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[200 4 ] -sotsugyou no ato de=====================

1.may.2004 -tou-: happy labour day!

Today is international labour day.. Us Americans are strange. Similar to not following the international metric system, we also have our very own labour day in the beginning of September. Guess that they didn't want to seem like "socialists" or "communists" by celebrating the day of workers!

I woke up today at 9 AM. I had a weird dream of my brother's roommate in Berkeley. Well, in my dream, he was the vice president of the art club! (he is actually an electrical engineering graduate student!) So i was very shocked.. then he taught us special techniques for painting.. later, it evolved that some girl had special cockroaches. The cockroaches were very beautiful shiny metallic blue/green/purple.. basically, they looked like lacewings(?), nothing like cockroaches at all.. there was also some bugs whose wings that look like leaves.. they flew around.. and then there was one that went in my shirt from behind! I jumped around trying to get it out.. then i was worried that it might bite me and i will get poisoned.. so the last images was red tint pictures of a drooling mad (rabid?) wolf staring back.. it was flashing red to black and white tint.. then all of the sudden, i thought, "Oh its kind of hot" and woke up.. kind of incoherent!

I am watching some of the entertainment Indian TV show "Namaste America".. and they have all sorts of that dancing with music.. My Computer science Vietnamnese roommate was also watching a little before leaving.. She said that in the computer lab, there is an Indian guy that is listening to music using headphones.. and that guy was basically moving, shaking and dancing to the music while sitting in the lab.. he then got so into the music that he started to sing outloud to the music.. My roommate couldn't control herself seeing this funny scene (think of that guy imitating and imagining himself to be in a movie's musical!!) and couldn't stop laughing! funny story.. i would like to see that guy do that! :D :D :D Well, I know that Indians seem to be a lively bunch. I remember seeing one guy that was talking on his mobile phone down the street. You wouldn't believe it, but he was doing all sorts of movements.. his head kept on bobbling around, and so many hand movements! hehehe. :D :D

4.May.2004: heat waave

On sunday, I went to the Pow-wow event at UCLA. There seems to be one every year.. but I somehow missed it last year. Like always, the Pow-wow seems to be on one of the hottest days of the year. It was smaller than what i imagined from the previous years. I am also a bit skeptical of the products they are selling.. I'm betting that many of the crafts they sell aren't Native American made.. perhaps made in China! I was kind of wanting to buy some rabbit fur (3 bucks each!) because it was so soft.. but I couldn't really think of a good use for it.. maybe I can make something out of it.. but i don't know.. it is cheap though. I went with my two roommates.. the Indonesian and ABC one.. however, no one bought anything.. We watched a bit of the dancing in the middle of the field.. Many of the people wore the traditional Native American clothes.. in many colors.. and many were not very "traditional".. some being in flourescent yellow, green, and orange! Oh yeah, I had this "shenmue" type of situation while we were walking to the entrance. While heading to the entrance, a guy and a girl was skateboarding towards me and my ABC roommate... when they were aobut 15 feet away.. All of the sudden, the girl lost control of her skateboard at a high speed and got off of the skateboard while the skateboard was crazily zooming at us!!! Whoah! As if using my natural instinct, I quickly countered by leaping back, barely touching/avoiding the skateboard!!! This was so much like the "real time" events in Shenmue, where some random event occurs to you and you need to press the right button at the right time to avoid it!!! Crazy, ne?!?! After the skateboard went past me, it was already headed at another person that had his back towards it!! It looked like it was going to crash into that guy, but it didn't! It seemed like a miracle that it just had a sudden turn right in time and barely avoiding that near victim's feet.. . what a strange and crazy skateboard.. if it really hit someone at that speed, boy, it would have really been painful. ... So the lesson is that you always need to put up your guard incase if you really have a real life Shenmue event!!

Anyway after walking around the Pow-wow field, my roommates and I headed to the Jamba Juice in westwood. We have some coupons for free smoothies at Jamba Juice!! Actually.. hehehe.. its supposed to be one coupon per room in our apartment, but I saw a stack of them on top of the mailboxes.. I took one and then thought, "which one of us is going to use it if there is only one?!" So i looked around in case if anyone is looking and took 4 more (total of 5 roommates!).. Whoah, it was quite a hot walk... My Indonesian roommate and I got a Mango smoothie.. while my ABC roommate got a mixed berry one. Well, it didn't really taste very good. I got kind of tired of it after drinking about 1/5 of the large cup!! Turns out that they cut the calories of those "Enlightenment Flavors" by adding artificial sweeteners.. so it wasn't really sweet.. and it didn't really taste too much like mango!!!! There was just a faint trace of mango taste.. and more like some orange.. We were all disappointed and two of us couldn't really finish it.. . After sitting there in the shade, we headed home, stopping at Rite Aid and Whole foods.. . In our apartment, it was so hot there. . gahhhh--

7.may.2004 -fretag-: crackling skulls delirium

Yesterday, I had a headache. I was falling asleep during the UCLA anime club showing (they showed: Gash no Bell, Naruto, One Piece, Full Metal Alchemist, Mahou Shoujotai Arusu, Cromatie high School).. I left before they showed Initial D 4th stage.. Walking back home, I was wondering if i can actually make it back in one piece (no pun intended! =_=).. I imagined Odin, Thor, or Zeus with a huge metal chisel and hammer hammering away to my left side of my skull. It seemed so much comical thinking of that pain in that way!! In this delirium, I mixed up Norse and Greek Gods together.. . Then randomly thinking how did Zeus felt when he had a headache, and Athena (or Minerva if you prefer Roman names), goddess of wisdom, popped out from Zeus' skull!! I was wondering what might be popping out from my brain.. must be some sort of crazy monster. Walking near the Pauley Pavilion, I overhead two guys talking. They were saying, "oh, are you going home to watch friends?" "Its on right now.. gotta go study at Powell [library]".. So yesterday was the so called last episode of the TV sitcom "Friends". I don't care. I never really followed it. I first started seeing some episodes just a few years ago because some of my roommates watch it. So walking by the apartments in Westwood, it was quite funny. Apartment after apartment, I hear a loud TV playing like a radio. I catch tidbits from one apartment, and it continues to the next. I guess that "Friends" must be a very popular sitcom. I couldn't believe that I actually made it to my apartment. Right upon opening the door, I see three of my roommates sitting in front of the tele. (sweat drop rolling down) I felt really sick at this point and had an urge to throw up.. Thor, Zeus, or Odin was still hammering away releasing all these thunderbolts (vjaya) at each blow to my skull with the chisel and hammer... I wanted to take a shower and sleep.. my eyelids were about closing.. . i just laid down on my bed for a little while.. feeling a bit better.. and took a shower. I then "guat sah" my neck and shoulders as best as I could.. painful, but i didn't care anymore.. The areas almost immediately turned bloody red spots.. So i have these marks on my neck again.. .

9.may.2004 -soleil': p(b)oisson, jour des meres, et le terre

sunny and windy day today. my dream the other day is about my Indonesian roommate collecting dry flowers. I stuck my head out the window and looked up towards the roof. I saw many long stems of dried red roses hanging from the roof. I then thought,"oh, Seirin goes up on the roof and hangs the roses." And that is all I remember...

On Friday night, all my roommate's father's 10 goldfishes started to die off. That roommate just changed the water that day and my other roommates noticed them dying at around 10:30PM.. I just came back to the apartment at around 11PM, after the computer lab kicked me out. We moved the goldfish to another container with fresh tap water.. but it didn't seem to help.. one by one, we watched them dying.. becoming still and floating to the surface. We all stood by surround the fish container watching helplessy.. . until there was only 2 fish that were moving. The rest of the dead fish I put back into the fish tank. (no one seemed willing to touch fish by their hands, except me! .. strange.. i like touching fish!) They weren't very active and didn't even move up to eat food. The next morning, only one medium sized goldfish was left.. and he still is.. a miracle that one out of ten survived.. I wonder what happened to cause the fishes to die so terribly like that? We can only theorize that the water must be bad. We just used tap water from the sink.. and you know that LA tap water is one of the most nastiest water you tasted! Lots of weird things in there. So in the end, we put the remaining fish in bottled drinking water. On Saturday, my roommate took out all the dead fish and left them in an open sandwich bag. It was kind of gross to see a bunch of dead fish in a plastic bag like that. It was left out all day and when night came, inside the bag was full of fishes in a pool of red blood..! isn't that grotesque?! I don't know what killed the fishes.. but i never heard that fishes have internal bleeding that leaks out.. perhaps it has some internal ruptures and blood came out from its gills and mouth.. . i shiver at that thought... . . .

That reminds me that last week, there was a terror alert at some targets near my apartment in Westwood. Of course, the federal building on wilshire (about 7 blocks away or so) is always a possible target.. but they announced that the shopping centres around here are now a target.. and they received some warning about an attack! Wow wee~

11.may.2004 -feu-: dream wandering

these days, i am getting these dreams again. I've been feeling so tired when I wake up in the morning. Yesterday, I had many various dreams. One of them was about me being part of the "bad guy group", where we trick policemen out of their money.... Something like that we have him chase us in a car chase.. they get into an accident, then without knowing we were the bad guys, we offer to help fix their car.. and they give us money!! So strange.. Other than that, its a bit disturbing when one dreams of dead people. It was so surreal, making me wonder "where am I? don't tell me that this is ... " I was also scared that the dead person was actually dead or alive in the dream. If she was alive, then i would be scared to be interacting with a corpse... In that dream though, she seemed to be what I imagined or wanted to imagine her to be like if she was actually living today. You see, time erodes memory.. and merely having childhood memories is not so reliable.. In my dream, my image of her remained immortal.. her being trapped in the same ageless form and face that remain the same even though more than ten years have passed. I can not imagine how she would be like or look like if she was still alive today. My only images of her comes from my memories and old photos.. . . Well, this isn't the first time dreaming of dead people. Sometimes it feels like everyday life.. feeling like going back to a fragment of memory. other times, I realise that this is a dream and that I must be in the ghost/underworld.. I try get out of the place without any other dead people catching me (alive person) in that world. But both times in the end, I wake up pondering over the dream.. going over it.. and wondering if it had any meaning.. . despite it being a bit disturbing.

24.may.2004 -u.getsu-: tra la la

OK. I'm back in Sacramento for a little more than a week now.

DAY ONE: tired but in one piece
Spent the whole night and morning sitting in the Greyhound bus. I couldn't really sleep because it wasn't too comfortable and there was so many stops!! The stops were at least 15 minutes.. All this trouble cause i missed the 11:30PM bus and had to take the 1:30AM one. problem is that the 11:30PM bus ride is only 7hrs15min compared with the 10hrs or so of the 1:30am bus ride! gahh.. and all my stupid fault.. Here are the places where we stopped:
Bakersfield 3:45AM 30 min - went to bathroom (can't be too careful)
Tulare ~5AM "coffe and donut stop" beautiful dawn peaking out of horizon with a sliver moon
Fresno 6:35AM 40 min - my friend Raoul is from here.. So i get to look around his hometown! :D :D I went to bathroom again and washed my face (nothing to do in the station). The station is OK.. it has a mini game arcade with old old games such as Marvel vs Capcom, Mortal Combat.. If it was KOF.. i might have been tempted because I was a bit sleepy. The area around the station is quite new because all the trees were small.. .
Merced 8:20AM
Modesto 9:30AM 15 min -I think it was here where there was a quite loud Cantonese speaking lady boarding the bus. Her husband was just escorting her.. but they talked to each other so loudly like most Chinese people! :D Well things like "Don't forget to turn off the cell phone!!" (sweat drop rolling down)

Finally, we arrived in Sacramento at around 11:35AM.. I went to the telephone booth to call home.. . and went outside on the sidewalk. Standing there for maybe 15 seconds, a security guy came up to me asking if i was chinese.. and then spoke some mandarins to me.. but i couldn't understand.. so he spoke English and said that there is no loitering around the station so i must wait inside the station.. =_=|| what sort of policy is that?!?! So I waited inside the station.. my father and sister came to pick me up. I went back home and it was time for lunch. We went to the "Tea Garden" Chinese restaurant nearby. "We" as in pops, grandma, oldest brother and me. I was told that Sym and my sister never comes along any more.. so they usually take leftover food back for them to eat. nanka henjyanaika.. kazoku wa isshoni gohan wo taberu koto wa jizen darou? Well, the old "usual" restaurant that we used to go on Saturday is "Gow Lung Gok Nine Dragon's corner" (forgot the English name! so strange..) on Broadway.. but they are doing renovations so it is closed now. so this restaurant is now the "frequent haunt" on Saturdays. even the waitress knew what we were going to order.. (sigh) The food was OK.. but I couldn't eat too much because I am not used to eating and seeing so much food on the table! At my apartment, i usually make one side dish with rice.. but all of the sudden, there are all these plates of food .. and so much meat!! @_@||

I can't really remember what I did for the rest of the day, but I played some badminton with Pops, oldest brother, and little sister on the sidewalk in front of my house. Oh yeah, I also watched some "promotional videos" or mtvs on the computer that my brother got. Psycho le cemu was highly entertaining for my eyeballs.. haha, its so funny.. it was weird to see them all in monkey suits.. and then they threw a bone into the air.. that bone turned into a spaceship. My brother told me that it was a parody of Arthur C. Clark's Space Odyssey 2001.. =_= uhh.. well, that explains why the Pv of them in monkey suits sort of reminded me of 2001! and that bone in the air.. sigh.. crazy crazy crzy! Oh yeah, i also was in a rush to finish the card for my friend.. since it is her graduation tomorrow! my brain was lacking inspiration... but i made it.. the cover is an experiment that turned out surprisingly well. I used the "quilling" technique of rolling and glueing paper strips.

DAY TWO: Sunday- graduation day frenzy!

(mumble mumble) whose graduation is at 8 AM!?! well, my friend's graduation is.. . and it is in Stockton (University of Pacific), which is about a 40 minute drive from here. being a car-less and no direction sense bum, i had to hitch a ride from that friend to go to her graduation. She had to leave around 6:10AM. So i set the alarm the day before at around 5:15AM.. I didn't hear the alarm, but I heard my grandma mumbling and trying to turn off the alarm!! Lucky, or i wouldn't wake up!! I was so tired, especially since that i didn't get much sleep the day before on the Greyhound bus. But I got ready.. but my friend was a little late and came at around 6:20Am.. . Whoah! turns out that she needed to go to her boyfriend's place first.. THe original plan is that she drop me off at another friend's place where they can take me to the graduation (else i had to wait a long time with her), but since we were going to be kind of late.. We scrapped that plan and headed directly to the boyfriend's place. The school told her that graduates should arrive one hour early!! So at the boyfriend's place, we changed cars. The boyfriend drove us in his car. and boy were we so scared that we are going to be late for the graduation! In the middle of driving, we had a scare. "Did i bring the cap from my car?" Now, we can't have a capless graduate in the ceremony, can we? So we stopped in the middle of the freeway and looked in the boot of the car. Yes, the cap is there! We continued out frantic drive.. I looked and saw that the driver was driving a crazy 90 mph!! gahh!! scaryyy~

We were arriving in stockton, but we got lost in finding the school! We seemed to have missed the exit and had to look for the freeway to go back.. lost around at least 10 mins here.. . then arriving at school, my friend wasn't too sure where the graduation was taking place.. . We just got off where there was lots of people in gowns.. and ran to the bathroom for her to change into her gown. Luckily, they put hair pins in the bathroom for their use.. . she came out in the gown and we looked for the line.. it had signs in alphabetical order.. my friend's last name is "Yee", so its all the way in the back. .. . She made it quite on time..!! in about 10 minutes or so, they began to walk! woo hoo~ it was so nerve wracking experience... so mad frantic rush!

So we went to the outdoor stadium to watch the ceremony. It was really short.. maybe it lasted for 1 hour! Afterwards, we walked to the reception of cookies and apple cider.. I was so starving because i didn't have time for breakfast.. I met lots of relatives that I haven't met for maybe 5 years (my time in LA).. they didn't seem to even recognise me at first.. took some time.. but it was almost so surreal! before, they always held a thanksgiving party at their house where we went every year.. but i haven't went for all the 5 years in university. so i recognised many faces, but not really remember how to address them or who they were! @_@ another strange thing was the mixed group of relatives who i haven't seen for such a long time and friends.. . It was a long photo session... and we went back to downtown for lunch at a Hawaiian place (quite near my house in fact!). Actually, the lunch was for the "young people" where all my cousins, friends were there. so it was a weird bunch. strange group of people! :D :D :D

After lunch, I was driven home (i have to thank my friend's boyfriend.. for troubling him so much.. . i always hitch his ride! =_=|| ).. and i found out that Pops, oldest brother, and little sister already went to the yearly library book sale. I also haven't went to this sale ever since I went to University! Basically, its a week long book sale, but on the last today, they sale books by the grocery bag! ITs $5 a bag! crazy, ne? I sort of wanted to go because I haven't went in so many years.. and my brother kind of was willing to go again! yay! so off we went.. . going there was sort of nostalgic.. it was very much the same as in my memory.. except that it was much more messy. It was also very sunny and hot like always. We looked at hundreds and hundreds of books that i began to think "i heard of this book before" many times.. :D :D We found book 4 of Wheel of Time.. . um. i can't really think of waht was our greatest find. . I was so exhausted after this trip.. . But i think we played badminton again. At night, my brother was thinking whether to go back to berkeley tonight or tomorrow early morning.. he was sleepy.. so we watched a movie. He claims that watching a movie makes him awake.. i'm not sure about that.. but at many slow points of the movie, i found myself getting quite sleepy! hehe. i forgot the name of the movie already, but it is about a reporter trying to get his story about the bad things of the tobacco industry.. After the movie, my brother decided to go back to berkeley. . ..

DAY 3 Monday. down in downtown
Sym called in the morning to ask how about lunch and walk in the downtown mall.. so i walked there. I noticed that many of the shops on K street was closed and out of business! Even Comics and Comix is gone.. business is quite bad? we ate at a fastfood mediterranean place. I got a gyro. It was quite good.. the workers were Mexican.. and i said i didn't want any onions (bad aftertaste).. they asked me "why?" with a smile.. :D :D I was looking for new shoes.. but didn't see any i liked. Again, in the shopping center, many of the businesses were new.. i came back to see bouncing kids in the backyard. I am introduced to two of my sister's friends. one is a 3rd grader. what a strange mix..? but it seemed like 'babysitting' here.. they kept playing around and noisily chatting away.. using the computer, playing games (neopets) online. .. because of the friend shield, I didn't really want to comment to my sister about needing to do homework and such.. they finally left at around 5 PM. I am told that they come every week. every monday and wednesday. yeah, guess its sort of babysitting desu.

DAY THREE: Tuesday. last minute study
can't really remember .:D but at night, i went to my maternal grandmother's place (they recently moved) to help my aunt on her studies. Her last day of class is tomorrow and she has a "self evalualation".. since her Anglais is not very good, she had to prepare for it and we kind of guess what the teacher is going to put.. such as what she learned in class.. etc etc.. but it was hard because she wrote what she wanted to say in Chinese.. and really cursive chinese too.. I was supposed to help translate it to English.. and i didn't understand all the vocabulary she used.. . but i guess it was ok. My grandmother is now quite even more blind.. and her memory is very bad.

DAY FOUR: Wednesday. trouble looks for you
I needed to go with my aunt to the Social Security Office to help ask to change my maternal grandmother's address and also ask if she can receive more benefits now that she's legally blind. We took the light rail there ($1.50 each ticket).. its the stop after "college greens" near Sac State. The waiting was kind of long. before you enter, there is a security guard that checks your bags. I was again so worried because I got a razor blade and a short knife in the outside small compartment.. but to my relief, he only checked the inside big compartment.. . After being called up, the guy told us we needed to meet with a guy about the blind benefits.. so we needed to wait longer. I think we waited for at least 30 minutes until we were called. The guy wasn't that good (IMHO). For example, he thought that my aunt was applying for the benefits.. not my grandmother. And looking at the appointment sheet, it clearly said that my aunt came to represent my grandmother.. :( is this where our tax dollars go to ? well, we sat there for a very long time while he was typing many things and got us many applications. We left and just took a walk in 99 cents store and Raley's supermarket. My aunt bought a pound of strawberries for us. Because the social security trip took such a long time, the light rail tickets already expired and we had to buy new ones.

Upon arriving home, i see the bouncing kids again playing games on internet.. . (sigh).. I help sign some forms and then my aunt and I went to a place to turn in a form.. I drove. I came back home and sort of retreated to my room.. noisy house with kids running around.

DAY FIVE: thursday. lightning.

My aunt was going to come again to bring her English book and tape recorder. I was supposed to record my reading of some of the dialogue. Well, we ended up talking lots and lots.. such as her old life as an accountant in China. standing up for about 1.5 hours. I was in awe to see my sister (by her own will) working on her picture book project. Very suspicious.. I found out that the book was due on Monday! And I was (hate to use this word) nagging/reminding my sister about needing to work on the picture book for weeks and weeks now..
Later, i needed to go with my sister to the library. "need some classics", she claims. We took the light rail there. my fingers are getting kind of tired now typing this~. however, once again we in trouble. I didn't know (or forgot) that she had swimming class at 6:30! Rushing to the light rail station, we boarded the wrong train going to Watt I-80! Quickly, we got off and waited for the train that goes in the opposite direction... we waited, but no train came.. it was already 6:30PM.. ah, no! "mum's gonna kill me!", yelps my sister! Well, Not to mention that I am supposed to be responsible for my younger sibling.. so I also felt terrible to let down the syms. well, not only that, but turns out that my sister merely borrowed some fantasy books ("Circle of Magic", or something similar) and on top of that, they are for reading for pleasure, not for school. I feel stupid.

5.june.2004 -saturn-: tra la la--

Back in Los Angeles. unexpectedly, i saw in the news that former president Ronald Reagan died today.

15.june.2004 -tuesday-: yume

Weird dream. After waking up and looking at the clock at 8:15 AM, I fell back asleep. I was in a classroom with my cousin Fung Leeeens. Turns out she is taking a Japanese language class and I was just there to audit. But then I realized that I didn't know Japanese, so i got nervous, hoping that the students or teacher wouldn't find out or ask me questions.. The scene changed. I was with a group of friends (none I know of in real life). One of them though wanted to kill one of them. He had a gun or something.. We needed to go somewhere by walking.. so we said that we will meet at a certain place later. As they took off, the friend that is in danger and me ran as fast as we could in a different direction ducking next to groups of children. The scene now looks like in my old elementary school playground. We ran and tried not to look at the other friends including the killer until we were outside. Outside seemed like a very normal street in Sacramento with houses and grassy lawns.. however, there were some large vehicles that look like garbage trucks that were spraying out lots of liquid.. Afraid that the liquid was dangerous, we had to avoid those large trucks.. While running down the street, I realised that my friend was getting younger! This meant that we somehow went back in time.. and we needed to get back to our time or she would keep on getting younger! We then arrived at a backyard full of plants.. for some reason, I was holding a plant leaf.. sort of like the jade plant.. In the backyard, there were some similar plants such as the plant whose thick lobe-like leaves are arranged like a symmetrical flower. "oh, i'd like some of those!" I thought in my head. I was climbing up on the roof and thinking how I needed to cast a spell to go back to the right time.. . and then I woke up. ..