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| 12 jun 2002 first, i am not photogenic. i forget how many pictures of me were taken last night, but this is the only one i'm willing to post. adam tried this extreme shot with his wide angle lens, and instead of the slogan on the t-shirt, what i found more noticeable was my chin pouch. (by the way, when adam dropped to his knees to take a picture of me from down below, i remember thinking, "wow, i'm really not used to a GUY being on his knees in front of me.") second, i am not bold. wearing that t-shirt made me really self-conscious. especially after i first put it on and walked through a mountain parking lot into a pho place. i guess if you don't know that "sexy northerner" is a pet shop boys song, then the phrase is kind of out there. but yeah. i think i'm too old to wear bold stuff. i need to sleep. i've been hitting around 6.5 hours a night, and it's killing me. asianmunchies.com sucks. i ordered my wasabi shrimp chips a month ago (may 12), and they charged my credit card the very next day. the stuff never came, and then they say they're CLOSED on their website, and finally, i call today, and they're like, "oh, we don't carry them, so do you want your money back?" what the fuck? like, i'm going to say, "oh yes, go right ahead, take my money and don't give it back. i don't need my money." so yesterday was the day of dozens. for basketball, we had a whopping turnout of twelve, which we accomodated by rotating three teams of 4 . and for bowling, we also had twelve people, which made for a really slow game. it felt like we were just hanging out, and once in a blue moon we'd have to get up and bowl a frame. my game is not good. i got a little friendly admonishment from mike last night about how i've sucked it up for the past month or so. and, to my dismay, the aqua ball i had been using was no longer there, so i had to settle with the pink ball. hey, i know a pink ball isn't manly, but i'm not afraid to use it. so i bowled around a 110 and a 130 last night. last night was pretty hectic, though. i left work at around 7:15 to go have dinner with jay. it seems that pho is the default place. jay wanted something light, but i couldn't think of anything (since i don't consider a salad a meal). so pho it was. but first i dashed home to change change and grab a hat and camera. after a messy pho experience (i got a bunch of red splatters all over my right sleeve), i had to skip getting balls and jetted over to stanford bookstore to pick up a copy of dreamweaver MX. getting around stanford campus is a pain. it's nice when you're not in a hurry, but there are hella lots of stop signs and slow drivers. and finally, i zoomed off to go bowling, but not before i got gas. tired. after we finished our games around 11:30 or so, mike said that he wanted some krispy kreme. i looked at him incredulously: "you're going to drive over 40 miles just for DONUTS?" he joked that he was offended because i didn't think they were worth it. wow. and they did it. in the end, 6 of us shared a dozen donuts. i was really disturbed, though, because there were some caucasian guys sitting in there, too, and if i wasn't mistaken, they were totally laughing at us or something. when we got up to look at the donut assembly line, one of them repeatedly made farting noises, followed by giggling. so what was it? was it the fact that we were mostly asian, or the fact that we were apparently not as cool and thuggish and tattoo'ed as them? i felt like i was in junior high or something, and that's a feeling that i have no desire to relive. i get the feeling that the impetus for their actions was our race. and then, there's a bitter irony because a few of them had tattoos of chinese characters on their shoulders. i tried to read one of them, but it didn't seem to make any sense. but anyways, why brand the language of a culture on your body if you don't even respect them? that's fucking idiotic. i have issues with ethnic diversity. meaning, that when i see a place that is labelled "diverse," i don't think about the fact that maybe people will learn to get along with each other. instead, i get afraid that eventually the different people will clash, and something will blow up. i think that's what scared me about new york when i visited last october. at stanford, there was this thing they touted as "multiculturalism." i'm not sure what their spiel is, but they were making it seem like it was a good thing. i guess it's good if the end result is that people of different backgrounds blended together harmoniously. but i didn't see it that way. instead, a large part of the stanford student body is simply segregated even further. i mean, you have the black fraternities, the korean american student association, the chicano/latino theme house. basically, people voluntarily sequester themselves among people just like them under the guise of "exploring their roots." hm. yes, i guess it would make sense if they grew up as the only minority where they came from (i.e. a practical reason), but for others (like the asian crowd), it was simply a conscious socially ethnocentric decision. so when people say that places like stanford and san francisco, etc. are good because they're "diverse," that really means nothing to me. just because you have a mix of people doesn't mean they get along. maybe it brings more exposure, but from what i've seen, people tend to stick to their own kind. i think in the middle of my stay in college, stanford changed the term "multiculturalism" to "transculturalism" to convey more of a cross-cultural notion. whatever it's called, i don't think it worked. and sad to say, i don't think it will ever work. one of the most shocking things i heard in school... one of my korean girl friends was talking to another girl, and a korean dude came up to the first girl and said, "what are you doing talking to *her*? she's japanese!" wow. this world is fucked up. ----- yesterday, i got an IM request from a girl who had contacted me once before, months ago. it was kind of neat, because we just started talking about sleeping naked (which we both do), pregnancy and birth control and sexual side effects and how condoms suck, dating and relationships, etc. it always pleases me to just jump into a personal conversation with someone i barely know... although it's probably easy for me to do precisely because they're strangers. does that make sense? the fact that i can reveal a lot about myself *because* i don't know somebody? anyways, when she mentioned she slept naked, too, a part of me started stirring. the imagery of a naked girl in bed is so much more enticing than a naked guy (i.e. myself) in bed. frankly, guy's bodies are pretty ugly. that thing they call a penis... even though i love mine, and it lets me pee wherever i want, i will admit that it's one nasty looking thing. i need to lock myself in my apartment soon so i can work on my site. i don't foresee any weekend when i will have time, and i'm really tired of going to bed past 2am every day. |