Ever had one of those days where you just feel blah? Well, today is one of those days for me…

Anyhow, I’ll leave you all with my favorite song of the moment. I was fortunate enough to have met Wyclef Jean earlier this week and this song really spoke to me. Listen to the lyrics…

It’s Monday and, as usual, the weekend flew by incredibly fast and I now find myself wishing it were Friday all over again. It’s weird how those two days always seem so short in comparison to the weekdays, perhaps it’s because I allow myself to just waste away and because I find so much joy in that that time flies. Regardless, drudgery has once again reared its ugly head and I must force myself to be productive once again, oh the pain!



This past weekend was interesting. On Friday, we hit up Dragon and my new friend, Jessica, joined us.







It was really fun, but we all were wiped out by the time midnight rolled around and so we decided to leave by 12:30. Saturday was a day of reunions for me. I got to catch up with two of my old roommates from Berkeley, Josh and Justin. I hadn’t really sat down and chatted with either for a while, so it was nice to finally touch bases with each other and get the update on what had been going on in their lives. Josh and I had dimsum at Oceans in the Richmond and Justin and I chatted over some sushi from Yum Yum Fish and Charlie’s Angels. After that, Brian and his fellow Rooters came by and we had an impromptu house party. Alcohol flowed freely and many memories were made and captured by my iSight. Here are a couple of examples to whet your appetite and show you what you were missing.











Sunday was pretty mellow. I woke up at 11am, but didn’t really get up to start my day until a couple of hours later. Instead, I decided to explore this wonderful site that my friend, Steven, sent to me. It’s almost better than TiVo. By 1pm, I was ready to start my day, so I made down to Bed, Bath & Beyond to pick up some dryer balls so I could wash my comforter and dry them effectively. As usual, I found myself purchasing additional items that I hadn’t intended on buying. There were some curtain rods that were on sale and I had been thinking of finally putting up some curtains in my room, so I thought, why not? I still haven’t put up the curtains yet, but I’m planning to go to the fabric store to pick out the pattern I want in the coming days. I’m going to try to Martha Stewart the curtains and make them myself, we’ll see how that turns out (fingers crossed).



Well, that was my weekend. Here’s to Friday arriving sooner than later!

Because it’s almost Friday and it’s a great way to put a smile on your face, I give you…

Ms. SWAN!!!!

Last Sunday, Bubba and I finally came face to face with our uninvited house guest. I’ve named him Touille in honor of his famous animated uncle, Ratatouille…

So last Saturday, as I was slumbering away and having nightmares about work, I reached a point in my dream where I was sitting at my desk typing. Yes, I was dreaming about work–a sign that I’m in dire need of a vacation. In any event, despite my subconscious state, the sound of typing just seemed a little bit too real and I gradually awoke to the sound of typing, or at least what I thought was typing, in my room. I lifted up my head to see who else was in my room and discovered no one. As I did this though, the typing stopped. I figured that I was probably just still in my dream or something, so I went back to sleep. Just as my head hit the pillow though, I heard the typing again. At first, I thought it was some kind of ghostly entity in my room, but then I came to my senses and started weeding out all the different possibilities for the noise, finally arriving on a mouse. I got up and started moving some items in the room, but to no avail. I was a little paranoid at this point, but I decided to just go back to bed and that was the end of that; or so I thought…

The next day, I hear the scratching noise again. I get up to go to the bathroom and when I get back to my room, I discover that a present had been left for me: a piece of candy had been chewed through, and the remnants of the shredded wrapper were still there. I wasn’t really alarmed at this point, mainly because I had already conceded to the fact that we had a mouse problem and that there really wasn’t much that I could do about that. In any event, I was quite awake after receiving this confirmation of his existence, but I didn’t pay too much attention to it and decided to just go about my daily routines and check my email. As I was doing so, a little black puffball shot across the room in my peripheral vision. I stopped typing and just looked towards that particular corner of my room. A couple of seconds later, he ran behind my bed and got himself cornered. At this point, my adrenaline levels were pumping and I was seriously freaked out. Let me make it clear now that I am NOT a fan of mice, or any kind of rodent for that matter. I grabbed my Cal umbrella and started banging on the adjacent wall to Bubba’s room to wake him up so we could capture this critter. I kept yelling his name and banging on the wall for what seemed to be almost 5 minutes and he eventually crept out to see what all the commotion was about. A hanger, flashlight, bag of coins, postal tube, some ingenuity, and about 45 minutes later, we had the pesky intruder. No worries, for all you PETA people out there, we disposed of him properly and he was quite delicious! Ok, not really, we set him free in Golden Gate Park, and he should be enjoying his freedom now.

the culprit

As we were driving to drop Touille off at the park, I was contemplating keeping the little bugger as a pet seeing as how we had kind of bonded through the whole stressful ordeal. I thought about how it’d be interesting to have a mouse for a pet, and he did look kind of harmless. Then I came to my senses and realized that as cute as he may be, he’d still poop and I’d be the one who’d have to clean up after him. Additionally, I’m sure his family probably wouldn’t appreciate seeing their offspring locked up either, so in the end, I’m happy with my decision. So creepy critters beware! For just when you think you’ve lost us after your nibbling feast, Bubba and I will be there!

So the past couple of weekends have been rather eventful, but I’ve been quite lazy about blogging about them, so I figured now would be as good a time as any to start back up again. I’ll start with this past weekend for now…

On Friday, I worked from home, and for those of you who know me, I loooooooved every minute of it. I’m a hermit at heart and any excuse I can find to stay at home, I’ll definitely utilize. It was great being able to work in my PJs, and while I can get away with that in the office as well, not having to commute to work also made the day all the sweeter. After a very productive work 10 hour work day, I drove on down to Menlo Park to celebrate Sarah’s 23rd birthday at Shiok!. In addition to the company, the food was awesome. I’d highly recommend the fragrant chicken if you get a chance to check the place out. The roti was good as well as it was complemented nicely with a curry sauce. It was nice to have Singaporean food again and definitely made me miss S’pore even more. Hopefully, I’ll be able to go visit this year. Back to the birthday though. Here are some pics from the dinner…

All of us at Shiok!

Google love!

Stanford peeps

the birthday girl

aww, yay! it’s Lucy and Chris

So after dinner, we headed over to Suite 181 for some clubbing. Now for those of you who’ve never heard of Suite 181, it’s a straight club located in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. Again, for those of you who know me, I’m not really a fan of straight clubs. Why, you ask? Read on…

When we got to the club, it was about 11:30pm, so still relatively early by clubbing standards, but it was still pretty empty. As the night progressed, the club would eventually fill up a little more, but despite the increase in body count, the quality of the crowd still remained relatively dismal. Ok ok, I’ll be nice, there were a couple of people that were cute/pretty there, but they don’t really count since they were part of our group. That said, Ev and I decided to hit the booze hard and fast so we could let the alcohol do for the people what their DNA couldn’t. Despite our consumption of Liquid Cocaine, Patrone, et al. (they were all quite weak, or maybe we’re just alchy’s now), the crowd still looked rather uninteresting. We decided to dance, but the DJ totally sucked. Not only did he loop the songs 3 times over, he also had no comprehension of a smooth transition whatsoever. He’d play a hip hop song, then he’d move on to some oldie, then he’d move on to some pop song, all within the span of about 4-5 minutes because the fool didn’t know how to play a song in its entirety. So just as we were getting into a song, he’d switch it over to some lame song and the crowd would disperse off the dance floor. Soooo lame. Speaking of lame, so too were the supposed “skillz” of some of these “playaz”…

Example 1: Ev and I are dancing. As we’re doing so, Mr. “I’m gonna pretend like I’m posing for a portrait while walking around like my legs are uneven” begins circling around us like a hawk eyeing its prey, except he’s no hawk; on the contrary, he’s nothing more than a pigeon. Anyhow, as he’s circling, he stops at various checkpoints to vogue some more for us, as well as to check out another angle of Ev. Eventually, he positions himself behind her and begins to creep up on her thinking that he can just start freaking her since he’s within proximity of her. Then comes…THE BLOCK! Yes, the cock block! I pull Ev in and we turn up the heat on this pigeon and he eventually walks away with his tail between his legs.

Example 2: Again, Ev and I are dancing. There wasn’t much to do there beyond dancing and drinking, especially since people watching was a lost cause. So along comes Mr. “I’m suffering from Alpha Male Syndrome and an inferiority complex so I’m gonna overcompensate and smack Ty each time I see him to try to prove that I’m a man”. He starts talking to Ev as we’re dancing and essentially cuts in between our dance. He tries to “dance” with Ev, but really it just looked like he was doing an interpretative dance of a weeping willow. Again, Ev and I crank up the heat and we send seizing pigeon #2 back from whence he came.

The moral of these examples: Don’t come at my girl with your weak sauce because you will get BLOCKED! Neanderthals and narcissists need NOT apply!

Ok, here are more pics from clubbing…

Ev and Sarah tearing it up on the table!

the trio!

Ev and me: that’s right, don’t mess
with us!

circle of friends!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH!

My name is Ty, and I’m addicted to Facebook…

Here’s the latest cool application I just added, the Friend Wheel. It generates a visual of all of your friends and how they’re connected. Wheeee!
See if you can find yourself!

[edit] d’oh! The application can only accommodate up to 400 friends, so some people are missing. Sorry! I still love you if you’re missing!

On this, the eve of Pride weekend, I just wanted to take a brief moment out of my day to share a very important message and video…

HAPPY PRIDE!

I know I’m a couple of weeks late with this, but the issue warranted a post, regardless of how late it is. Last week, as I was reading through the articles that my friend, Will, had posted on Facebook, I came across an article about honor killing and how a 17 year old Kurdish girl was stoned to death because she had run away to marry a Muslim man and convert to his religion. As if just reading the article wasn’t horrific enough, technology blessed us with the opportunity to witness the barbaric atrocity first hand via camera phones. To say that the images of Du’a being humiliated and stoned to death was harrowing is an understatement and simply does her cruel murder absolutely no justice whatsoever. She screamed and plead for mercy, but those righteous and cowardly men showed her none. Not a single man in that crowd of hundreds was willing to stand up for her, not even the police. They stood by and watched the cowardly savages prey upon the defenseless 17 year old girl and recorded it on their camera phones instead. You know what the sad part is, her family is directly responsible for her murder. Her cousins brought her into that gauntlet of hate and savagery, and they murdered and humiliated her. No, it wasn’t an honor killing, it was a murder. There is NO honor in attacking a defenseless person, PERIOD. In case you haven’t seen it, here’s a VERY watered down version covered by CNN. More graphic clips can be found here…

Now, I don’t want to pass judgment on other people’s religions, especially since I don’t know much about the Yezidi, but I think this whole idea of honor killing is absolutely absurd. I was never a fan of organized religion, and I sincerely doubt I’ll ever become one, especially in lieu of events such as these, but how do you honestly justify killing someone in cold blood just to show your loyalty to a religion? Is it actually written in their scriptures that they must murder and torture all dissidents? Are these religious zealots that mad that they’d sacrifice and torture their own blood just to appease an unknown God? I don’t know, but that sounds rather inane to me. Oh, and before the Westerners chime in about how uncivilized “those” people are, Paul brought up a good point while we were having lunch today. Although Western countries may not be as overt and barbaric in their crimes against humanity, they certainly aren’t the exceptions. Far from it actually. Just think of all the innocent lives we’ve killed in Iraq thus far in the name of “liberation”, or the persecution of the Jews, Japanese, and Muslims; or even the rape and pillage of the Vietnamese and Cambodians; etc. The list goes on. We are NOT an exception. I know there are some people out there who will say that there is no comparison between us and them, but I beg to differ. The fact that we’re a supposedly democratized society does not exempt us from all the human rights abuses we’ve covertly committed and/or are committing. At the end of the day, we’re all still humans, and believe me, that’s certainly nothing to be bragging about….

What would you say if someone told you that your sexual identity and everything related to it is gross? That you can dance with other guys, but only in private. That you can kiss, but only in private. That you can hold hands and love, but again, only in private…

WHAT IS THIS?! THE 19TH FUCKIN’ CENTURY?!  AND WHERE THE FUCK ARE WE?! Oh wait, that’s right, the United States of Jesusland. The last comment aside though, it really frosts my cookies that despite all the sacrifices and progress we’ve made as a community that there are still people out there who suffer from internalized homophobia. It’s one thing if you’re heterosexual and you’re homophobic because then I’d just chalk it up to ignorance, but come on people, if you’re queer, accept it and move on. No, I’m not saying that you have to fan those fiery flames of faggotry (not that there’s anything wrong with that by the way), but you also don’t have to help perpetuate heterosexist society’s hatred for us either…

Queer people are not any different from heterosexual people. We may have more of an affinity for rainbows, but who wouldn’t?! That shit is beautiful after a nasty storm! In all seriousness though, we’re all capable of doling out and receiving equal intensities of love and pain just like heterosexual people, and more importantly, let’s not neglect the clear and obvious common denominator–we’re all human! No, contrary to what Fred Phelp(s)-ians believe, queer people are not an inferior race of people. We are not second class citizens of humanity and I refuse to be treated as such. If heterosexual couples are going to show public displays of affection towards one another in the forms of holding hands and/or kissing, then I’ll be damned if I won’t do the same damn thing. I won’t go so far as to publicly fornicate as that’s against the law for all, but should legislation ever come to pass that heterosexual people are allowed to do so, then I reserve that right as well…

The point I’m trying to make here regarding internalized homophobia is that people are more than welcome to stay closeted if that floats their boat. I understand that there can be socio/religious/cultural/professional implications if their sexual identity is revealed, but in the same way that they relegate their sexual identity to the private realm, so too should their hatred/internalized homophobia be relegated to that same space. Our society has enough ugliness and hate in it, we don’t need to add internalized homophobia to destroy all the progress we’ve made in the past couple of decades…

As a final note, don’t ever fucking tell me to “get over it.”  I’ve encountered and survived bashings, being bullied, and being ridiculed with derogatory statements, so it’s not for me to get over. I’M GAY AND I’M FUCKING PROUD OF IT!  Queer people have been oppressed and victimized long enough, so if some people can’t deal with their own insecurities and self-hatred, then that’s their problem and they really need to start acting their age instead of their shoe size. Being gay is a gift. It allows me to have friends who love me for me unconditionally, and beyond that, WE’RE FUCKIN’ FABULOUS! 

I’m now 25 years 15 days 23 hours and 16 minutes old, and I think it’s time for an update, a la photo vomit that is…

So to start my birthday off, Fred treated Paul and I to dinner at Le Colonial, then since it was Friday night, we hit up Dragon and pretty much took over the dance floor. Here are some G-rated pics. YoYo has some of the more scandalous ones that I’ll post up once I get the files from her, haha…

dinner at Le Colonial with Fred

Paul and I at Le Colonial

Paul, Fred, me, and YoYo at Dragon

Paul, Fred, and YoYo: yes, they’re G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S!

Paul, Fred, and me

So I got pretty wasted that night and we didn’t get home until about 3 or 4am. Needless to say, Paul and I passed out once we got home, but somehow, he was able to get up at 8am Saturday morning. I wasn’t sure what he was up to, but he had apparently planned something for us, and it required me getting up at 8am as well. He was finally able to get me out of bed and we made our way down to ‘Great America’. Well, at least that’s where he told me we were going. After we passed Santa Clara, he finally told me we were going to Monterey, but he didn’t tell me what we were going to do there. It wasn’t until we turned the corner that I saw the sign ‘MONTEREY SKY DIVING’ that I realized I was in for the surprise of my life…

HOLY SHIT WE’RE GONNA SKY DIVE! WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

omg, they’re preparing the chutes!

look! he’s not even scared!

aww, he’s so excited!

WHEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

aww, it’s my Superman!

let’s FLY!

So after the skydiving, we headed back to SF. Paul wasn’t feeling well, so I figured we’d just take it easy the rest of the day. Well, I guess I was the only one that had that in mind, haha. Once we got back to SF, I was pleasantly greeted by the best set of friends a guy can have. We met up at Golden Gate Park first (I’ll post up pics for that later), then we headed over to the apartment where we had a rousing night of karaoke revolution…

Rui and Choi-Yee are workin’ their mics

yes, they feel the karaoke spirit!

Eve and August showin’ their range!

YoYo: “Touchdown!”

we’d like to take this moment to thank our proud sponsors: Kit Kat Green Tea, and now back to our regularly scheduled program…

Paul gets in a practice round beforehand

and the sing off is on!

sooooooo confused!

the crowd doesn’t know what to expect!

the perfect combo!




Brian: “I swear I’ve only had one drink”

yay Joe!

it’s EEEEEEVE!

aww, love!

aww, more love!

So that was my birthday, and yes, it was absolutely fantastic. Thank you to everyone who came, who called, sent me a card, a text message, and/or emailed me. I’m incredibly grateful to have you all in my life and your friendships are honestly the best gifts I could ever receive. From the bottom of my little heart, much love and thank you all!