socialpanda

beer, bag, bed

2010-10-13T22:00:00.000-07:00

home is a really nice place to be. we have beer, a YSL downtown bag, and even a mattress that takes up half the hallway but to me has become invisible. if you see something often enough, it does sort of cease to exist. there are exceptions that prove this rule -- namely, zits that never go away and pasta-sauce stains on white garments. both are categories of stuff that i, unfortunately, know way too much about.

and here is another sentence, because while i'm willing to end a sentence on a preposition, i won't end a blog post on one.

fritter

2010-10-13T07:38:00.000-07:00

there's no better way to desecrate the sanctimonious health of vegetables than by deep-frying them. in this case, we're talking corn and coriander, both of which barely count as vegetables -- one is an herb; the other has so little nutritional value that your body doesn't even bother to digest it. but i suppose, who cares, as long as they make for good fritters. which they do.

start with:

1 can corn (or the equivalent in fresh, if you're not lazy)
1 onion (red or yellow, depending on how sweet you want it)
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1/2 cup double cream
1 egg
3 tbsp of grated cheese
1 cup/lots of coriander leaves, roughly chopped
1 tbsp plain flour

- slice onions into strips or grate
- add corn and garlic, season with salt and pepper
- add cream, egg, grated cheese, coriander and flour
- add more coriander than you think you'd need, the stuff shrinks into nothingness
- heat a pan or wok and fill with about 1cm of oil
- spoon dollops into the hot oil like cookie dough and let them spread
- flip when golden brown, fry other side, then transfer to paper towels to soak oil
- cooking time should be a couple of minutes each side
- serve with thai chilli sauce

the whole shebang takes no longer than 20 minutes, and is near impossible to screw up.

since all i ever do is think about food, write about food, cook food and eat food, i figured i might as well share the wealth with y'all. "y'all" being my three readers. what say we?

30

2010-10-05T05:15:00.000-07:00

i pretty much hate birthdays and all the hoopla associated with said occasions. i'm turning 30 this year, a milestone that i don't much care for either, not because i worry about wrinkles and the stress of getting older, but because the older you get, the less you can get away with. inappropriateness is the realm of the young. i refer, of course, not only to such frivolous examples as backless tops without bras, but also risk-taking in general. that's why it's nice sometimes to be just a 29-year-old jumping on a hotel-room bed. life is best in those moments you're suspended in mid-air.

[14:30] Brad: it's fanta monday?

2010-08-29T23:16:00.000-07:00

[14:03] Meebo Message: Brad is online
[14:10] Christina: i'm eating a big mac
[14:11] Brad: o o o im havin a mcchicken
[14:14] Christina: hahahhha
[14:14] Christina: niiiiice
[14:14] Brad: how was ur weekend
[14:14] Christina: it was goooood
[14:15] Christina: okay maybe it was just okay
[14:15] Christina: hahhaha
[14:15] Christina: how was yours?
[14:15] Brad: played rugby
[14:15] Brad: yay
[14:15] Brad: n now my right side hurt
[14:15] Brad: s
[14:15] Christina: hahhah we were so healthy
[14:15] Christina: u played rugby
[14:15] Christina: i went wakeboarding
[14:15] Brad: yea i know
[14:15] Christina: now we are both eating mcdonald's in pain

imageshack won't let me post the image(s) that i want. that's the excuse i'm using for not updating more frequently. that and my upcoming monster travel plans, which include my first trip to europe outside of a two-day session in london, which sort of doesn't count, because all i did then was walk to the palace, steal hotel supplies which i still haven't used, play at the science museum (i don't remember much but i do know there were 3D glasses and it was fun), and go out in the streets of london in nothing but a trench coat and boots, because i was too lazy to get dressed but not too lazy to turn down dessert at midnight.

anyway this time we're mediterranean-bound: istanbul, kusadasi, santorini, sorrento, florence, st tropez, monte carlo. i feel like i should be most excited about florence, but given we're spending less than 24 hours in each location except monte carlo, i'm actually most psyched about santorini. and, er, not because i recently saw rory fall in love there in the first sisterhood of the traveling pants movie. because i totally don't watch those types of films. i'm deep, right? this paragraph must be a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream.

and to prove how deep i am...

[14:20] Christina: what aare you drinking
[14:20] Brad: im good haha
[14:20] Brad: fanta
[14:20] Brad: n u
[14:21] Christina: ME TOOOO
[14:22] Christina: omg
[14:22] Christina: it's like a cosmic sign
[14:22] Christina: like the universe telling us
[14:22] Christina: something. but i dunno what. hahhaha.
[14:30] Brad: it's fanta monday?
[14:32] Christina: i'm posting this up

redemption song

2010-06-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
none but ourselves can free our minds.
have no fear for atomic energy,
'cause none of them can stop the time.
how long shall they kill our prophets,
while we stand aside and look? ooh!
some say it's just a part of it:
we've got to fullfil the book.

what's cooking

2010-05-08T04:38:00.000-07:00

cooking is fun when there's someone to chop up the ingredients and do all the washing up. at the four seasons chiang mai, we learned to make thai salads, and while preparing it all was a cinch, shopping for those same ingredients in hong kong will be the real challenge. we picked up northern thai chili flakes while we were out there, but instead of seasoning larb (better known in our household as SMS -- spicy meaty shit) ended up using them last night to spice up pizza box's meat lover's and bbq duck breast pies. other useless skills picked up while on holiday -- how to carve a carrot into a leaf, curl a sprig of scallion and transform a big chili into an orchid.

thai beef salad

pomelo salad

papaya salad

munchies

2010-05-03T07:03:00.000-07:00

bits and bites from dining at the four seasons chiang mai. the cooler northern thai weather (but only marginally) makes it the perfect place to sit on the terrace and stare at rice paddies over spicy tasty treats. more importantly, it marked a turning point in my dining repertoire. "chiang mai-style" noodles in yellow curry sauce is the best thing to happen to man, and more importantly, me, in recent history. further down below, breakfast is fun, fattening and fanTASTIC.

the social panda

2010-04-29T20:07:00.000-07:00

looks like the guys over at wom guide are social pandas too. or at least they don't like to eat alone. my dahling virginia sent me this banner they had on the site.

you (yes you, my one and only reader) may wonder about the origin of the social panda. i once read that pandas, by nature, are solitary creatures with little to no sex drive, and whose ovulation cycles are something in the region of 18 months. no wonder they almost went extinct. thank god for sichuan and the advent of designer pandas (though i swear, they are fakes, super A-quality fakes), whose baby boom has ostensibly been due to instructional panda pornography to get the fluffy animals in the mood for luurve.

by the same theory, the way to stop overpopulation (and maybe even the hollywood baby binge) is to remove human porn from our society. or something like that.

on a more personal note, there will be more to read here soon, hopefully, once i sort through the 700+ photos downloaded off the slr. i promise, no pandas there, although there are plenty of elephants, pink water buffalo, plus a snake, a peacock, some goldfish... and yeah, that's it. And pie, glorious pie.

the rose that grew from concrete

2010-04-28T02:23:00.000-07:00

[Tupac Shakur]
You try to plant somethin in the conrete, y'knowhatImean?
If it GROW, and the and the rose petal got all kind of
scratches and marks, you not gon' say, "Damn, look at
all the scratches and marks on the rose that grew from concrete"
You gon' be like, "Damn! A rose grew from the concrete?!"
Same thing with me, y'knahmean? I grew out of all of this
Instead of sayin, "Damn, he did this, he did this,"
just be like, "DAMN! He grew out of that? He came out of that?"
That's what they should say, y'knowhatImean?
All the trouble to survive and make good out of the dirty, nasty
y'knowhahatImean unbelievable lifestyle they gave me
I'm just tryin to make somethin..

[Nikki Giovanni]
When no one even cared
The rose it grew from concrete
Keepin all these dreams
Provin nature's laws wrong
It learned how to walk without havin feet
It came from concrete

[spoken part]
Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Provin nature's laws wrong it learned how to walk without havin feet
Funny it seems but, by keepin its dreams
it, learned to breathe FRESH air
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else even cared
No one else even cared..
The rose that grew from concrete

[spoken part]
Did you hear..
Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete?
Provin nature's laws wrong
It learned to walk without having feet
Funny it seems but by keeping its dreams
it learned to breathe FRESH air
Long live the rose that grew from concrete
when no one else, even cared

[Nikki Giovanni]
Keepin all these dreams
Provin nature's laws wrong
It learned how to walk without havin feet (to breathe the fresh air)
It came from concrete (to breathe the fresh air)
(to breathe the fresh air, to breathe the fresh air)

[Tupac Shakur]
You see you wouldn't ask why the rose that grew from the concrete
had damaged petals. On the contrary, we would all celebrate its
tenacity. We would all love it's will to reach the sun.
Well, we are the rose - this is the concrete - and these are
my damaged petals. Don't ask me why, thank God nigga, ask me how!

caught!

2010-03-02T17:55:00.000-08:00

Panda found eating like a pig
Mon, Mar 01 11:15 AM EST

BEIJING (Reuters) - Hunger drove a wild panda to break into a Chinese farmer's pig pen and eat their food, which was meat and bone, rather than bamboo.

State-run China Central Television said the giant panda had apparently descended from the mountains in a region of southwest China's Sichuan province and was spotted in a field before the animal was found inside the pig pen, chewing on bones and spitting out the meat.

After eating its fill, the panda quietly left.

...

read the rest here. yahoo's oddly enough is the best. except that you know i would never spit out the meat, how sacrilegious.

Image: Tubaba

double whammy

2010-02-12T02:07:00.001-08:00

whoa, what's this? a double-post? how scandalous! you can tell i'm bored, or dedicated, or bored... anyway this comic came in the mail a long while back and my co-worker showed it to me expecting some expression of shock. boobies, guns, weapons of mass destruction, eh... i'm very desensitized to porny stuff. but turn the page and BAM! lookie what i see, something very enticing indeed...

vivienne westwood, is that you in a garter belt and fishnet thigh-highs? although obviously what i was interested in was in the bottom right corner...

AWWWW.

calorie orgy

2010-02-12T01:54:00.000-08:00

it's cny and it's foxy b and me for the next three days. if i weren't sick, i'd be cooking up all sorts of tasty delights -- lo pak go, taro, water chestnut cake... i wonder how long a human can go subsisting solely on mashed up, carbo-fied versions of vegetables. having a sore throat is the worst, because you're still hungry but you can't eat all the lovely things your stomach is craving. when you have a fever, it doesn't matter, because you don't want to eat anyway. so the situation right now is downright annoying, compounded by the fact that i'm all by my lonesome except for the world's hungriest dog at my side.

thought i'd further entice myself by uploading pictures from what would be our last thanksgiving in club syp. let's see what we have... clockwise from bottom left: macaroni tuna salad, cranberry sauce, pumpkin risotto, garlic mashed potatoes, citysuper 20lb turkey, fettucine alfredo, weird steamed veggies and roasted potatoes from citysuper, sourdough bread stuffing, cornbread stuffing, butternut squash, creamed spinach... man, this is actually rather torturous. and in the second pic we have two pumpkin pies, poonam's apple crumble (or was it berry crumble?) and complete deelite cupcakes.

making a list, checking it twice

2009-12-11T21:46:00.000-08:00

kiddies around the world are making their xmas lists but i, on the other hand, am merely making to-do lists of all the millions of things that i haven't done am supposed to. you know, like paying your electricity bill. when it gets to almost the $4000 mark you know you haven't paid it in eons. it's almost getting to be a game with the electric company, to see how high i can run my bill without them cutting off the seminal substance that runs everything in my house. loretta = not amused by this game, if her phone call yesterday morning was anything to go by. ("um, is electricity SUPPOSED to be $3,700?")

yesterday was last day at tatler, part deux. i can't believe how time flies. i really thought this whole month was going to be about sitting in bed, catching up on project runway, making random diy projects, online shopping, organising the house to impeccable standards and bonding with my dog. ohs wells.

i am determined to spend the rest of the week doing xmas shopping and grooming myself into an acceptable standard before the holiday season. when i had my eyebrows singed last week by a lighter gone haywire, i looked into the mirror and blessed the incident as it eliminated the need to groom my eyebrows, a task i have been sorely neglecting along with various other beautification processes that nobody is really interested in, especially me. the first step to achieving my personal best, i believe, is to add another pair of shoes to the burgeoning marcos-inspired collection. which i shall attend to, promptly.

doppelganger

2009-10-06T02:03:00.000-07:00

i've gone bonkers, right?

fly lice

2009-09-29T05:06:00.000-07:00

finally made myself dinner at a reasonable hour tonight, giving myself ample time to cook things properly (well, as properly as you can get when you're just converting your lemongrass pork rice w/ copious coriander into pork fried rice). and for the first time, i understood what they meant when they say you have to fry it until the rice "jumps". it's cool. and by "they", of course i mean loretta, who always complains that i don't have the patience to cook anything properly. when you've seen rice jump, it gives "fly lice" a whole new meaning, no?

cor blimey!

2009-09-23T21:09:00.000-07:00

okay, so i've become one of those people who's obsessed with their dogs. when you come to work and spend the first couple of hours searching for corgi products on etsy, you know you've got a problem. but arguably, not as big a problem as these etsy designers who spend their lives painting corgis into classic works of art; designing witty corgi greeting cards; transforming corgis into cult sci-fi characters; dressing corgis in saville row fashions; or creating corgi-shaped earrings. and then trying to make a living by selling said items.

proximity

2009-09-22T06:47:00.000-07:00

part of living in the city means anything could happen at any time of any day. like, you could be sitting at your computer calmly playing on restaurant city, when unbeknownst to you, a man is jumping out of the window across from yours. um, what? given the proximity of our apartment to his is such that i can watch his tv while i'm washing dishes, this is probably a man who's seen me naked, running from the bathroom to my bedroom to get my clothes. and now, he's being hauled into a truck that's sealed off my whole street, trapping me at home and far away from any restaurant takeout or dog-pooing locale. yes, i sound shallow and self-absorbed, i know. what can i say? i'm a realist.

not sure why this photo, but it seemed apt, if a little heartless.

2009-09-08T20:17:00.000-07:00

PANDZILLA!!!! part of an exhibition showing at schoeni gallery opening on october 15. the other stuff is as weird and morbid as you have come to expect from contemporary chinese artists, but this is priceless, and very close to what my ass is becoming after a weekend of super splurging. some deft illusion work will be necessary for me not to look pregnant at the tatler ball this friday.

we adopted a corgi this weekend from the SPCA and although she's a scrawny little thing, soon we shall fatten her up so her hind region reaches these epic proportions. but first, she needs to stop pooping four times a day. her name is foxy brown, and we met her on the day of foxy brown's birthday, so it seems apt, no?

elephant in the room

2009-08-28T02:26:00.000-07:00

oh you gotta love that banksy. a little change from the panda-lovin, for once. in any given room, there's always a billion things that go unsaid. go long enough without saying them, and your room elephant will eventually become wallpaper. lots of things going on, which i will leave unsaid for now, especially since no one reads this thing anyway except maybe me, virgie, and andrew, but only when i tell him to. how do i feel? nervous, excited, hopeful... but for the time being, simply kind of annoyed. but it's friday, so how bad could it be?

reason to imbibe

2009-08-25T19:28:00.000-07:00

i don't drink, but if i did, this panda colada from FINDS would be my cocktail of choice.

framed

2009-08-24T20:39:00.000-07:00

returned to the office this morning and a little paper bag was sitting on my desk with a logo that read "GoodSkin Labs". dissed much? anyway, inside was a glasses case containing an invitation cordially inviting me to "the journey of restoring youthful gaze" via some new product called eyliplex-2. also in the case? these faboo plastic glasses without lens, which go perfectly with my where's waldo tank. LOVE 'EM. (PS look at that panda behind me, trying to be all social 'n all. awww.)

busy bee

2009-08-11T05:40:00.000-07:00

this week has been a mad rush of photo-shooting, spinning out copy as fast as my fingers can type and brain can think, running errands, self-beautifying and packing. none of the above were done to the quality of my liking, but time constraints have the habit of doing that to you.

GOD, packing. so many shoes, so little space. i wish all my babies could come back with me, but alas, tis not meant to be. so only the gold bridesmaid slingbacks and one of the other top four pictured will make the cut. which one will it be? america will decide, after the break. okay, too many reality shows.

i'm fairly excited about the trip, although i have a feeling it will descend quickly in nature from a national lampoon-style spring break vacation to a four christmases (or insert other dysfunctional holiday family comedy) nightmare replete with strange antics and emotional drama. and also, my brother is getting married. my brother who is six months older than me and has been dating his girlfriend for half the time that i have mine. pressure much? haha. i don't think i'll start getting antsy until they start the baby factory.

at the very least, it will be good to get myself a good american tan. wakeboarding sessions, including a particularly fierce one last sunday, have given me a new kind of farmer's tan. my feet and torso are completely white due to the lifejacket and wakeboard binding (that's the shoes on the board) and i have a lovely board short imprint on my thighs. that's the sexiness.

okay, back to packing.

the age-old question

2009-07-22T04:46:00.000-07:00

the other day someone asked me what she should do for her birthday, and it struck me how OLD i've gotten in between the ages of 27 and 28. 27 was all about the clubbing and karaoke-ing and making new friends and trying to be cool, 28 is all about looking down on people who still club and karaoke, hating on new people who weren't cool enough to meet me back when i was 27, and simply knowing i am cool because i'm old and have self esteem enough to stop wondering and just start believing.

and then i became OBSESSED, seriously OBSESSED with doing projects this weekend. whereas normally i melt into a pile of mush on friday night, doing absolutely nothing (save wakeboarding, which only justifies and exacerbates the whole escapade) but gluing my ass to the bed and eyes to the tv, this weekend i was on a rampage. went jewelry-supply shopping with my virginia on saturday, then grabbed afternoon tea pour une around my house (yes, the beauty of being OLD is that you can dine alone without shame), then got my nails done. when i realized i couldn't stud the shit out of everything without a studding machine, i made chain and ribbon necklaces and flailed about the house looking for stuff to do until loretta threatened to sedate me.

what i did in the ensuing day: bought a hammer, wire and hooks; looked over whole house for picture frames we never hung up despite moving in 3.5 years ago; couldn't find them, looked again; found them; hung up pictures. baked bread pudding from scratch which required two up-and-down-the-stairs trips for forgotten ingredients; invented a new dish called minced pork and snow peas with cold ramen (aka shit that's left in the fridge); cleaned closet of offensive fashion mistakes... ate a buffet AND got a massage. then got a tummy ache.

anyway, stream of consciousness must end sometime, why not now. enjoy instead a random photo, because everybody loves photos, especially ones of yours truly. no? my blog. too bad. look at all these lovely items combined: my live-in H&M boots. The nine-year-old DKNY tuxedo jacket with oversized shoulders that I never wore because I intended to get it altered but it was quicker to wait for bold shoulders to come back into fashion. A HK$69.90 lace dress that obviously only cost that much because it itches me like a rash of poisonous mosquito bites. and yeah, guess where i wore this to? to eat at Fatburger and shop at high-end Park 'n Shop at Hopewell. But see, I can do weird stuff like get dressed up on a Saturday night to go grocery shopping. That's the beauty of being old and self-confident. See how I brought this all full circle?

fiending

2009-07-14T04:37:00.000-07:00

water water everywhere and not a drop to drink. since i cannot wear proper shoes, what with the giant mass of dressing and netting formerly known as my left foot, i can't wear new shoes either. but they pretty, ain't they?

lefteye

2009-07-13T04:35:00.000-07:00

i think my chi is wonky. i've had a weird allergic reaction in my left eye, resulting in a slightly uncomfortable swelling that makes my eyeball feel too small for its socket. a lovely visual, i'm sure, but it doesn't look at all different to anyone on the outside (unless perchance they choose to scrutinize the amount of iris showing with a measurement device). then today, flippantly skipping down the makeshift stepping stone that leads from my building, i twisted my ankle. the left one, naturally. at least i'm still in possession of a functional right side. knock on wood.

waves of mutilation

2009-07-11T05:44:00.000-07:00

tropical storm soudelor foiled plans for late-afternoon apartment viewing, wakeboarding, and a birthday bbq. instead, we shopped at ifc. after feeling shunned by the affluently attired shoppers and the attendant shop assistants in lane crawford, it was down two floors to break the ban at aldo and zara, which led to the quick and deadly purchase of bags of gleefully reasonably priced goodies. the most amazing suede lace-up wedges, a pair of crazy-stringy reptilian-panelled chunky heels that are comfortable enough to be worn around the house most copiously, and a snake-print strapless silk dress that is inspiring jealousy from my other clothing because i love it so very much. oh retail therapy, how i've missed you. how very easy it is to fall into old patterns. pictures of the purchases, you say? if my love will indulge me with a camera session...

house

2009-07-04T03:18:00.000-07:00

there's no place like home. i really like my home, and in particular my bed. this wednesday, repairs begin on the dysfunctional elevator, which will make my place a walk-up. so expect me never to leave the apartment again. long-distance travel will hereafter be known as the distance covered between bed and couch and refrigerator.

addict

2009-06-30T20:48:00.000-07:00

hello everybody, my name is christina and i am an addict.

i have, in my mind, an insanely addictive personality. and it's not something to boast about either. it's not like i fit the profile of an indie-film waif, railing lines off glass tables in out-of-the-way motel rooms. neither am i the type to fall insanely in love at the drop of the hat, and require the constant presence of my beloved like fresh air for the drowning. instead, i'm relegated to the relatively geeky admission that i'm addicted to the most mundane things possible -- like silly text-based multi-player iphone games, or facebook sim games (if we must get specific, we're talking restaurant city here). but real-time games must be among the most inane addictions a human can face. i've been sitting here for the past hour, quite literally, watching my team of minions serve garden salad, lobster and a fruit plate to animated versions of my facebook friends.

at least i'm not shopping.

but it's a gorgeous day, and time to get ready for lunch and wakeboarding this evening. the sky is clear and blue for once. it's a beautiful day to be sitting in bed in jammies, laptop in lap (is it still called a lap if you're not sitting down?), deciding which table layout facilitates the speediest service to your animated denizens.

STOP

2009-06-25T06:51:00.000-07:00

10 signs you (er... i) shouldn't shop no mo'

1. you iron your clothes and put them in the closet, then when you take them out to wear, you realize they're wrinkled again because your closet is too full.

2. you've taken to asking salespeople not to give you a shoebox, then you hide new shoes in nooks and crannies around the house, because you don't want your weekly helper (who puts the shoes back in the shoe cabinet) to judge you for your "problem".

3. you start wanting to sell shit on ebay to make room for new purchases. not your own shit -- your partner's.

4. in the 10 or 15 years since you hit puberty, you never bothered to figure out how far apart your periods are, but you know exactly how many days it is till the shopping prohibition period ends.

5. you watch gossip girl and start thinking about headbands, watch fresh prince and start thinking about 80s blazers, watch curious george and start thinking about acid brights (yellow in particular, i wonder why...), watch transformers and think of hussein chalayan, watch gremlins and think about fur coats/exotic skin bags (depending on whether it's pre- or post-midnight feeding)...

6. you kind of start to realize that cruella de ville wasn't so far off the beaten path with that dalmation coat idea... now where to find 101 dalmations...

7. it's 10pm and you haven't eaten dinner, because you're busy blogging about reasons you should not shop, which you are doing in order to prevent yourself from online shopping. or massacring 101 dalmations.

8. you can't think of a eighth reason, because you're thinking about those dries-style shoes your friend, who is not boycotting the shops, just purchased.

9. you've lost countless friends over the past year because you work too hard to go out, or you're too old to go out, or you're too busy to meet up, but somehow your wardrobe doubled in size in the same period. hm.

10. you rationalize that you're happier with more clothes and less friends anyway.

image conscious

2009-06-25T05:57:00.000-07:00

testing out new image hosting options. Why has tinypic banned my IP address for violating terms of use, when I've never used tinypic before? haters. anyway, blogging in and of itself is essentially narcissistic, so of course I tested out image-hosting objects by uploading photos of myself. unfortunately, it took 2,000 years to upload and resize this image, because ImageShack is kind of slow, so there's just the one pic for now. I should be attending to other things on my one night off at home, my first in seemingly ages.

bumped into some kids from high school today. It's always so awkward to run into people you used to be friends with but haven't seen in 13,432 years. you can't really do an update on the past decade of your life, but neither can you really do the hi-bye thing. you'd think two years at tatler would have given me enough experience in social niceties to deal with this kind of situation, but I prefer to retain all the natural charm of a blithering idiot as my off-duty self.

there's a million and one things i should probably be doing now, and i'm doing exactly zero of them. since i'm not allowed to buy clothes, shoes or jewelry anymore either until next wednesday (although the embargo may self-extend like a time deposit because i still haven't made any room in the cavernous closet), i bought books and a vcd from flow, the used book store. purchased: best american short stories 1999, a thoroughly trashy-looking novel about a society columnist-cum-detective (sound familiar? the first part, at least, i guess...) and a copy of steven soderbergh's first big film, sex, lies, and videotape. i'm pretty excited about watching it, i need time to do a movie marathon and string it together back-to-back with gremlins and before sunset, another couple of old movies i recently acquired and need to find time to view. now would be a natural time, but it's sooo far to walk to the dvd player (3 feet = too far). in the meantime, let's take a moment to note that sex, lies, and videotape not only utilizes an all-lowercase title, much like this blog here, but also incorporates the serial comma. i was a big proponent of the serial comma, having studied and discussed it many times in college, plus having taught it at princeton review, but i have since unwittingly forsaken it because none of the publications i've ever written for seem to show any serial-comma lovin'. when i start writing recognise instead of recognize in my personal life, it will have gone too far.

quote of the day

2009-06-04T06:32:00.001-07:00

"i can see your rolls. they're making me hungry."

excursions

2009-05-30T10:09:00.000-07:00

we went to mongkok today, which used to be a fun little excursion to the dark side, and we now treat like it's an involuntary journey to a third-world country, in which we eat mountain loads of street food and try not to touch any door handles. we had to stay there for four hours to wait for loretta's phone to be fixed, and it was an ordeal, my friends, no joke. the only way we made it through was by eating everything in sight: ice cream, noodles that come in a clear plastic bag, cream puffs, turtle jelly (not me), mango-coconut-aloe smoothie, CPK chicken salad and roasted garlic chicken pizza... this was between 3pm and 630pm. We then ate a four-course dinner an hour later, and it wasn't like we left a lot on our plates either. SIN.

no piccies from that experience, so just a couple of vintage shots from trips taken last year. i get so spoilt by fancy hotels due to my job, i've become such a hospitality snob. it's going to be impossible to deal with me in a few years, not to mention that fact that it's so sad when i go on holidays that i pay for myself. WHAT, no butler? WHAT, no villa? WHAT, i have to pay for my own meals? yeah, my life is filled with strife, isn't it.

never posted these photos, they're from last november when we went to sri panwa in phuket. this hotel was SICK, the ultimate honeymoon destination. i kinda miss my long hair when i look at these photos, short hair is such a pain sometimes, especially when it's humid and rainy.

george in my hotel room in beijing on the Worst Trip Ever. yeah, i bring a stuffed toy with me when i travel alone to keep me company. there are ghosts in so many hotels!

so it looks like I can surf, sort of. what you can't see is that the sand lies roughly 2cm below the surface of this water, and in about 3 seconds i'm going to land my ass on the ground. you also can't see the other 59 minutes surrounding this frame, which consist of me battling the surfboard for control of mobility. who knew that the hardest part of surfing is carrying the board?

how do you get yours pictures to be bigger on blogger?

chloe 7y

2009-05-27T12:19:00.000-07:00

when i was younger i totally didn't get the chloe sevigny thing, but now i love her, without ever having seen her act in anything. read THIS and you will too (side note: blackbook is for some reason the best mag ever) and then check out her elle spread styled by the impeccable and invincible kate lanphear.

i'm on a new blog high tonight, which is why i'm posting again after having gone to a birthday dinner, witnessed a wedding proposal, celebrating that proposal and birthday with a very rare night on the town, and standing around in the rain waiting for a cab.

observed tonight during my prive cameo: the people are the same. the music is the same. the vibe is the same. but i, sadly, i'm past my prive days. oh to be crazy -- gnarls barkley crazy -- and carefree and cool again.

back and back at it

2009-05-27T04:23:00.000-07:00

so i'm back. and i realize that keeping a personal blog is something that nobody does past the days of college, but blogging wasn't around when i was in school (i think i signed up for xanga during senior week, and i was one of the early ones. yes, i'm that old.) i abandoned xanga for facebook, which has now let me down with its un-user-friendliness and generally haughty arrogance regarding its status in the world of social networking. yes, you are the bestest, fastest-growing social-media network, ever. no, that does not give you the authority to screw with us all.

long story short, i'm back. what to expect here: photos. things i like on the web and want to share with you. rants, no doubt, when i'm going tsunami inside my head. and as is the cuz cuz tradition, funny stories — if i can remember them. this is my unilateral way of keeping in touch with you all, because i know i'm ever so bad at that, in terms of emails, picking up phone calls, answering fb messages... this is what i'm up to, now.