Why Hillary won West Virginia by a landslide.

Totally one-sided, biased view of people in West Virginia (they can’t all be that ignorant, can they?). It’s funny and really scary at the same time. Re: first half of the video.

“I guess because he is another race. I’m sorta scared of the other race cos we have so much conflict with them.”

Great aerial shot of Berkeley campus. How lucky was I to have gone there?

This guy takes shots from his kite.

Check out this Burning Man one. Boy, I can’t wait to go!!! Chansidines to Burning Man 2008! Whoo!

-link from Shane.

There are 2 things that I’m just not and I’ve been wanting to be:
1. Being a morning person
2. Being a little more OCD

Let’s talk about #2 first. I wish I could be more OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder). OCD people have really clean and neat houses, because they are obsessed over it. And I like my house to be clean and neat. Clean, I am, and my bathroom is spotless most of the time, but it’s really hard to keep the house exceptionally clean with 4 cats that are indoor/outdoor cats. That’s why I have a cleaning lady now, which helps a whole lot.

But I am not the neatest person around by far. I have been known in my childhood to be really untidy. I think it’s because I grew up with really neat parents (yes, Kelly, blame the parents). They are pretty ridiculous. When we travel together, the first thing they do in a hotel room is to unpack everything neatly and arrange everything. My father’s office table has all his pens parallel to each other…and everything else that is not parallel is perpendicular. And this is the view of my office desk where nothing is parallel.

So my parents (and my brother actually) always straightened things up after I leave a mess for me, without really scolding me about it. They scold about a lot of things, but this just wasn’t a thing they scolded me about. It was one of those situations where, as long as I did well in school and was studying, I could leave a mess with my study books around if I like. And marrying someone that is certainly not the tidiest person by far doesn’t help either. It only makes me look like the neatER person, when I’m not. We just do not have the natural instinct like some people do to neaten up our stuff as we go along. It takes an effort to remember to tidy up the place. I have gotten better at that, mainly because I get really stressed up when I see the house in a mess (bad feng shui or something). But I’m trying to get to the point where it comes naturally to me. Like my father and his parallel pens. I remember traveling with my best friend once. Every time she left the bathroom, every single bottle in the bathroom will be lined up in a perfectly straight line, according to height. That’s just nuts! It could totally be a ‘be careful what you wish for thing’, but I almost wish I was that OCD, so I’d have a neater home/office.

As for #1, I’ve always thought of myself as a night person, and I’ve always slept ALOT. My mom likes to tell me that when I was born, I just cried for a while, then I fell asleep for a long time (let’s home that when I do have a baby, he/she will sleep throughout the first 5 years or something…). In my weekends, I’d just sleep for 12 hours. Even when I do wake up, I’d just lay in bed for another couple of hours before I get up. My mom would be walking around doing laundry and say “Kelly jin ho miah (very good life) can sleep so long” while I just lay there.

I used to -have- to read something to fall asleep. With a good book, I’d just stay up all night reading it cos I didn’t wanna stop reading. And I’d occasionally get nights of insomnia where I just couldn’t sleep. In college, my sleeping patterns was just wonky. I’d stay up all night chatting online, surfing the web, watching tv…I had my computer and tv in my own room…it was hard to stay away from these things. I just thought it was my “natural” instinct to just stay up late.

But here’s where Pat helped me a bunch…being a school teacher, he was in bed by 10 or 11pm every work night. He refused to have any TV or computer or radio in his bedroom (aside from the time he lived in a studio). It was the best habit I’d ever picked up. Nothing with caffeine after 4pm. Before bedtime, things just get really quiet and dim in the Chansidine household. I can’t even read in bed now. Most nights, I fall asleep within minutes of hitting the pillow. And I’m telling you, I love to sleep so much that I really appreciate being able to sleep so well.

But the problem is, I still freaking sleep 10-12 hours if I don’t have something to wake up for! And that’s why I wish I was one of those people that just can’t sleep past 8am or something. I’d love to instinctively wake up at 7 or 8am and be just up and ready to go. Instead, when my alarm goes off at 7:20am on work days, I hit the snooze button at least 4 times before I’m actually up…when I’m up and outta the shower, I’m usually fine, but it’s hard to get up. And if you could see my “lemon face” (as Pat calls it) or “chao bin” (smelly face, as my father calls it. He used to tell me when waking me up for school that he pities my future husband because he’d have to see my ’smelly face’ every morning. Sorry Patty!) in the morning…wooooo!! I could turn people to stone. And I really believe sleeping too long isn’t very good for me because I definitely feel groggy more when I sleep too much. I love activities that you can do in the morning, like going to the park and doing yoga and feeling fresh and chirpy. There’s nothing these days I really wanna do in the night, since I am pretty much over going out to clubs.

I’m pretty sure that it’s more a nurture than a nature thing, and I’m adamant about changing my nurture. I’m not “naturally” a night person…I’ve just been told that I was all my life and I’ve allowed myself to be distracted by modern technology to stay up later than I should. I know this because when we were in Tulum, and we had no electricity for most of the time, and no internet, no cell phone, nothing…we were in bed by 9 or 10pm and I got up automatically every morning at 7am.

And of course, I then google search “how to be a morning person” and found this site explaining how to train yourself to be a morning person. The crux of that site says to go to bed only when you’re too sleepy to stay up (not a big problem for me), and get up at a fixed time every morning (need to work on it on weekends), and when you get up, to get up immediately, not hit the snooze button and have conversations in your head about why you should sleep in (working on it).

So last night, I went to bed early (before 11pm) and set my alarm to 7am (usually I get outta bed at 7:40am) and told myself that I was gonna wake up the moment my alarm went off. The weird thing was that I got up right before my alarm went off, and sat right up and forced myself outta bed without thinking, as I usually do, that I have a little more time to sleep. This morning, I feel fresher than ever. It’s true! I’m gonna try to keep up with this experiment over the weekend (7am Sat and Sun baby!) and see how much better I feel. If anything, I need that extra time to study, because I’m totally FREAKING out about the CFA. ugh.

okay, rambling post leading to nowhere.

So at around 1pm when I stepped out of the office for lunch, I noticed a line had formed right across the street from where I work. People brought chairs, tents and everything. They just sat in line waiting. I wondered what they were standing in line for (if you think Singaporeans like to queue up…wait till you get to NYC). The weird thing about that line was that they were all middle-aged white women that were…ahem…rather overweight. On average. The line had grown by the time I left work at 5pm.

Then at the front of the line, I saw a woman wearing a New Kids on the Block t-shirt. So I go home and googled them and sure enough, these women were waiting in line to watch New Kids on the Block perform at the Today Show tomorrow at 7am for the Today Show concert series (the performances are right across the street from where I work). WTF? People Cougars stand in line OVERNIGHT for NKOTB? That’s just insane!

Hm. No one interests me in the concert line-up except Donna Summer. She could be worth going to work early for.

————————————-
Added this morning: wow. them cougars were SCREEEEAMING this morning! NKOTB were just wrapping up their performance when I got to work. I haven’t heard this much screaming since Chris Brown. Who would have thunk? NKOTB are back!

I love this quote:

Chief Justice George too pains to emphasize the limits of the majority’s ruling. It does not require ministers, priests or rabbis to perform same-sex marriages, he said.

“No religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples,” Chief Justice George wrote, “and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs.”

Precisely! I like to think of myself as a pretty open minded person, i.e. if I have a certain view, I like to hear from someone that doesn’t agree with me and at least understand where they are coming from.

But there is one thing I really can’t get my head around: why do people BOTHER protesting against same-sex marriage? Organizing groups, lawyers and all that to try to ban it constitutionally. That takes a whole lotta time and effort. What is this whole protecting the sanctity or tradition of marriage argument? What is “traditional” anymore? Interracial marriage used to be banned…and we all know how crazy that law was now. If marriage is only for procreating, then couples with no intention of having children, old couples and sterile couples shouldn’t be allowed to get married then.

So maybe I can understand it if you oppose to it on religious grounds i.e. you believe it’s a sin. I’d still think that you are wrong, but if that’s what you believe, you can believe whatever you want. But why would you bother trying to stop 2 consenting adults from getting married if they want to? As CJ George said, the law doesn’t force a religious group to marry people if their faith dictates against it. So why bother? I don’t get it. Can someone who opposes same-sex marriage explain it to me?

My mom just bet me dinner. She says David *yawn* Enchilada will win American Idol. I say David *drool* Cook will win.

I now have a vested interest in David Cook winning. In it to win it!

Cook For The Win!

P.S. Did you watch Fantasia’s performance last night? Many said it was a mess…but I thought she was awesome! She’s a fire-puss on stage. I loved her in The Color Purple too.

Same-sex marriage now legal in California. It’s about time!

…the California Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional.

…With the ruling, California becomes the second state to allow same-sex couples to legally wed.

…best looking prez/vp tag team* ever.

I’m just sayin’!

* if obama wins the democratic nomination and picks edwards as his VP.

I didn’t quite get what the writer was trying to get at. But I thought this was an interesting summary of what is termed “Neural Buddhism“:

First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is.

That more than anything else has defined what I currently believe spiritually. I am certainly one of those “people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits”. Institutional religion is not for me. My spiritual beliefs, given my a-religious background have been rather nebulous, and I’m slowly defining it as I grow and learn. I have somehow decided that the concept of “God” is the sum of all souls. Heaven and hell are here on earth, not someplace else. The concept of karma and the afterlife, heaven & hell are simply what you leave behind in this world when you are gone…love and do good and you invariably leave positive souls that have benefited from your life (e.g. your children, your friends, people you help…heaven). Hate and do evil, and you leave a legacy of bitterness (hell).

In the meantime, the Now is all there is. It could be heaven or hell, but we humans have the Choice. That’s the beauty of it all.

In case you were cynical about how your money could help the people in Burma while the media is talking about how the junta is preventing aid agencies from going in, an update from Yi-ling, whose friend runs Global Refuge International (previously written about here):

An update from my friend, who is currently in Bangkok:
- All NGO and UN agencies have been put on delay for visas, and 9 out of every 10 visas are being rejected;
- GRI is currently moving supplies overland through Thailand into Burma by trucks;
- Airlift of supplies will begin this week;
GRI is one of only two groups granted access to the delta areas, and they are assuming a leadership position in the Logistics cluster with WFP; other agencies such as IMC, Operation USA and IRC are offering resources but GRI is covering transportation and distribution due to their access to the delta areas.
Once again, if you want to give money, please think about helping out GRI - they have people and access within Burma. Most other agencies have resources, but not the kind of distribution network that GRI has.

Please donate here to help.