Friday March the 27th, I went to watch Watchmen with Diana at Spectrum. I really liked it! It was really deep and really interesting. It was definitely violent and I had to look away from the screen a lot (as is the norm for me, LOL, since I love comic book and/or superhero films yet am a total wimp), but also very sexy. I really want to read the comic now; I’ll definitely do that over the summer.

Afterwards, we got Chipotle and then went to my house to change and get dressed up and then rushed to meet our friends at the Benefit Concert at my old high school. Things were fucked up for a bit, with Mark and Jess both raising their voices at me in annoyance, which obviously resulted in me crying. But I don’t think that anyone actually knew that, so it wasn’t too embarrassing, just distressing. I hadn’t even done anything wrong or stupid in the least. So my friends all went in and got seats (I gave Amanda my ticket because I’d promised to buy her one) but I couldn’t until my mom and sister came with my ticket, which was like after 7 PM, which was when it was supposed to start. So I didn’t get to hear the pre-concert stuff, which I was disappointed about. So I just sat on the steps and at my Chipotle while trying to stop being stupid and crying until my mom and sister came. Then I joined my friends, who had kindly saved seats for me.

The concert was definitely not as good as it has been in its previous years, but it was still very enjoyable to watch. I spent half of the concert being mad, but I got over it eventually. At Intermission, I chatted with my friends, hugged some acquaintances I haven’t seen in a long time, and got to talk to Helen and Sean for a while, which was really nice. I miss them kids; Pit was so much fun. After the concert, the Venadies asked us to eat with them at Denny’s. We decided that we’d go to BJ’s instead, but then Diana announced that she wanted to make an appearance at Denny’s to see the Venadies before going to BJ’s. So everyone except me headed over there. Once everything was cleaned up, I drove Ben, Tiffany, and Mark to Denny’s to join them. But the Venadies hadn’t shown up — in fact, they never actually did. Wooooow. Apparently they decided to go to Guppy’s instead and didn’t feel the need to inform us. What bitches. Whatever, it’s not like I was super eager to hang out with them anyway. It’s always so awkward being Diana’s best friend because we’ll be chatting incessantly and arriving everywhere together (including social events) and then suddenly people will see her and be all excited and huggy and totally ignore me. Yes, even people who I am acquainted with. I mean, I know she’s so much more exciting, but would it kill people to at least say hello to the friend? The friend, who they are plenty familiar with? Jesus. And they rank ME “worst-mannered” on Facebook.

Denny’s was all right; I arrived late because I had to wait for Mark, Ben, and Tiffany, so I missed out on Diana telling everyone about her (now ex-)boyfriend. I sat with Mark at first but then switched seats with Diana so that I could talk to my friends. After all, I hadn’t seen them in ages! But multiple people (including this very talented singer named Amy, who apparently keeps telling Mark about how I’m so pretty; I’m really, really flattered because she’s super cute) asked Mark why I wasn’t sitting with him, and he got all joking-sad but I’m never really sure if he’s really joking or just covering up his actual sadness. I wasn’t sure how to react to that. I’m hardly an inattentive girlfriend, but there is no way I would sacrifice time with my friends to spend it with my boyfriend, who I’d seen nearly daily during my months away from home. I especially did not want them to think that I was valuing him above them and was being a bad friend and lavishing attention upon him.

Later, I remembered how distressed he had been throughout and after the concert. That was why I had waited to give him a ride in the first place; he was just so bummed and I felt really sorry for him and felt really bad for being mad at him earlier. (Still, I severely dislike when he raises his voice at me like that. It happens often enough to leave an impact but rarely enough for it to lose its ability to get me down.) But maybe I should have been a better girlfriend and comforted more and talked to him more throughout the meal, rather than ditching him for my friends. I still stand by my choice of talking to my friends, but I now really regret forgetting his unhappiness so quickly that night.

“Bros before hos” has always been a really important philosophy for me. But then again, maybe it’s more bros = hos, or something. Mark and I talked about this recently, discussing how for him, his love is divided into different categories (e.g. friends, family, lovers) that he loves a lot but in completely different ways. He brought to my attention that in contrast, my love is distributed along a hierarchy of people. For example, I always put friends first, but I also consider my lover to be my best friend. I dunno. It’s interesting.

Anyway. On Saturday, we all went to Kelly’s house. Her family had friends over, and Wendy cooked up some delicious things, as usual. I always look forward to her meals; they are simply wonderful. Hanging out at Kelly’s is always a lot of fun; she always has lots of drinks and food and the nifty kitchen area for all of us to chat and tell hilarious stories. We updated each other on college, and everyone got to hear my angsty tales about my college experience. Fun stuff. Dale also approached me and asked me about how things were going at Cal, and I told him the truth. He has probably been the most helpful person I’ve talked to so far, which is so freaking random, but I’m grateful for it, of course. He expressed genuine sympathy and told me that he couldn’t imagine my position because all of the college friends that he’d made he had met in the first semester through living together. That made me feel a lot better, you know? He didn’t reprimand me for being too shy to join clubs, he didn’t tell me I needed to get out there and make friends on my floor and in my classes, he didn’t look at me funny with somewhat of a pitying look. He just told me that I was in a really bad situation and that he was sorry but hoped that next year I would get the opportunity to do what most college students get to do–meet people at a time when everyone is like WTF IS GOING ON?! That really helped, somehow, and I’ve been much more apathetic to my lack of friends here ever since (props to Alex as well, who told me flat out, “Why do you need friends?”, LOL). It’s really contributed to my happiness.

Anyway. So after dinner, we went upstairs to play Taboo, which I am of course pwnage at. Yay! After some fun rounds, we went downstairs again and had some REALLY GOOD DESSERT, OMFG. It was this delicious angel food cake with ice cream; so simple and so, so good. I love simple things. Afterwards, we hung around for a bit upstairs before deciding randomly to go see Monsters vs. Aliens, haha. It was a good movie, a fun flick to watch at night with friends. I was really sad when we had to leave. I hate leaving them; I miss them so much up here. I’m really looking forward to getting to chill with them a lot over summer.

Overall, it was a good spring break. Oh, except…

My great-grandmother passed away, bless her. It was pretty crazy, actually; my mom came home from spending time with her in Taiwan the Monday after I got back, and she passed away two days later. So then my mom that Saturday morning to go back and figure stuff out with the funeral and all the crazy will blah blah stuff. I teared a little and “prayed” a little, but overall, I’m glad that she died. She hadn’t been living much of a life (for the past two years, especially), with her vision and hearing shot, her physical body weakened (she used to exercise and garden all the time), her constant returns to the hospital, her “adopted” daughter feeding her ridiculously scant meals just to save money so that she could spend it… A life like that isn’t really worth much. She was suffering greatly before she died, and I’m really glad she doesn’t have to suffer now. I only wish that she could have witnessed me speaking Taiwanese the way that I can now. She would have been so delighted and so, so proud.

Me with my buddy Sean!

Me, Mark, and his ridiculous Asian afro.

mood: annoyed that my shoulders hurt but otherwise not bad
music: Love Lockdown – Kanye West

Saturday, September the 20th (…LOL, two months ago, yes), I went to an insurance class about what to do in case of an accident. The guy, who loves to talk, rambled on for ages about things both important and not-so-important. Actually, that’s incorrected; I suppose I should say he “loved”.

Jonathame, my insurance agent, in whose name I found endless amusement–which I happily shared with all of my friends–died last week. Just the other day, I had gone to visit him with Mother, to whom he had tried to convince to attend one of his classes. Just the other day, she had complained to me about how he always creeped her out because he liked to be in close proximity to people when he spoke, and to put a hand on their shoulder, pat their back, etc. And then here came the news of his passing; he died of pneumonia.

Life is so short.

Today, my Humanities teacher talked about how scary the external world is; any of us could be run over a truck on the way home. I’ve always been hyperaware of the fact, often morbidly imagining such scenarios, but Jonathame’s death brings me immense sadness. I think we often associate death with lifeless, suffering people; people who have no choice but to die. This man was so full of life that it was sickening; he was talkative, full of energy, and so damn animated that you just wanted to tie him down so that he would take a deep breath for a moment. It’s like this when you hear about the high school students who die, like Chuck Keith, for whom the street in front of University High is now named. You don’t have to know people like this to feel sad about their deaths, for you can just imagine the youthfulness and vigor of these types of people–and how it’s so…gone, now. They make me sad; these people who have their lives snatched away from them.

Anyway. Then, I went to the library to do research for my paper, whoo. That night, I took my sister out to Black Angus for dinner, which was fun. The food’s quality has greaty decreased, but the prawns were still really delicious. I barely touched the mashed potatoes, though, blegh. Soup was still delightful, as usual. Dinner was fun. We’ve been doing a lot of these since, and it’s been really nice. Sisterly bonding experience and all. It’s nice.

The following Friday, I took Jess to Mervyns, which is having a huge store closing sale. Just ended up buying a Jansport duffel bag that I adore; it was 50% off so only $30, yay! I used it when I went to CalSO, and I expect to use it when I visit Irvine after I go up north, yay. Don’t you love how I’m already planning my trips back? Ahaha.

After that, we went to the Grand Opening of 85C Bakery, which opened its first US store right here. Well, damn, haha. So I went to spy on the action, wearing sunglasses and all, LOL. Jess and I bought a shitload of goodies, except that they turned out to be not-so-good. I was kinda disappointed, but I guess any business that gets superly duperly commercialized like that ends up being not-so-great as it really could be (don’t get me wrong, I love Starbucks, but it really has lost that coffeshop feel!). You can read all about my unpleasant experience here. I was a very unsatisfied customer, haha. And usually I’m quite easy to please regarding food/restaurants!

One thing I do want to elaborate on is the demographic aspect of this town.

When I reflected on my experience, I realized that something else 85 C Bakery Cafe lacks is Americanism. Perhaps the owner is unaware, but while half of Irvine may be populated by Asians, most of them are English-speaking, Americanized Asians. Irvine is no Arcadia or Rowland Heights, where one can survive not knowing a single word of English. From the way they spoke and the way they didn’t put good service as a priority, I could tell that pretty much all of the workers were imported from Taiwan. This may work in other cities, but it’s just inefficient in Irvine, where almost all of the Asian kids speak English, where the non-Asian population loves to dabble in multicultural foods, where the majority of the population is pretty integrated into American society.

I dunno, I find this town really interesting in that aspect, and it’s a large part of why I love living here so much. When you walk around our mall, you see so many interracial couples, young and old. When you work in any kind of restaurant, you see so many interracial couples. I see a ton of them daily, because my family’s store is one with a crooked customer base–my mother seeks to serve food that white people will embrace, but my aunt is insistent on making the store a Chinese one. So a lot of what I call “halfie” couples enjoy our food: it’s an interesting medium, if anything. Another large portion of the demographic that enjoys our food is English-speaking Asians. Like, not Asians who can speak English, but Asians whose main language is English. Asians like me. Which I also find fascinating.

But anyway. The next day, I went to South Coast with Jess, which was fun. Got a bunch of warm clothes for Berkeley–well, relatively warm, anyway. A jacket, a 3/4 sleeve shirt (yes, I was just stretching the “warm” here, LOL), a cardigan, awesome bright yellow earrings, a very-me necklace. Oh yeah, I also went into the Abercrombie store for the first time–well, the kids one, anyway. For the past ten years of my life, ever since I started hearing about the brand, I’ve refused to go into the store, deciding that it would be awesome to fight mainstream, overpriced, overworn clothing. Also, that company has a horrible history regarding minorities, ranging from its plethora of white (naked) models, its racist shirts, its lack of white workers (despite that the brand is immensely, ridiculously popular among Asians… HMM), and its former status as a non-GLBT friendly store (it has only been GLBT-friendly for 3 years). You hear about this shit and you think it’s all lies, but just walk into an Abercrombie/Hollister store and look at its employees. The guy who gave me a fitting room was possibly the hottest white guy I’d seen in months. HMM. Yeah, so I decided that since I had turned 18, I should get out of that middle school funk and hatred of the mainstream. I bought two things but realized that it hasn’t really been about being in middle school. That kind of aversion has been part of me for a long time, and I predict that it’ll remain with me for a long, long time after my teenage years. Abercrombie has always been up there on my list with name brand bags, expensive shoes, and expensive jewelry–a fucking waste of money and ridiculous for people to desire. Meh. It’s just too bad that their clothes make me look so damn hot.

P.S. NaNoWriMo Word Count: 26,000, YAY!