sometimes when i'm riding the subway home after work at 2:30 in the morning, i look around at the station or in the subway cart and ask myself, "what the hell am i doing with my damn life??"

i just got back from my parents' place in nj after attending a large family dinner for my grandma. she flew in from alaska a few weeks ago and has been bouncing around the homes of relative-to-relative since but her stay is finally over and she's leaving back to anchorage in a couple of hours at 5am. she usually comes to ny once a year with my grandpa since four out of six of their children (including my dad) live here, but now he's gotten too old to travel so this is the first time she's making the trip out alone.

it was really so great to see her the past few weeks. i grew up with my grandma as a kid in alaska and i've always really loved her. she's definitely a strong matriarch and raised her five sons and daughter through a lot of hardship and difficult times. i feel like her generation of korean women just had to be tough yet at the same time a great wife, mother, money maker and patriot.

it's not a family event for our clan if there isn't lots of booze and a korean card game called "go-stop (고스톱)" going on---it honestly really isn't. i'm determined to learn how to play this card game because they always have a great time playing and it will be my in at family gatherings. honestly, being gay and in the closet to my family and extended family is not the easiest thing. as a kid i coped with this by being extremely quiet and just waiting for the night to be over. i remember when my parents would say, "okay get your stuff together because we're going home," the voice in my head would be screaming "about fucking time." these feelings for my family has made me miss most gatherings by choice if i can manage to get out of it and my sister has made me realize that that's not cool. an elongated avoidance of the subjects of girlfriends, marriage and other uncomfortable things has made me a completer stranger to everyone in my extended family and that upsets me.

anyway, here's a few pics of my lovely grandma enjoying a good game of go-stop (고스톱). the first is of her, my grandfather and aunt in front of the white house during what i think looks like the seventies but am not sure.

ALSO, if there is anyone in nyc who knows how to place this and is willing to teach me, that would be awesome.

korean model, daul kim, was pronounced dead today in her paris apartment---she was only twenty years old. so sad.

her cause of death is unknown at this point and i just can't believe she's dead. she was one of the biggest models from korea and i liked her not only because she was eccentric looking, but she also had a blogspot, iliketoformyself.blogspot.com---i really appreciated that about her.

r.i.p. daul kim.

even after all these years, i can't believe i still perfectly remember the theme song to "living single." isn't it funny what our brains remember? this show and "martin" still make me laugh as hard as i did when i first watched it as a kid.

does the whole "what-the-hell-am-i-doing-with-my-life/i'm-just-living-day-by-day-with-no plan/how-do-i-get-control-over-my-own-life" phase ever end?

or is this just how people spend their twenties?

anyway, the new apt is great. having 4 new roommates (including madden, my friends' lovable dog) in a new neighborhood and a nice apartment is sort of fun. living by central park is just amazing and i especially enjoy walking madden there. i'm also by the northern end of it on the west side and there are some really quiet and deserted areas of the park here. i really like nature and being outdoors so i'm happy to have that little getaway when i need.

there's also some secluded streams up here, and i love just sitting there and watching and listening to the water. living in alaska as a kid for five years and doing lots of cliche but fun outdoorsy stuff was one of the best parts of my life and i will always love doing those things. something about the sound of a river or stream always relaxes me. i mean, who cares if this stream is no wider than two feet and there's cigarette butts and empty beer cans, left from who knows when, scattered around?

i will take what i can get---story of my life.

my 2005 ibook is dead. i'm broke and will be computer-less for a while. that sucks.

i'm not sure when this started, but i've pretty much always hated halloween. dressing up never really intrigued me, i think i would just not feel like myself if i did, i'm lame. i know some people really love it and have a great time so no offense to others though. but honestly, the name of the holiday should be changed to "themed-skank" day. don't get me wrong, i was born normal and dressed up as a kid (mostly just for the candy) a few times but i was too lame so i just wore my judo uniform out---it's hard being such a stereotype.

anyway, i usually try not to leave the house on halloween. i remember pretty much throughout my whole life, on halloween my family liked to turn of all the lights and we would just watch tv with the sound on low---oh yes, we were those people. kids really never came to our house in flushing, queens but when they did and rang the doorbell, we'd just get paranoid and put the tv on mute as we listened until we knew they had left. i'm very sad because this year i won't be able to continue on with that tradition since i have to work. thinking about dealing with drunks in power-charged costume mode is making my hair itch.

for some good news, i moved today. yay. i'm living in the uws and i can truly say that this is probably the first apartment that i've ever given a shit about. i have lived in some disgusting shitholes through the past few years so it feels so nice to have not just an apt, but a home. and central park is 1/2 a block away, fuck yeah. ah i love the smell of new paint.

if i had an opportunity to buy a one way ticket to tropical (and safe) country where i can work on the beach and live as an american expat for a few years, i would jump at the offer in a second.

i need change.

spontaneous karaoke after an amazing korean bbq dinner on 32nd street for daniel's bday was tons of fun. i realized that every now and then, i need a night of singing my heart out to korean power ballads while drunk off soju---it's a great stress reliever.

michael jackson was on the cover of this year's september issue of american gq. i love that jim nelson, the editor-in-chief, put an older photo of a young michael on something as iconic as the magazine industry's biggest monthly fashion issue. the cover was awesome and the issue had a really great piece written about jackson, which was really insightful and well written.

for the november issue of gq korea, they re-used the same cover and i'm so excited to buy the issue. i already called the korean bookstore on 32nd street and they said it arrives this monday, woohoo.

i rarely approach guys in bars and clubs. i'm just way too shy and it takes me a while to muster up enough nerve to do anything. i went out last night with a friend and thought this one guy in particular was cute. after a few drinks and towards the end of my night, i decided to go up to him and of course the first thing he says is, "sorry i have a boyfriend." ouch---shot down haha. oh well, he was cute though.

on another note, i blogged about this random dude that my friend magali and i met last year after our college alumni party. when we met him last year, he said he was only in town for a week and he told us some other stuff which i didn't really believe. well at the club i went to last night, i totally ran into him again. apparently he's only in town for a week again and he's staying somewhere in midtown. i guess it's especially interesting because my college alumni party was also around this time last year, so it amazes me that i saw him again during his brief nyc visit. small world.

i really need to make some more gay friends.

i run into the most random people in this city.

i got off of work pretty late and since i live farther into brooklyn at the moment in bed-stuy, i try not to ride cabs home because they're more expensive. also, sometimes i feel bad for the cab drivers because i'm sure they won't be able to find a fare back into the city and i dont want them to lose money. tonight there was all this random track work at night and the subways were all fucked up and slow so i had to transfer a few times, and each time the train took a long ass goddamn time to come. the funny that happened though was when i got onto the f at west 4th street, i sat down and saw this guy that i used to work with at my old job at the magazine---how random. it's past 2 in the morning, there's not too many people out, and he's sitting in the exact same subway cart as me in all of nyc. i have to say that i'm a true believer in fate, and while we're not going to become best friends, i really felt that this very moment was just meant to be. so i walked up and sat down right next to him and we started talking. we just talked about the people who we worked with because he and most of those people are still there---thank fucking goodness i don't have to work with some of those people anymore. we happened to be going in the same direction, while his commute was wayy longer than mine, so we got off the f together and waited at jay street for the a, and then i got off at utica and he kept going to get to canarsie. i love nyc moments like these because i think, where else in the country can this happen at this hour under circumstances like these? can i say though that i absolutely hate riding the subway home that late. i just hate the fact that it takes forever, i just want to get home after a day of working on my feet and not deal with any of that. up until a few years ago, i never rode the subway past 11 because i hated waiting and thought it could be dangerous. i guess i grew up sometime after that, and now i ride it at 2 am to get home. shit, people can change.

anyway, i started serving at work. i'm having lots of fun because sometimes i feel like i have no idea with what i'm doing, but i just try to act cool and stay natural. haha it's so pathetic sometimes that i just have to laugh at myself. and now when i go out to eat, i always take a good look at our server and the other people who work in the restaurant and wonder, is this how i look like to people at work?

i wanted to wish a happy birthday to my friend and future roommate, daniel.

it's been great getting to know you the past couples of years---thank you for everything that you've done and for always welcoming me into your warm home. you and jenn make me believe that love and happiness is out there for everyone because i've never met a more supporting and happy couple. the two of you guys and madden have such a strong foundation, one day i hope to have something like you guys have. thanks to all three of you for taking on a straggler like me and letting me into your lives.

here are some pictures from this year's the new yorker festival that took place in various locations all over the city this past weekend. jenn, daniel and myself attended a special screening and q&a of an upcoming movie called precious. the nyt magazine just did a great story about the movie and its cast members that you can find here. the movie was good and i definitely recommend it to everyone when it comes out. time sure flies, i can't believe it's been a year since i saw haruki murakami at last year's festival.

since the seventh grade, i've always had terrible insomnia. there's something magical about the night time that beckoned me and wouldn't let me go to bed---like a force that i naturally gravitated towards and i had no control on stopping it.

i guess that's just a glamorized way of summing up all the night time fucking hell i've been going through since i was twelve. not being able to sleep when you desperately want to and need to makes life challenging sometimes. i can't count the number of days that i had to go without sleep because i wouldn't be able to fall asleep until 5 am, and i knew that if i went to sleep then, i would never wake up anytime before 11 am. tossing and turning in bed as you stare at the ceiling and trying not to get pissed off about the fucking fact that you've been attempting to go to sleep in your own bed for the past 3 hours can really irk you. i've tried sleeping pills, exercise, praying, counting, etc, and none of them ever worked. i went to a doctor and he told me to just relax when i'm trying to go to bed---anxiety is a bitch.

at this point in my life, i know how my body is when it comes to sleep and if i know i'm not going to be able to fall asleep until hours later, i'd rather just plant myself in front of the tv and fall asleep to it.

thank goodness my friends/new roommates have this huge hd flat screen tv---holy shit i'm in insomnia's paradise.

off i go. i hope nick at nite plays old episodes of roseanne, that's my favorite sitcom ever.

today is your 31st birthday, happy birthday.

it's been eight years since we've seen each other. whatever you're doing with your day (or even your life), i hope today's a good day for you.

i think i need to correct the way i walk because for as long as i can remember, i've always gotten holes in the exact same spots of my sneakers' soles after only months of wearing them---every pair of old sneakers of mine that had to be tossed away was for this reason only. the weather today in nyc is absolute shit with cold rain and wind, and my feet are soaked because of the damn holes in the soles of my sneakers. wet socks/sneakers can make anyone cranky.

some good news is i found an apartment and will be living with 3 of my good friends in the UWS. fucking yay.

i purposely came home tonight after getting off of work to somehow make a meal with all the food in my cabinets since i'm moving out tomorrow. i got home about an hour ago and thought long and hard about what sort of meal i could make with all the random shit in my cupboards. i was proud of the recipe i had concocted and was starving---i couldn't wait to eat and get rid of all the leftover stuff in my kitchen instead of throwing it all away.

my roommate moved most of his stuff out already and has gone to his new place so i was more than happy to cook a meal alone in my underwear on my last night at my apartment. i started chopping up veggies and went to go turn on my stove, but then realized and completely forgot that my gas was turned off this morning...fuck.

without the basic necessity of something like a working burners in my apartment---i will never ever in my life take having a working stove for granted again.

now it's 1 am, i'm hungry as hell and wondering where i can get some food. shit.

i don't have anything in particular to write about, so i'm just going to talk about anything that comes into mind. i made a big life/career decision today and while i have a little pang of regret, i have to stick by my decision and be done with it. i don't know what to do anymore---i feel like i have no control over my life, or if i do i'm about to drive into the side of a mountain because of my stupidity and bad judgement. i like to scrape the resin off my bong and smoke it when i'm desperately out of goods. i need to stop procrastinating my life by smoking weed, but i just love it too damn much. it's the only instant pleasure provider i have left. drinking is too much work and being drunk is physically exhausting the next day. other drugs just leave me too brain dead and feeling like absolute shit the day after. i remember when i was 18 and partying every week at clubs with house music and trance in my lame raver/party gear like exit (a nyc club where i rarely missed a friday for 2-3 years), i was rolling my face off and started talking to the person next to me who was this random dude who was also very fucked up. we were both rolling and happy, so of course a whole bunch of e-talk comes with that, and at one point he told me he was 23. after hearing that, the only thought that ran through my head was, "wow, this dude is so old, wtf is he doing here? if i'm 23 and doing this shit at a club like exit, kill me," or somewhere along the lines of that. when i think back to that period of my life, i had so much fun and don't regret any of it. i was so in the closet and confused back then that whenever i was partying, i strictly focused on getting fucked up and just tried to dance for hours. i was never on the hunt for pussy or ass, but instead i really appreciated the music and loved dancing to it. i used to order bags of raver beads online and make candy bracelets for hours with the intentions of distributing and trading them at my next party the following friday. and to create a stretchable bracelet, i went to duane reade and bought those 20 packs of women's hair tying things and took two, tied them together and looped them through the beads. i loved trading the bracelets with other kids at parties. i wonder what happened to all my old bracelets, i should have at least a few left somewhere. i missed out on being sexual while rolling and being fucked up---people always got laid except for me. i know it's bad, but i want to go party and roll one last time at a gay place where i can be comfortable, meet other people and slut it out---i think it's only fair after all those years of being asexual at parties. my roommate moved out of the apartment, and i only have a few days left here. i'm really going to miss this place. holy shit it's past 5am and i'm too tired to read and edit this so goodnight.

what the fuck am i going to do with my life?

i feel like doing something drastic and stupid in life---bored with everything.

am i delusional??

why do i get so surprised when i hear that people i've met assume i'm gay? i guess i'd like to think that i'm pretty low-key and seem somewhat straight, but i guess not. i've met many people who say they knew the moment they talked to me, yet there are also people who have said they had no idea.

regardless, i really need to get over it and just accept myself for who i am.

yo no sé.

there are so many god damn crazy people in this city.

today's a sad day for magazines---conde nast announced that it's closing four of its titles.

interestingly enough, the editor-in-chief of one of the shuttering magazines came into my work place last night for dinner. i feel like the eic had to have known about the news that was going to be announced this monday morning, and wonder if what i witnessed was their last meal before the start of the predictable yet inevitable media frenzy.

i threw a moving-out party last night to celebrate my last few weeks in prospect heights. i'm really going to miss this apartment and having people over, it's been a lot of fun and i've had some great memories here.

it's funny looking at my empty apartment the next morning and trying to remember how it felt the night before, filled with friends and noise. now all i see is just stale food, empty bottles and a big mess to clean up. thankfully my sister hung around and helped me this morning.

i never trust sites like yelp because people like to bitch and moan about the dumbest things. i learned this when i started purchasing stuff through amazon. i would buy something and then read the reviews that people gave it, and it would make me want to shake them violently and say please shut the hell up. some people just complained about the most minute things that i thought was so unnecessary.

anyway, because of my philosophy that people are crazy and from my previous experience with user generated reviews, i do not like sites such as yelp. well, it's about 4:20 am right now and i'm bored as hell with nothing to do, so i did a yelp search of my work place and i found this gem below:

"One curiousity I have is the idea of having the wait staff dressed like 20 year old college students. No apron, no sign that they work for the restaurant. It wasn't a big deal and for the most part they were cool and attentive. Although the little hipster Asian guy with the black rim glassed was pretty rude to me when I walked back in after going out to flag down my Fiance. Dude, I was already inside sitting with a full table of friends. A stern "Hello? Can I help you??" as if we were somehow trying to sneak in and steal something was not necessary"

haha. and what does she mean by hipster? i just have my own bummy style.

but all joking aside, i'm usually never rude.

i do not understand people who bring strollers and children to a busy nyc restaurant at the peak of dinner hour.

they annoy me a lot. i would call what i have annoy galore---that's how much annoyance i have for them, it could fill buckets. damn annoygalor.

i've blogged about it before, but i fucking LOVE mcdonald's and because i am a fat girl at heart, mcdonald's will always hold a special place in my childhood and memories. i don't want no damn birthday cake anymore in my life, just big-macs with candles, please.

with that being said, i wish i could be as happy as the day i was in the following photo---i mean, i'm smiling (yes, and sincerely) for goodness sakes. i have absolutely no memory of this day but it's prob somewhere in the late 80's in my family's nearby jackson heights apartment in queens.

if i could relive one day out of my life continually for the rest of my life, i would choose this day because i probably was happy as hell and didn't have to give a shit about anything. .

this post is dedicated to one of my newly single friends.

the gossip- men in love

i've sent him the song above, which i love. i really like the gossip's past few albums, including their new one titled "music for men" which rick rubin also worked on.

anyway, this is to one of my newly single friends who's meeting other people and just trying to enjoy life---welcome to my side of the world.

i am a kid of the 90's.

i absolutely love 90's music (mostly everything before 1997) and i've always listened to korean pop music my whole life and enjoy korean music even now, which means i fucking love 90's korean music.

my favorite all time korean group for the rest of my life will always be Roo'Ra (룰라). growing up, i was fucking obsessed with them and their music, especially their second, third and fourth albums. they had some stylistic and member changes after that, but none of it compared to their 2nd (1995), 3rd (1995) and 4th (1006) albums---for real, THEY'RE THE SHIT. listening to them now, sure, i admit that a lot of their songs sound like rip-offs of american songs, but i don't care they're still the shit. i will never change my opinion about roo'ra, their music really means a lot to me.

each one of their albums that i love brings back happy memories of where i was living and how my life was at that time. i moved around a lot as a kid and had a million other weird issues but listening to roo'ra always made me feel very happy.

the following roo'ra albums will ALWAYS be classics to me.

*i am aware and saw their recent comeback, but refuse to acknowledge that it happened due to the fact that it was really bad.

i have to admit that i've been really bad with taking cabs home for the past month or so. i usually end work late and just don't feel like dealing with the subways all the way back to brooklyn so i just ride a yellow cab home.

i got home about an hour or so and because i ended work late and wound up having a few drinks with my coworkers, i rode a cab home. the interesting part is, as i was exiting my cab at the stoplight near my apt in brooklyn, i totally saw this chick alone in another cab that's stopped at the same light---and she was leaning her head out the window of the back right-side seat and very slowly and surreptitiously vomiting out the window. the window was half-way down and her mouth is barely reaching the top, yet she's still quietly dripping her vomit down the glass and side of the car. the cab driver had no idea she was doing this, and by the look on the girl's face, i don't think she realized what she was doing either---i looked at her face and man, she was fucked up.

holy shit, that gave me a good laugh.

only in nyc does your grass supplier tell you that they can't come meet you somewhere like usual and instead asks you to drop by their apartment because they're not able to leave since "it's monday night and gossip girl is on."

one day, my insomnia is going to make me do something crazy.

less talk, more action.

to support one of my best friends, judy---me and all of my close friends usually go to anna sui's show at fashion week every season.

all the spring 2010 shows marks the end of an era because this is the last time nyc fashion week will be at bryant park, so sad---it's moving to lincoln center starting with the fall 2010 shows.

anyhoo, here's some pictures from last night. fun fun funn.

i hate to admit it, but i think i'm going to be an insomniac for life. it's always been a problem and i don't know how to fix it.

if i had one superpower, it would be the ability to fall asleep whenever i wanted. yes---i would be that loser superhero and i'm sure my costume would be as lame as hell.

everyone, please meet junko.

i first took notice to this ad for english classes during my freshman year of college (back in 2001). i instantly thought the girl sort of looked japanese, and at the time i was working at a cafe in the west village with a girl from japan as well. my coworker's name was junko, and i thought "hey, the girl in the learn english ad looks like a junko, too!"

if you live in nyc and commute daily on the subways and buses of the city, i'm pretty sure that you'll see junko on a daily basis. just be on the lookout and the magic of junko will appear---sometimes, i even see her twice a day.

thank you junko for being a reliable pseudo nyc friend to me all these years and for helping a countless number of new yorkers learn english.

wow, you know things are bad when the lady at burger king behind the register says, "damn, you hungry!" after placing your order at 4:30 in the morning. somehow i wandered alone from 58 and madison to the burger king that's 24 hours on the weekend at 32nd and fifth.

all throughout college, my instinct and natural curiously led me to read books by asian and asian american authors---it was with them that i felt the largest literary connection. i wanted to know what they went through as writers and see what type of work they were producing. i kept current with most of the stuff that was out there up until a few years, and now i have no idea what's going on.

such with life, shit changes. i don't know why but now i'm completely focused on literature that is related to or about nyc. i guess this is how i identity myself now, both in literature and life, as a new yorker. i can't even walk down a street without studying/appreciating all the amazing architecture and history here, it's becoming a problem. but there has to be a way i can make this into something positive---perhaps a stoned in the city walking tour. 

i just love this city.