wednesday, april 25, 2001
I walked a lot downtown yesterday... First I bought a simple sterling ring for myself... It's very nice... I bought it from one of those stalls downtown... I tried bargaining but I wasn't really good at it so I paid for the original price... I tried though! Then I met up with a friend... We were suppose to watch a movie that afternoon but we didn't like what was on so I went to Kinko's, a printing place, with him so he could print his business cards... then we walked around again, bookstores, record stores... I bought a Japanese music magazine Pati Pati.... then we went to Design Exchange where all his college's graduates' design works were displayed... one of them of course was his... They were all awesome.... then we went to see a movie, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon... yes!!! finally!!!! It was awesome! I love it! I didn't like the ending thought, it was a sad one... but that's okay, it's only a movie :-P
I had a really weird and an interesting dream last night.... In the dream I wrote the Chinese character for "gold/money" in a big piece of white paper... that's all I could remember.... Maybe it's telling me
I'm going to be lucky today! Maybe I'll win something!
10:39 AM
tuesday, april 24, 2001
I had an emotionally rough day today... I have revealed the other side of Gary that not a lot of people see... When I'm upset, I really show it and I tell the person directly... I can be really frank.... so yeah, I told somebody off... I then realized I was too harsh so apologized later on.... I didn't want to do it but sometimes you have to let the other person know things that piss you off... and my patience ran out.... I especially didn't want to hurt that person's feelings because I love that person so much... I definitely didn't want our friendship to breakup... so we had a talk and we're okay now... I'm so glad everything's back to normal again.
I did my errands this afternoon (don't forget it's my first vacation day today) and then I went to Playdium... It was great when there's nobody around... Usually the place is crowded at nights... I must have played Star Wars Trilogy for 2 hours....
12:29 AM
monday, april 23, 2001
I'm posting yet another junk e-mail I got today from a fella at work... I thought it's cute (no offence meant!)... Surprisingly a lot of them are true... I'm speaking for myself anyway:
YOU KNOW YOU ARE ASIAN IF...
- your mother has a short-haired, curly perm.
- your dad is some sort of engineer.
- your parents still tried to get you into places half-price saying you were 12 when you were really 15.
- you ask your parents help on one math problem and 2 hours later they`re still lecturing.
- you have a 50 lb. bag of rice in your pantry.
- Americans think you`re "Chinese" no matter what part of Asia your ancestors were from.
- you`ve had a bowl haircut at one point in your life.
- your parents enjoy comparing you to their friends` kids.
- you`ve had to sit through karaoke videos with scantily clad, ugly Asian women attempting to dance and walk around a temple, forest or library.
- your parents say, "Don`t forget your heritage."
- you drive mostly Japanese cars.
- you`ve learned to keep bargaining even if the prices are rock bottom.
- you`ve had to eat parts of animals they don`t even put in hot dogs.
- you know what bok choy is.
- you`ve gotten little red envelopes around February.
- piles of shoes tend to make it hard to open the front, back and closet doors.
- you hear (your name + eee (optional) + yah!) every time someone calls you. (e.g., Jean- ee - yah! or Mary - yah!).
- you have NO eyelashes.
- idiotic people try to impress you with pathetic imitation Asian languages, like
- ching chong woo bok chi, etc...
- your parents say leaving rice in your bowl is a sin.
- the Bio lectures on marinelife (seaweed, sea cucumbers, octopii) was last night`s dinner.
- at least one family member wears black wire/plastic frame glasses
- your parents hover over your tired, caffeine-drugged body at 12 midnight to say, "In China, we studied even more than that!"
- your parents expect you`ll be best friends with any one off the street in any given area as long as they are Asian.
- an Asian woman comes on campus and Americans ask: "Is that your mother? Well then, is it your sister?"
- your parents say, "Calculus? I took calculus in 8th grade!!"
- everyone thinks you`re good at math.
- your parents` vocabulary is filled with "Ai-yahs and Wah`s."
- you like $1.75 movies.
- you like $1.50 movies even more.
- your aunts and uncles bring you back adorable clothing from Asia with fuzzy bunnies, vinyl ducks and English words that make no sense, in great colors like yellow, pink, magenta, orange and the ever popular lime green.
- your parents insist you marry within your race.
- you never order chop suey, sweet and sour pork, or any other immitaion oriental food.
- your parents have never kissed you.
- your parents have never kissed each other.
- you learned about sex from someone other than your parents.
- you want a stereo and your parents say, "When I was your age, I didn`t even have shoes!!"
- people see a bunch of scribbles on a chopstick and ask you to translate.
- you have to call just about all your parent`s friends "Auntie and Uncle."
- you have 12+ aunts and uncles.
- at expensive restaurants, you order water for your beverage and never order dessert.
- your parents simply cut the green/black part off the bread and say "Eat it anyway. It`s still good."
- the vast majority of the people related to you wear glasses. Thick glasses.
- you will most likely be taller than your parents.
- your parents have either made you play the piano, the violin or both.
- you get nothing if you do well in school, but crapped on if you don`t.
- your dad still pulls his socks up to his knees, you know, the ones with the blue and pink stripes at the top.
- your family always cheers for the Asian countries during the Olympics.
- the furniture in your house never matches the wallpaper, the carpet, the decorations or any of the rest of the furniture.
- you own a rice cooker or two.
- you buy soy sauce by the gallon.
- your family owns butcher knives bigger than your head.
- your parents tell you about how long it took for them to get to school, how horrible the weather was in their native country, and how much they still appreciated going.
- your parents buy you clothes and shoes many sizes too big so you can "grow into it" and wear it "for years to come."
- people can`t pronounce your real native country`s name
- you have an English name to replace your native name, so people can pronounce it correctly
1:00 PM
ok... i'm okay now... forget about what i said in my previous blog... sometimes some people are so annoying... argh.... anyway, i'm gonna have a busy day tomorrow, my first non-working usual-working-day.. remember i'm on vacation... weee! ^_^ i love this new bracelet i bought from this chinese store downtown... it's purple and it's quite girlish but who cares... i also bought a bigger and heavier one and is made of hematite... shiny dark blue... i love it. i ate too much barbeque today... we had a barbeque this afternoon... it was suppose to happen on Saturday but it was raining so we postponed it. A friend lent me a L'Arc-en-Ciel video... they're so cool.... I love the dark ones...I should go to bed now... bye.
1:26 AM
sunday, april 22, 2001
i'm so annoyed with somebody right now! sometimes i wonder if i should be honest and tell the person what i really feel... but at the same time i try to think of reasons why these unfortunate events happen...
12:52 PM
saturday, april 21, 2001
yay! i'm officially on vacation for a week and i don't have any plans to do in mind.... i booked this vacation so i could study for my finals but i dropped the course so....
i'm having cinnabon and starbucks coffee for breakfast... cinnabon's a taste of heaven! it's gonna be a busy day today... we're gonna have a family barbecue today to celebrate my mom's birthday with relatives... her birthday is really april 18.
9:54 AM
thursday, april 19, 2001
i ate lots last night... it was my mum's birthday (the real one)... we just ordered chinese take out... i ate a lot... we are going to celebrate it, again, this coming saturday with our relatives...
12:44 AM
tuesday, april 17, 2001
friend from work is back from japan and he brought me a l'arc-en-ciel cd clicked singles best 13.... he also finally brought my sony md walkman, finally! the cd is very sweet! i finally used my starbucks gift certificate a friend gave me as a birthday present... i bought a bag of one of their specialty coffee colombia nariño... ah, it's so yummy!
9:23 PM
monday, april 16, 2001
oh yeah i forgot to mention... i added a new section on my site (who cares anyway???).... i call it unrequited love (shitsuren in japanese)... click here to check it out, if you want... it's just a page where i put lines from my favourite songs... or sometimes the entire song! i also include some of my own crappy try-hard poems... i only have one posted so far.. yikes! well, i need to spice up my site a bit so i just thought that would be nice idea... talking about spicing up the site, i updated my picture page (how vain am i)... one of them i had to edit a bit because it showed too much skin....
saturday i went to my friend tony's birthday dinner at alice fazooli's italian crabshack downtown... i had balsamic chicken pasta which was good... but as usual, i didn't finish it. i met new people. one of them i didn't really like very much. she thought i was lying when i told them i couldn't go clubbing after the dinner because i wasn't feeling well which was true.... i didn't sleep well the night before... so yeah, long story... sunday i didn't do anything... i didn't even go to church... i'll go to hell when i die. i ate a lot of apple cinnamon muffin my sister baked and drank a lot of soya milk which is one of my favourite drinks. i didn't realize margarine tastes good on hot freshly baked muffin! i never like margarine... it's just a fake butter.
at the bus today, i chatted with one of my co-worker... she's really nice and i always enjoy talking to her... we talked about religion in the entire bus trip. we touched on topics like plenary indulgence, confirmation, penitence, the split of eastern and the western catholic churches, wicca, devil worship, feng shui and atheism... hmmm... i should be a priest.
my mom has two birthdays, april 16 and april 18. we always thought her birthday was april 16 until 8 years ago when she found out her date of birth on her birth certificate is actually the 18th. we're still not over having april 16 as her birthday... she looks like an april-16-birthday woman... i know it doesn't make sense.
11:04 PM
friday, april 13, 2001
screen shot of my desktop today... nice...
good friday... i have nothing to do... my two brothers, my sister and i are planning to watch a late night movie tonight... yes, we're crouching tiger! i am so bad... i've been planning to see this movie for almost 2 or 3 months i think and i keep putting it off...
let's see.. what did i do today? oh yeah, i added a background image on the site, isn't it adorable? that's tetsu i think peeking at the window... i stole it from the l'arc-en-ciel cd sleeve and did little bit of magic.. hehe... oh and i learned and memorized forever love guitar chords so i can now sing and play guitar with it ^_^
last night i went out with my friends... coffee and we were trying to decide a name for the asian boat cruise my friends are planning to set up for the summer... we came up with silly names like fun-asia, fant-asia, dragonflies, madame butterfly, asiana, asian snatch (yeah, don't ask me where that came from)... the group also came up with the name floating lotus cruise which i liked ^_^ ... no name was decided so far....and then we went clubbing... after clubbing we went for vietnamese food in our favourite vietnamese restaurant called Pho Pasteur and i had my usual favourite pho... we were making fun of the non-asian lady wearing chopsticks on her hair... the funny thing was the chopsticks looked so much like the chopsticks they had in the restaurant... we were so bad but we couldn't help not laughing ^_^ we came up with a funny analogy, it's like me wearing spoon and fork on my hair in an italian restaurant ^_^
7:18 PM
wednesday, april 11, 2001
I will post this junk mail only because it's cute.... here it is:
You know you are Canadian when...
- You stand in "line-ups" at the movie, not lines.
- You're not offended by the term "Homo Milk".
- You understand the sentence, "Could you please pass me a serviette, just spilled my poutine".
- You eat chocolate bars instead of candy bars.
- You drink pop, not soda.
- You know what it means to be on pogey.
- You can drink legally while still a 'teen.
- You talk about the weather with strangers and friends alike.
- You don't know or care about the fuss with Cuba, it's just a cheap place to travel with good cigars and no Americans.
- When there is a social problem, you turn to your government to fix it instead of telling them to stay out of it.
- You're not sure if the leader of your nation has EVER had sex and you don't want to know if he has!
- You get milk in bags as well as cartons and plastic jugs.
- Pike is a type of fish, not some part of a highway.
- You drive on a highway, not a freeway.
- You know what a Robertson screwdriver is.
- You have Canadian Tire money in your kitchen drawers.
- You know that Thrills are something to chew and "taste like soap".
- You know that Mounties "don't always look like that".
- You dismiss all beers under 6% as "for children and the elderly".
- You know that the Friendly Giant isn't a vegetable product line.
- You know that Casey and Finnegan are not a Celtic musical group.
- You participated in "Participaction".
- You have an Inuit carving by your bedside with the rationale,"What's good enough protection for the Prime Minister is good enough for me".
- You wonder why there isn't a 5 dollar coin yet.
- Like any international assassin/terrorist/spy in the world, you carry a Canadian passport.
- You use a red pen on your non-Canadian textbooks and fill in the missing 'u's from labor, honor, and color.
- You know the French equivalents of "free", "prize", and "no sugar added", thanks to your extensive education in bilingual cereal packaging.
- You are excited whenever an American television show mentions Canada.
- You make a mental note to talk about it at work the next day.
- You can eat more than one maple sugar candy without feeling nauseous.
- You were mad when "The Beachcombers" was taken off the air.
- You know what a toque is.
- You have some memento of Doug and Bob.
- You know Toronto is not a province. (...yet)
- You never miss "Coaches Corner".
- Back bacon and Kraft Dinner are two of your favourite food groups.
- You actually get these jokes and forward them to all your Canadian friends.
10:07 PM
Days of joy, days of sadness slowly pass me by
As I try to hold you, you are vanishing before me
You're just an illusion
When I'm awaken, my tears have dried in the sand of sleep
I'm a rose blooming in the desert
It's a dream, I'm in love with you
madoro ni dakishimete....
9:20 PMtuesday, april 10, 2001
grrrr... i didn't start my day well.... i was going to have an argument with my dad because my dad always let my youngest brother get away with everything... he didn't want to go to school today for no reason and my dad let him get away with it... i told my dad how much he spoils him....okay, gotta take a shower...
7:52 AM
welcome to version 13 -- yes the unlucky one... i call it the "dark version". i decided to give my site a "gothic" make over... version 12 was too "pop-ish" and too "cute"... i also removed my "positive" and "inspirational" pages... why? because i'm not really a fully-positive-thinker i claimed to be... mind you i always try my best to think positive all the time...is it possible to get attached to a "security blanket" when you're 26? recently, i'm getting too attached with this elastics i started wearing around my right wrist a few days ago... i don't feel comfortable without it... weird, huh?
12:39 AMsunday, april 8, 2001
oooh... awesome hairstyles! i should show this to my hairstylist in my next visit ^_^ and the costumes, well, i know where i can get them.... hehehe... *evil smile* i still can't forget this one old man who asked whether i was wearing a wig while having coffee with some friends yesterday... argh!my saturday was a busy one! i was downtown toronto almost the whole day / night! it was a friend's birthday.... we went to Mandarin Chinese Buffet restaurant... i hate buffets because i get tempted to eat too much... 20 bucks for a buffet, not bad... the food was good. i ate mostly seafood... and lots of custard (flan) for dessert! i love those stuff! then we went to the Playdium... we did the group car racing and then i did this play-drums-with-your-favourite-band thingy which didn't work so it just ate up my credits... and then we went home....
9:50 PMsaturday, april 7, 2001
can you believe i spend almost half an hour styling my hair... and then at the end change it anyway?? it's crazy... i always miss my bus to work because of it... i should go bald again.... hmmm.... i look like a girl with my hair... a friend told me i look quite androgynous which i kinda liked ^_^i didn't blog thursday... the thursday was a busy one... i went straight downtown Toronto from work and met up with a friend... we went to a store called "Booknet", a small Japanese book/video/CD store, close to Yonge and Charles downtown and I bought an X-Japan CD (a ballad collection)... i love them so much... i become very sentimental everytime i listen to their ballads... and then we went to eat at the Japanese restaurant downstairs called "Japan Deli" which is one of my favourites... had some nice cold Asahi beer, tempura and teriyaki.... ah so good after a long day's work!! we were making fun of the Japanese server because he looked so giddy and submissive!! too bad i didn't bring my whip ^_^ (waaataaa!) haha.... and then we killed some time in different stores downtown and then we went for coffee to kill even more time... and then i went home... i must have gone home about 11:30... and then woke up 5:30 the next morning... such a drag!
friday was not too busy.. i didn't do anything. i was suppose to have dinner with a good friend of mine from high school but i totally forgot about it!!! good thing she forgot too!!! we'll set up to meet another day...
it's gonna be a busy day today.... i'm gonna go shopping downtown again, walk around and watch people (LOL)... and then go to birthday dinner for a friend.... my god, every week there's a birthday! next week is another friend's birthday! i'm gonna be broke in no time!! just kidding.....
well.. my coffee's almost finished... time to run.... bye!
10:12 AMwednesday, april 4, 2001
so yeah, a friend left for japan this morning... i asked him to bring me two cd's and a magazine... i ask so much... oh well ^_^ ach, i miss him already! I almost fainted in front of my boss... it was so weird! I was trying to explain to her a complaint from one of our clients and all of a sudden I found myself holding on to the wall to support myself... it was so embarrassing... she got worried i might take a sick leave... can you believe 2 people are on sick leave and 3 people are on vacation in my department... just try to imagine how stressed the people in my department are... except for me, i'm really doing well in my own gary-style stress management practices. but wait a minute, what about that almost-fainting incident?? hmmm....watashi wa rabu hoteru ni ikimasu! ^_^ LOL
11:38 PMquote of the day, from gary's mouth: "... androgyny tickles".
12:26 AMmonday, april 2, 2001
Yes... I confess that I'm officially addicted to spring water... I drink 2 in a day! I used to hate water because it's tasteless, well of course, doh! That's all I can say tonight. bye
10:28 PMsunday, april 1, 2001
I spent sooo much today... argh... I woke up early and was craving to get to the mall and walk around... I promised myself to stick with just walking around but eventually I bought stuff and they weren't cheap! Ouch, my wallet hurts ^_^ One of the stuff I bought was CK One cologne... it reminds me so much of 1995!! That was the cologne I wore for 2 years at that time before I discovered Acqua di Gio... I went back to CK One because I want to be androgenous... LOL!!! Just kidding... I always love its fragrance... I hate very masculine or very strong colognes.. they hurt my nostrils. I also bought a white shirt for work which is nice but it's still quite big (most or all adult clothing stores here in Canada do not carry my size... argh!) and I also bought a gel that cost me 27 bucks... I gave myself some spanking after... ^_- LOL!
9:42 PM
I saw Tom Cats this afternoon with a friend. It kinda sucked. It was a stupid movie. I laughed so I guess I found it a bit funny. Then after that we had dinner. Okay, I'll start naming places from now on even if you don't know which place I'm talking about... It may be useful in finding good places here in Toronto if you happen to drop by. The restaurant we went to is called Tokyo World... It's a good Japanese restaurant with a small store inside where you can buy stuff from Japan. It has a very informal and open atmosphere, meaning you can see everyone in the room so if you like cruising this would be the place for you :-P hehe... There are no private sections unlike the other restaurants. My friend is Japanese and he knows all the good Japanese restaurants in the Toronto area. I've visited all top five in his list so far ^_^ He's leaving for Japan next week and he'll be gone for two weeks... I'll miss him for sure. We were going to watch Crouching Tiger (can you believe I still haven't seen that movie yet??) after but we were both tired so we went home.
3:03 AM
