wow.
what an absolutely awesome photo.

something to be thankful for...
i have good friends. thanks guys.

strange days...
this morning, i woke up to claps of thunder. a couple of moments later, it started pouring. although it rained only for a few moments, the sky still has this murky haze.

earthquake weather?

law school, maybe?
i'm trying to think of what i want to do with myself and i'm starting to lean towards law. i don't think i could EVER do lawyer-law.. not the court stuff--judges scare me. but more like, legal studies and policy analysis.. non-profits, maybe? all i know is that i want to be in some kind of field where i can help people in need. back when i was at csuh i was thinking of doing this sort of thing (social service) but i changed my mind once i got to ucla. heh.. kinda funny now that it seems i'm just back where i started.

so i guess it's back to the books. more standardized tests.. lsats.. dammit.

this is sea ranch:



so is this:



see why i miss it?

oh another thing.
i found out that people actually read this thing. whoa.. weird...

have you ever had a dream that you wished was real?
i had one of those the other night. it felt so real, so tangible.. i could remember distinct little things. i wished it could've gone on, and on...

but i woke up..

the clock read 3:00 am and i realized that i had been dreaming the entire time. sometimes.. i wish.. i wish...

but. i guess not.

times of refreshing.
fourth of july was a nice little retreat, but now it seems that i'm back to the same old, same old. i'm back to being exhausted and tired all over again.

give me a star-filled sky and the sound of the ocean.. *sigh*, yeah that sounds nice.

oy yoy!
they changed blogger, and blogger looks weird.. WEIRD.

.. fourth of july weekend ended up pretty good. jennifer invited us up to her home in sea ranch, a little town just south of medicino on highway one. it was beautiful--coastal views, fresh air and a wonderful starry sky in the evening. it was a welcome retreat, and it reminded me of just how much i love the ocean. watching the waves go in and out, the feel of wet sand, the sound of ocean.. i missed it and didn't even realize it.

i think i told jo once that even though the beaches in southern california are more fun to swim in, the beaches in northern california are more beautiful. and they are, there's just something about it...

pretty wonderful. heh.

i want to go back.

i had a dream about work the other night.
it's still kind of creepy to me. it was weird, all of my supervisors were there, and i was dreaming about economic development and visiting cathedral city, where one of my supervisors had worked on a redevelopment project. lately, i've been dreaming about work a lot. a while ago, i had a dream about running transactions at the bank. i was helping one customer but kept counting the money out wrong. you know how in dreams sometimes things go in slow motion? it was like that except with money counting...

all of this tells me one thing: i work way too much.

all that pomp and circumstance.
i can't believe it. this year, i'm attending commencement as an alumni. it's hard for me to think of myself of as a grad, but here i am. i guess this officially marks my one year anniversary as alumni. so i'm driving down to ucla tonight. i'm doing a very college-esque thing: i'm planning to drive through the dead of the night and arrive in los angeles in the wee hours of the morning. hey it works, and i don't have to deal with traffic this way, thank goodness. anyway, there's something calming about driving in the middle of the night when no one else is around. huh, maybe i should've been a truck driver. i'm in the wrong profession, dammit!

feeling antsy.
i'm trying to make myself go to sleep. i need to go to work tomorrow, and i'm very conscious of the fact that tomorrow morning, i need to drag myself out of the bed at 6 am, but for some reason, i just can't sleep. so here i am, typing away and hoping that this will somehow make me want to go to sleep. but i seriously doubt it. things have been halfway hectic lately. i say halfway because i don't seem to have a lot of time lately, but and the same time, i can't recall doing anything significant. so most likely i'm just spending my time doing a lot of nothing. but hey, that's nothing new for me.

part of the reason may be my jobs. i've been spending a lot of time at work but i really don't feel like i'm making much of a difference. at redwood city, i get paid to sit in front of a computer screen all day. and at the bank, i do help people but at the same time, they're not people who need my help. with each job i get, i'm refining more and more what my actual career interests are. but the problem is that even with the jobs that i've held, it's still not enough for me to actually figure out what i want since my interests are still so wide and inconsistent.

i really just need to buckle down and start job hunting again. but i'm lazy, and it's hard to make yourself look when you already have a paycheck coming in...

sick(ish).
so happily i'm not sick-sick anymore. this past week, i've been battling a cough that will not go away, and earlier in the week i was running a high fever. now i'm just stuck with the congestion and that cough that still won't go away. i have anti-biotics though.. yay! it's still taxing to work through sickness. i don't like it. all the times when i'd rather be lying in bed trying to get better, i'm on my feet running around the bank in circles. but i don't have much of a choice, after taking so much time off from before to go to dc and new orleans, i'd rather not call in sick now. it just seems like asking for too much.

all day today, i haven't felt like being at work. it's just draining. it's unrealistic to believe that there's some "dream job" out there for me. but at the same time, there has to be something more out there than this.

whew, i just got back.
i've been going from vacation to vacation and i feel kinda drained. its been fun, but at the same time it's exhausting flying back and forth and walking around everywhere to see the sights. new orleans was plenty of fun.. lots of good eating (gumbo and jumbalaya, YUM!) and lots of things to see. the streets are beautiful, when i first arrived i was in complete awe of the tiny little streets, lace balconies and gas lamps--i felt like i had stepped into a storybook.

bourbon street was also surreal. a 24-hour party--those people never take a break! you could buy a daquiri for breakfast, if you'd like. and the beads.. yes, i got my share, but none of that "girls gone wild" stuff.. nuh uh. also going to the south, i realize that asians are really a minority.. that's really something you take for granted, living in california where every other person is asian. everyone was friendly though, it was always, "how're y'all doin'?" or "where're y'all from?".. always with the "y'all".. heh.

whew.. but that's enough vacationing for me, i think. i'm ready to take a vacation from vacationing.

dammit, i want a mac.
in particular.. i want these penguin icons. wah!

i was thinking of mr. eaton today.
mr. eaton is one of my customers at the bank. when i first met him, his wife was sick and the doctors had told him that there wasn't much more that they could do for her. so he had taken her home to make her more comfortable in her last days. when she eventually passed on, mr. eaton would come into the bank and break down while chatting with the tellers. mr. eaton took to wearing aviator sunglasses--so no one could see him cry. six months later, he's doing better.. but he choked up when he mentioned that what would've been his anniversary is coming up.

it makes me wonder. would someone love me enough to cry over me like that? i'm uncertain of myself more often than not and i honestly don't know. but it would be a sad existance if no one cried for you when you were gone.

...

yeah.

yummy.

the internet made me cry!
oh my, this is so touching (3.8 MB .asf video).

i'm taking this cooking class with anny.
a chinese cooking class. yesterday we learned how to cook fried rice, chow mein and tofu. not bad, eh? hopefully by the end of the class i'll be a cooking pro.. HA. i'm keeping my fingers crossed on that one, but until then it's ramen forever.

yum.

tired.
i just got back from washington dc tonight. good times, good friends and good eating--a great trip. the weather was gorgeous, except for the one day when it rained.. but every other day was 80 degrees and sunny. the museums were fun and the monuments were beautiful.. but the best part was that most everything was free!

now i'm trying to regroup and get ready for work tomorrow. on top of that, i'm leaving for ANOTHER vacation to new orleans just a week and a half from now. kinda crazy, i know.

oy, time to sleep.. good night.