eeeeeee - i start school in the morning. i'm a senior! ok...technically, i've been classified as senior standing for a few quarters now, but i'm starting my last year!!! that means, by june, i'll be a college grad! aiya!!!

did i mention that i got back from canada earlier this evening? :)

my whole sleeping pattern is out of sync so i'm still awake. anywho, hong kong was incredibly humid, and toss in tons of people on the streets, and it makes for a not so comfortable outting each day. but i got to go to street market things and buy cheap, but often somewhat useless stuff. i got cell phone faceplates, vcds, and a cute paul frank monkey bag. i did indulge in yummy dim sum and other good chinese food. oh, and i went to this peninsula place - it's not a real peninsula but a buildling/complex named the peninsula plaza or something like that. anyway, it's this plaza that has designer stores like chanel, salvatore ferragamo, and minolo blahnik, etc and the dining area has afternoon tea in the british tradition. so my dad and i had afternoon tea. haha...it reminded me of when gene hackman and gwyneth paltrow go and have a tea party in the royal tenenbaums, except without the hostility. :)

after a couple of days, we went to taipei and spent the rest of the week there. it included more shopping at the many night markets and stuff. the area where we stayed was right around where my parents went to college...so i heard a lot of "in college this is where mom and i went...blah blah blah" from my dad. we also had dinner with some of his friends and stuff, and that was alright. i spent the evening sitting quietly hoping no one would ask me anything. they kept calling me "mei mei" and the term for "little friend" which pretty much means child/kid. yea...the whole time i was there i felt like i was 6 years old. ah well.

clothes shopping was interesting. apparently all their "normal" sizes are like the petite/massively small sizes here. plus, apparently they like to wear their pants butt-tight - so bottoms were out, but the shirts and tops were ok. they still have esprit there and they were having an end of season sale so i picked up 2 skirts and 2 shirts for under $9! the bummer was that shoes over there don't fit me. my monstrously huge feet can't fit the biggest size shoe they have. one lady tried to convince me that the shoe will stretch out - my toes were curled up at the toe of the shoe and didn't have room to flatten out at all. she really wanted me the buy the shoes.

so aside from being accosted at the night markets by the overwhelming amount of shoppers and vendors vehemently trying to sell their wares, shopping was a bucket of fun.

i'm back and alive! praise the Lord! i need to adjust to the whole time zone thing... more about my trip in the morning :)

i'm currently sitting in the lounge of china airlines at the taipei airport. it's pretty darn cool. they have humbaos and a mini-frig with lots of juices and stuff. and...best of all, internet access! yahoo! yesterday, i spent the day in sf and hung out with cora for the afternoon. she showed me around the berkeley campus and i got to see her mom and her house too. it was pretty fun. later in the evening, i had dinner with my dad's side of the family and occupied my 6 year old cousin catrina. we flew out around 1am and i immediately went to sleep for like 12 hours. i'm not a big fan of flying, but as long as i can sleep the whole time, i'm ok. :) in a few hours i'll be in hong kong and hopefully get to take a shower...i feel gross. i have that "i've been flying for days and i'm grimy" feel. ick.

it rained today. i was getting into my car earlier this evening and it had just started to drizzle, and there was this really great fresh rain smell in the air. i just stood there next to the car and just breathed it in. it always baffles me a little bit how certain smells can bring up precise memories and emotions. i remember there was this one time when i was walking out the back of lander hall and it was toward the end of the school year, around 9pm so it was still a bit light outside, and everything about that moment reminded me of standing outside of my house as a little kid. anywho...that's my example of smell and memory association. yea...so it rained and i got in my car and went to target. :)

i was thinking earlier today that i don't think i've found my niche quite yet. i've had a lot of time to think about many things lately, and that's one of the thoughts that's been bouncing around. my life feels like it doesn't quite fit. it's not that i don't feel like i fit in the places i am, but i just have this sense that my niche is out there and i just haven't gotten a hold of it just yet. hmm...stuff to ponder.

in the morning i'm off to san fran for the day to hang out with cora in her 'hood and then it's off to taiwan around midnight. it should be interesting. it's like a week with just my dad - i wonder what we'll talk about.

last night i went to watch my little brother's jv football game against southridge high school. sunset totally won - 28 to 14. i watched andy take down the guy with the ball in the 2nd or 3rd quarter...yay! it was actually pretty fun. i try to make it to at least one game each year before i leave for school or something, especially since my parents never go.

i was driving home earlier tonight and i was thinking about how surprisingly well-adjusted the 3 of us are - considering our parents. our parents are great - definitely providing for us, etc. it just would have been nice if they actually participated in our lives - in things like showing up at our sports games. i mean...they actually asked me if they needed to be at my high school graduation. it's not that they don't care, i don't think. they want us to get into good colleges, get good jobs, marry great people, etc, etc - but sometimes i feel like they expect all these things, but they don't want to be involved. for example, my parents wanted me to play the piano and they went to all my recitals, up until i could drive myself to them - then they stopped showing up. it used to bother me slightly, but after awhile, it stops mattering...but i wish so much for mike and andy that it would've been different.

i was sitting in those bleachers yesterday and surrounded by parents and friends of the kids on the team. i saw a mom who had like 3 photo buttons of kids on the team. i saw dads cheering when their kid did something noteworthy. it just makes me sad that my parents can't...maybe won't...spend 3 hours once a week to watch their son do something that he loves so much.

eh. on the upshot, i found out that on my way to taiwan with my dad, we get to spend the day in san francisco on tuesday! yay! hopefully cora won't be too busy - yay! i get to visit her!

i just watched the funniest game of monopoly played out until the bank was down to a single $5 bill and like twenty $1 bills. ok gil...girl you rock. too funny. she was kickin' butt - so much so that she started to closely resemble one mr. montgomery burns and she also acquired an eerie cackle.

since my last rant about my mom's hawk-like gaze, i've decided to venture out...just leave - but too bad it's while she's at work so it's not really that gutsy. *sigh* anyway...i went and spent some time with my friend jessica [one of the handful of non-asian friends that i have left in this world - i super miss diverse people!] :) anywho...we had a good time catching up and hanging out. it was a bit of a throwback to high school and when we used to work at the dry cleaners...how we'd just make fun of each other and laugh - all in a very loving manner of course :)

it feels good to leave the house and just be out. i'm thinking tomorrow...i'm going to resume the target/best buy/costco thing i usually do back in seattle. wahoo! or as garrett would say "wh00t" haha.

maybe it's the medication i'm on that's been making me feel listless and tired...or maybe it's being home. i still can't explain what phenomena causes me to revert to a complete lump every time i'm home. when i'm in seattle/school, i'm totally productive - i do laundry, clean, cook, read, do crafty things, go out to the park, target, costco, make efforts to hang out with people...etc. but for some inexplicable reason, i do none of those things when i'm here at home. i have no real desire to venture out. i'm content to sit at home and putter around. or maybe i just don't want to bother with explaining to my mom where i'm going all the time. i go to target or the bookstore for no reason and to my mom, it just sounds ridiculous. i went to the Bales last night to buy more soft foods like pudding and yogurt and took a detour to hollywood video, where they were having their 4 vhs movies for $20 sale. :) i know...fun, huh? of course...i got caught up wandering around for a super long time because i couldn't just pick any 4 movies...i wanted to pick 4 i would watch more than once. when i got home, my mom was freakin' out and going on about how she was worried...etc...

ok, let's get some facts straight:

• i live in portland - not ne, totally and completely westside
  
• my whole neighborhood and surrounding community is so suburban some people would hurl.
  
• i have a cell phone. if she was really that worried, she could've called.
  
• i'm a 4th year college student - granted i feel very un-adult and more like a kid - but still, do i really need to report in for a detour to the stinkin' video store?!?
  

ok...i'm done now.

monday was spent driving back home and then hanging out with my former roommates and some seattle people. it was a much less stressful event than canada was...probably because i had an escape route [aka my own empty car]. it was fun...i got to eat lebanese food at a "hole in the wall" place in ne portland and then had dessert at papa haydn's, at their new eastside location.

yesterday was a blur. i woke up at 9am to have my 4 wisdom teeth pulled at 10am. i remember sitting in the chair and having my blood pressure and temperature taken as well as getting an iv in my left arm. i even recall the nurse sticking the "sleepy medicine" into the iv thing. and the next thing i know, i'm in recovery all puffy and swollen. my cheeks are totally puffed up...i look like minnie driver...or luke wilson...all square big jaw-like. i'm confined to eating liquidy-soft foods, which sucks, especially when my brother is sitting across the table from me gnawing on beef ribs... i feel like homer after the forbidden donut... so basically, all of yesterday was spent sleeping. hmm...maybe i should take another percocet... :)

when worlds collide...

i went to canada today with 9 other people, so a total of 2 cars doing the caravan thing across the border. we got a bit of a later start than originally planned and also had to deal with a lame-o rock shard that busted the tire of the other car - so we didn't get to canada until 4pm...yes...4pm...and we left a little bit before noon. i felt like gilligan...what was supposed to be like 2 hours, etc. but we made it through the border with no fuss at all, and the patrol man was super friendly and nice. we drove through vancouver traffic [which totally sucks since everything feels like local roads] and arrived at granville island before 5pm - at which point there was a forum about where to eat dinner.

i think i was already irked by the traffic and the length of time it took to get to canada so when neither of my worlds really wanted to eat where the others wanted to eat...i felt trapped...but only sort of. i super wanted to spend time with chris - and it was looking like i was only going to see her for that brief 15 minutes at granville island since not everyone was up for eating at shabusen's. i'll admit it - i wanted my way and i was being bratty about it. i drove when i didn't really want to, i even left later than i wanted to, i decided not to stay overnight until tomorrow, and after all that, it looked like i wasn't even going to get to do the one thing i went to canada for - namely to hang out with chris. i was in a foul mood. i had no desire to concede and take a hit for the team, but i was going to grudgingly do so, but turns out a compromise was struck - yippee. i feel a little bad that i was so totally anal-retentive, but then again...i drove for like 7 hours today and i'm super tired so i feel slightly justified.

my solution to preventing this situation from ever repeating itself : go by myself. maybe it's just because the novelty of canada has worn off for me so there isn't really anything besides eating there that i feel is a "must do" - which of course isn't the same for everyone. bah...maybe i'm feeling like carry-over pms...

i'm trying to imagine how dave must feel. if i'm tired, he must be pooped from trying to coordinate 3 worlds of friends. for once...i agree with abe. how weird is that? anyway, it was a fun trip - despite my own anal-retentive nature. i think the car games of "6 degrees of kevin bacon" and playing the "pseudo-loaded questions" were big fun.