I was so ready to get it after months of deliberation and having a brother that just bought one. Went by the Apple store at Palo Alto, made a last minute spontaneous decision to finally spoil myself with this sweet li’ll gadget that I’d name either kPod, iKel, or kelPod and feed with wonderful music and cuddle, caress and love every day as I do with Kelph, my darling Kelph.

And just as I was about to make the purchase, the Apple dude asked about my OS and I remembered that my Win98 system was too outdated for it.

Boo.

Maybe the stars were telling me I didn’t really deserve to get myself the sweet li’ll thing that I really really lust for now.
Maybe the stars were telling me that desires and wants are bad for your soul and I should renounce material desires.
Maybe the stars were telling me to just friggin’ upgrade my OS.

You know a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco is truly authentic when they tell you "I’m sorry, we don’t serve fortune cookies."

House of Nanking is da bomb! Or in Singlish…damnnnn shiok! We didn’t have to look at the menu. Just told the owner to feed our table of six and bam bam bam came a scrumptious dinner of wonderful food that I can’t remember the names of. Maybe it’s a personal bias but nothing beats good Chinese food.

Funny that I was the only Asian at the table and everyone used chopsticks they requested for while I stuck to the fork and spoon they provided initially.

So far, the summer’s been as lovely as expected. Wonderful weekend trip to Bodaga Bay, baking myself under 90F heat at my brother’s in Menlo Park, found out that I got an A+ in my political science class, reading George Eliot’s ‘Middlemarch’ (powerful amazing book. Even at the starting chapters, you feel that tingling vibe of a novel that can and will change you. Gotta love the way she describes the changes and tensions that come along as the Industrial Revolution was starting to show its effects on human life and emotion. Can’t help but think that we’re in a similar ebb of change today that we’ve not yet understood.), having Pat cook dinner for me the night before and my brother cook for me tonight, and a Minna-cum-Anu night thereafter. Life is very good.

Oooo…check out what I found on the web…a Kellog alter ego!

We have the same name and the same age.

The ecstasy of dotting the last period of your last sentence in your last final.

Heralds the first second of glorious summer vacation.

I am very happy, blessed, blest, blissful, blithe, cheerful, chipper, chirpy, content, contented, convivial, delighted, ecstatic, elated, exultant, gay, glad, gleeful, gratified, hopped up, intoxicated, jolly, joyful, joyous, jubilant, laughing, light, merry, mirthful, overjoyed, peaceful, peppy, perky, playful, pleased, satisfied, sparkling, sunny, thrilled, tickled, tickled pink, up, upbeat…(I love thesaurus.com)

Grrrrreat. While I’m here trying to put my mind into studying for my last final tomorrow, for which I’m screwed because I spent all day tapping toes wishing that the last final was over and pondering over the exciting possibility that I could do grad school (irony!) rather than engaging in productive work, there’s a huge noisy party going on upstairs.

In return, I am blasting Jondi and Spesh’s "We Are Connected" to drown their party noise. They are playing awful music by the way. Mine’s better.

We are connected by the universal desire of human beings to party. But for now, it ain’t fair that they get to party and I don’t.

Spesh rocks. I met him last night at 111minna. Told him he was awesome at Kelly’s Mission Rock 2 Saturdays ago. And he looked right at me with those big blue eyes of his, with his platinium locks tumbling down, shoke my hand and told me how much he appreciated that comment. I think I blushed almost as much as he did. He’s one of those people with a lovely sweet shy non-threatening almost space-y etheral air to him that usually masks utter brilliance.

So my economics professor spoke to me about the 20-page paper that I wrote. I didn’t do very well for this paper at all…and I know it. My thesis wasn’t tight enough. He saw through me. But he tells me he saw a true academic mind from what he’s read and tells me he wants to see me pursue Economics seriously, i.e. aim for a phD in Berkeley. I have a potential to be a top econ grad in Berkeley, he says and it’d be a waste if I don’t try to realize that potential. He’s offered to be my supporter, write letters of recommendations, etc, to help me.

I have never seen myself as an academic, first having reservations about "academia" (churning out papers that doesn’t seem to have any immediate contribution to our society feels very gratuitous at times); second, I live in chronic self-disparagement about my (especially intellectual) abilities and mostly either feel like a parody or fraud when I get (or try to get) ‘intellectual’. Especially given my accute awareness that there are so many smart-er people out there, I mostly feel that dude, my brain is like, so nothing.

Which means what he told me could be hog-wash.

…or not. Because I am very interested in what I study. And now the opportunity to pursue that seriously is horribly exciting.

Problem is that I have a messy contractual issue with my sponsor for whom I have to work for right after my BA degree. I still have a year left to negotiate round this. But I hate this feeling of having seeds of expectations planted that could either blossom into happy realizations or bitter disappointments.

1. Patrick appearing at the Canvas Cafe suddenly while I was studying.

2. Cultural education.
Attending his school’s spring concert. Meeting his students who are an awesome cool kick-ass bunch of brats. Observing how a ghetto urban public junior high school worked. An eye-opener for someone who’s only been through the side of Singapore’s school system where being a rebel meant leaving your top blouse button open as you loosen your Cedar Girls’ school tie. Fire alarm goes on during the concert and no one bats an eye. The school’s had 2 bomb threats in the past 2 weeks. The fire alarm gets pulled every other day. They continue playing stubbornly above the sirens. When the sirens stopped, the warning lights keep on flashing for the rest of the concert, to the tune of the ‘Nutcracker Suite" being played.

3. Last Minute Cable Ride:
Qool was just ok. The music didn’t kick it for me last night. But on the way to a post-club pizza place, as we stopped by a red-light, I looked at the SF cable car to our left and said "I’ve never been on one of those." Pat gapes increduously. "You have never been on one of those????" Chris in the back seat says "Well, it’s about time" "Go go go! We’ll meet you at the pizza place!" Pat says. So Chris and I jump off the car at the intersection and hop onto the cable car as Pat drives off. For some reason I had put on Pat’s Jamaican woven hat in the car for fun and still had it on as I hopped on. Must have looked touristy. And of course, big black cable car driver has to go "My, my, konichiwa! or ni hao! You Japanese, or Chinese?" He was hilarious. I didn’t bring my wallet with me and Chris only had $3.50 in total on him, 50 cents short of our fare. He covered the rest for us. Taught me the "brotherhood" handshake and the "hippie" handshake which ends with both pretending to take a hit from a joint. The cable car ride is way more fun than it looks! Something to hanging your body off to the side of the road as you go up a San Francisco hill with the Bay Bridge in the backdrop the entire time.

4. Cultural exchange:
About 10 blocks later, we hopped off and got our pizza. Somehow, Natalie, Pat, Chris and I ended up in an Asian squat position outside the pizza place after us telling Chris our previous attempt to do so (Re: 13 May Tuesday entry about Sunset party). An elderly group of old white ladies walked past us. One of them said "My, I’d never get up if I got down there." I replied "Yeah, I’m just trying to teach them how to do the Asian thang." It must have been funny with my ghetto Jamaican hat still on. At least, they thought it hilarious.

There’s always a story or two to tell when you spend time in the city.

…and once again, damn! How I love it when I study my ass off and it pays off. Three hours of non-stop writing after 4 hours of sleep must have its negative effects, but the adrenaline from writing good essays compensates for that. As does Patrick’s email telling me that I will be viewing this

in our getaway this Memorial Day weekend after my final final on Friday morning.

Despite the fact that studying is fuckin’ hard work (and the one on Friday will be the worst one yet), I have too many compensatory factors to bitch and whine. I will remember that when my body is shutting down on me tomorrow night as I freak out trying to squish information in, yes I will.

Man, this sucks ass. I find this website with a delicious bunch of James Zabiela streams that I could have been listening all this while but my stupid realplayer keeps crashing on me. Thus leaving me salivating for even more Zabiela grooves, especially after watching and re-watching this clip from that night. For some reason, that 10 second clip captures that night so completely for me. The chill before the thumping beats. The laser-lights thumping to the thumping beats. The people jumping and clapping to the thumping beats. And James Z himself jumping up and down to his thumping beats. He’s soooo cute. Every time he did that, I jumped with him too.

On an off-topic, getting an email from my GSI telling me I got an A for my final paper in the class which I have a final tomorrow morning is a nice li’ll confidence booster. Although the final that will freak me out is the Econ one on Friday. The bytes of information I’d have to cram in before 8am on Friday is daunting. I’ll have to go clubbing tomorrow to prepare for that.

On an offer-topic, are you aware that frozen blueberries with yoghurt and cottage cheese (sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and topped with maple syrup and granola) are delicious?

From the Bureau of Engraving and Printing’s (BEP):

Defacement of Currency
Defacement of currency is a violation of Title 18, Section 333 of the United States Code. Under this provision, currency defacement is generally defined as follows: Whoever mutilates, cuts, disfigures, perforates, unites or cements together, or does any other thing to any bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt issued by any national banking association, Federal Reserve Bank, or Federal Reserve System, with intent to render such item(s) unfit to be reissued, shall be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

Defacement of currency in such a way that it is made unfit for circulation comes under the jurisdiction of the United States Secret Service. Their address is: United States Secret Service, 1800 G Street, N. W., Washington, DC 20223.

So even if it’s for art?

He doesn’t think it’s right.