today is the day we are reminded to give gratitude for what everyone has done to us such as:
- voting bush to be re-elected
- having the $$$ for wants instead of giving away to third-world countries
- pumping out oil in foreign countries for cheap economy here
- giving imbeciles to the next level of fear factor
overall, i love the fact that everyone like you is just a human being. we all share our different views and let our views put aside and gather for what a humankind is supposed to - learn how to live together, live peacefully, and be open and honest.
happy dead organism day.
a long ride to home from JFK a couple of weeks ago...
my fiancee got invited to a private welcome party of renovated moma, but she was unable to go due to her part time teaching job so i took her place and went there myself (though i got two friends going there too). i was very impressed with yoshio taniguchi's work on moma as it definitely gave moma more space than its original existing space - one huge reason why moma selected taniguchi's work. here's some pictures that i took at moma and its architecture:
its downside may be its expensive ticket - $20 admission, but here's a secret... on every fridays, you can pay as you wish to get inside...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4019295.stm
i'd love to take a huge whole bite out of this 10 year old sandwich and get praisably blessed by madonna. so any of ya wanna help me by bidding it for me?
i'm tempted to take this offer...
http://dir.travelzoo.com/Air.asp?intCategory=11&id=169376
japan.... boy.... but then i got more fire to find a job rather than going there... so you gotta give me a pat for that!
(at least i have a few japanese guests in town next month to make up for this temptin' offer anyway.. )
(taken at legion of honor art museum, san francisco, july 2004)
what's on my mind simultaneously at this early dawn:
toy business
wedding banquet
cough
jobs
jobs
jobs
susie
relocation
money
and of course, jobs.
are you reassured that i'm actually looking for a job now instead of globetrotting?
it seems like _back in nyc_ is a common title for my blog. anyway, it's 235 am here, and i just got home like 15 minutes ago and i'm chowing down my leftovers from last night's dinner (yep, i actually brought the whole seafood leftovers to here from california!) i'm just trying to savor the california's finest cantonese seafood. now what you ask? well, i got a few guests crashing at my pad this weekend and then afterwards, finally get the things rolling with a full time job in my sights.
http://www.marryanamerican.ca/
a canadian website asking canadians to marry a desperate, liberal american wanting to escape from usa for a while...
finally, i'm back in my folks' place, but haven't seen my parents yet. they're out somewhere partying real hard and it's 10 pm here now. my parents are in 70s, and they're still prowling out at late night! such active senior citizens... they can just boast that they can prove they're senior citizens while fulfilling their lives together!
ok.. here's useless statistics from my long road trip:
- miles i've drove from nyc to palo alto: 3088
- numbers of road kills on i-80: 50s.. (amazingly, half of 'em turned out to be deers.. must be the deer-hunting season... i guess these deers prefer to commit suicide as opposed to taken by the hunters)
- number of states who don't patrol highway: 1 (nevada... didn't even see a marked/unmarked cop car anywhere)
- top speed i've driven on i-80: 105
- lowest speed: 1 (bumper to bumper traffic jam in reno)
- amount of $$$ spent on gasoline for the whole trip: more than $500
- amount of $$$ spent on jeep repairs during the trip: another cool $500
do i need to elaborate if the trip went well or not? you figure it out...
i'm sitting in my jeep with my powerbook as i'm parked just next to amerihotel's lobby here in a puny town, elko, nevada. but this town is much alive with a few casinos and many cheap motels along the main street. i don't know why i desperately had to drive around to find free wifi and i hit this hotel sign that proudly says, "wireless internet," and i immediately just barged in by the lobby and got online! i'm just too exhausted to drive further, so i've decided to stay here in elko overnight at motel 6.
the drive was pretty long all the way from nyc, but i'm just glad that i got to drive on i-80 all the way to san francisco from new york. i'm sure very few peepos get to do this drive on just one highway coast to coast.
oh yeah, i just nearly almost got into a car accident in salt lake city when a car in front of me just hit the brake real hard while swerving out of the way in front of the car's hood. it seems like both of the drivers were racing, and somehow the first driver playfully hit the brakes lightly to make the second drive go nuts. anyway, as the second driver almost hit the first driver on the shoulder (they immediately got into the left shoulder after hitting the brakes, and i hit the brakes, too, and then the second driver was about to get back in the lane, but he was just next to my car and i had to hit the honker real hard, and he got the attention and just swerved back to the shoulder lane. what the hell is wrong with these drivers... nevertheless, i'm just glad that nothing had happened even though that second car was like maybe few inches away from my side door before he went back to the shoulder lane. first the jeep's malfunction engine, and now this?? i just hope that i get to my parents' home safely by tomorrow afternoon!
last night, my jeep's engine went funky on me and then its 'check engine' light indicator came on...
now, i'm at a local jeep dealership waiting for my jeep to get fixed. throttle's broken, fuel injector's dirty, and differential transfer case axle's messed up... estimate cost: $500
u can bet that i won't be going anywhere soon...
i'm actually driving now...
but to keep me alert during the drive, I have my best buddy, mr. sidekick, to feed me the current news.
here's what I find amusing:
http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/asiapcf/11/05/china.toilets.ap/index.html
in my opinion, it's kinda sad that this chinese style toilets had to go because it has been in china's 5,000 year history only to see them replaced by western-style toilets. I truly think that each country should have its own culture instead of being influenced by western culture.
anyway, I gotta focus on the road now... everyone on the road near me prolly think that I've been drinking....
earlier tonight, i went out with susie to do a bit of shopping, and then went to check out this cool art gallery called _fuse gallery_ located in east village. a magazine named _juxtapoz_ collected a nice collection of cool artists' work together and put 'em up in this hidden gallery which is behind a bar. check this exhibition if you can before it's long gone:
http://www.juxtapoz.com/www/newimages/events/nyc_artshowLRG.jpg
afterwards, we were gonna go to second ave deli for dinner, but we had stumbled upon another cool new gallery, _nyc showroom_ near toy tokyo. toy tokyo invited many graffiti artists as well as illustrators to do whatever they can do with a plastic nyc-style subway car. toy tokyo has collected over 100 cars and displayed 'em on the walls. they were pretty impressive that just popped our eyes. i gotta give toy tokyo top props for putting this exhibition together. if you're into underground art, you ought to check this room out:
http://www.strangeco.com/blogs/news/0410/tagthesystem.html
while at the nyc showroom, i bumped into a familiar guy who works at toy tokyo, and he gave us two passes for a private party in lower east side. so we decided to check it out, but we were hungry. so we opted to chow down at the katz's (corned beef sandwich!) and off we went to a bar that is in middle of nowhere in lower east side. it's near the williamsburg bridge. it'll be one of my secret bars 'cos it has one of the best roof views in manhattan! suz and i got some freebies from the party as well as drinks as it was a semi open bar there. suz told me that she enjoyed this evening because we were just practically spontaneous as we didn't know where to go that evening. we had a faboo time, and it was quite nice to spend this quality evening with suz before i hit the road to ca tomorrow am.
last night, i was taking a subway to manhattan from queens. when the subway stopped at one of the stations, a man was about to enter the subway but realized that he had left his glass case at the bench so he went back to the bench to retrieve it, but the subway doors were about to close, and a latino old guy sitting next to the doors just grabbed the edge of the door and held it open for the guy to come back. he managed to come back just in time. that shows you how a true new yorker can be a saint once in a while ;-) i know i may be just exaggerating here, but i just think that this example proves my case that new yorkers are such nice and friendly people as opposed to the myth of a new yorker with a bad attitude.
anyway, tomorrow, i'm hitting the road to california to drop off my jeep. i'll fly back home next week. i guess i won't have to worry much at all about parking in new york after all. parking in nyc was such a pain in the ass.
guess you won't get to see any blog here for a while.
a friend from uk asked me to spread the word about this nye's bash in london:
i won't be going there, but i'd suggest you to check it out because these uk peepos do know how to throw a great party...