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

2.july.2004 -fretag-: sigh.. .

Well. These days I haven't been getting too much good sleep. Don't know what is wrong, but I wake up around 6 or 7AM and try to sleep.. but can't really sleep despite being so tired... I still have strange dreams every day... but I can't really remember them. For example, in the morning, i got eggs out of the refrigerator to boil them and put them my lunch box. As I took the eggs out, I felt dejavu.. and remembered that in my dream, I took my box of eggs out. Something was wrong with the eggs so I broke all the eggs into a slop of mess and threw them in the garbage. After doing that, I regret what I did. The dream felt so real that I actually thought, "Wait a moment! I remember that I threw away the eggs! How come they are still here?!?"

I'll just write out a funny conversation I had with my Vietnamnese roommate some weeks ago concerning the blue sandals that my Indonesian roommate got a while back. My Vietnamnese roommate didn't notice them before, so she thought they were new.

roommate: "whose shoes are these?"
me: "Sierin's. She bought it with me and Gloria."
roommate: "oh, at the pavilions?"
me: "? pavillions? You mean the grocery store?" (note: "Pavillions" is a grocery store in Southern California.. owned by Safeway)
roommate: "of course not! You know what i mean!"
me: "Well, that isn't very clear.."
roommate: "its the shopping center down in Westwood!"
me: (feigned surprise) "ohh.. you mean 'Westside Pavillions'.. ."
roommate: "of course!"
me: "no, How should I know which "pavillion" you went to? OK, lets look up what does 'pavillion' means in the dictionary. {gets dictionary out and looks up word} Ah ha! it means an open space. see, there are so many pavillions. There is also the store 'Shoe Pavillion'".
roommate: "But no one buys shoes in a grocery store! You know which one I'm talking about!"
me: "um.. that isn't true. You see those shoes? {points to Sierin's khaki canvas shoes} Sierin bought them at Ralphs."
roommate: {looks a bit defeated} "... OK OK, I don't care, I gotta go to school.. Don't make me late!"

3.july.2004 -saturn-: le weekend hajimemashou!

I don't really have much to write about.. but I remember that a few weeks ago, I walked to Westside Pavillion's Barnes and Noble bookstore.. I was skimming through comics and there was a middle aged lady looking around there.. she asked me where was "Inuyasha".. I found it for her and she asked me if it was the latest volume.. how should I know? So I looked inside and the printing was December 2003. She said that she is buying a comic for her niece that is around the same age as I am.. (sweat drop rolling down) and then she asked me for recommendations... I asked her how old is her niece and she said 16 years old! (24-16 = 8 years difference!) I told her that I'm not sure what her niece likes.. .. .

4.july.2004 -sonniq-: hana hanabi!

Well, I never spent my July 4th (America's Independence Day from Britain) in LA.. but here I am today. I don't see any fireworks stands selling any fireworks here at all! In Sacramento, I always see so many different firework stands in many parking lots.. the most common was "Red Devil" and "Freedom" brands. My family would then light them up in our driveway. Holding incense sticks, you point the glowing firey end to light the short fuse.. you know you got it when a few sparks fall out.. quickly, you run away and turn to watch.. Well, I was invited to go with my Indonesian roommate to watch the LA fireworks with her friend. However, she didn't any details of the plan even in the afternoon. I spent about 3 hours with at her lab at school.. a bit excited to see a demonstration of "transforming" cells with a plasmid insert. however, it turned out that there wasn't enough time to do that experiment! =_=|| It was around 5PM when the plan is realised: go to her friend's place for dinner and watch fireworks on his apartment roof. @_@|| hearing this, I was a bit sceptical! Well, to tell the truth, I was imagining going somewhere close to where they have fireworks.. and here I am going to see some fireworks (*if* we can actually see them) on some apartment... I was thinking "why not just watch them from *our* roof?" our apartment is only 3 floors. But anyway, I was expecting to go with my Vietnamnese roommate too.. HOWever, when we went home, she didn't want to go anymore!! uragiri mono---!! I kept trying to convince her and my Taiwanese roommate to come.. promises of free food, a possibility of seeing fireworks, it would be good to have company, another friend is also going.. blah blah.. :D .. . and to my surprise, my Taiwanese roommate decided to come! yeaahh--! >_<

And wow, his apartment was so spacious! I was impressed! and it was also quite empty too. In the living room, there is a large art print drawing being made flat by 2 volumes of the Korean comic "Ragnarok" on two corners. Then my roommate's friend began to start the bbq grill outside to cook hamburgers and hotdogs. I didn't really help that much.. but we got a little tour of the place. A funny thing is that they are looking for a new roommate because the previous roommate who is a Chinese citizen got stuck in Canada while visiting his wife. visa problems i hear!! Quite sad.. anyway, the cool thing is that on the stairways up to the roof is a pigeon nest. Thats right, a nest *on* the stairs! It looked as if someone stepped on it though.. but sure enough, there are a nest of twigs.. and there are two juvenile pigeons huddled together on the upper part of the stairs! It seems that they can't really fly yet... and the door to the roof is now closed.. I feel sorry for them.. and wonder how can their parents find or feed them...

Dinner consisted of hamburger, chili beans, Ralphs potato salad, sour cream and onion potato chips, sausage, hotdog, and my roommate's friend Julie's lemon bars! yum! After dinner, we still had time so we played "uno" card game. I lost both rounds.. and then It was time to go see the fireworks on the roof! And wow! there were at least 7 different firework areas going off all at once!! I turn my body round and round trying to catch them all! :D some were very far while some were more close. Its so crazy to see how much money is spent on fireworks... I thought there would only be a few areas where fireworks will be lit.. but nope!! like the many separate library branches (each with a different card), there were so many fireworks going off in so many different places.. we were on the roof for almost 45 minutes total. While I thought that the fireworks weren't *that* impressive, the overall view of so many fireworks made up that weak point. ..

After watching fireworks, we watched the dvd "X-men 2". However, since I read the comics long time ago, I am familiar with the characters and their background. One thing that bothers me is that I already have an image of how the characters are like in my head.. and some of the characters are different from my imagination. I also don't really like some of the costumes and make up. Such as Mystique's blue scaley nakedness.. or how some of the characters were made to be young (iceman). It was an ok movie.. and knowing that Jean Grey (marvel girl) is going to become "phoenix" doesn't add to much emotion and suspense to her "death" in the movie. So i already know the ending of that story arc..

SO that was my LA july 4th. quite interesting it was. more "american" than I ever experienced before too! :D :D

9.july.2004 -fretag-: henna hibi..

Betty's day was a bit different from usual today. For example, for lunch she ate some cheese filled tortelini and chinese dumplings (pork + vegatable) with Ralphs meat flavoured pasta sauce. Yum! What an interesting and tasty combination indeed! She also accidentally ate some white moldy green grapes. Without looking at the grapes, she ate more than half a small sandwich bag before noticing that some of the green grapes had little white hairs on the top! yucky! "I hope that I wouldn't have any stomach problems," says Betty with a bit worry. Later, Betty and her Indonesian roommate ate some instant ramen at home. They were in a hurry to see the roommate's friend's guitar performance at the Westwood Brewing Company. With cookies, golden grahams cereals, milk, Maruchan oriental flavoured instant ramen, and soy drink slushing around Betty's belly, they both hurried down to Westwood Brewing Company. There, they had to show ID to enter and got a stamp on their right hands. The performance was a bit country style. There weren't too many people there. It ended at around 9:50PM. After waiting a some minutes for the next band, Betty and her roommate got tired of the band getting ready to set up their equipment and decided to leave. Betty's roommate announced that she needed to go to "wamu". Such an ugly sound! It is actually the name on "Washington Mutual"'s homepage. However, they decided to go check out the newly opened "Urban Outfitters" clothing store that took over "The Wherehouse" vacancy. The store is smaller than the one on the Santa Monica Promenade, but it has much more home goods and furnishings and is much more neater. Betty was impressed by the selection of cool shirts! Especially the ones with the cats. HOwever, the hefty price of $25US is not really worth it, thinks Betty and her roommate. They then go to the Washington Mutual ATM on Wilshire and Westwood. What a strange ATM it is! With a glowing sign that states "24 hour ATM OPEN SATURDAYS" , Betty knows that this particular ATM is closed on Sundays! "What sort of ATM is closed on Sundays?!" wonders Betty. After business was done at the ATM, they both went to "Boba Word East/West Sandwich". Actually, Betty was a bit reluctant to go, but her roommate insisted and poor Betty wasn't able to convince her roommate not to enter. Her roommate bought some Japanese Green Tea shake with jelly. The jelly tasted quite bland. "The jelly doesn't have much taste. Its like agar agar on a petri dish!" exclaims Betty with a frown. Her roommate agrees saying that it "tastes funny". The ice didn't really have much taste either. With bellies full of the Japanese green tea, they left to go to Blockbuster. There doesn't seem to be many good movies out. Betty's roommate borrowed a movie she never heard before called "Analyze This". After that, they finally went back to their apartment.

july172004-sturn): jyuun.

yuuuuuutsu. I'm feeling quite in the pits and perfectly miserable for these past weeks. I couldn't even bring myself to work on this neglected homepage now. Well. Quite feeling horribly about my long time unemployment *cough cough*, about the approaching deadline of needing to move out of the apartment at the end of August *sigh*, and not really having a clue on my dark and bleak future *droops head*. In fact. I was thinking about walking around Olga's Fortune telling shop on Gayley again for the need of someone to tell me about me. As you may remember, my last encounter with Olga (who was sitting outside on a chair in front of her store) ended up her telling me that she could tell that I am not going to graduate anytime soon, I don't have a boyfriend, and I wouldn't be marrying in a long time. Of course, I thought this was quite a funny thing.. She used psychology by looking at my ugly face to deduce all that. So, I want to walk down her store NOW with my current dark, drooping eye bags, miserable depressing pimply face that gives out dark aura that would make anyone in my vicinty to feel the same way I do or to get out of my way and LET her see what sort of macabre apparation she will see out of me this time!!!! Perhaps she will see death with her scythe with one hands on my shoulder. And.., perhaps a deep black hole sucking all light and colours on top of the other shoulder. Maybe she'll say something like "I see that you are walking on a dark, dark path..lady luck isn't on your side. You won't find what you are looking... you attract darkness.. and I don't see it clearing up in a while. Pay me $5 for more detailed reading." Yeah, so, my spirits are quite low now.. but I know and have to try harder myself too. I've been thinking how many bad decisions I've made throughout university leading to my present condition. How things could have been more well planned out. And, comparing myself to other relatives or people I know. People say to me, "wow! you must be really smart to get accepted to UCLA!" I don't think so. In fact, the years at UCLA made me a bit bitter, mad, and quite unrefined. I was never a top student in any classes. There are always people who seem to do so well in classes that I had to struggle to keep up. My GPA in my major is quite low. But I found solace in getting to know some of my classmates. "My GPA has been dropping ever since.. ", said one classmate. Everybody nodded in agreement. Anyway, all I'm left with is a sucky resume that no one seems to even bother to reply to my job applications. All this trouble compared with , for example, a few younger cousins of mine. One is quite set on the road to become a doctor. The other, got a scholarship to study at Notre Dame and recently got a scholarship to study in this summer at California Institute of Technology. WOw. How ambitious. But its quite all over for me. I've graduated and now that is in my shadow.

OK, thats enough of venting all that airs of lately. Well, I'll discuss something else. How about some mysteries? sound good? haha. So, one strange thing is that one day, my Taiwanese roommate found her cookie that she placed in her closet (yes, that is right, she put it in her clothes closet) disappeared! It hasn't been seen since. Well, disappearing items doesn't seem to be so rare in this apartment. I've been *still* hoping that my ceramic blue fish spoon will resurface one day. Its been at least 3 years already. HOWEVER, my plastic medium sized spoon that I used for mixing soups, mixing cake mix, or scooping rice disappeared recently!! My pops bought it for me when I moved into the apartments.. so I'm kind of sad to see it gone.. I used that spoon quite frequently too!! grrrrr.. Then, in the cabinet was a box of these Quaker brand snacks (Oatmeal squares with fruit filling). My Vietnamnese roommate told us that we can eat them, but no one seems to eat them.. so they were in the closet long forgotten. Recently, we were cleaning up and found it again.. only that it is now empty!! Nothing inside!! Where did all the bags go? Who ate them?! No one knows.. Then, yesterday, I was discussing about french fries to my Taiwanese roomate. You see, we were discussing about our email addresses... Mines is "schezo coli". Hers is "smartfr". When I saw her address, for some reason, I thought of "smart fries". I clearly remember seeing her frying some frozen french fries before in the kitchen. The strange thing is that my roommate said that she never bought any frozen french fries, nor did she ever cooked them at home!! We sort of "argued" a bit, both sides did not relent.. so it is a mystery!! I did see her!! So, thinking about it since yesterday, a unlikeable but making sense theory is that I did see my roommate cooking fries in the kitchen, but it was her "doppleganger"!!! Yikes!! Could this doppleganger of hers also ate her cookie? No one else knew that she put it there in the closet.. hmmmm.... sounds likely.. . :D :D :D :D

21.july.2004 -mittwoch-: SHI ra nai ..

turmoil. ITs been a cataclysmic week. Well, perhaps I was the trigger, and I do feel a bit responsible. On Saturday, I unintentionally quite offended one of my roommates. Well, I feel like that it isn't so "major".. but apparently it had a huge affect that caused the whole days and after effects so stormy. The atmosphere became very uncomfortable, but I couldn't do anything: 1)we share the same room 2)my desk is in the living room. So I couldn't really avoid her and let things calm down or anything. It made me realise that how having roommate conflicts would be so restricting. I really felt like I needed to move out *soon*. to get *OUT*. But that isn't a solution because I would always need to return *here*.. .. . and recalling part of the book "Speaker for the Dead" that I recently read, things like these will never mend or heal completely. There will always be a [scar]. An unpleasant reminder of these sour memories. To vent all this guilty air out, I'll just write what happened.. and to remind me of being more careful. If she reads it, thats fine. Whats happened happened.. I wouldn't or can't cover up it. So this is my point of view. Perhaps she was also having a bad day.. . but soon after this incident, her boyfriend broke up with her.. so it was a dark and gloomy week.
Well, it started with breakfast. My roommate cooked eggs, bacon, sausages, and toasted a peanut butter sandwich. Well, she said that I complained a lot.. but I didn't really think so.. . So when cooking was done and we sat down to eat, I remembered that her white sandwich bread was kind of old and was out in sitting in the hot sun within the tightly sealed bag. the moisture was trapped inside, so its easy for mold to grow. So I checked my 1/2 of the peanut butter sandwich for mold.. lo and behold, there was 2 small greenish white spots on the side! My stomach isn't so strong and of course, everybody seems to know that (especially the LA "hot and sour soup" and Hilton Hotel emergency incident")... so I said outloud that there the bread was moldy.. Well, my roommate seemed to flare up all of the sudden so that it really caught me off guard. I know saying this was kind of being "ungrateful little soul" because she did all the cooking and things, but fact is fact.. . I didn't really want to upset my stomach by eating it. She reached over and grabbed that sandwich, gave me her 1/2 of the sandwich, then took a knife and cut off the moldy edge.. and ate it. well, the 1/2 side she gave me didn't have any mold, but you know that if a part has mold, there is probably more else where. especially how mold grows root-like into the food. She then ate as quick as she could without saying another word to me, and washed dishes her dishes.. Knowing that not eating the 1/2 sandwich she switched with me would make it even worse, I ate it. I know I must seem like a picky, good for nothing person.. and even thinking about how in the French Revolution, when the city people don't have any food, they even eat moldy bread... so it probably wouldn't kill me... For the rest of the day and the days after, we didn't really exchange many words. Anyway, she seemed quite angry throughout the whole day.. and everyone could tell by the way she talked.. She seemed quite annoyed.. . And then on Monday, I have to face her again because I was helping her out in her lab.. . It felt so awkward, and I didn't know how to "resolve" it. So the whole weekend, I was feeling so miserable and quite depressed on my darned unemployed situation, and on top of this, conflict with my roommate. Although the damage is already done, I made a promise to myself and try not to add salt to the wound by "shutting my trap" and to politely refuse any other meals that she cooks and invite me to eat. I never thought that my mouth would get me in so much trouble. (sigh~ ) =_=|| I know that I'm not really a "people person". I'm not really social kind of person.. introvert.. and to be quite frank, I don't really have any friends here at UCLA. The few friends I do have already graduated. I'm quite a loner. a wolf. In the past days, the music that I was listening to reflected my mood: Dir en Grey, Eliphas Levi, Onmyouza. loud Xjapan songs like Blueblood.. and some rap..etc. Especially that crazy Dir en Grey song with babies wailing that is about sickening aborting babies.. The lyrics and imagery is quite sick and twisted. If it was English, I tell you, it would scare off all my roommates! There is some English translations some where.. I need to find it and link it so you can get a sense.. but you also need to listen to that song with Kyo's (the vocalist) "barf-like" voice and screaming.. along with repetive baby wailings in the background.. um . that is one of my favourite songs on their "Gauze" album.. quite "beautiful".. .and I like how they had an interlude with a female voice .. they were acting out being a doctor and a lady who is seeking to abort her child.. then her beautiful voice blends into the music.. . .

So, I have been having them "weird" dreams again. It seems like that I dream of almost anything! Especially related to things I have been reading or watching on TV at night. For example, I was reading "Black Like Me" by John Howard Griffin at night. Its about the author who, by taking pigment medication and put under uv rays, temporarilly became "black". He did it so he can write about the real situation about blacks in the South. Well, its quite sad how other people treated him just because he changed his skin colour. Anyway, my dream was that me and some other doctor developed some medicine or lotion that you can apply to your skin and your skin will become lighter and lighter!! This lotion is in high demand, showing that many blacks do not like being black and want to turn into whites.. . so that alls still not right between the races.. I was discussing this problem to the doctors and was quite sad on how blacks just couldn't accept being themselves.. .

Some days later, I was watching "Star Trek: Enterprise". The episode was about the Enterprise encountering a ship that had aliens that were religious fanatics.. it turnss out that their home planet were having a great war between the religious fanatics and the "heretics". These religious aliens use techniques similar to modern day terrorists in Israel and Palestine: implanting bombs in themselves! Its quite a fascinating episode similar to real life.. Those aliens forced Captain Archer to pilot the ship to their home planet and were planning to use the comparatively advanced weapons on the ENterprise to attack the heretics.. . However in the end, when Captain Archer managed to deactivate the biological implanted bombs and regained control over the ship, they arrived at the alien's homeplanet to find a planet of complete destruction. THe war is over, and no one won: everything was in debris. Well, at night, I dreamed of religious fanatics... and I was arguing with them.. :D

Some recent dreams involve one of those "toilet dreams" where I was with my family and we were in this large stone floored hall that had all sorts of toilets on the sides and in the middle of the room. Well, before this dream, I was thinking about how I never dreamed of those "squat down" toilets that were in China and Japan!! Well, I got my little "wish".. There were sit down toilets and squat down toilets.. and many of them were, of course, sort of broken.. many of them were filled up to the brim with brown water!! yucky!! So there weren't any stalls or anything.. I just told my family to not look at me while I do my business.. well, I selected this toilet that is not sit down, nor is it completely squat down! its like 1/2 .. @_@|| So I take a piss, but all the water is splashing out everywhere and all over my jeans! So my jeans had all these large sploshes of brown liquid.. . so gross.. but all of the sudden, I realized, "wait a minute! why am I wearing these jeans?! These jeans had the hole between the legs.." Sigh, that is the random nature of my dreams.. =_=||

So last night's dreams were a bit fragmented and disturbing. Yesterday, I was talking to my Taiwanese roommate about eating differnt animals.. such as snakes. Well she says that is so disgusting.. etc. but I rather liked the snake congee I had in Guangzhou!!! It was "sweet". At night, I dreamed that I was at "home" with my family.. and some person brought in a snake!! I was so scared of the snake and was constantly looking over my shoulder to stay away from it!! I tried to scare it away, but it kept on persistently chase me!! Then, finally, it got me!! It bit two of my fingers. Just imagine your middle and index finger that is within 4 cm in the mouth of the snake!! I tried to shake it off and everything, but it wouldn't let go!! I felt a numbing and sharp sensation on those two fingers as the snake clung onto my two fingers! When it finally came off, my fingers still felt numb and tingling, but there wasn't any blood.. I was wondering if i got poisoned or not.. Later on, the dream evolved into one of those family trips to an alternate "China"!! We were somehow in the country side of my father.. but its completely strange. Well, his village was quite run down and in ruins and deterioration. THe housing structures didn't seem to have walls to separate the outside.. they only had roofs! And everyone seemed so poor. The problem is that the village is very dangerous because it had high radiation levels!! So we were worried that the radiation will cause cartegenic effects on us.. so we got these suits to wear.. ...... and I couldn't really remember too much.. but i kind of recall that the crazy snake was still with us.. =_=||

2.august.2004 -montag-: naze?

I'm sick.. again! It was only last weekend that I felt so sick. Well, Yesterday morning, I don't know what happened, but when I woke up, I wasn't feeling well. I had a bit of headache. I ate my usual cereal and milk.. and was hoping that my headache would go away. My two roommates, my lab mate from Puerto RIco, and I were supposed to go out to eat "dim sum" in Monterey Park (its not the aquarium, its in LA!).. but we couldn't get ahold of or even contact with that lab mate.. I was feeling kind of bad and didn't really want to go.. but it seemed that my roommate might get angry because everyone ditched out on this trip! During the car ride, I was feeling worse.. such as feeling a bit nauseus.. feeling like wanting to throw up.. When we finally arrived at the restaurant, I felt so terrible... my roommates said that I looked so pale! There, I didn't dare to eat any food.. I just drank some chrysanthemum tea.. and ate some "dou fu fa" (sweet soft tofu dessert) THe whole noisy and lively atmosphere of the Chinese restaurant caused my headache to get worse.. I couldn't concentrate. . Next, we stopped by my roommate's cousin's place to pick up her mobile phone from her brother.. and then we went to "Sun Faht" supermarket. The day before I was looking quite forward in going there, but this day, I felt so weak and terrible.. I was planning to buy lots of foods,.. but I only got around getting some white nectarines and an avocado before asking my roommate for her car keys so I can just rest in her car instead. When we finally came back to our apartment, I was feeling so bad that I immediately changed into my pajamas and laid down on my bed.. . I also drank some bright pink coloured "Pepto Bismo".. My stomach was sort of upset..
Later, I got up to close the blinds because the sun was bothering me. I laid back down.. and I felt that I was going to vomit soon! SO I quickly tied up my hair and went to the bathroom.. and soon enough, I vomited some pinkish liquid out! Couldn't really tell what it was.. but it probably contained the Pepto Bismo.. . Some of the substance also came out from my left nostril.. =_=||

Throughout the whole day, I was "out of action". I didn't feel like eating anything and I was mostly in bed. I went to bed early and felt very cold.. but later I woke up so feverish and covered with sweat! My dreams were very eccentric and fragmented.. not very pleasant.. I also woke up quite many times to go to the bathroom or drink some water because it was so hot. I finally had enough with sleeping and got up at around 7:30AM.. It was strange because my whole body had periodic flares of fever.. . But the headache was still persistent..

5.August.2004 -moku-: well well well!

OK, I feel that I finally recovered from that bout of sickness.. I still don't know what it was.. food poisoning? Well, I'll just describe the *previous* day, the day before I got sick. I went hiking with my Indonesian roommate and her 3 friends: Alberto, Denton, and Trinh. First we stopped by at the Vietnamnese sandwich place called "Lee's Sandwiches" in Westminister. I also got to try out Vietnamnese yoghurt! It has a different taste than the American ones.. but still, I think the best yoghurt i've ever tasted was in Dunhuang, China! :D Next, we got a bit lost and found that the freeway (405) has great traffic jam.. so we drove along the street.. it was a very long drive next to the beaches.. from Seal Beach to Newport Beach,.. and finally the beach in "Crystal Cove State Park". At one of the beaches was a huge "X Games" (Extreme sports) event.. crazy! and so many cars! Parking at Crystal Cove costs a whopping $10!!! (thanks to our current governor Arnold Schwartzenegger's drastic cut in fundings =_=|| .. it used to be $5!!) I was very pleasantly surprised by the beach because the water seems to comparably clean!! It is actually blue in colour! wow!! @_@ It wasn't very crowded either.. My roommate's friends were quite well planned and brought some equipment to sit on. We ate our sandwiches on the beach and later walked around. There is a great area where its teeming with life: hundreds of hermit crabs (some even small as 3 mm!), some small fish, small crabs hiding in the rocks, sea slugs (soft dark brown-purple! with antennas!), sea anemones, sea snails, etc.. . wow! its really great.. reminds me a bit of my adventure in Hong Kong's "Dung Ping Chau" Island.. :D I also collected different kinds of seaweed.. In the Marine botany class which I wanted to take (but it was completely full), they have some projects where you have to go to different beaches to collect and preserve various seaweeds.. If I remember correctly, the process to preserved them is called "vivarium press".. don't know why I remember that, because I only went to class for a week or so. So when I brought the seaweed home, I sandwich them between sheets of paper towels, newspaper, and books. Don't ask me if that is the real method, but.. . how should I know?

After spending lots of time on the beach, we decided to go hiking at the Moro Canyon part of the park. The hike wasn't too challenging. Not so many steep hills.. We saw lots of Cottontail Rabbits (the tails are so white and fluffy, it makes me want to pull it off!<-- joking! :D :D). There were also lots of these black beeles that leave some weird looking tracks in the trail. Funny thing was that everyone at one point was discussing what it was.. and they actually believed that they were snake tracks! umm. I don't think that snakes have legs and leave foot prints.. :D We also saw some birds.. some were regular brown ones.. a few were goldfinches. The most amazing thing was that we saw a small pink-reddish patterned snake all curled up at the side of the trail!! Whoah--! Well, Denton was walking near the side when he gave out a yell! It didn't even move.. We were taking pictures of it and everything.. when two kind of old Chinese (talking in Mandarin) passed by. They looked at the snake, but said that it looks like a mushroom!! @_@|| Right then, the snake moved its head a little and its black tongue went in and out of its mouth! "... . its a moving mushroom!", Alberto finally said.. Everybody laughed! Actually, we were going quite slow.. even the old couple went faster!! My roommate was telling us about her hiking trip to Grand Canyon.. so we were all imagining ourselves to be in Grand Canyon.. haha... we are so crazy.. There were also some melon plants all over the park.. many of them had little melons! We also found a peculiar print across the trail. This time was a solid line that meanders across. No footprints.. I felt for certain that now this is a snake trail print! THe last portion of the hike wasn't so great in that there was a whole neighbourhood of mobile homes complete with basketball hoops to our left! When we reached back to the parking lot, we ate our sandwiches at a picnic table. There was a "Full moon hike" scheduled at 8 PM.. and it was around 7:30PM. The park office was open so we went inside.. it was quite small, but it had displays of stuffed animals.. it was gross that ants were eating up a stuffed hummingbird within a display case. It was completely covered with ants! However, we didn't have flashlights and the trail will be the same one we just hiked on.. so we decided to go home.. I was quite sleepy in the ride back home.

6.Augustuscaesar.2004-fretag-: up load

I finally got off my lazy lazy buttocks and uploaded this file. Sigh. Either I'm all so hard working on this hp, or I forget about it! I haven't uploaded these logs since ... in May? (and now its August?!) Maybe it'll swing back to being updated again after such a long break of doldrums. However, I did scan some pictures some weeks ago.. but didn't get around editing and tweaking them so they take less space. I had a short burst of creative drawing energy for one day and sketched at least 6 pictures that day. After that, its the doldrums again.

This is my first summer in Los Angeles and I'm quite pleasantly surprised how cool the weather is in Westwood (which is near the Santa Monica Beach). The temperature doesn't even touch the 100s F mark like it does in Sacramento. In my Sacramento summers.. whooh.. 110s is quite usual indeed! I can't even bring myself to work on anything in the heat! Yes, I should take advantage of this and get more things done. Funny thing is that summer is almost over.. its already *almost* ( :D ) mid-August soooon ... and I'm still unemployyyeed...

OK, to make myself work on the homepage, I will announce here that I will work on this homepage (update the [moi] section into more easy interactive menu, upload new pictures) ... *BUT* only after I have applied for that list of jobs I have. :D :D :D hey, you can't blame me, its a list of priorities!