my new favorite snack

BBQ Kettle Bakes from Trader Joe's. Catherine recommended them to me, and I was skeptical at first, because I generally don't like Kettle chips. They're too thick and hard, and the potato flavor is overwhelming.

But I just got a bag today, and I have to say, the Kettle Bakes are totally different--light, thin, and crispy. They taste just like regular potato chips except without the greasiness. And they're healthier than pita chips! I'm a convert. ...I should be getting commission from them. ;)

Happy New Year!

cuckoo's nest

Just saw Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest last night--a solo performance by Kristina Wong analyzing mental illness in Asian women in the U.S. I liked it; it was entertaining at times, poignant at others. It seemed more about raising questions than necessarily providing answers, which didn't make it any less needed. It made me think of all sorts of little and not-so-little traumas I've seen and known in my life and in those of people close to me. I think of how resilient we are, yet at the same time how we aren't so impervious to pain as we sometimes like to think.

It also made me think twice about my own prejudices against Asian women. I do start with some basic assumptions about folks when I meet them, and I guess they're not always good. I think part of it stems from a sort of resentful longing I had at different points in my life since I never seemed to fit in with other Asians. In high school, there was a big Asian clique, that my cousins belonged to, but that I was never really able to relate to. At Stanford, the same thing happened, though a lot of that was because it was full of Asian christians, who I really did not relate with. My set of friends was always much more...multi-cultural, let's say. I patted myself on the back, saying I had much more personality, more spice than these seemingly tame people who looked like me, but certainly didn't seem to think like me. Yet I have to admit that on some level, I always felt that longing, that desire to be a part of that tight-knit family.

So it was pretty ironic when I started a relationship with an Asian American Catholic woman. Hah. I even had misgivings in the beginning, knowing that I hadn't been able to find common ground with my so-called "Asian sisters" before. But lo and behold, not all people are the same. ;) I think my relationship with Catherine, and things like this Kristina Wong performance, are sort of evolving my ongoing relationship with this issue to one of more peace. Heck, after the performance, I went out to a late dinner with a group of activist Asian American friends, and I think I was more able to let my guard down and be chill with them.

Hopefully this post makes some sense, and you don't now think I'm just totally racist against my own people. This really has been a really old internal conflict for me. Catherine can attest to it. ;p

i need a break!

wow, i've been so busy lately. i'll go in reverse order; might as well keep the blog format. ;)

first performance of the year with PME was last night; it went really well! the audience really responded to the music. of course, it meant trekking up to Berkeley several times in the last week; that was craziness. thank god for the BART, but it needs to extend down to the south bay for folks like me! and thank god for Forum podcasts.

went to yoshi's on saturday night (another trek up to Oak-town), for 2 friends' joint birthday. it's a jazz club with a very nightclubby feel, and ever since i was in college, i kept hearing people rave about this place. after finally experiencing it firsthand, i give it 2 thumbs up. very chill, very cool (though physically very warm).

thanksgiving was a very good time as well. i made green beans with pancetta, wild mushroom soup with chestnuts and roasted fennel, and the apple tart i made last year (yum, puff pastry!). yes, they're all Food Network creations--what do you expect? my tv hardly ever leaves that channel. then on black friday i scored a pair of Arden B. black pants marked down from $90 to $11. of course, i payed the price by waiting in line there after this group of 3 obnoxious women who kept hogging the cashier. one would start paying, and the other two would go grab more clothes and bring them back to buy. i'm sure they were at that register for a good hour at least. towards the end, when my mom and i were finally near the front of the line, one of them had the nerve to try to take up a second register while they were still being helped at the first. so cindy had to break out that 'oh-NO-you-don't' side that only my closest friends have had occasion to see. although that woman gave me the stinkest eye i've ever seen, thankfully the cashier sided with reason and told her she'd have to get to the back of the line to start another transaction. yea, BACK OF THE LINE, sister! did i have bottled up aggression at that point? um, that would be yes.

catherine and i had a joint birthday party out in the park the weekend before thanksgiving; lots of friends came, and a good number actually gave us presents, which was a pleasant surprise! and here i thought the days of presents were over. maybe it's just a college thing not to give presents, when the only things that matter are sleep, food, studying, (booze, for most,) and conserving one's cash. anyway, it was a great time. we played capture the flag, in which i DOMINATED!! well, for one point at least.

ah, yes, and the weekend before that i sang 'ave maria' at catherine's sister's wedding. a big stylistic jump for me; definitely a far cry from my R&B, soul, motown past. i'm still rather new to the whole classical style of music, despite being in PME for a few months now, so i went out and rented a slew of books on classical singing style, after discovering the huge 6-story MLK library in san jose (looks like it's the main library in use by san jose state students). isn't that awesome? a university-level library open to the public! i was in heaven. anyway, so i got a bunch of books by herbert-caesari, who is supposed to be the last proponent of the 'old italian school' of voice. despite his exceedingly pedantic, didactic, and in general very extreme tone, there was plenty of useful information that i wish i'd known a long time ago. i'm considering quitting drum lessons and taking up voice....more on that later.

i think that just about takes me as far back as my memory will currently allow for. and i gotta get to work. long story short, i've been in a whirlwind of activity for the past month at least, tornado really, and while it's been fun, it's also been very exhausting and i'm starting to look at how not to be constantly overcommitted. story of my life...just get me through the holiday season!

i can sing!

Wow, I'm so excited about singing. As you may know, I've been practicing some warmup scales from the book/CD I've been reading, trying to find my middle voice.

I was in my car the other day (which is normally when I do my singing practice, although it's probably a little too distracting for my safety), driving home after taking a friend to the airport, and decided to see how it felt to sing some actual songs again, now that I've kind of been exploring this new part of my voice. So I popped in my iPod cassette adapter, started singing, and it felt, well, GREAT!! I felt so much more ease singing in that part of my range that has always been kind of stressful to me--the part that's kind of too high to belt for extended periods of time, but a bit too low to sing in my head voice--not talking about ice cream voice, Yelena ;), although I think that voice may be talking right now....

The end result? I was able to sing nonstop the entire way home from SFO without wear ing my voice out! It may not sound like much, but for me it felt like the time I swam 1K for the first time. I had majorly plateaued before I started using this book, and always felt so restricted in what songs I could sing and how many I could last through. Now the doors are wide open; I bet even karaoke will be more fun! Care to join, anyone??

the right direction

So, earlier this week I ended up flying over to MD for half a day to go to my great-uncle's funeral; he passed away due to cancer. My parents had just flown to China when it happened, and since they couldn't fly back in time, they wanted one or more of their kids to go. All 3 of us live in CA, so deciding which of us would go was a hard choice to make.

My ultimate decision to go was the end of a rather agonizing process, which started out with extreme resistance. My inital reasons: all of us had just flown to Boston for my great-aunt's funeral a couple months ago (both were siblings of my maternal grandmother), and I was just recovering from the $700 hole that left in my wallet. (Ironically, the fact that we all went to the previous funeral meant that it would look rather bad if none or only one of us went to this one). Also, I had taken lots of vacation and plane trips already, and I was planning on more, so I didn't want to take even more time off work. Finally, the funeral was scheduled for Tuesday, and I was going to have to miss a second PME rehearsal and my drum lesson, and there was a rule (or so I thought) that if someone missed 2 PME rehearsals, they'd have to be tested by the music director to see if they were eligible to perform in the upcoming concert (there are only 3 concerts a year in the group, so it was a big deal). All these reasons were floating around in my head and made my initial reaction, "I don't see how I could possibly go."

My sister agreed to go, my brother was too busy, and we all basically decided that she would represent us all in MD. But even though all my perceived conflicts were avoided, I felt a nagging doubt, like I was making the wrong choice. I was tired, stressed out, and didn't want to just cop out with the easy choice of not going, but i didn't want to just go out of this feeling of vague guilt, either. I got the impression that my sister disapproved of my not going, but my brother said he would understand whichever choice I decided to make. That was really helpful to me.

Anyway, Catherine, in her usual wisdom, suggested I make whichever choice would allow me to wake up the next day and feel like a better person. She said that didn't necessarily mean I had to decide to go--in fact, she was worried about me causing myself undue stress in having to go through another audition-like process (she was witness to how difficult the actual audition process had been for me). Basically, she wanted me to make whichever decision would be best for me.

Best for me, according to me--this was the same thing preached in the "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" book by Stephen Covey I'd just been re-reading, a book I highly recommend, by the way. I don't have the energy to ramble about the thesis of that book right now, but essentially it introduces the idea of basing one's choices and plans on a set of principles and values that make up one's life mission, rather than on other less important, often external factors (like outside situations, and other people's expectations or opinions).

Putting 2 and 2 together, I realized that this choice of mine was riddled with bad reasons on either side. Concerns about missed rehearsals, my being perceived as flaky by my work, or PME, or my drum teacher, those were not really legitimate reasons not to go. And concerns about my extended family's expectations and judgements, or about my parents' perception of my generosity and/or selfishness, were not really legitimate reasons TO go. On the other hand, my deepest values, including wanting to show support, love, and passion to others and to myself, were the real factors at stake.

Again Catherine was a huge support to me here. She offered to help me find a way to work around the missed rehearsal by helping me figure out how to move my October MD visit so that I wouldn't have to miss a second PME rehearsal. That pretty much solved the problem of my need to take care of myself; I was willing at that point to say goodbye to the plane ticket money, and to deal with the lost sleep involved with taking the trip. At the same time, I reaffirmed my real reasons for going--I knew I would give my parents comfort in my going, because they must have felt quite bad at not being able to go themselves. I wanted to support my grandmother, who was losing her second and last sibling. I wanted my extended family to be reassured that the younger generation (my generation) has its values in place, and that when the chips were down, we recognize what's most important.

So, in the end, I was able to come to a decision that was really mine, rather than going through the motions either way and allowing myself to succumb to circumstance. And I believe this is a step in the right direction in this longest, most difficult personal struggle of mine to live fully with love as my guide.

middle voice

May I first start by saying how ridiculously busy I've been this week? I really am a serial hobbyist; sometimes I think I just need to chill out.

Anyway, to completely change the subject, I had a revelation today as I was reading "Set Your Voice Free" by Roger L-O-V-E (hah...). This purchase was my attempt to try to alleviate my anxiousness about the alto singing in PME; skimming through it at the store, I was intrigued by the so-called "middle voice" that he mentions and focuses on. Lo and behold, he was talking about the transition area between the chest and head voice, which is supposed to have some qualities of both. This is exactly what I've been looking for my whole singing life! I've always had a horrible break in my chest/head transition, and the lower part of my head range has always been too weak for my liking, but I can't just sing all this classical stuff in chest.

I actually kind of intuitively came across my middle voice when trying to experiment with how to make my head voice sound more "chesty" and less weak, but it never occurred to me to try and build up this middle voice--that it was something definable and improveable. I haven't read through his exercises for building up the middle voice yet, but I'm really excited to try it! I'll let you know if it works.

I guess that's what I get for never actually taking voice lessons.

PME

Hello again.

I just got back home from a vocal workshop for a singing group I just joined, the Pacific Mozart Ensemble. I auditioned a couple weeks ago and was accepted--woohoo! The workshop was fun; I left feeling a bit concerned though, because I'm singing alto, and I've always sung soprano in the past. I'm used to singing in my chest voice for pop/soul/R&B styles of music, but not for choir material. I don't think I was singing correctly. What to do?? I thought of taking a few voice lessons, but I don't want to add anything more to my already plump schedule. Anyway, we'll see what happens. I'm just glad to be singing again!

Still alive. For the next day at least.

I am, really. Won't post anything substantial though until sometime after tomorrow--my honey is leaving to the East Coast for a long, long time...:*( and I'm gonna spend as much time with her as possible before she leaves. Waah! (the leaving part, not the spending time part.) TTFN

SBTB, part 2

I was going to respond to Chris's comment on my last post with another comment, but didn't want this link to get passed by. Yes, my friends, the Hot Sundae music video from the caffeine pill episode:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZoYEVAOsgw&search=hot%20sundae

Someone mentioned the adult swim showing of it in the comments; apparently they altered the video slightly when they broadcasted it there.

Okay, that show has taken up enough of my blog for the time being. Unless, of course, I find another video from it worth posting. Heh.

why 'saved by the bell' was always so painful, yet so good

If you grew up in my era of childhood, you probably already understand the paradox of the TV series "Saved By The Bell." The show was, let's face it, super cheesy. Behind their at-the-time cool hair swoops and neon-colored clothes, their afternoon-TV personalities were at best, watered-down versions of reality. You knew Zack caused trouble but would never do anything too scandalous, and that his friends would always forgive him or pay him back in some cute way. At worst, the characters would get even cheesier and try to promote some important moral message in a very simplistic manner (remember the "There's no hope with dope" episode?).

And yet....

Somehow I could not pull away from it, and even got joy out of watching it when the reruns would air in the afternoons after the series ended (and was replaced with the spin-off "The College Years," which I could not stand watching most of the time). I don't think I quite understand why I still liked the show. Maybe it was because one of the only other choices at the time was Full House, which upped the cheese factor by 2000% and did away with most of the coolness factor. Or maybe it was because, in Zack's little watered-down, afternoon-TV world, he was actually cool. Somehow the show made me believe that Zack, despite being a trouble maker, was essentially a good person, and therefore I liked to see his friends forgive him of his faults and occasionally teach him a lesson. Or maybe it was just the hilarity of hearing the studio audience yell "oooooh!" every time he hit on Kelly or Slater pumped iron at random times on the set.

In any case, it's time for me to stop pretending that the purpose of this post is a deep, philosophical one. I really just think this clip on YouTube of Slater dancing is ridiculously funny. But it does demonstrate pretty well the often failed attempts to convey coolness on the show. HAHA!

say it, girl!!

http://colours.mahost.org/org/notenough.html

'nuf said.

goin home!

i'm sick AGAIN, so i'll make this short and head to bed. just wanted to let you Maryland people know that i'll be heading over there for a few days in late april! i'll be there the 23rd to the 26th, to be exact, and then i'll be in the jersey/NY area again for the rest of that week. i know i was just there a few weeks ago, but hey, this is what you gotta do in long distance relationships. and maybe i can see yelena this time!

alright, time for nyquil and groggy, wonderful sleep.

1K, baby

i'd like to take a moment to announce that i swam 1000 yards freestyle for my first time ever! i know it's not a lot to many swimming folk, but it's my personal best so far. i was on my high school swim team for a bit back in the day, but i was always in the slow lane, and didn't really know or learn good stroking, kicking, or breathing technique there, and was pretty much in it because i wanted some exercise and because my friend Yelena was on the team. every practice was sooo painful, i couldn't ever finish the workouts the coach gave us, and i h-a-t-e-d swim meets (even though i usually only swam in the exhibition lane, 50-free).

so this time, i took a fresh outlook on the whole thing. i started swimming twice a week at the local community center, conveniently located next door to me. catherine, who also swam in high school (but who was actually very good at it), gave me some really useful technique pointers. i go at my own pace, pushing myself enough to improve, but not enough to make me unwilling to swim again. and i must say, i have a much healthier relationship with swimming than i had the first time around. after a few weeks, i swam 500 yards non-stop for the first time ever, and what amazed me the most about it was that i felt great afterwards! i had totally found a good rhythm and breathing pattern that worked for me, and i was instantly hooked. just a few more visits brought me to this past friday, and my 1000 yards. it was totally a Zen-like experience, just like the feeling that long-distance runners say they experience, which turns them into running addicts. i know i could've swum even longer, but i knew the pool was closing soon and i didn't want to overstay my welcome. very, very fun.

thank you, good people

I just went to visit my girlfriend in the Wilson School at Princeton, and had a timely dose of fun times and awesome people. One night Catherine and her housemates threw a party in my honor (sheesh, wouldn't you feel lucky if you had parties thrown for them just for weekend visits? Thanks hon! Kristy says you spoil me, which is true I admit), and I got to meet some of her ridiculously amazing and down-to-earth friends there. I'd have felt a little intimidated by all these multi-lingual, accomplished, and selfless people if they hadn't been so welcoming and engaging.

That was Friday night; Saturday was just as well, as I went up to NYC to see some of my closest EP friends there, plus Catherine's friend who I also got to bond with in Peru last summer. AND totally unexpectedly, I saw some other friends that night at a birthday shindig that I haven't seen since graduation.

All in all, I felt surrounded for the first time in a while by lots of awesome, politically conscious, real people.

...and i thought princeton was already too conservative 7 years ago

I am disgusted. Thoroughly sickened. Sure, it's no news that conservatives and the Christian right are total hypocrites for staking their claim on morality while simultaneously seeking to further their own monetary or even racist agendas. But in perusing the website for The Nation for the first time, I came across a cover story detailing a wealthy, stealthy conservative agenda to take over the world of academia. Funny, even back when I visited Princeton as a prospective college in '99, before the Madison Project actually took off there, according to this article, I decided against it because the student body seemed too conservative for my likings. Hah, I guess that just shows how much of a polar opposite I am to those crazies that are taking over Princeton / running our country. :/

I mean, how can they claim to be moral Christians when, according to the Bible, they'd be the worst out of anyone? Okay, they're claiming that their pro-life stance is a result of their desire to preserve life at all costs; so why are they pro-death-penalty? If they claim that God is supposed to pass judgement on everyone, then who are they to a) determine when someone should be put to death, and b) put them to death? Why are they all so damn rich, and believe they can or should coerce people to correct moral values using their financial power? Isn't there a Biblical saying about it being easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to go to Heaven? And I'm tired of people conflating "traditional" values with "correct, moral" ones. Sure, maybe things seemed nicer and more proper to white people in the '50's, but oh yeah, they were mostly racist and sexist too. And a lot of the actions of conservatives in power in this country appear to be no different. They cut taxes for the rich (mostly whites), while removing funding for programs to help the poor (mostly people of color). They remove protections for working-class people and immigrants, while at the same time profiting from their exploitation. They just so happen to wage wars on countries with lots of oil. Oh, did they not notice that they had no evidence of a tie between Iraq and Al Qaeda? Maybe all brown-skinned people look the same to them...honest mistake, eh?

Yeah, they're right, our country is becoming more and more morally bankrupt. But the worst offenders are the people with the most money. Yay, capitalism. Let's see, if you build a system in which financial superiority results in success and power, is it surprising that the greediest people will end up on top?? It ain't rocket science, folks.

Anyway, frustrating diatribes aside, I really liked the article. It's really refreshing to see such a cogent and comprehensive criticism of the underpinnings of conservatism. Reading things like that are a huge step up from listening to frustrated but underinformed fellow student activists, or listening to politicians spout rhetoric on NPR. Of course, I have lots of respect for both activists and NPR, of course, having been and worked with the first and listened to the second almost every day. But as a first-time The Nation reader, I was impressed by its depth of analysis and evidentiary support (woah, been dating a law student for too long). I definitely plan to continue seeing what its writers have to say in the future.

baboons

...randomly watched Animal Planet this morning and saw a rerun of "Growing Up Baboon," about a baboon conservation in South Africa. It's amazing how much care they are able to give the baboons, to the point of being strikingly like raising a family and setting them off into the world. Plus the little ones were so cute! They actually had diapers on and were being bottle-fed. Maybe I've just grown a soft spot for babies. *sigh*

i know, i know

so, it's been a long time. i'm not going to try to make up for lost time, because the amount of time that would take would probably deter me from ever blogging again.

i've been really, really angsty the past week, a symptom of the cycle i have perpetually been going through since i left high school and began college: every once in a while, i'll hit a really big low and wonder what my purpose in life is, or more accurately, whether there is one at all. it probably sounds very melodramatic, but it happens nonetheless. and now that i'm out of school and no longer have school to be at least a temporary 'purpose,' i feel it more often than not. and above all else, it's ANNOYING!! :I

catherine has a hunch that maybe i feel this way because i no longer participate in hobbies, causes, or what have you, that i'm really invested in. i'll admit there's truth to that. in addition to working relatively long but more or less reasonable hours at my full-time job, i also do tutoring at DCP on mondays *and* tuesdays, drum lessons also on tuesdays, yoga on wednesdays, and swimming on saturdays, and i haven't been doing any of these things for more than a couple months. and on top of that, i still stay awake at times thinking about all the other things i want to do that i don't have time for, like teaching myself more math, reading lots of books, learning to improv on the keyboard, running, cooking, singing, biking, etc....basically i want to do everything. and catherine's argument is that since i haven't been doing any of these things for very long, none of them will give me the sense of reward or joy that i used to get while singing with EP or playing the piano pre-college; i'd done those things for so long that it meant more to do them. furthermore, she says that if i continue jumping around among hobbies, i'll always be chasing satisfaction, and it will always remain elusive.

i do see the wisdom in this, and even just trying to write out all the things i want to do makes it seem obvious that i am searching for something. at the same time, though, what spins me into my cycle of depression is the realization that most of these things i want to do are just that: things. most of them diminish at some point to being nothing more than interesting hobbies, amusing pastimes. what i really value most is love, trying to become the most loving person i can so that i can make a positive difference in people's lives. and not only the hobbies, but even my job seem very far away from that right now. okay, i thought of a cheesy analogy, and now i have to write it: it's like Belle in the disney adaptation of Beauty and the Beast, where she sings, "there must be more than this provincial life." don't you hate it when you think of corny things like that, and then you just can't help saying them? okay, maybe it's just me....quiet, you! oh god, i'm so clichée.

anyhow, whatever it is i'm looking for, i don't think i've found it yet. i'm not so much in the throes of despair at the moment, having successfully (i hope) pulled myself out of that stage. but i still have this big question mark in my mind. in the meantime, i'm going to stop blogging at the office and get my butt home already.

*cough* *cough*

boo-hoo. i'm sick, BUT--i got to work from home today, which was rather pleasant...i love my job!

i also just installed Photoshop Elements on my NEW home computer, HP Pavilion, 1G RAM, 2.2 GHz AMD processor, baby!! thank you mommy and daddy!! it's a huge step up from my old Dimension 2100 with a Celeron processor and no extensibility. Okay, and before I sotp myself from sounding like a geek, I have to brag about Photoshop Elements too: finally a program that actually has all the features I want! And makes it so easy to share photos...I finally posted 2 sets of pics that I've been meaning to send for ages. I love it love it love it. Whoever works at that company must be an absolute GENIUS...nod, nod, wink, wink.

(begin non sequitur)

new year's was pretty fun, went down to West Hollywood in LA with my girlfriend and some other friends. also got to have dinner with one of my long-lost a cappella friends who now lives across the country in NY...*sniff*. Korean BBQ, karaoke, club...who knew I was so happenin'? Or so Asian, for that matter....hehe.

It was the first time I didn't do the 'sit around the TV with family and/or friends and toast at midnight' thing, possibly because it was the first time i didn't do new year's in MD. ;) no offense, my lovely MD friends, but honestly, do you disagree?? But seriously though, the change was a bit bizarre. I always felt like there was ceremony around new year's, and it was a time of contemplation, celebration, appreciation, etc. etc. But this year, call me crazy but it's hard to feel ceremonious when you're surrounded by loud music, party lights, random people with LA-ish clothes on, with a caramel apple martini in your hand that just got half-spilled all over your jeans. not that it wasn't fun, but...was it new year's? i guess since i'm one year older, it must have been. (ah...wise cindy moment.)

(end rambling)