and where are you now

simple joys in a modern day world...

the feeling of smooth teeth after brushing

the feeling of clean, unoily hair after washing

the satisfaction from a new, good haircut

laying in bed when it's warmed up

now that i need you

cuz we've been too strong for too long

well, my oldest brother left to go back to the bay area. but not after having a huge fight with my mother. [sigh] the same fight as always, as he told me. i assume that it's difficult to make so much progress when you move away from home, but to go back to zero once you visit home.

i was in the car while the fight took place. and i played my usual role: sit and listen. but somewhere in there, during the silence, i wanted to change my role. i wanted to do something about it. so i went over all the mediation stuff i remembered. and when i was ready to take part, it was too late. my mother went on a rant and couldn't be questioned or made to listen to my brother. [sigh] next time... be ready...

after reading some more harry potter, i realized that mail can be tampered with and opened before the recipient opens it. so i searched my belongings and found a seal that a friend had given to me years ago. i'm going to try to use it on my correspondence. should that include the bills i pay? probably huh...

currently, i'm bumping:

"one wish" by ray j,

"check on it" by beyonce and slim thug,

"sugar, we're going down" by fall out boy, and

"be without you" by mary j. blige.

i love thermals and borrowing sweaters from the boy. i bought a new pair of sweats today just so i could cut them. my oldest bro's gf bought me a winter sweater (with peach and teal stripes that's casual and not dressy), exactly the kind i was thinking of getting! i was surprised. i know that i am hard to shop for but she got me! and so quickly! and the boy's sister bought me flannel pajamas.

so i covered recent events, realizations, plans, music, and clothes. anything else?

and i can't be without you baby

the fam around the tree

we major

hi y'all. hope you all had a super xmas/christmas! i received jess's box on saturday morning and wanted ever so much to open it but held off till this afternoon. but it was worth the wait. thanks, jess!

last night, my fam (minus the pops) went over to bob's gf's house for xmas eve dinner. there was a lot of grub and a lot of people. and for the moms, it was the first meeting. interesting. the kids were cute, especially the one that i got to hang out with (kaylie). then my brothers and i played spoons with the aunts and uncles (the last time we were there, we played some board game), who did not want to disband the game for pictures. but the cameras won out and then we all opened our presents. we arrived back home at around 12am.

this morning i headed over to the boy's for xmas day presents. and as always, he put up a fight to avoid taking pictures. but again, the cameras and his mom won! then we just hung out. i left to make it home for a vietnamese xmas meal - catfish and grilled pork spring rolls. after we scarfed down and cleaned up, we opened the presents we had purchased for each other. it was all a whole lot of fun -- seeing each person open up their presents, the wrapping paper sprawled all over, the "thanks" and "you're welcome", the gathering itself. i love xmas time and the feeling that is embodied in the season.

with the new year quickly approaching, i want to wish you all an amazing year that sees your goals and dreams actualized, your love given and returned, your help shared with others, and your mind able to recognize the lessons that are taught to you. take care and ring in the new year with fun and care. see y'all soon!

we major

we're riding in a wonderland of snow

i keep running into people. saturday i went to lax to drop off my dad and i saw professor p.hat and classmate connie, who were off to zurich. sunday, i was eating at market broiler and ran into my volunteer coordinator from girls inc. and then last night, i ran into a friend from junior high school at the mall. sheesh!

im sleepy. i watched "two weeks notice" tonight with my mom since my dad is gone. its midnight-ish and i woke up at 645 this morning to go to a training session for work, after sleeping for 6 hours. after i got out at noon, i headed home and hung out for an hour before heading out to ikea, costco, and lollicup with the boy, returning home at around 545p. sigh. i shoulds be off.

jo - check your myspace for the info you texted me about.

we're gliding along with a song of a wintery fairyland

lovely ladies at sua winter formal 2005

real love, i'm searching for a real love

so, no luck with that idea of sleeping more. heh. =/

it smells like fish.

i have a bag of homemade cookies sitting next to me and it's tooo tempting.

parent-child (those who return home from college) conflicts would probably be highly minimized if the child did not go out and stay out late.

dancing as an alumni at sua is interesting -- the kids of the school seem more weird than when we were there. maybe they are.

yum to carne asada and orange bang.

my corgi and shiba have been sold. =(

i like wearing cut-off sweats, a sweatshirt, and my hobo gloves. who needs sweaters and slacks?

the only chinese food i want to eat is dragon express.

darn cookies!

i had weird dreams sleeping in my sleeping bag last night.

here's to winter break being jam packed with fun, loved ones, and rest!!!

someone to set my heart free

i square i blogged again since monday

hmm...this week, we started sports. our site played another site at a public park. and after seeing both sets of students, i felt so lucky. our students are just more well-behaved and they listen when they are asked to do something. you can't beat that. i'm not saying that the other site's students are bad; it's just different realities that the students come from. and the one that my students have is more similar to mine.

in other news, people keep opening presents early and for me, it takes away from the holiday. perhaps it's because i'm used to delayed gratification and holding out until the right time, even if i'm anxious. for example, we are giving my dad his presents tonight before he takes off for the motherland, and they want to give me my present but i don't want it till christmas day.

hmm, whatever tension that existed between my mother over the years has built up even more. although things seem to be okay for a bit, we'll go back to square one and keep battling. she just can't accept my choices in my relationship and as she says, she's "waiting till i open my eyes and stop being blind." this hurts and it makes the dualism that is my existence worse. i always feel like i have to choose her or him and it makes any situation involving one, the other, or both a pain. as she said tonight, "in order for me to be happy, you have to be single or stop being with him." [sigh] so do i follow my own heart or do i appease the blood? either way, i'm screwed.

in other news, i plan on sleeping more.

but apparently not

our decorated, midget holiday trees.

i never said you had to stick around forever

well, i have two people left to shop for and one, i already know what to get but i have to wait on the money for it. weee! and i square, i'm on top of things without schoolwork. i love it. sometimes, i feel a little obsessive compuslive but oh well! it's nice not feeling like i'm always behind.

my pops is headed out to his motherland this weekend, his first trip back in around ten years. cuz he works so much, he doesn't get that many opportunities. this time, he has to go cuz he kept promising his mom and she's getting older. so he'll be gone for around 2 weeks. eee. but before he leaves, the family in oc has to go to a boat show in newport beach. i don't know anything and i wish i did because i know it's gonna be cold, and if i don't have to wear a dress, i ain't!

anything else? dude, not really, it's just work and whatever i can scramble to do. but because it's not full-time, i have time to breathe. =D que bueno.

oh, and at work, they gave us whistles. dude, if that thing's in front of you, you can't help but use it! oh, and they also bought xmas trees for our site and we decorated them today! it was so joyful! i like decorating trees! my third one ever! and two were this year! weeee!

never said you had to stick around and be with me

watch out, my outfit's ridiculous

gee, it's been a long day. last night i went to a holiday party and had a couple of drinks and couldn't fall asleep till sometime after midnight, only to wake up at 7 and drive myself over to tustin for 45 minutes. then i was freaking out about my first month's timesheet! and after spending an extra hour figuring it out, i rushed over to work in garden grove only to find the students dancing up today's storm in such a way that my body can't move anymore. i'm serious, whatever krump or buck or the new hustle is, i don't know if i can do it. oh well, i'll keep trying. but then we cooked with our two students and greeted the art instructor, who stayed for a quick two hours teaching us his stroke technique. wow, i made a nice palm tree that i wanted to put up on the refrigerator. after work, at 5, i drove over to south coast to meet up with other afterschool staff at tgif's, where i wisely passed up drinks and had fish tacos. here i am, home early, so that i can jump in the shower, do some correspondence, and sleep before a long day running errands with my mom. after five days, i'm sure they'll be a lot to do.

in parting i'll leave you with tupac's wisdom: "you all appreciate."

in the club looking so conspicuous

do you see what i see

okay, i would have really loved to have told you personally. but for my first day of the afterschool program (where students actually could show up), we had ONE stay for one program. that was okay. and as my partner and i have an interesting track record (we temporarily broke the laminator last week), we shouldn't have been surprised that we set off an alarm in one of the classrooms! but we were and i tried to keep my cool, calling our supervisor and letting her know our dilemma. then we had to talk to the police who came and tell them what happened and how we were new staff without access codes. but i think everything is okay. we'll see tomorrow when the teaching staff questions us. yeah, so an interesting "first day."

otherwise, i finally quenched my boba craving at the only place i drink boba these days: little bean. and i went with the boy and we ended up running into my brother and his little bean crew! haha. funny. oh and we saw a funny in the parking lot: a couple who each drove the same car, color and make. the boy and i thought it was cute. haha. and i thought it was overkill. ha.

my favorite xmas song for its cheerfulness factor is "it's the most wonderful time of the year."

thanks, jess, for your shout-out! and my computer doesn't always show me all your updates when you post; so i thought that you were going dry with your posts, but then i saw like 3 new ones for each one of you! so confusion.

--edit--
do you ever have moments that are like freeze-frames from movies? brief instances where you look around you and everything is perfect and you wouldn't want to be anywhere else? i had one on graduation day may 22,2005 while driving back to school from the boy's. the sun shined beautifully through the thin clouds in the sky and everything in my life felt whole. i felt one with the world for that brief moment. i had another moment like that last night. while reading over my health textbook for my class, christmas music filled the room with felicity as the boy sat across the room studying. it felt cozy and comfy, like christmas time at home.

cuz santa clause comes tonight

i said something wrong

yesterday, i went to an alumni meeting with the class of 2006. and we sat around chatting and talking. it was really informal and some "seniors" had some questions that were pretty insightful and others were just there to say whassup. it was cool. afterwards, we went to the cafeteria to see if we could get some dinner. but of course i had to be sitting where someone told me i was stealing cafeteria food. so i felt,um, BAD! doh... anyhow, we sat around chatting and talking with some of the students who remembered us. it was fun. then we went back to pili's place to watch "dodgeball." haha. i love it when i watch movies i wouldn't have watched on my own accord. hahaha. yeah. "cram it up your cramhole." ridiculous. hehe... and we had a couple of stragglers come by, as we gossiped and reminisced.

so how's the holiday season treating you? christmas/xmas shopping coming along smoothly? i'm going to be so broke, especially considering the fact that i won't get paid till like january. i need to figure out how to buy less presents or buy less expensive presents. [sigh] darn the commercialism of xmas! hehe...

now i long for yesterday

come back to me, darling, you'll see

it's very beautiful how people bring out different sides of me. compared to some people, i am pretty high on the continuum of impression management; i do care about how i come off to people and i will act according to how another person behaves or how a situation turns out to be. so i have a lot of different social selves. and although not everyone sees these different sides, as ellie has said before, i am like an inion with many, many layers. sometimes people freak out (literally!) when i behave differently from what they are used to. and that usually makes me hide that part of me. and i have friends who feel the same way.

so for today, i hope for the freedom for everyone to be who they are.

i can give you everything you wanted before if you will stay with me

aww, can't i take you home???

my gut is burning

hi-dee ho.

so i'm still planning for work this week. we've been figuring out our activities and schedules. and guess what i'm in charge of? healthy living class. which will encompass everything in the world and their moms. what do you think? nutrition? exercise? social etiquette? household chores? driver's ed? i don't know. i have to think about that one for a bit. but it's weird because the way i'm handling this job is much different than how i approached school. i'm not procrastinating. i want to be ready for everything. i've been obsessive compulsive over organizing. haha. i feel like a different person!

what else is going on? not too much. sleeping here and there. i worked out yesterday for the first time since last wednesday. hehe. my diet's not coming along too well. i can't restrain myself too well. and i'm not drinking enough water.

oh, but i did buy a HP movie for $5.88 from target! excellent! i love a steal!

dude, i haven't really been listening to music either. i tell you, this post-grad, working thing is pretty routine and boring. oh well, at least the students will bring some variety into my days.

i have a big craving for boba.

won't you find me some water?