Gosh, do I attract the freaks or what?

I logged online and some random dude IMs me via Yahoo. I don’t recognize the name and so I asked him who he is and do I know him. And he says no. So I ask him how did he get my YIM and he says he’s an acquaintance of my friend Yvonne and he got my email from one of her emails. And the red flags go up; I already know what this boy has on his mind. (For those of you who know me, yes, I’m already rolling my eyes.) So I ask this boy do you normally IM Yvonne’s friends? He says, no. I’m thinking, YEAH RIGHT. Then I ask him how well he knows Yvonne and he says he doesn’t really know her. I’m thinking, whatta freak. So I ask him did he IM any other ppl from her email and he says a few. And so I ask him what their responses were. He says they were confused and disgruntled. So I ask him, why he continues doing so. DUH! And I give him my 2 cents, don’t you think it’s a lil ODD you email ppl you DON’T KNOW. He says he just wants to my friends. I told him he should have at least ask Yvonne for permission or let her introduce him to us. So after I give the 411 how normal ppl act like, THEN (of course after a nice session with me), he says he’s going to apologize to Yvonne.

Afterwards, I catch Yvonne online, and ask her, who this freak is. And she tells me she BARELY even knows the guy. And how all her other friends were being bugged by this dude. She later emails me the apology letter he emails her, and I noticed how he harasses only the friends of her those were girls. Yeah right, you were ONLY looking for friends. PUH-LEEZE! Did he IM any of her guy friends? Nope. I should have messed around with this guy and said I would be a female after a few more surgeries. I wonder if he would still want to be my friend. ;p

Whatta day.

Just came back from UCI. Edwin and I were guest speakers on behalf of MANAA for a Korean American women class; we were invited to speak about media representations and stereotypes. Funny thing, as I was walking in, I recognized their professor, a fellow classmate of mine at UCLA. Small world. Was hoping more energy from the class, a lil disappointed maybe because it was a 3 hour class and it was 8 at nite, that’s why most of the students were so dead, but then again it is UCI. *sigh* Though was refreshed by the students that stayed behind and talked with us some more. Was planning to promote Coffeehouse and other OCAPICA stuff, but most of the students, seem to scurry as soon as their Dennis released them. Someone needs to whack some reality into the UCI APIA student population. But I’ll rant and rave about UCI’s Asian American Studies and APIA students another time.

Anywho, just before the lecture, I had a faboo dinner with my fellow BCL participants. Audrey picked this YUMMY French and Vietnamese restaurant called La Veranda. It was sooooooooo good. I was so tempted on ditching the lecture, but I got a nice share of food before I had to jet.

But I’m pretty drained. Tutoring today was pretty exhausting; there was a sub today, so when I got to Century, it was chaotic. D would not focus, and the other students weren’t helping. Then a fight broke out. I really worry about D, I have not be able to get thru to him, why he needs to focus, he’s not going to be ready, when he goes to high school, at the rate, he’s going at, I’m so worried, he’s going to get so going to get so frustrated, he’ll drop out. I hope tomorrow is better, but knowing that the sub is there til Tues. isn’t really reassuring. Sometimes I wonder why some people become teachers I’ve meet so many unqualified subs. I remember this one that tried to instigate something with the one of the students. Hello, you’re supposed to be the more mature one? Makes me soooo mad.

Now onto my weekend

Was in LA, most of this weekend, yes back at the House of Wang. On the way to LA, I was still in OC on the 405 and I got a call on my cell and saw Jeremy's name appear on my caller id, I answer my cell and Jeremy is telling me he's in the next lane to me. Too funny. He recognized my UCLA and Lenore sticker. Crazy. We had a good laugh about it. Was going to LA to celebrate Pason and Alice’s birthday, as well as all the other January bday’s such as Raymond’s and Charlene’s. Helped out Richard with the planning and what not. Interesting all these ppl asked when the birthday people’s birthday was at, but did any of them really help plan? Nope. Hmmmm…makes you wonder what kinda friend they are or what their agenda is. (Well, Jason and Bonnie don’t count since they helped out) But you people know who you are. Though what really annoyed me were the soooooooooo many maybe’s and the no shows. It was so ridiculous how many maybe’s there were. But J was mentioning, I should just assume the maybe’s weren’t coming, which was pretty much true. But we still had a pretty nice turnout.

But man, looking for a place was pretty hard, thought 360 would be perfect, but noooooooo, they’re STILL under construction, and it’s been over a year! So I mentioned to Rich, Barbara’s at the Brewery, even though I’ve never tried it, I’ve been wanting to check it out, every time I go to the Brewery. Had a lil trouble finding it since Jason suggested I go local, and he nearly drove me loco (yes, that was suppose to be funny) anyhow, I was a lil stressed since we were behind on schedule and I didn’t know how to get their on the local streets and Jason was saying go this way, then this way. Had a nice scenic tour of downtown LA and finally figured out where San Antonio Winery is at. That's my next restaurant to check out. Luckily, we finally found it. It was pretty cool since there was no one else there and it was really chill and cozy with couches. I dug it. Too bad the food wasn’t as good. Don’t get the deep fried catfish. It’s pretty bleah. Wish I had known there was no table service. I didn’t mind but I should have found a place that offered that. Good place to kick back and lounge. Rich found out from the bartender, there was a battle of the robots in one of the buildings. And one of the robots had V8 engine! Insane.

But we had to get the Gate since we were on the list, and I didn’t want to deal with the whole velvet rope crapola we had to deal with at Las Palmas and I really didn’t want to pay cover for a place that plays *ahem* “hip-hop” for one of those fancy pancy places. Edwin was telling how the Gate was such the thing 10 years ago and I mentioned how I was only 15 back then. HAH! Anyways, just barely got there before 10 and played the DD role since I didn’t want to drink, cuz I prayed waaaaaaaaaay too many times to the porcelain god last year and I don’t enjoy shivering and having ppl think I’m having a seizure cuz you know how attractive that is. Yes, I’m a cheap date but then again I seemed to be always doing all the paying….hey don’t mind me I only work for a non-profit. CHEAP ASSES! Uh, do I have issues? You would too if you had to deal with $#&@ I’ve gone out. Okay, I’m going off on a tangent, back to story.

The Gate wasn’t too bad inside; the music was commercialized hip hop that was more R&B disguised as hip hop, in other words..eh okay. Bonnie was harassed by 2 guys, SNL Roxbury guys’ style. Nasty. Then Alice friends’ Bonnie and Tracy got grab by some guys so I wasn’t in any mood to get on the dance floor to deal with slimy guys so I chilled with Naomi near the fireplace. Was entertained by Thomas, who was drunk off his ass, being very loud, and telling us about his sex-capades or lack of. Word to wise never spank or bite the dude. No S&M for him ;p

Poor Pason got completely wasted. Never saw the guy looked so bad from drinking. Usually Pason has a pretty good tolerance, but most of been around 11:30ish, when I started to notice, he was looking pretty bad. Luckily Bonnie was looking out him, especially since he yakked on the table. Eeps. So Bonnie took him back home. Most of the bday group had thinned out by the time we got to the Gate so it was just a handful of us left afterwards. Well, I hope Pason and Alice had a good time.

The next day had an artery clogging but yummy lunch at Junior’s. We ordered soup, chili cheese fries and potato pancakes, which were good. Then went to buy some Superbowl snacks, since we had didn’t have our fill of junk food in our system. Had more chili and nachos, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Pringles’ Spicy Cajun, Arizona Green Tea, chocolate rugula from Juniors….healthy…no? Wait, I had some carrot sticks too. ;p

Had to bounce cuz Bonnie made plans to take Pason out to a gondola ride in LB, but we got lost and so were late, so the company were being assholes so they cancelled. Luckily, they didn’t charge Bonnie. So ate at Belmont Brewery Company ordered this tomato soup thing, the waitress suggested and it was horrible, waay too sweet and salty, the cerviche wasn’t too bad. Watched the last quarter, it was pretty sad what happened to the Raiders the last 6 minutes, thought they had a chance, but then they got humiliated. Was disappointed by the Superbowl commercials, I saw this year. The Levi’s one was pretty sad and the AT&T’s mLife one was pretty uninventive. Yawn.

Check out Tolerance.org tomorrow, they'll be an article about Maxim's f* up article called "Maxim's Kick-Ass Workout" by Daniel Kraus, Illustrations by Steve Cross Pgs. 74, 76, 78. It was bought to their attention by OCAPICA. It's in Maxim's Feb. 2003 issue.

They have a computer generated illustration of a white guy kicking the crap out of Gandhi-like figure. They could have made the illustration look like so that you couldn't tell what ethnicity either person was, where both figures were generic figures. They could have made the person white. But noooooooooo. They didn’t choose Martin Luther King Jr., someone who regarded Gandhi highly, they didn’t choose Jesus, another pacificist, they choose Gandhi, an Asian, a “safe target.”

Basically it implies that Asian men are weak, wimps and inferior, especially to white men.

This is really disturbing since post 9-11, many South Asians and those appearing to be Muslim were brutally attacked in hate crimes.

And what is Maxim saying about ppl that are opposed to the war?

But have no fear OCAPICA and MANAA and yours truly has something up their sleeves. TBA later.

Image courtesy of the Kristina Sheryl Wong aka the Big Bad Chinese Mama, herself. 8)

Woo hoo! I'm on a website, well Kristina's site. That’s right I’m special. ;p

BTW that's Charles, Pac Ties former biz manager. Buncha the Pac Ties staff from my gen had a nice Pac Ties reunion at Versailles, since Tam was visiting from San Jose for the weekend. Michelle, Lindy, Jeremy, Kristina, Dave Lee, Stefanie and her bf John, Tam and her bf Ben, and Charles came on out. Enjoyed playing catch up.

Afterwards, we went to check out Zanzibar. No cover on Sunday. 8) I like I like, nice chill lounge place and good music, a KCRW vibe, well what can you expect Garth Trinidad spins that nite. I especially liked how they played some Brazilian tracks, they mixed a Suba track in as well. It's tragic what happened to him though. Would have been better, if they played some Marisa Monte tracks, like from her new album.

Had to leave early since I was staying at the House of Wang and didn’t want to my lovely host to stay up late.

Grrrrr. Lost my first blog post. ARRRGH.

HAHAHAHA Just read this off of Elbert's mini AIM profile
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boy howdy, if you like snow, ugly taiwanese boys and girls, and their even uglier staff, come check out tacl winter camp 2oo3!

"tacl: a face only a mother could love"

haha..just kidding..the boys and girls are hot. staff? still ugly. come on out for 4 days, 3 nights of snow, skiing (or snowboarding, if you're into that hippie crap), and good clean [smirk] entertainment. at the very least, you'll learn to write your name in the snow. even you girls. :D
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That's right go to TACL Winter Camp 2003. http://youth.tacl.org I LOVE MY TAIWANESE PEOPLE! Next time I'll share the conversations I've been having with our lil Juliet, who will be turning 18 next month. AUGH. She wants to adopt a mini-leaguer. 8O

Woo hoo hoo! Found the new Julie Plug website. www.julieplug.net New album March 2, 2003! It's about time. Guess they're under Thud Rumble, I hope they do a better job promoting JP. It would be a shame to see such a great and talented group go to waste.

Another overdue album I'm waiting for is Amel Larrieux's Bravebird. I LOOOOOOOOVE the Brave Bird song. Supposedly her album is coming out in March as well. I hope it doesn't get pushed back.

And there's a new Marisa Monte album. 8) Someone want to buy me it? It's at Amoeba's.

Hmmm....jen's listening to a lot of music. Guess what that means?
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Updates: (well I'll be doing this backward or something like that)

Thurs. Jan. 9th

Meet up with Rosa to go to Carol aka DJ Careroll’s birthday party at THE MIX @ 2nd Street Jazz in Little Tokyo. Carol’s one of the resident DJs there, so be sure to check her out every Thursday nite, as well as the other Joint One DJs. I would have never known that such a place like that was there. Doors open @ 8pm and there’s no cover for you po’ folks.

2nd Street Jazz
366 E. 2nd Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012
213.680.3232

A blend of Old School Funk & Soul,
Hip-Hop, R & B, Reggae/Dancehall
In a lounging atmosphere

I ordered some buffalo wings and boy was that a sight. I was so ladylike. HAH! I inhaled those suckers. Thank gawd, it was dim in there. ;p Pretty nice place, though wish the bartender knew how to mix more drinks, wanted to get Carol a Blowjob or Sex on the Beach but she didn’t know how to make any of those drinks. Ah well, so got her an apple martini. Carol was a riot on the dance floor. She’s the best. 8) Her fellow mariachi band members were a fun bunch as well. We’re busting out corny dance moves from back in the days. The sprinkler move, card dealer and the U-turn. 8D hehe

Mariachi Band?! Yes, I did say mariachi band. That’s right Carol’s in a mariachi band. She’s playing the violin, which BTW she just learned how to play a couple of weeks ago; yes that girl is too talented. So be sure to check the Mariachi Toros from CSUDH.

Ran into Jenny H. and Louise from TACL. Nazareth aka DJ Rhettmatic from the WORLD FAMOUS BEAT JUNKIES also came out and even got on the drums with DJ Peepshow’s group Just Homies. He even gave Carol some records. That’s what I admire of Nazareth, even though I don’t know him personally, he’s always been nice to me and approachable, unlike some musicians I meet. I don’t seem to sense any ego and he’s really supportive of other djs. These are the types of artists I like and enjoy supporting. Every time I see him in public, youth and other DJs go up to talk to him and admire him with such respect and awe.

I stayed til closing cuz Rosa suggested that I drive George aka DJ G-Force’s car, since he was pretty faded since it was his birthday party as well. I made a sad attempt to park his car at Rosa’s place. But got to know George a bit and found out he’s from OC too. A but overall a fun and de-stressing nite, it was good to catch up with Rosa, hadn’t seen that girl forever.