No name

Went to a Meryn's interview today. I tried to pretend to be outgoing but instead spewed out a series of strange fabrications. Here's what I must have been thinking when I answered:

Question: Can you work after the summer?
Methinks: Mom said to lie and say I can...so...
Reply: I might be able to.

Question: So you just graduated from high school. Which college are you going to?
Methinks: Well I just said I might be able to work in the fall, so it would make no sense if I said I was going to LA...
Reply: Berkeley.

Question: That's a long drive.
Methinks: Damn it, think of a lie, fast...
Reply: Well, I might defer for a year, I don't know, it's weird...

And I bet the interviewer-guy was thinking, "hmm...those sound like lies, but why would someone make up such stupid lies?"... So if I get hired at Mervyn's (which I won't), I'll have to keep up my lame deferring-Berkeley lie. Ug.

Let's see...."interesting" things....

Only Chen had to go to work today (*evil laugh*).

Dad tried to fix some of the lights inside our car yesterday, and today both the lights inside and the turn signal lights no longer work.

My mom showed me a story that was in the Chinese newspapers yesterday. (We subscribe to a really weird newspaper that carries a whole bunch of random anecdotes/columns b/c there aren't enough news articles to fill up the paper. The advice the paper gives contradicts itself a lot, and is usually some nonsensical thing like "Washing Your Hair Before You Go To Bed Will Make Your Hair Fall Out." Plus all the news is just translated directly from English newspapers and tabloids.) Anyway, I'll paraphrase this story here, and you see if you can answer the questions or make sense of the answers, because I sure as hell couldn't.

A lord or emperor person wanted his daughter to marry, but a suitor needed to answer 6 questions in order to win the daughter's hand in marriage. Only one man, Li Shimin, was able to answer the questions correctly. The questions were:

(1) There's a log that's equally thick on both ends. How can tell which end used to be closer to the ground? (You know, when it was a tree. I can't translate >.<)

(2) There's a piece of jade with a tiny hole in it. The suitor must put a string through the hole. How might he do this?

(3) There are 100 mares and 100 ponies all penned up together. How can you match up each mare with its offspring?

(4) There are 100 chickens and 100 chicks all penned up together. How can you match up each chicken with its offspring?

(5) The suitor must eat a whole lamb and drink a whole tan (a large ceramic pot) of alcohol in a day and then make it back to his home. Many of the other suitors couldn't even make it through half a lamb, but Li Shimin was able to complete the task. How did he do it?

(6) The suitor must pick out the emperor/lord person's daughter out of 500 women. How did Li Shimin do this?


Now for Li Shimin's solutions (and my rants):

(1) The end that used to be the bottom of the tree is heavier, so that side will sink if you put the log in water. (Ok, what???! I think most sane people would have said that the rings on the bottom would be larger. Because that's what I said, and I'm sane. Of course.)

(2) Li Shimin put some honey on one side of the jade piece, then tied a string to an ant and placed it on the opposite side. The ant crawled through the hole and took the string through it as well. (WTF? Why couldn't someone do this by hand? The hole was big enough to fit an ant with string tied around it but not the string itself?!   I didn't even know you could tie string around an ant! No sense, no sense at all!)

(3) Just let all the horses out of the pen, and the ponies will go directly to their mothers for milk. (Ok, this one kind of makes sense...)

(4) Chicks usually feed with their mothers. Divide the chicks and chickens, let one chicken out at a time, then let out all the chicks and they will go to their mothers. However, the chicks don't always do this, so Li Shimin imitated the cry of a hawk, and all the frightened chicks went to their mothers. (Isn't this question the same as the last one? Then why is the answer so much more complicated? Why don't you just let all the mother chickens out at the same time? Better yet, why don't you just do the hawk sounds first?! Confusion, utter confusion!)

(5) Li Shimin also had a lot of trouble eating the lamb and drinking the alcohol, but he was able to make it home afterwards because he tied a piece of string to his house and brought the other end to the emperor/lord person's house. He just followed the string home. (Even better. This was barely even a brain thing, and what kind of string can stretch so far without some else breaking it while walking on the street?!)

(6) Li Shimin found out from someone who knew the daughter that she liked to wear kind of scent. He knew that bees liked this scent and thus brought a bee with him. He released the bee and it went straight to the daughter. (The guy totally cheated...how dare he have inside connections? And wouldn't the daughter be mad that there's a bee chasing her?! But by now, I already expected these answers to be stupid.)

I just realized that Li Shimin is actually the name of the emperor/lord guy, not the suitor. Hahaha (nervous laugh). Makes no difference anyways. I'm sorry for posting this stupid story, but I was so disgusted with it that I just had to share.

Just got back from work. Let me see if I remember anything "interesting" enough to put down...

(1) A Mexican guy who didn't speak much English came up and ordered $7 worth of food. He first took out a $20 bill to pay, then put it away and instead took out a $100 bill. Being as cynical as I am, a fear that the $100 bill was counterfeit suddenly overcame me after I gave him the $93 change. I even tried to check the bill to see if there were security watermarks, etc. Now that I think about it, I'm sure the guy was just a tourist who needed smaller bills. At least I hope.

(2) Some guy bought a/b $20.50 worth of food, and before I could do anything, the owner-guy took over the register. The buyer-guy pulled out $20 first, then another dollar, and the owner-guy grabbed both bills without giving back any change. The buyer-guy seemed all frustrated when he first took out the $20, but when the owner-guy grabbed the extra dollar, both started to laugh. And the buyer went away satisfied. And I became so so so confused. Didn't he pay $0.50 extra?!

That's it. I know, actually very uninteresting. Oh yes, there were also some 20-year-old-ish Polish guys who got really excited about Coke and had trouble paying b/c they couldn't tell what amount each coin represented (Why is the dime smaller than the nickel?). Very cute ^_^

And something must have been up today, because some people actually ate the samples, paused, and said, "wow, this is really good." And I just stood there, shocked out of my mind.

In a blog I read, I found a link to an Aragon blog webring. Even though it's titled the "Aragon HS Class of 2003 Webring" on the surface, it's actually a list of the blogs of a group of "AZN" (note: we use this word to refer to popular Asian people) friends from Aragon. So I decided to peak into the lives of popular people by looking at some of these blogs. Muhahaha. Most of the guys seemed to just have pictures of cars that all pretty much looked the same (ok, well, of course I know nothing about cars...I drive a Nissan Sentra for christssake...). I didn't really look at the girls' blogs, but I'm sure that theirs are way way more interesting than mine.

Apparently, some UCSD people already went to their orientation and were sad b/c many of the classes were already full. What? My orientation's in August and I have to take a whole bunch of impacted classes...so what am I going to do if the classes are full and I end up with teachers like this guy? Anyways, I didn't realize so many of the AZN people were also going to be engineers. Damn it, I was hoping that there'd be more unpopular people in the electrical engineering major so that the 7:3 guy-girl ratio would work greatly in my favor. While looking at the schedules of some of the UCSD engineering people, I was trying to figure out what MAE and SE were. I'm guessing they're probably Mechanical Aeorspace Engineering and maybe Structural Engineering? I'm not sure what the latter major would be though (never heard of it b/c they don't have this major at ucla)...maybe civil engineering minus environmental engineering?

But EE is still the best kind of engineering. Of course. I'm actually really excited a/b the major for some reason, but I still have to take some non-science-related "general education" classes, which are probably going to suck. Look at the list I can choose from! Look at it! All the course titles are so weird! If I want to take Asian American Studies, I can't just take Asian Studies 101 or something...it has to be course like "Health Issues for Asian Pacific Islanders: Myth or Model?" I'm also planning to teach myself some C++ (yes, when I have zero programming experience to begin with) to prepare for the computer science aspect of the major, but the stupid outdated library only had books on C and Visual Basic.

Ug, I just realized that this post completely violates the resolution in the last post about only putting down "interesting" things....

Okay, I am making a resolution now. I will:

(1) stop watching so much tv

(2) stop writing about tv & find something more interesting to put down.

...hmm...this will doubtlessly leave me with nothing to write about...so something really interesting better happen in my life really soon (v. unlikely >_<)...

Very very bored right now while waiting to go to the Grill for my 5:30 shift, so I shall post. Hmm...let's see. Well, last night at 2AM, I was completely awake until a certain movie titled "Analyze That" put me right to sleep. I only saw 5 min of it, but I could not tell which lines were jokes and which weren't (maybe they were all supposed to be jokes?). If anyone is thinking of renting this movie, don't. Don't tell me I didn't warn you. I have absolutely no idea why I used to find Billy Crystal funny.

After running some errands in the morning, I came home around noon and my mom told me that Chen had left for the Cajun Grill place (where we finally got hired super-part-time b/c of Mom's "connections"). Apparently, the Grill-owner-guy, whose name is also Steve, called and and cryptically said "This is Steve. Come to the Grill", which made her extremely confused because she thought it was that other Steve that we hate. She finally figured it out, left, and returned around 4:30. Even though the owner-guy told Chen many times what time he wanted me to go, she couldn't remember if it was 5:00, 5:30, 6:00, or 6:30. She also didn't want to call and ask him again, which would, of course, make her look stupid. So, instead, I was supposed to just guess what time to go. Stupendous.

I arrived at around 5:30, and the owner-guy didn't say anything about the time, so I'm assuming that I guessed correctly. For 3 hours, I scrubbed trays and worked the cash register. My feet hurt like crazy towards the end, and there was absolutely no place to sit down. However, luckily, I didn't have to suffer through the ultimately demoralizing task: forcing free samples on people and then hearing them say "This is disgusting" or shaking their heads after tasting it. Why, oh why, does the owner-guy keep driving away customers with those nasty samples?! I feel really really bad for him though, b/c I don't think he makes all that much money and I kept messing up and under-charging customers >.< You see, we were supposed to charge extra for 2 meat entrees, but towards the end of my shift, I suddenly discovered that what I thought were potatoes were actually pieces of meat (which means I only charged people for 1 meat entree instead of 2 a whole lot of times). We were also supposed to charge extra for shrimp and fish, but I also had trouble discerning those items from the cheaper meat and the sauce-drenched vegetables. I figured that my working there probably cost that poor guy $5-$10...plus he had to pay me! Oh, my blasted incompetence!

When I got home, Chen was watching some weird movie called "The Crow 3". I'd never even heard of the first installment, so, of course, this movie was terrible. It was about a guy who was put to death for being wrongfully convivcted for his girlfriends murder. But then a crow shows up and the guy rises from the grave (with dark circles of make-up around his eyes) and kills people. Basically it. The movie actually had Kirsten Dunst and Bill Pullman, but I'm guessing it wasn't their breakout roles.

And, lastly, here are pictures of the Cajun Grill from the chain's official site. The Grill in the pic looks kind of like our Grill, but not really. But you get the idea. And you can almost tell how unappetizing the food is from the picture (the chicken looks kind of like rubber here)...

                 

Did absolutely nothing today b/c I felt terrible and slept most of the day. I think it might have been one of those 24 hr flu things, but I'm not sure and even had to check up flu symptoms to see if that's what I had (I don't think I've ever had the flu before...). Anyway, I took some Advil, and around 6pm, all of the symptoms went away magically. Oh yeah, I also saw "Amazing Race" and "CSI" for the first time ever today. I'd never seen them before b/c they usu. come on around the same time as "Friends", even though I'd always heard about how good they are (well-deserved compliments). So that was it for today.

I finally ran out of stores to call. There are only teeny small business stores left, and I highly doubt that they'd be hiring...or that they'd hire me if they are hiring. I still haven't decided if I should call that Starbucks number. If I do call, however, I would probably have to say something like, "Um...I'm not sure who you are or why I'm calling...but...umm...." I'd planned on replying to my Chinese grandparents' and aunt's letters yesterday (a very strenuous task), but I'm too lazy and haven't even started yet. Hmm, maybe I should have heeded my mom's advice and made a daily schedule to follow. Maybe I'll do something spontaneous tomorrow, like go to Great America.

Anyways, I just finished watching "28 Days" (on my computer of course; I would never have actually paid to see it). I guess it was okay (...for a horror movie...) and about as scary as "Resident Evil" (the game, not the movie), which gave me nightmares. The screen was so dark and small that I couldn't really tell what was happening most of the time, but I still wouldn't recommend paying to see it in the theaters. As far as I could tell, the story's about an infection that turns nearly everyone (in the world? Or just Europe and America?) into zombies. Then this dude, whose facial hair resembles that of an ape, wakes up, gets attacked by zombies, finds more survivors, and goes looking for food and more survivors. These people get attacked by zombies everywhere they go, though the infected don't really do anything except infect other people by spitting blood in their faces (ppl become zombies when zombie blood gets in their mouth/eye/etc). At some point, you wish the good guys would stop pointlessly going into dark areas and going outside for picnics and such.

Every summer, I have a tradition of taking advantage of free trials from online DVD and video rental places. I just cancel before the free trial is over and play the games/watch the movies for free. So, in keeping with my tradition, I signed up with gamesforrent.com a couple of weeks ago, but I just discovered that they charged me $20 because, even though I cancelled the account in time, the games didn't make it back in time. Ug. Ug. The shipping took so long that I could only rent 3 games anyways. And the worst part is that the game that went back too late was "Simpsons Road Rage", possibly the worst game ever! What you do is drive around Springfield, pick up people, and then drop them off elsewhere (yes, exactly like "Crazy Taxi"...the concept of the game really didn't have much to do with The Simpsons.). I only played it for 10 min before I sent it back. It was just that lame! Oh well, I guess that's what I get for taking advantage of these free trial thingies...

Oh yes, and I must mention that last night's Conan ruled! (For the imaginary visitors who have not seen Conan O'Brien...I must point out that it's an acquired taste. 95% of the scripted stuff is really really stupid, but Conan is so so good at spontaneous comedy, which makes his interviews the best.) Ok, well, Simon Cowell was on. I used to like Simon, but now I really hate him because sometimes he's not giving constructive criticism, just being cruel to people he doesn't like. (Come on, he kept saying how incredibly ugly Clay is without ever mentioning Ruben's weight problem. Not like Cowell's the best-looking guy in the world either...and he should definitely stop wearing tight-ass T-shirts that emphasize his man-boobs.) Well, anyway, during the interview, Cowell joked that Conan's hair "looks like shit" (which made me hate him a lot more), and the whole audience booed and shouted disapproving "ohhh's". I loved this, b/c Conan fans know that his hair is not to be messed with. Conan's always super-nice to his guests (unlike Leno and Kimmel...which is why I don't really like those people), but this insult gave him reason to talk back. Whenever Conan made fun of Cowell, the audience laughed; whenever Cowell insulted Conan, the audience was completely silent. I know it sounds really stupid, but I love Conan and hate Cowell so much that this got me really excited :P

Yep, you guessed it, another boring day of job search and TV watching. In the morning, when I went to turn in my Starbucks application, the lady there said, "You can call this number, and the best time to call her is between 12 and 4pm." I was so confused but didn't want to ask "Call who? What for?" because I already kind of pretended like I knew what she was talking about. She wrote down a number and handed it to me without my having said a word. Strange.

In the afternoon, I did some work for my mom, went online, etc. An old friend IMed me and said she read my blog, which was quite exciting, since it means that someone else actually visited it. Yes, I'm just that sad. (You see, I never actually told anyone that I had a blog...and I guess no one bothers to check my AIM profile...*sob*)

At night, I saw some Korean music video countdown show. I hadn't seen this show in years, but it was worse than ever. Clearly shot on personal camcorder with bad tracking, it consisted of two annoying guys showing videos and saying crap like, "Yeah, and email us. We want fanmail too. Hahahaha. And our email is 'info-at-i-slash-channel-dot-com.'" And then screen shows "info@i-channel.com". That's called a "dash", damn it! They also claimed to have the "newest videos straight from Korea," but then aired videos from, like, 2 years ago. Classic.

On Conan today I learned that 66% of Americans can't name a Supreme Court justice, which made me sad because I'm part of that statistic. I could be one of those people who end up on JayWalking. They'd ask me the name of a justice, and I'd probably be like, "Um...Chief Justice...Rein.....hurst?" (OK, and I just learned that it's Rehnquist.) Oh well, what can you expect?...I haven't gone to school in like, 3 weeks!

Today was yet another day of turning in and getting applications ("It never stops." -- The Ring). In the morning, before I went out for the job search, I saw a couple of episodes of an anime called "Jungle wa Itsumo Hale nochi Guu Deluxe" (see pic on right). It's a weird and very scary comedy like "Excel Saga", except it probably made more sense and was a little funnier (to me, anyway). I also downloaded all the eps of "X" from this pretty damn cool site.

In the afternoon, I went out for the job-search stuff. Mervyn's application annoyed me immensely. I had to fill it out in the store on this little phone-like machine with a teeny keypad that made too much noise. When I went in, there was an "out of order" sign next to the machine, but the thing worked fine, so I wasn't sure if I could use it and was too scared to ask. Thus, I ended up trying to hide while doing the application, though I'm pretty sure my efforts to suppress the clicking sounds of the keypad were in vain. This application took me a/b 40 minutes due to the huge number of "survey questions" (which were actually mandatory). Most of the questions were completely irrelevant to the job, such as "What percent of politicians do you think are honest?" Five, okay? But what the hell does it have to do with selling clothes? And I swear that the 70 survey questions were actually just 10 questions repeated over and over again in different words. I mean, one question would be "Do you consider yourself to be organized?", and then the next would be "Do you consider yourself to be unorganized?" Who was paid to write these questions?! But I'm sure that that was a complete waste of time, because at the end, the screen said, "press the red button to call someone over for an interview." I was extremely annoyed and my hair was all messed up from the 40 minutes of frustration, so I ended up not pressing the button and just leaving (Chen did the same when she did the app a week ago). So I guess I technically left the app unfinished >.<

Today was slightly more interesting than usual because I actually had plans (*gasp*). In the morning, I went to church for the first time ever, along with a friend's family for guidance. It was pretty cool, but I felt like a poser because I had no idea what to do. When everyone else said prayers together, I had to move my lips and mumble things to pretend like I knew what to say. Afterwards, Chen and I stayed at the friend's house and did random things until we went to another friend's house for a grad party. There, we did more random things, which included watching "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", "The Simpsons", and "Excel Saga" DVDs. (Yes, that's right, it isn't enough that I watch TV all day at home, but I must also go to other people's houses to do so.) "Excel Saga" was indeed very very strange and seemed to just consist of random characters doing random things, with no real underlying plotline. I think it might have tried too hard to be funny, though I'm sure it would've be funnier if I understood Japanese and the Japanese culture (or perhaps it's my sense of humor that's twisted...hmm...). Anyway, there were at least 2 slightly amusing things in the 2 episodes that I saw: a dog that looks like a cat and the evil (?) guy that appears occasionally. And (wow!) here are pictures of them so that I might spiffy-up my blog-thing (yay!):


         

Today was hellish. Yes, that's right, even more so than usual. My mom forced Chen and I to go to visit the new condo she bought along with her friend Steve, whom we can't stand. I told myself that I'd try to like him this time, so I was all quiet (which equals "nice" for me, for some reason) when we met him. His house was pretty nice and probably pretty pricy, but he said his wealth was only "average" in comparison to his neighbors. "It's okay," he said to my family, "Because you're not really poor either." Thanks, but I didn't really think I was that poor. And I started to remember why I hated him so much. On our way to my mom's condo in his Mercedes, he started blabbing on and on about how we must get MBAs after getting our engineering degrees, because the people with engineering MS degrees don't makes as much money, etc. etc. We were noticably annoyed (since he talks about this every time we see him) and tried to explained that we aren't cut out to be business people, but he just went on and on about ambition and success and how we must be like Bill Gates and Steven Jobs. Finally, my sister and I were like, "We'll decide what we want to do in 4 years, okay? Please stop talking about it." And just started him on a whole new lecture on how we're too young to understand now, but only ambitious people succeed, etc.

My mom's condo was pretty crappy, dirty, and even smaller than our appartment, which was hard to believe since it was $215,000. I feel relieved that this is only a real estate investment (she's going to rent it out at a price close to the mortgage payment, so that the house would kind of be "free", save for the down payment and utilities, etc.), so we don't actually have to live in it.

After visiting the house, Steve took us to eat at some Korean buffet. On the way there, he only spoke with my mom, but their conversation topics always (and will always) only encompass 3 topics: how he became rich, how he will become richer, and how terrible and worthless the CEOs and CFOs at Westlake (my mom works there, Steve used to work there) are. At lunch, Chen and I were very sullen (and I think sarcastic), and Steve said to my mom (while I was right there), "Don't worry, college will correct them." And I really wanted to strangle him. On the way home, he talked more about why he gets to make $300,000 a year, how others told him that he's such a great (and caring) manager, and how his wife complained about how their house wasn't "awe-inspiring" enough (Steve: "You should be thankful that we have what we have, I told her. I mean, we just went on a $15,000 cruise to the Bahamas and stayed in a presidential suite!") Very humble, I must say.

After getting home, I fell back into my TV-watching stupor. I saw an *exciting* show called "Extreme Engineering". I think the title kind of says "only nerds watch me." Anyway, it was about the SkyCity that they're going to build in Tokyo to conserve space. It takes up 3 acres, has 54 stories, and kind of looks like chunks of large cylinder-shaped buildings connected by beams on the sides. What I described probably makes no sense, but it's basically a gigantic cylindrical building with 7 gaps in the middle, and each gap has a large outdoor park area and a monorail going around the rim. It's going to house 300,000+ people and serves as a whole city, with both offices and appartments. Of course I, sadly, found this very futuristic and exciting, because I'm such a geek.

My mom also set us up with an interview-ish thing with a friend of a friend who's willing to hire us part-time. We went around 8pm, and it was a little scary because the owner-guy looked incredibly mean and always had the same deep monotonous voice, even when he was laughing/joking. He hired one of us to work Saturdays 1-4pm and the other to work Sundays 1-4pm, which is absolutely wonderful because now we will pretty much never get to go out with friends on weekends. Anyway, the place we'll be working at is directly across from CostPlus in Hillsdale. You know, that food-court place where people are always desperately handing out free samples but no one ever takes them. So yes, we will also be shoving free samples into strangers' hands, as if we haven't already suffered enough degradation in our lives.

Called a whole bunch more places to ask if they're hiring again. Chen had me make calls in a separate room because she gets nervous when I make these calls (o..kay...). My mom comes home to eat lunch and watch her soap ("The Bold and the Beautiful") everyday, so I've been watching it with her every summer. Sadly, it's been strangely engrossing recently. And the pace is also getting faster and faster...today 3 people found out secrets! It normally takes a week for one person to do so and then react to the discovery. And I find myself liking the character Deacon more and more. I had hated him during the previous years, but those new highlights make all the difference! Well, here are some pics of him to show who I'm talking about. Yummy, ne?

               

At night, some guy came to the apartment so that my mom could do notary for his loan, so I hid away from him in my bedroom, where I could do nothing but watch TV (again). I saw a couple of stand-up shows (on Comedy Central again, of course), and the saddest part was that I'd seen them before. In fact, I'd seen one of them (the Lewis Black one...he rules) three times already! What was even sadder was that, when I saw "Reality TV Wrap-Up", I realized that I'd seen about half of the 15 reality shows they recapped. Oh God, I need a life!

(From now on, I shall try to add pics in attempt to spiffy-up my blog :P)

Today I went to the mall and some other stores to turn in (and get more) applications. I even worked up the nerve to venture into Banana Republic and Nordstroms to get applications. (Yes, somehow I convinced myself that I could work in stores that intimidate me so much that I have trouble even going into them.) I also have an interview with some Sears person right after I filled out the app, which was a little embarassing b/c I put down volunteering as "prior employment" (and they asked me about it). They had a whole bunch of annoying and obvious-answer questions on the app like "A customer is having trouble. What do you do? A. Help him. B. Ignore him. C. Tell him to go away." And it's sad because you know there are people who put B and C.

I also saw "Bruce Almighty" (on computer...through the wonder that is Bittorrent), which was a pretty good movie. I had forgotten how funny Jim Carrey can be (you know, after his series of unbearably horrendous "serious" movies), and I especially liked the ending. It kind of inspired me to make the best of what I have instead of being bitter all the time, but it'll probably wear off in a few more days (or hours).

Also saw a show that had a "masked magician" who revealed the secrets of street magic (basically everything David Blaine did in his special). I already knew how most of these were done, but it was still pretty interesting. (Still don't know how Blaine balanced on that pole for, like, a day, though. *sniffle*) Of course, as usual, you could totally tell what the guy looked like under the mask.

My sister has been really happy the past few days because Clay Aiken (2003 American Idol runner-up) is going to be on the cover of Rolling Stone and outsold Ruben (the winner) to become number 1 on the singles Billboard chart last week. I love him too, but Chen is so obsessed that it scares me a bit >< Anyway, here's what the RS cover is going to look like when it comes out tomorrow (And yes, you can click on it to enlarge. Exciting!):



Okay, normally when guys show skin, it's sexy. But it sucks how, somehow, he appears kind of effeminate here. (Well, more so than usual. *Dodges sharp objects thrown by other Clay fans* Yes, the imaginary fans who actually "visit my blog.") But come on, I love Clay. In the least, as a sort of geek, I must support my fellow (former) geeks! And I was sad that Conan made fun of him yesterday (*sniffle*).

In the afternoon, Chen (my twin sis) and I went out separately to get applications, which was quite an arduous task for me because it required so much human interaction and I'm so shy. After I got home, I read my grandparents' letters from China and some of the random Chinese newspaper clippings they sent. One of the articles they had me read was about how there's going to be a huge earthquake in San Francisco by 2032 (in other words, get out before then). Another was about Einstein (in other words, try to be like him (?)). Another was about how some German guy can't find a job because it was on his record that he tried to get out of paying for bus tickets on 3 occasions (not sure what this is supposed to show...that German people put bus ticket incidents on people's records?) Another one was a ranking of engineering schools in the US...which was depressing b/c somehow UCSD was above UCLA (the school I will unhappily attend...for many complex reasons), even though the article referred to the US News & World Report ranking, which put UCLA above UCSD (and put UCLA's EE program at #13, yay). Okay, I'm pretty sure I just created a series of run-on sentences.

I randomly went to a site with FFX character quiz links. It never ceases to amaze me how people like this girl here can take a whole bunch of quizzes and actually get the same person. Here's what I got:









Lulu is cool, but how the hell did I get Riku and Aeris? They're, like, my least favorite characters and pretty much the exact opposite of whom I am.


Oh, and I really like this last quiz, because I, in a sad and pathetic way, get to get with Sephiroth :P





I could get laid by Sephiroth.
Which Final Fantasy
Character Could YOU Be Having Sex With?

Find out now! Only from the Quiz Junkie

Whoa. I didn't get to post yesterday. No, I did not all of a sudden magically get a life. There were just some errors on the blogger site that prevented me from accessing it.

Okay, well, I was supposed to go out and look for a job yesterday, but I ended up just calling a few places to ask if they were hiring. For the rest of the day, I sat around and watched TV. Aside from the random crap I usually see via channel-surfing, I also saw some crap that I actually planned on watching. One of these was "Maid in Manhattan", because I'm an evil (and cheap) person and I steal Pay Per View with a little black box (but I can't get HBO, Cinemax, etc. Damn you, digital cable). Anyway, the movie was about J.Lo being a maid, and this idea in itself is funny. Like all romantic comedies, even though the guy (who I thought was 1000x cooler as the psycho dragon dude in "Red Dragon") barely even spoke to J.Lo and seemed to have a better connection with her son, he "fell in love" with her. Whatever. A couple days ago, I also saw a/b 10 min. of "Two Weeks Notice." I love Hugh, but damn do I hate Sandra Bullock. In the small part I saw, it was made known that Sandra knew who designed the Empire State Building or the Sears Tower or something, which was supposed to show that she was smart. Okay, now that's not intelligence, that's just useless knowledge. As the two actors stared into each other's eyes, I wanted to gag and had to shut off the TV right away to stop myself from chucking the remote at it.

Then I saw "Last Comic Standing," which is basically American Idol with comedians, with Big Brother tossed in there somewhere too. It's sad because they made no effort to conceal who made it to the finals, which was supposed to be (suspensefully?) revealed at the end of the episode. Basically everyone who got a bio made it in. There's even a comercial on Comedy Central that shows the winners walking around in the house. Anyway, it sucked how some people I liked (like Eddie Pepitone) didn't make it in, while a lot of people I didn't like did (like that guy who looks like a child-rapist...Rob or something...you'll know who I'm talking about if you see the show). I'm rooting for the vietnamese guy though, just because he's Asian. And apparently he's so poor he has to sleep under his desk because his appartment isn't big enough to fit a desk and a bed.

Lastly, I saw something called "I'm With Busey." This is one of the stupidest shows ever, but I felt like I had to check it out just because they had so goddamn many commercials for it on Comedy Central. And really, you know you watch way too much Comedy Central (or TV in general) when you turn it on to see a 1985 episode of SNL and realize that you've see it twice before. Anyway, not much to say about this show...it was as stupid as I foresaw.

And I end up feeling really bad about watching so much TV. Someone once asked me (repeatedly), during my senior year, how I could watch so much TV and still get homework done. Planning and experience, my friend. You see, all you have to do is do half of your homework in class while the teacher is pointlessly going over material you just read the previous day, and you can just BS the rest at home. All you have to do is write a shitload, and the teacher will think it's brilliant regardless of whether it makes sense. Muahahaha!

O yes, and I also heard that George W. Bush fell off of a Segway, which is never supposed to tip over. Hehe.

There. I attempted to spiffy-up my new blog, though mostly in vain. I did, however, get to put a neat pic on top. Isn't he yummy? He's from a manga series called Saiyuki, though I actually have no idea who this guy is. Sad, considering I've pretty much read the entire series. I considered putting up a pic of a bloody Sanzo instead, but I was afraid it might scare people away --; (Yes, the imaginary people who actually "come to my blog"). Anyway, I added/changed some stuff on the side with the minuscule amount of html I know, but the banner on top is a bit annoying. But I sure as hell am not going to pay to remove it. The picture looks less chopped w/o the ad (I swear!)...

Well, job-hunting was sufficiently annoying. I ended up going shopping (for a calculator, because I'm a geek) and just checking out Ross, which I heard was hiring. Except Ross wanted age 18 and above, so I don't even qualify for that. Oy. Almost the entire way there I was thinking about this lame riddle I saw on some blog I randomly visited. So I thought about it for like 20 minutes, gave up, told it to my twin sis, and she figured it out in a/b 3 min. Because she's smart. Or because I'm stupid. Probably both. Anyways, here's the riddle:

"Three men decided to split the cost of a hotel room. The hotel manager gave them a price of $30.

The men split the bill evenly, each paying $10, and went to their room. However, the hotel manager realized that it was a Wednesday night, which meant the hotel had a special: rooms were only $25. He had overcharged them $5!

He called the bellboy, gave him five one-dollar bills and told him to return it to the men.

When the bellboy explained the situation to the men, they were so pleased at the honesty of the establishment that they promptly tipped the bellboy $2 of the $5 he had returned and each kept $1 for himself.

So each of the three men ended up paying $9 (their original $10, minus $1 back) totaling $27, plus $2 for the bellboy makes $29.

Where did the extra dollar go?"

Hihi,
I've decided to randomly start a blog after seeing one done by someone from my high school. His was supremely bland, so I thought, "Wow, I can do that too!" Perhaps this will also help to curb my boredom during the summer (unlikely...). Anyhoo, to introduce myself, my name is Xi. It's Chinese, and the closest western pronounciation of it is "she", though some people have magically come up with pronounciations ranging from "zi" to "shy". I just graduated from high school and will be heading off to college in September. I would like to think of myself as cynical and sarcastic, though I think most people who hold those qualities are more interesting than I am. Then again, 99% of the population are (more interesting, that is). O yeah, and I also have a (identical?) twin sister.

My life is, in a word, boring, so I'm sorry if you (somehow), in your infinite misfortune, wander here and are put to sleep by my posts. (But I know no one's actually going to visit this page, so I'll be using it as a diary, only -hopefully- prettier and with more pictures. Typing beats writing too.)

Okay, I have to go out and look for a job now (yay! something to do!), so I'll post the next time I'm bored (ie. very soon).