08.01.01
i saw an ex at a bar today. he was actually my first boyfriend. i was really surprised at how bad he looked. he at least looked boyish in h.s. but now he's the spitting image of his very homely father. i pretended not to see him although he was sitting right by the doorway. i just didn't feel like small talk. i don't really care about how he's doing either. not that i have any bitter feelings- just kind of disturbs me that i dated this guy.

i am not going to complain about my situation any longer. i can still stress about it. but i'm just going to suck it up and not complain.

08.02.01
wong kar wai's In the Mood for Love was very good. could anyone be as graceful as maggie cheung? jane, emi, and jen came to class with me today. they even stuck around for after film discussion which is always full of flat out stupid comments. ate noodle gourmet then decided to go to a bar but drove around for 30 minutes getting lost and trying to find parking only to find out that both jane and *jen* didn't have their id's on them. hatred!!!

08.04.01
jen and i have been trying to deviate from the backyard activities lately. for example, last night we went to a gas station, 7-11, and dunkin donuts. tonight we went to a movie and down to rutgers.
my cousin (seventeen times removed) and i went to pick up my mom from work today and drove right into a massive thunder storm near boundbrook. there was all this lightning and when i looked over to the passenger side, i saw that she was petrified. she said the lightning in korea is on a smaller scale. how is that possible? my mom later explained to her that everything in america is big. people, melons, and believe it or not, even lightning.

08.05.01
today was the last day of the sale and people were still shopping 30mins after the store closed. they had this frantic look in their eyes, looking for *something* to buy before the sale ended.

today's highlight: bea, heavyset black woman with plenty-o-attitude and jackie, extremely bitchy manager from the accessories department let their ghetto-ness come out on the sales floor this afternoon. jackie was laughing way too loud for bea's taste. first bea shot her a "look" (cannot be described), then sauntered over to the border of handbags and accessories.

bea: excuse me but can you be a little more quiet over there? this is a department store, not k-mart.

jackie: well the merchandise in your department is lookin like the stuff from k-mart so that's why i can be loud!

bea: jackie, do i need to get over there and hit you? mmm,mmm!

a few mins later, jackie was trying to sell some angora gloves, shouting flea market style, "these gloves are hot! they're so hot!" bea stared at jackie from the corner of her eyes and yelled out, "then why nobody buyin' em!" after that there was a lot of "mmm,mmm!" and "why don't you just shut up!" man, bea got attitude like no other. i bet if they weren't at work, she'd just go beat the crap out of jackie.

i went to the mongolian grill for the second time in my life today. dinner was with jen, patty, and patty's friend jill. the guy at the grill was constantly humming while he cooked up our food. jen and i just stood there smiling, watching him through the plexi-glass. i wonder why the glass is there. probably to prevent escape.
finally got to watch crouching tiger which was quite good. there's this one scene where zang ziyi throws a curved blade at a guy's head and then for the next minute it's just his daughter kneeling by him, constant footage of the blade lodged in forehead, and i found this quite disturbing. certain scenes just stay with me.
can anyone be cooler than michelle yeoh?

08.06.01
jen and i broke the record for backyard activities.

why does my head feel so heavy right now?

08.07.01
i was at jen's last night till 5:30, sitting in her backyard having a few drinks and chatting away about what, i don't remember. in any case, from last night i have 16 mosquito bites on my legs including one on the bottom of my foot. they are the kind of bites that swell into sizeable mounds, the kind that one can press a nail into and imprint a crescent, the kind that you scratch until you break skin and even that is not enough so you end up scratching around the open wound or sometimes dabbing some iodine on it so that you can get a good sting. they are driving me insane.

it is so hot.

08.12.01
sarah and jane were here for the weekend and for some reason, when the three of us get together, the chemistry is really good. i have decided that there is one perfect adjective for sarah: SASSY

sare and i watched 301/302, a visually disturbing korean film about sex and food. but the sex was incestous and carnal, and the bit about the foood was gluttonous, canabalistic, and carnivorous. just don't watch it.

08.13.01
i got into my first car accident today. i was dropping sare off in manhattan and i made a careless turn. well, i guess cutting across three lanes to turn into a street was pretty presumptious on my part but i made sure the lanes were clear. a white van slammed into the back corner of the car leaving a few cracks in the blinker light and a warped trunk that now refuses to shut. i had to drive back home with trottely drivers hi-beaming me to let me know that my trunk cover was wildly flapping up and down. the worst part about all this is that the car isn't even mine.

i watched a five episode korean documentary about this celebrity transgender. must say, she is better looking than most natural women and she is so catty and feminine- really puts the rest of us to shame. by the end of the documentary i was jealous.

08.14.01
i honestly thought that my final paper for the film class was absolute crap. i whipped it up the night before class and i was certain that it was so mediocre. but i got an a on it. so i read it over today and i realized it really wasn't bad at all. where does all my pessimism come from? dad? personal experience? i'd be more optimistic if i were raised by monkeys.

sare is over and i'm making her watch the transgender documentary on ha rheesoo. we must seeth with jealousy now.

i got an unexpected im last night. i was really surprised. why did he im me when he really doesn't have anything to say to me? all he said was "hey". i replied with a hi. i have nothing to say to him either.
08.16.01

i can't seem to accecpt his apology. because there are too many things on my chest that i want to lift by telling him. but i can't seem to do that either. i started to say stuff but everything was trying to pour out at once and it got jammed. so now it's just stuck there in the middle of my throat. he could have just left it alone and i would have been fine.

08.17.01
why am i so repressed? sare told me that i just stop talking sometimes. maybe it's because my parents are so repressed.

i feel so overwhelmed. must bad things happen all at once?

08.18.01
sare, joe, and i hung out yesterday night. it was fun at first. then i got really sick and had to be taken home. i don't like how baden puts out bowls of popcorn. i really don't like popcorn however after an hour or so of drinking there, i find myself devouring fist fulls of stale popcorn dropping some on my lap, down my shirt, pretty ridiculous.

a few days ago at work, a customer had cleopatra-ish eyeliner encircling her eyes. kind of looked like she drew jesus fish around her eyes, with the tail part all extended out atleast half an inch to the side of her face. so i started ringing her up and she asked me if i was the youngest in my family. when i said i was the eldest she seemed really surprised. she then asked me if i took 5min showers.
"and your brother takes longer showers right? because you see, the eldest always takes very short showers while the youngest takes 30min showers."
when i told her that i take longer showers than my younger brother, she got really upset and told me that i was wrong.
"it has to do with guilt. the older child is always pushing around the little one you know, 'get out of my way. leave me alone you little brat!' so the younger child just has all this stress and guilt. so in the shower it's like they're trying to wash it all off. and only children, oh they're the worst. they take the longest showers because they have all the guilt from their parents."
she went on to tell me that she did research on this for the past two years, walking around the mall asking random people. she even had her report with her, which she pulled out of her handbag. it was a hand written paper with drawings on it.
i just stood there staring at her thinking 'oh mah gohhh she is completely insane.' as she walked out of the store she just kind of leaned forward and recapped in a sing-songy voice, "remember. the oldest child takes 5min showers!"

a very very old woman walked out with over a thousand bucks last week because i made the mistake of assuming that such a frail, old woman couldn't possibly have stolen a $1000 d&g. as it turns out, it wasn't the first time nordies was attacked by the ninetysomething year old crook. other employees just shook their heads and gave me a 'tsk'. i felt so stoopit.

rosanne and i had our last hotdog lunch and coffee at the cafe. then i took irata out for coffee. when we got back from lunch, my manager wanted to take us out for coffee. i walk so fast when i get wired.

sare and i went to great adventure two days ago. i was forced to ride freefall, the ride i swore i would never ever go on. we stuck around till closing but unfortunately we didn't realize that there was another section of the park that had nitro and medusa, the newer and more thrilling roller coasters. how gay is that.

08.19.01
today was sort of strange. i hung out at ex's house. in his room i saw something i gave him sitting on his bookshelf. i wondered if he would throw it away. i picked it up and thought about taking it back but that would be stealing, right? technically it belongs to him.

from an email i received from emi today:
"Laurie asked me about you and was like "so is it true what mike told me,..that linda dropped out of school to work for a hat store and make 50,000 dollars a year?" where in the hell did Kwok get that rumor?"

so sare and ex had an argument a few nights ago. she told him that i was only a conquest to him. she also told him that he needed to apologize to me now in order to free himself from gulit. now he's all pissed off and wants me to *know* that what he felt for me was really really real. he imed me today, to tell me just that. when i asked why now, why not in person, he said because that would be a while away. so is the deadline for apologizing to an ex-girlfriend at the end of two months? shouldn't he have said something *while* i was going through this crap? it is selfish of him to just appear and ask me to tell him how i felt when i found out that he started dating someone else a few weeks after he told me how it "broke his heart to see me cry" and how dating someone else would be the last thing on his mind. he put up an away message during the conversation. my im was met with "eatin lunch". nice.

he started talking to sare because she was using my computer and i was signed on. after he realized it was her, he wanted to ask her something about me, expecting the same kind of neutral advice he's received from her before when we were dating. instead she let out some of the sarah cho sassiness. he responded by saying that she shouldn't be signed under my name and that the matter was purely between the ex-couple. but really , if he thought so he shouldn't have asked her about me in the first place.

i think he's also accusing me of *trying* to become friends with his friends. i do talk to one of his close friends. i am not trying to be friends with him. he's just a nice guy who i chat and hang out with once in a while. i did feel awkward about talking to him at first but i thought it would be paranoid and uptight to say i couldn't just because of exboyfriend. so yes, i now consider this guy a friend. but he must know i'm not trying to establish friendship with his friend with some sort of alterior motive. why would i do that? to get back at him in some way?

i don't want to be bitter. i don't hate this guy but i'm angry, humiliated, stressed, tired, and hurt. if he was going to wait this long to apologize to me, he might as well have waited to tell me in person. although somehow, this apology seems more like his attempt to smooth things over. he's in a new relationship now but there wasn't much closure with me. there is nothing i can do. closure should have come before new person. if he's feeling bad about what happened, he's going to have to deal with that on his own. i was stupid to tell him how i felt. i ended up getting more hurt in the process.

i know that things happen for a reason. if he stayed in jersey this summer, we might still be together. if he didn't meet this girl, i would have been waiting for him to get back.
i know his parents pray for him. i know god's working in his life and that he has a long way ahead of him. he has so much more to learn... just sucks that i was the one trampled on in the process. this on top of the other issues i'm facing this summer, i feel like crawling under my desk and rocking back and forth. however, i no longer own a desk because i threw it out in the heat of one of my 'redesign room now!' episodes. i have so much more to learn... i ought to be thankful that this is all part of god's plan for me. he's molding and tinkering away, as painful as that may be, to make me into something better and more fabulous, right? yeah. i believe it.

08.20.01
i'm ok. a-okay.

08.23.01
i think i'm going to eat nothing when i get back to school. not because i want to diet but because i am not sure that i can afford to eat out anymore. that might sound pretty ridiculous to some... yeah, that sounds ridiculous. but still. cooking for myself is so annoying.

jen sare and i went to j.c. tonight. i only went to get a rebate on my new cellphone but somehow, an hour later the three of us ended up in manhattan. so we went for a few drinks. sare left after the first bar and jen insisted we go to another one. i seem to submit to most of her whims when she is nice and liquored up. after the second bar i was tipsy and my foremost desire was to go kareoke. man, we were pretty bad. we sang badly and loudly, adding in hand motions, some dancing when necessary, etc. v.trottely but v.fun.

after women's night yesterday, we went to see d's new place. didn't feel too comfortable there. first of all, it was freezing inside. the four of us just sat there, snug on his couch, the four of us all facing in one direction. we did this for about 40 mins, then went home.

08.24.01
i woke up around 2pm today. went online for a little bit, then i went back to sleep until 7pm. if i was allowed to, i think i could sleep for days. i feel incredibly sluggish right now.

happy birthday jane and joe! you guys just don't seem to be getting any younger.

for my 23rd birthday, i would like one of the following: a kiln, a wheel, a manual camera, or a doner roasting-revolving machine and a sword with which i may shave thin slices from the rotating mass of mystery meat. i would slice it so dramatically, with my eyes closed and such.

i realize that i step outside only when i have to get in the car and go somewhere. that's kind of gross.
going to jen's now to drink iced coffee and watch when harry met sally.

08.26.01
so without further delay, i will pack.

...packing is taking forever...

oh mah gohhhhhhhh!!! i hate this! forget it. i'm just not going back to school

i have this tendency to keep *everything*. i just can't throw things out. it's always "it might come in handy later, this little plastic cube that fell off a hair accessory" or "this completely deflated balloon with a happy face drawn on it has incredible sentimental value because jane made it for me on my birtday."

08.27.01
congratulate me on my naturalization. i am now an american citizen.

i'm back at school. it feels weird to be back. i don't like my apt. it smells funny however we do have a leather couch and a huge mirror with an etching of the manhattan skyline covering a wall in the living room. v.cheesy.

08.29.01
yoga class is pretty ridiculous. i went in today hoping the class didn't cover too much during the past week. as soon as i entered the room i saw that everyone was barefoot and already laying down on their mats. i felt a bit intimidated, thinking that maybe they were already doing some kind of breathing exercise that i did not know of. there was soft music echoing through the gym, the kind you'd hear in an old chinese movie when the camera sweeps past a foggy mountain-scape. then the instructor (who is pear shaped and not at all thin and muscular as i had imagined) began speaking in a soft voice, "take a deep breath in. breathe... now, breathe out..." later we had to do this position called "dog". it's pretty self-explanatory. on all fours, lift butt up, down, etc. during this exercise the instructor said, "you guys are good dogs. good dogs... breath...".
the men's gymnastic team was warming up for practice in the next gym. there is a large window that separates the two rooms, therefore i can check out buff guys without shirts on, running around and such. they can also see us. a bunch of girls being good dogs.

my bed is mushy. this makes me upset. i want to go home this weekend.

i am poor. i'm pretty much down to my last dollar these days. i don't like this at all. not at all.

08.30.01
there's too much stuff to do...

drinks are so cheap here. last night i had a good glass of red wine for under $4. two good glasses actually.
i felt pretty bad this morning due to above mentioned glasses of wine, and couldn't make it to morning class. it's amazing how low my tolerance is. i should just stop drinking altogether since my body seems to flat out reject alcohol. i bet jen could see my liver from westfield.

08.31.01
after three whole days of classes, i am back in jersey. today was sare and jane's move-to-jersey city day. we were loading up the uhaul this morning and i decided last minute to go with them. oh how i fly by the seat of my pants.

we (including jane's dave) ate dinner at a dingy chinese take out place in j.c. while we browsed the menu, dave who is chinese, told us that the ladies behind the counter were talking about us. they were trying to decide on who they thought was the prettiest. dave told us that they settled on "the one in the middle". jane sare and i jokingly haggled over the title of "pretty one" until dave simply stated that he was the one standing in the middle.

jen and i have concluded that we would be text-book writing math geniuses by now if our dads had just let us alone with the math homework when we were younger.










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