i have the memory of a sharpie. how the hell do i fix this?

right now i'm completely digging deux, a korean hip hop duo from the early 90's with members kim sung jae and lee hyun do. listening to deux always reminds me of my sister because she used to be obsessed with them when we were kids, especially lee hyun do.

the duo pretty much started the movement of 90's hip hop, rap and r&b in korea and also had the "bad boy" image of the music industry, or at least they were marketed that way. from what i can recall as a kid, i remember thinking that the group's major fan base was a certain demographic of girls. all the female hardcore rebels and bad-girls of korea finally had an anthem and soundtrack to play in the background at the clubs and in the streets as they beat bitches down korean-style. listening to their music now, some of their tracks have obviously been sampled from american songs but the countless number of people who get a sense of nostalgia every time they listen to deux can easily look past that (probably also due to the fact that many koreans back then didn't know american hip hop). one of their songs in particular titled "여름안에서" is my karaoke-go-to-song, it's easy to sing and there's no complicated rap part on top of being a sentimental classic for anyone who listened to their music back then.

the duo released three studio albums as well as additional remix and concert albums, then the they split and kim sung jae put out a self titled solo album which i really like. he died suddenly in 1995 soon after his album release and being young and not understanding korean that well back then, i'm still not sure how he passed away. i remember there were a lot of rumors and speculation going on and it was reported that his girlfriend killed him by giving him some drugs that were horse tranquilizers, but knowing the korean media and how they love to sensationalize things, especially shit that has to do with illegal drugs, i have no idea what happened to him. the sad thing is he died pretty young.

here are their albums that i never get sick of.

have you ever been on a date in a restaurant and then bam, your fucking nose starts bleeding? so embarrassing haha.

are new yorkers just natural haters? maybe we use it as a defense mechanism of some sort. or perhaps people just suck and make it so damn easy sometimes.

last night i dreamt that i was holding someone's hand very intensely. i was apparently dating this guy, but don't remember his face or anything else about him---i just remember holding his hand. dreams are weird.

here's my one and only actual christmas present of the year, beautifully wrapped with a big red bow and just waiting to be opened under our christmas tree. i love it---thanks, judy.

merry christmas everyone.

why do i feel like i have so much to hide about my life? i want to live with no secrets.

i still listen to korean music and really like a group called 2ne1. this group has four girls and i think they're all so cute (but not in a cheesy big lollipops and "look at me i'm so fucking cute" way). each one has their own thing going on and my favorite is the youngest of the group. i think she's like fifteen years old and her name is minzy. i think she's so full of talent for someone such a young age and also love the fact that she has very korean features on her face. i see her and think she's adorable, i want to hug her like she's my younger sister.

i really wish that people who choose to use the term "think outside the box" would actually "think outside the box" and come up with a new goddamn term or be violently shaken in my imagination.

why is the grass always greener on the other side? why do i feel like i'm always standing in a patch of dead, brown and withering grass while the other side seems so green, vibrant and healthy? and then i'll get to the other side and all the grass around me will wither away and seem dead. that's my problem---i'm scared i will never be happy in life. it's an issue i must work on.

it's funny/interesting/sad how shit changes between friends.

oh well.

i would love to spoon all night.

isn't it amazing how smells can bring you back to another time?

calvin klein's eternity will always remind me of the 7th grade---i used to be such a big pyro with ir back then.

does anyone else watch psychic kids: children of the paranormal on a&e? omg i totally believe in it, i love the show.

i want to run away.

sometimes instead of riding the subway downtown for my daily commute, i'll ride the bus instead. it goes down central park west and has so many interesting things to look at. riding the bus around nyc is really a great way to see the city, if you have the time to do it i highly suggest it. most manhattan buses go in a straight line wether it's east to west or north to south. a lot of them run on avenues and since new york is pretty much designed as a grid with only a handful of them in comparison to streets, they avenues are really amazing. here's the american museum of natural history while on my way to work.

i need to get a damn life.

smoking after work is the only thing that takes my mind off all the horrible people i had to deal with during my shift. some people just turn into awful human beings when they're customers at restaurants and bars. it's really sad and disgusting at the same time.

i went to boston on monday after my lunch shift at work and just got back a few hours ago. it felt nice to get out of nyc, but coming back home was equally comforting---there really is no place better than this city.

i didn't do much in boston but just hang out with my friend who lives there or wander the city alone while she was working. my favorite part was being stoned off my ass and going to the MIT museum and seeing the holography: light fantastic exhibit. it was mostly hologram stuff and everything was trippy as hell, i love shit like that esp after smoking. i also went to this interactive art production called sleep no more. it was held in an old catholic school at night, and what you do is walk around with masks through the whole school, from basement to the third floor, for hours without speaking or really know what was going on. you're supposed to follow the actors around and that's what the story is but i was sort of confused the whole time--- i was also stoned so of course it was fun as hell.

anyway, it was nice to have a mini re-charge and get away for a little. i really need to start putting money aside for vacations more often and make it a priority. my next real vacation has to be outside the u.s., hopefully somewhere in asia.

who knew that such a petite and bookish looking young girl with round glasses had such a voice?

to add to my obsession of korean music from the 90's and earlier, i've recently been listening to the music of lee sun-hee a lot. she dominated the korean music charts in the 80's and 90's and played a huge role in korean pop culture. unfortunately i don't know that much about her, but just from listening to her music, i know that this is the stuff i would have been jamming out to if i were able to appreciate music back then. like the lee moon sae albums i've blogged about before, her music is from the similar time period and also has that old-school-folky sound as well. all her stuff is pretty well produced and my favorite song of hers is called "서울의 밤" (Seoul Nights). it's really upbeat and i love listening to it while i'm walking around nyc alone as i imagine myself being 26 in the 80's and listening to it while walking around seoul. i wonder how different seoul looked back then and try to imagine what i would be wearing, eating and thinking about. i probably would have blasted the song on my record spinner as i got ready for a special night on the town to a local coffeehouse or bar. i like moments like that when i can really think and appreciate how so many things have changed since then, yet the song remains and brings out the same reactions in people as it did back then.

then i think about things like, is there anyone else in this city of 8 million that also happens to be listening to this very song and having similar thoughts?

below are two of her albums that have really grown on me.

i am very grateful for everything in life.

i've been in such a funk the past few weeks. i hate the vicious cycle of depression, i hope this wave ends really soon.

i'm starting to obsess with the idea of getting away from nyc and even the country for a while. i want to experience something completely new and foreign in life. i need to get away.

my close friends have a running joke that i never lived in alaska and that all the stories i tell from my childhood years spent there are a lie---this entry is dedicated to you guys.

here are a few pictures of my family's chinese restaurant called "twin dragon." yeah, since the town is so far north in the state that it's only accessible by airplane, it didn't matter that we weren't actually chinese because we were one of three asian families in town so we were "chinese" to all the locals. these pictures were taken in the summer of 1996 when my extended family members from nyc came to visit us. at our restaurant, my dad cooked in the kitchen, i washed dishes, and my mom and sisters worked in the front. of course there were a few staff members, all who were found after my dad posted job listings in the korean newspapers of major american cities such as ny and la. i have to say that the food my dad made didn't taste like something you'd get from a nyc chinese take out place, my dad's was so much better. when i moved back to queens after living in alaska, i remember having chinese take-out again for the first time and i couldn't believe how different it tasted.

humility is hot.

.

i have a magazine addiction.

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??"

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.

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. 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. along with my friend susy, 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.

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 girls 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 it 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. .

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.