The Day I Walked/Slammed My Head Into An Electrical Pole

If anyone asks me, "Name one of the stupidest things you have ever done.", I would answer right away with, "I walked/slammed my head against an electrical pole.".

Yes, I think all of us walked into things before. But when it's my turn to become a klutz, I do it 100%.

So the story goes.. after guma, guchung, and I got dropped off from the Karoke Bus at the corner of the street, we started walking home. It's a short walk, but the night was dark already. As we were walking, I see that guma had a bunch of our shopping bags in her hands. Turning towards her while continuing walking forward, I bent down to take some bags off her hands. Little did I know, the evil electrical pole was approaching fast. That sneaky thing. Continuing to walk forward, I turned while straightening and "KAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNGGGG!!!!" was the next thing I heard.

Houston, we have contact!

Here's an accurate portrayal, anatomically correct pictorial drawing for those who can't read good:



What I felt was my head bouncing away from a very hard thing. I didn't know what happened at that second for all I can see is black. Well cuz it's dark out AND also cuz the force at which I slammed my head into the pole severely bent my newly adjusted glasses, smushing it against my oily face.

Guchung who was at least 30 feet ahead of us, briskly came back after he heard the "KAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNGGGGGG!!" When questioned if I was okay, I was like "yah, I am fine."

My guma then sheepishly laughed and said "That was loud." Hahahaha...

Well I wasn't laughing when I felt that large egg hatching underneath the impact point later that night. No break of the skin, but the scalp was definitely red and it started to hurt.

"Dooh!!!!" Well, I've always had a thick skull. Hopefully no permanent damage was done, but it sure feels like I cracked it and indented it at the same time.

My brain!! My brain!!!

That night guma and I griped about the local government and their stupidity for placing an electrical pole in the middle (fine!) towards the middle left of a pedestrian walkway, esp with no lights. The discussion got even more heated when guma mentioned that electrical pole is no longer in service because they moved all the wires underground.

There was talk about filing a complaint with the local government by the time we headed to sleep.

Stupid pole!!

Two Meals

Overstuffed today.

I had plans to go see docs this morning about my recent breathing problems, but that all went out the window this morning, starting with my dad telling me to wake up cuz we need head out.

Scooted my ass off the raised platform, my make shift bedroom, and after some brush-ups, into the van and off we go. Where to? I had no idea until I got into the van. Guchung, pop, and I were invited to celebrate the birthday of my nephew. Sure, why not! But I would appreciate it if pop would've told me ahead of time.

Anyways, the company was great. I finally got to meet my other niece and nephew. Nice bunch of kids. The restaurant had a very earthy deco with wood tones and faux slate throughout the restaurant. I was like an tourist, snapping away, inside and out. The little courtyards outside are pretty. Even pop liked the decor. Enough to say take more pics so that we can show my brother what he can do with his yard.

The food was yummy as well. Italian cuisine was served. Interesting eh? Well these type of restaurants are the current fad here in Taiwan.

Within a year or so, the Taiwanese people will be coming up with some other way wine and dine.

After couple hours of rest, it's feeding time again. Off we went to a relatives house for din din. Dinner was good as well. The auntie can really cook. Saw more cousins there and listened to the older folks chat about family history, health, burial or cremation after death, and of course answer the questions about whether I have a boyfriend or not.

My standard answer is that, nope, I am not looking right now. Which is the truth. I have no idea where I'll be in a month. No need to stir the pot more.

Penis of An Armadillo

The penis of an armadillo is 2/3 the length of its body.



Well I would have never guessed.


Ouch.




Things one learn watching Discovery Channel. The armadillos need the length in order to mate with the female; to be able to reach underneath the female's armor.

Awake

Another day, another night.

I am neither in a foreign land,
nor in a foreign state.

"Change of place, change of scenary",
some threw out,
"will do you good to help you figure things out".

Nay, I am still awake when others lie,
snoring away half the night.

Same worries, same doubts.
Same question "What am I to do now?"

The Fatty Cyst

Another $35 bucks spent on health. That makes it what? Hmm about $150 YTD and it's only mid Feb. Great.. should've upped the heathcare spending account to like a grand or something. Well today was for the removal of my fatty cyst embedded on the back of my forearm. One of the many many many cycsts. Why do I have them? "Blame your father" is what my dermatologist said to me. So it's in the genes. I received the thick skin and the fat cysts tagged along. This particular cyst was a midsized one compared others in my arm. I nevered named it so I'll just refer to it as it.

Well fat cysts are for the most part invisible to others. But you can definitely feel them if you got them in the skin. You can pinch them (although my doc does not suggest that cuz it'll just make them grow bigger), you can move them.. they feel like a little soft BB in the skin. I got this huge one at the shoulder but doc did not suggest that I remove it cuz due to the size and location of the cyst, the scar will stretch and tend to get quite big.

So on with the procedure. I arrived at the office approximately 8:44 AM. I was called in to the room around 8:55 AM. I waited around and stripped down to my T-shirt of course the jeans stayed on. Doc came in and asked "Are you sure you want to do this?". Doc didn't really think removing these things were necessary cuz others can't see them and they are harmless. But I wanted the one on my forearm gone. Why? Cuz I see it and I tend to squeeze them everytime I see it. Besides, I really wanted to make sure it's not cancerous. Call me pessimistic.

The doc had me laid down on my side and have my arm facing him. Not sure why I needed to lay down for that but what the heck, it was comfy. So he first drew on me with a pen to marke the spot of the cyst. He drew a circle in blue ink pen. Now was that sanitary?

Next he took a little needle filled with some type of local numbing agent. I am too tired to look up correct spelling of anethssthics.. So numbing agent it is. He took that and gave me little shots around the target. The skin I noticed immediately puffed up a bit. Looked like a huge bug bite without the redness.

"You don't have to watch this." he said.

"Ah, I am curious on what it looks like." As I look on with the procedure.

"Cool you are going to watch." doc beamed.

I guess not a lot of patients like to watch? Not I, as long as I don't feel any pain why not?

Then he took this blue tube like thing.. and twisted it down on the mark he drew. Kinda like corkscrew, he turned and turned and that is how the top layer of skin was removed. Out came this little chunk of circular layer of skin. He snipped it off and put what was a part of me into this plastic lab cup.

Now comes the interesting part..the doc then tries to pop out the cyst but it was stubborn so in goes the scissors. Snip snip snip, and out came this yellow ball. It's very similiar to color of chicken fat, but darker. The cyst was enclosed in this type of outer flexy membrane. I was surprised how big it was compared to what I felt. Interesting. That also went into the lab cup.

The doc also cauterized the insides of the cut to minimize bleeding. I was surprised to see less blood than what I had imagined. Doc only sewed me up with 1 stitch. What's up with that? I would think at least 2.

So that was the fat cyst removal process.

I still got my original bandage on there, wondering how it will look tomorrow.

Made Up My Mind

It's a glorious day, Feb 17, 2006. It sure didn't start out that way. Sure the sun was shining and the geese .. whatever they do.. the wind was blowing.. you get the idea. Anyways, I woke with a start, having dreamt that my energy sector stocks were tumbling and that my ROTH IRA account was now 6k less than what I started at the beginning of the month. If that doesn't jarr one from sleep I don't know what will.

So the routine begins. Roll off the bed, onto the floor, and waited for brain to wake up. Ten minutes later, I couldn't resist the curiousity so the little Dell is turned on. After verifying I have not lost my shirt off my back, the attention was turned to the fridgid whether and the depressing news of global warmer. Great... NYC and part of FL will be underwater some time within this century.

Buy land in the midwest!

I have been setting 3 alarms recently. First one goes off at 3:30 AM.. why? to get up and do work. 2nd one goes off at 7 AM. Why? Incase I slept through the 3:30 AM alarm. The last one is set to buzz at 8 AM. Why? Cuz this is the absolutely must wake up time.

Once or twice I did wake up at 3:30 to do work. Actually got more done in those hours. Away from flashing sametimes and brain numbing tv shows. I did not look foward to waking up. There's the first internal design review to go over this morning. At 8:30 AM, I was still checking out news and articles on the web. I've been doing that a lot lately. Trying to find stuff other than work to occupy my time. Doing design for these new functionalities have been like pulling out ingrown hair, all over the back. It's painful and you can't really get around to it. Then it hits me again, that feeling of being trapped and that there's little you can do. I didn't like that feeling and the thought of working on code design and developing code just makes me miserable thinking about it.

So that was it.. call it 6 year long spontaneous decision, call it a cop-out, call it finally finding the courage, whatever it is, I have made up my mind. It's time to make my exit from Big Blue. For real this time.

I was checking stock forums, but that lead to scouring the posts in Ask The Headhunter from The Motley Fool. The article Taking A Salary Cut To Change Careers had 2 analogies for the situation. A particular one, that although was not on the top of my list of cons, ever the practical one, it's always on my mind.

1 - Think of a tree. The branches of the tree represent the paths that you take. The article talks about climbing up this one particular branch and looking around you find out that this is not the direction you wanted to take or it's coming to a dead end ahead. Eventually you know you are going to have to turn around or just be stuck there up on a branch that's not leading you anywhere. So in order to do that, you have to come down, retrace your steps, prehaps start all the way over to the lowest level the trunk of the tree. But you gotta take that step before you can climb over to a new branch.


2 - The second analogy is something I can definitely relate to - Stocks!
Cut your losses early on or else the price gets costlier.


Well we are on the topic of analogies, why not bring up Who Moved My Cheese again? Yes, so there's the 3rd analogy.


3 - Someone moved the cheese from usual position in the mouse maze. One mouse decided to venture into the unknown to look for that cheese while the other just waited around to see if the cheese will come back.



Message to take away is that, yah, it's going to be rough to start over or to venture into the unfamiliar territory. But that's all part of the process to find that thing you find most rewarding.


So, what's the plan? Not 100% sure, but I will be trying my hands to get into more of the writing field. In the meantime picking up odds and ends jobs, prehaps one of those on the Stepping Stones article. Companies such as Starbucks or Whole Foods that offer medical benefits after working something like 400 hours.. avg 20 hours a week.

Something.. there will always be projects and deadlines which should've been completed yesterday. Do I feel bad that the project will be lacking some resources to finish it? A little.. but whose fault would it be if everything hinges on one person? Esp in a company as big as IBM? It would be arrogant and egocentric of me to think that the division will not be able to survive without me. Sure, they might be in a bind for couple of weeks. But they'll recover soon enough. If they don't then managment really need to think hard about relying too much or putting too much weight on a single entity. Listen to me.. entity. .. dam technical mumble jumble.

Long story short, been in IT/progamming/consulting/configuration/programming field for about 6 years now.. from co-ops to interns to corporate. Time to make a move. Got friends who got engaged, to getting married, to having baby #1, and now baby #2. After 6 years, I filled the apt full with just stuff.. most of it just paper lying around, got my instruments that I haven't learned how to play yet. That's it.. 6 years. Sure there has been good days. Most of the people I've met throughout these years have been my only source of human interaction. Work for the most part monopolized my time. My bad for letting work to take over my personal time. I didn't speak up, I didn't make a fuss and a ruckus. Stupid me, I just buried my head and tried to do the best I can. But that was just incredibly foolish of me. Six years have passed and I have not made a single stride.

I don't know how long it'll take me to find the job I am looking for, but I am looking toward the change, and I will make it.

First Set Done

Thank God.. good grief.. mother #@#$$%^^!! .. *sigh*.. 2 weeks I got 1 set of documentation docs done at around 5 am 12 days later.. wonder if I can blame it on the material or the writer's block.. God... .. just have noooooo motivation to work on that thing.. it puts me asleep..

anyways.. you ever dig stuff out of your belly button? Well I hit a mine today.. bunch of little pieces of what I can tell dried crap.. yah that's a good word.. came out after much finger digging. Surprisingly it didn't stink! I remember a time where I wouldn't stick anything in my belly button for that item has to be quarantined and nuked cuz it was just vile.

Don't know what happened between then and now. No more foul odors, just dried crap. If these black brittle fragments are what is left from my umbilical cord that would be pretty neat. Disgusting, but neat. To think these nasty things I am rubbing between my fingers might have been there for roughly 29 years now... amazing.. I've always wanted to be an archeologist.. well guess it's dream come true.

Things to do before I leave this planet:

archeologist - done

Let the Games Begin!

Just finished watching the opening ceremony for the 2006 winter Olympics in Torino. This opening ceremony was a bit of a contrast from Athens. While Greece had put on a very well orchestrated artistic show that inspired many "woes!" from everyone around the world, Torino presented the ceremony in more of a casual fun light hearted way. The focal point with this Olympics ceremony for Italy was clever choreography and people power. My favorite part was when probably hundres of performers lined up and formed the shape of a giant skier and shown in sort of a Lego/claymation type of a way. Then through change of formation, we saw through aerial shots the giant skier's downhill ski trip. It was utterly brilliant and fun and engaging to watch.

Couple of things surprised me. The use of 80's American music throughout most of the opening ceremony and the use of American performer Peter Gabriel. Yes he was singing song of peace, I guess it's more of the message that counts. But what about Italian performers singing in English?

Cool... let the games begin, only if we can all play along in the bigger world. But then the specials won't be that special anymore right? Maybe it'll be even better like how Monday Night football draws a crowd and that's only national.

Anyways.. down to business:

Worst dressed = China
- what the @#$? what they wearing!! It looked like they just got out of the midnight shift from Intel's factory with their shapeless, unflattering, white lab coats. Man they were fugly! What the heck...who is picking all this Olympic merchandis for them? First it was the fugly, demon looking, scarier than tellatubee things.. for the Beijin Olympics .. .now the lab coats/white garbage bags? I really hope they acquire a better taste by 2008. Asians have been making clothing for thousands of years, even if they didn't want to show off the traditional patterns I am sure there's a design better than the white blunt cut.

Coolest sporty jackets = Germany
- now those are some nice looking, refreshing jackets, in colorful green and orange mixes.. thumbs up

Chic casual jackets = Slovenia
- I want one!! the offwhite trench coat like jackets paired with an apple green scarf.. very very classy and slick.. nice..


Hahah.. I am not the only one who thought Solenvia's outfit rocked!.. found this funny commentary blog on the fashion show we witnessed at Torino this year. Wonder where I can buy one..

Comments on 2006 Winter Olympic Opening Ceremony

Stocks and Work

How does one judge productivity? Am I being productive when instead of work I am busy learning about stocks trying to make money? Or is that just slacking off at work? Probably the latter. But can you blame me? Come on.. it's doing documentation or looking at the little nice tickers go up and down.. red.. green... red again.. green green green... red.... it's like Christmas all over again!

I was dumped into the design/documentation/implementation project about 2 weeks ago. The first set of tasks is to document all the stuff we need to get into the next release of the product. Well, after being on the fast pace demo team for about a year, getting back to technical writing proved to be a bit difficult for my mind and body to get acclimated. Having an active stock market doesn't help either. My mind wanders to stocks. I dream about the opening bell and the first 10 minutes after it, with all the crazy trading. I see stocks drop 10 dollars and I wake rushing to turn on my desktop, ready and eager to get in on bargains.

And oh yah.. work.. suppose to talk about my procrastination problem. Where was I? So 2 weeks later.. the huge design doc is due tomorrow. How much do I have done? ehh.. i say maybe 40 percent if even. Everytime I look at that thing it makes me yawn and the eyes turn filmy.. and my bed beckons me.

It's my job (for now) so I must do whatever it takes.... gawd... my ass is numb.. maybe some exercise will help. Doubt it.

Smallville - "Reckoning"

There was a little upturn at the corners of my mouth as I suppressed a smile when they finally ended the Lana character on Smallville. But.. a twist they threw in those writers.. they didn't kill off Lana! So then I was all tense when Clark went to see Chloe to tell about the 2nd chance he has received to change destiny. When Chloe promised that she won't leave Lana's side all night, I cried out "Nooooooooo, Chloe's going to die this time!".

But at the end it was Mr. Kent that got written out of the show. Whyy whyyy didn't they just leave Lana be.. whyy...

Interested in others' reactions, I logged onto the Smallville fan site KryptonSite and found that many others like me were happy/ecstatic/overjoyed/sang words of praise when Lana bit the dust. Unfortunately for us, it looks like we have to endure more episodes with the dragging Clana relationship.

We'll miss you Jonathan Kent!

(Hmmm.. maybe Clark will find a crystal again..)

God I love fan sites.. it's hilarious to read and for those of you who have never visited your fav show's site, try it one day. You'll find surprising detailed analysis, good writing, and the posts can be funny as heck.

Spock or Dumb and Dumber?

Ahh, it's nice to shower. Nice to be clean. While I was squeezing some whiteheads out of a stressed out/lack of sleep face, I noticed that I look vaguely familiar in the mirror. Then I realized I am a junior Spock! What the...

My bangs have not grown out fully yet.. it's almost .. almost to the eyebrow.. maybe give it another month. So with a fully blown dry hair, it was either Spock or Jim Carey in Dumb and Dumber. Neither image is flattering to the ego.

Back To The Dungeon

Before I get on with my whining, I just had the strangest experience. So here goes, on my excursion out of my apt to do my rounds at the normal wee hours (visit the garbage dumpster, pickup mail from downstairs), I was fascinated by the trees lining or probably more like leaning at the back of the apt complex. These huge trees are all leaning over at least 35 degrees. Those things are going to go next time we have a big ice/snow/wind storm. Freaking apt complex landlord is too cheap to hire people to come and cut those things down before someone else's car gets crushed or worst yet injuries from falling trees.

So there I was looking up at the trees and then haphazardly swung my bag of garbage into the dumpster. Swooosh....... Thunk! It lands on the lid and then falls into the abyss. Before I can mentally congratulate myself for making the incredible shot, I noticed this brown object on top of the lid.

It's moving!!!

My brain finally kicked in and identified the "thing" as a raccoon with its back towards me. It turned its head around a second later and looked at me. We looked at one another and I started to apologize softly when I noticed it is breathing kinda fast.

"hey buddy.. i am sorry .. did i scary you? did I? ooh don't be scared, i am not gonna hurt chya"

I think I almost gave that poor thing a heartattack when I swung my garbage in his direction.

After taking about a minute break to calm its heart down, he kinda looked at me with the expression saying: "Jesus, there I am eating dinner and you.. *sigh*".

With that and one more look of dismay, it walked back to the hole in the fence and ended our encounter.

----

So on with my bitching.

Close to dinner time today I received 2 e-mails from work.

The first one is from the manager telling me that hey I am getting pulled back to the product team to help on the next release of the product doing configuration. At least they didn't have the nerve to assign me to some coding project.

The second e-mail was from my manager's boss, a partner of the company saying hey I support the decision to put you back in the dungeon and by the way appreciate everyone for their efforts!

If I weren't so busy trying to get this demo done for them I think the sailor in me would've came out in full force.

Now it's like a slow boil... bubbling.. bubbling.. tomorrow is when I'll find out the details of this sudden assignment.

This is what I despise as being a "consultant". Wait a minute, didn't they change my title to "IT Specialist"? Whatever, I am still getting pimped out. Regardless of your wants and preferences, you are sent off to wherever they dictate.

So to apply what I've been reading on roadtrip nation, I need to change my attitude and view this just another sign/confirmation that my current job is not the path that will make me happy and that it's time to get the ass moving toward the pursuit of happiness.

Monster.com here I come!!

I complained to friends and family already, and also co-workers. One friend in particular said that she refuses to say words of encouragement to me cuz she's been harping that for years. Instead the tactic will be reverse psychology. She said, "You are going to die alone and in front of a computer." Booohooo..... I don't want to die infront of a computer :(

My mom was a bit different. She said that tell them you can do the work but you won't be happy about it. When I told her about the publishing job posting on Monster the Virgo/extremely practical realist side of her came out and pointed out "do you know how much money you can make working only 40 hours on some of these minimum wage jobs? do you know how little money you'll actually be able to take home after all the taxes and deductions?"

But I held on strong, saying "well I gotta start somewhere." Wonder if Michael Dell would commend me if he heard those words.

6 hours till meeting time. Lovely.

Of Music and Career Advice

Reading does enhance one's view and knowledge. It's a shame most people don't have the time to read these days. Especially the kids born in this technology laden world.

Anyways, I digress. Going through the magazines before I drop it off downstairs in hopes others might want to read them, I found 2 really cool articles/websites. Before I get to those, I just want to do a plug for Fast Company and Business 2.0, two of the most time worthy magazines available on the newstands. The articles are well written and the info presented is unique and more thought provoking than your usual gambit of waiting area magazines.

I like listening to a pretty broad range of music. So for people like me, Pandora is pretty cool. You are able to create free radio stations by entering 1 of the songs you like. The company's algorithms then uses that one seed song to create a radio station of songs it thinks you'll like based on your first input. Best of all did I mention it's for free? It's a great way to discover other artists out there.

The other site/company is called roadtrip nation. There's a lot of informally conducted interviews of leaders on career advice and what it was that took them to get into the field they are in now. For those of us out there who still feel directionless, prehaps we can find some inspiration from those who have found their passion and made a career out of it.

Nokian WR-SUV 215/70/R16

I didn't win the lotto, but lately it sure seems like it buying things left and right. Like today, it was for my trusted Element, my only means of transportation (beside my legs). The treads on the stock tires are very close to the mark for replacement. My mechanic told me so last time as well. Yes I did the penny test to double check, and yep, time to get rid of the Goodyear Wranglers.

After scouraging the web and Element Owners Club forums, my top 2 choices of tires went to:

a. Nokian WR-SUV 215/70/16 ~$135/tire
b. Yokohama Geolandar H/T-S G051 215/70/16 ~$78/tire

Yah there's a steep price difference. Nokians almost doubled Yokohamas!! Tires these days are getting shee shee.. silica compound and directional arrowhead treading..siping

Winter has been light on snow thus far and there were several icy storms. But after the Thanksgiving trip back to PA, where I've seen at least 6 vehicle accidents, it was easy to justify shelling out close to $700 for a new set of all weather tires.

There's too much riding on those tires to regret getting the best for what I can afford to minimize risk in unplanned hazardous driving situtations. Esp when carrying precious cargo such as my family and friends, I don't ever want to mutter the words "I wish I had.. I should've gotten.. ".

So why Nokians? Well I've heard read nothing but rave reviews on them for their superior handling in rain, ice and snow.

No, I don't work for Nokian. I just like to do a lot of research especially before big purchases. So the call was made for 4 Nokians around 4:46 PM.

For those of you living in areas with a lot of bad weather, prehaps consider Nokians. Here are some articles I've found:

Real World Snow Tire Tests - 2002
Real World Snow Tire Tests - 2004
Nokian Tires
Canadian Driver - Nokian WR - Review
Element Owners Club - go into the forums and search for "Nokian"

Whohooo!! I'll get my new tires next week!

Hopefully riding with the Nokians, the white knuckle syndrome will go away whenever driving through foul weather.

The Night Calls on Me

Maybe I am a vampire. I seem to be more awake and alive at night then when the shining and birds are chirping.

Got my new set of headphones today from Amazon and I love them! It's the Philips SBC HS500. After the discount, got them for around 8 bucks or so, what bargain. The bass is rich and strong, sounds great and they are comfy! iPod has been running for 3 hours now. Ears still feel fine.

Go Amazon.com reviews! This is a classic example that usually going with the crowd is the right direction. Masses rule, isn't that a saying?

Nah, I don't think I am a vampire cuz I am awfully sleepy right now. Maybe it's cuz I don't drink blood? Hmm maybe it's just my iron is low again. Is that the reason vampires have to drink blood? Thought I read it somewhere before, don't recall now.

I am pack rat. Cannot throw away things in my possession easily. Trying to sort out stacks of magazines but I have to go through each page first to make sure I read it all before turning it for recycling. Wonder how many others are like me?

Finally... 1 down, 40 more to go.

The Urges at Night

Wonder how many people out there have urges to fit everything they've wanted to accomplish during the day in the past week into 4 hours after midnight? I bet a lot.

Well my sleeping schedule is has gone to hell. Been working late hours again after coming back from vacation and it's screwing with my biological clock. I worked for 25 hours straight and then went to bed around 1 pm on 1/18/06. Ring.... rrrrrrrring!! The shrill woke me up. Grabbing the phone, I tried to make my voice sounded as professional as possible considering it was only around 4ish in the afternoon. I should be working. Instead I was in La La Land.

"Hello?" - yah great way to answer the phone

"Hey there? This is ******". Great, my big boss, a partner of the company is calling me to discuss PBC results. I was struggling to prop myself up from the bed while he rambled on about my 2005 PBC results. He said he knew I was pulling some late nights and so made it really short that or he had a billion others to call after me. In any case, I got a 2+. Whatever that means, maybe a bonus in coming who knows. I just wanted to get back to bed.


Finally, nature calls so I woke up around 9 pm on 1/18/06. Showered and ate something of substance not that the PJC sandwich was good 10 hours ago. But I gotta eat. I am human.

Between 9 pm to what.. 5 am now? I've tried to cram 1 year of overdue clean up into 1.. 2... now how many hours.. i have to use my fingers, god my brain has gone to mush.. dam those calculators and computers.. I can do this.. where's my clock.. 7 hours! Yes! 7.. finally got it.. good grief.

So for 7 hours, what the hell did I do!! jeeeze.. I thought I cleaned. But .. hmm sure doesn't look like it. Well I organized a lot of papers.. finally unpacked the 2 suitcases.. went through the bathroom reading pile. Yes don't deny it.. alot of you probably have your own stash somewhere. Time to put some more magazines in there.

Okay I got 3 hours to sleep before turning into a robot for the big blue.

Unattainable Love - Brokeback Mountain

I wanted to write a review on Brokeback Mountain, but there's tons of reviews out there by you know.. actual movie reviewers so I will save myself from embarrassment by not going into the cinematography or whatever stuff that I probably don't have merits of mentioning.

I will however post about how the film engaged me... isn't that what watching a film is all about? Connection with the viewer?

Ever the procrastinator, on the day of the movie, I got to the theatre during the previews. I was shocked to see the entire room packed like sardines. Finding a seat in the dark is not much fun. I never changed the battery for the mini mag on the keychain. Now that would've come in handy.

The 4 most memorable moments in the film for me were:

1. When Ennis and Jack separated for the first time after coming down from Brokeback Mountain. Ennis kneeling in an alley wretching and emotionally distraught after seeing Jack drive away.

I think that's a dreadful thing to go through, watching someone you love so deeply simply walk out of your life and for whatever reason there's nothing you are doing or could do about it. It's that ache that hits your right beneath the sternum. That gnawing feeling that just spreads until you can absolutely overwhelmed and have to do something, scream, cry, punch a wall.. something.


2. The moment Alma (Ennis's wife) opened the door ready to greet her husband's mystery friend Jack. Alma's reaction of shock, betrayal, and hurt when she witnessed her own husband, the man who she raised a family with, passionately kissing the so called fishing buddy at the bottom of the stairs.

Thank goodness I have never felt gone through this particular situation, and hopefully never will. I'd be mad as hell. But I think, it's the betrayal part that would haunt me, the infidelity and the lying.

3. The longest dialogue between Jack and Ennis toward the end of the film where us, the viewers finally see the strain and pain these 2 men have been enduring through out the past 20 years of their lives. Out came the famous lines:

Ennis: If you can't fix it, you gotta stand it.
...
Jack: God, I wish I knew how to quit you!
Ennis: Well, why don't you? Why don't you just let me be? It's because of you that I am like this! I ain't got nothing... I ain't got nowhere..

Love, or any kind of emotions that strong can be debilitating can't it? Sometimes we are so driven by our feelings we loose a part of ourselves, we compromise and give up part the individual goals in order to get somewhere .. together. But Ennis and Jack, they couldn't. Anyone can identify how Ennis feels if we just relate it to a serious crush. You are stuck on this one person, this one being that occupies your thoughts, enters your dreams, haunts your free moments during the day, and until that one decisive moment where you either get together or fall apart, you are stuck in that limbo place. Neither here nor there.


4. On the phone when Lureen (Jack's wife) finds out that the man on the phone is the long time fishing buddy her husband has been seeing all through out the years. That Ennis is the man that Jack is really in love with.

Beautiful, sensitive acting. That slight pause, the self-denying recognition of what she always suspect was confirmed by that short conversation. Yet, after hanging up the phone, tears wiped, Lureen went back to her routine, seemly unaffected by the long kept secret.


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I love the guitar chords played throughout the film. The plucking seems to be done on heartstrings.

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Visually, it's breathtaking. Ang Lee and his team have managed to take us back to a time where we do see blue open skies, majestic mountains and green pastures. I loved the sheep.

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After the movie is over and we are all filing out of the showroom, through my teary eyes I can safely say that at least 80% of the audience in the room were couples over 50s. I was shocked again. This was not the demographic that I expected for this film. But after a while it made sense.

Although there's not a lot of dialogue in this film, it's more of what has not been said that left the deepest impression.

Reasons why I was engaged and appreciated the film:

1 - I think all of us at one point in our lives if we are lucky we meet someone who we can open up to and feel safe just being ourselves.

2 - The film successfully conveyed "unattainable love". A love that can't be carried out fully. The pain of not being able to be with that one person who has your heart and soul.

Bad Tree! Bad!

Spent a great afternoon with friends. It's just good to go out and socialize. Today a group of us went to a place in NJ called Duke Farms and got on the Display Gardens Tour. Pretty neat! It had a bunch of greenhouses set up and within each, a different type of garden is shown. There were the French, English, Chinese, Japanese, etc.. (well I don't remember the rest).

One gripe about the tour is that we went through too fast and weren't given enough time to really look at the garden. Okay fine, we weren't given enough time to take more pictures. There were a lot of weird looking flowers that would make great macro shots. Oh well.. next time have to find an outdoor garden in the spring.


When I got back to my apt, I saw that the wind tonight (20 - 40 mph winds) did its damage. One of the apt's trees snapped and landed across 2 cars. Thank goodness it's not my car.
Ouch! What a way to start off 2006.
This is the 3rd time a tree landed on cars at my apt complex since I moved here!!

This is the unfortunate scene from my window.

Not going to sleep easy tonight.

Oh ill wind! Blow the other way!

Day and Night

I just disconnected from AT&T vpn connection. Work finished. Sad it's 5:30 AM. Surprisingly I am not that tired, that's probably because I slept 12 hours the night before.

Mom finally contacted us a day later. Turned out her charger wouldn't charge the batteries so she was out of juice. Worried all day and night. But all that counts is that she was fine. So yesterday my bro ordered a new charger and it's on her way.

Guess my body won't get a chance to produce melatonin tonight. Another night lost facing the computer monitors. Recent alarming studies have revealed that proper sleep in the dark suppresses body's ability to produce melatonin which in turn decreases our ability to fight off cancer cells and thus increases our risk for breast cancer. Lovely.

From http://www.medical-library.org/journals2a/melatonin.htm:

Melatonin is a hormone produced by the pineal gland in the brain, melatonin also occurs naturally in some foods.

Timekeeping Hormone

Secreted only in the dark, melatonin provides a time-of-day cue to diurnal and nocturnal species. For some animals and birds, it also provides a time-of-year signal for migration, hibernation, and estrus cycles. Melatonin's secretion is one of hundreds of circadian, or approximately 24-hour, rhythms in bodily functions controlled by the suprachiasmatic nuclei (SCN) of the hypothalamus, which comprise the body's master clock. Melatonin receptors have been found in the SCN, which is itself entrained by daylight signals received.

Daylight intensity light-roughly 5 times brighter than ordinary indoor light-suppressed melatonin secretion.
Young adults typically secrete about 5 micrograms to 25 micrograms of melatonin per day. In most people, secretion declines dramatically with age, a fact some researchers suggest accounts for the higher prevalence of meletonin.

Need to sleep more.

Cellphones

Got a call this morning from my mom. Or that's what I thought at first. Unexpected, it was from some lady at a convienence store where my mom supposely have left her phone in the bathroom? of all places.

So all throughout the day been waiting for her to call me back. It's her day off so I wonder if she even realized she has lost her phone.

It's amazing how much we depend upon cellphones these days. The little gadget that connects us to the rest of the world. It's like a GPS tracker, only without the nify GPS part. Well supposely, the police can track the GPS signal from your phone, but I have not had to resort to that yet.

It's close to 3 AM. Don't really feel like sleeping. At the back of my mind I worry. I worry if my mom is safe if she's sleeping soundly at the apt. I don't know why I didn't think of this earlier, but I could've contacted the apt complex people and see if they can run and leave her a message at her door or something by a note. This unknowing where your parents are is very unsettling. A role reversal. Wonder if this is how they feel when we go on trips.

Hope my phone will ring soon with her voice on the other line.