I decided to come home on Friday on the spur of the moment. Paul was coming this weekend for his swearing in ceremony and I figured it was a great opportunity to kill two birds with one stone as I hadn't seen both Paul nor my family in a long while. I haven't seen my family since I left for China back in early July, so it's been nice to just catch up with them. Paul's also been getting situated with school in AZ, and I haven't made it out there yet, so it was a total treat for me to see him down here.

I drove down at noon on Friday and pretty much was canceling my weekend plans as I was driving down here. The drive was pretty nice. I averaged around 72 mph the entire way because I didn't want to get another speeding ticket, and the drive was quite pleasant. I didn't hit any traffic even as I entered LA county. The plan was to surprise Paul since he wasn't expecting me. He and his friend were planning to watch Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in Santa Monica, so I basically figured I'd surprise him at the show. I got to the playhouse a bit early, so I just hung out around the area until it was showtime, then enlisted a friend's help to make sure that Paul was in fact coming to the show. Once 8:25pm struck, Paul showed up to find me waiting with flowers in hand as his surprise date. Haha, I think I get more of a kick out of surprising someone than being surprised myself. After the show, he had to go to some birthday parties, and I decided to head home and surprise my family.

My time back home has been pretty relaxing and nice. I think it's good to come back home and just veg. My mom's been cooking up a storm since she has another mouth to feed now, and I've just been enjoying all the perks of being home again. My dad washed and cleaned my car and I got to tend to my plants in the garden. Yay for home!

EXCITING NEWS!!!

So my longan and wong pei seeds are growing. Here are some pics for now. I'll take better ones later...

If you haven't seen it already, here it is, Tina Fey at her best...








...and as if that weren't good enough, I'll leave her to explain why it is I'm such a die-hard Hillary supporter...

It's 2:30 in the morning and I can't seem to sleep. It's not that I'm not tired or anything, far from it actually; I just have a lot on my mind. I kind of wish I had a pensieve like the one Dumbledore had where I could empty all of my thoughts and sift through them at a later time. Wouldn't that be nice? A clean slate whenever you wanted it, untainted by the nonsense of the inept and the ignorant. I guess one could argue that's what forgetting is for, but that's just too dangerous and too much of it leads to Alzheimers, which is not a pretty sight. My grandmother had Alzheimers. Fortunately, she didn't have to suffer for very long with it. It's painful to watch someone's memory deteriorate, and even more painful, when you're part of that memory...

It's almost 11pm and I'm just now on my way home. Yes, work's been busy and it doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. I guess that's a good thing though, otherwise I'd be out of a job. It's been pretty difficult juggling work and and studying for the past year. I've been out of school for about 3 years now and it's just weird operating on this schedule again. Forcing your brain to think after it's been exhausted from 10+ hours of work each day just is not a nice thing to do to oneself. It's a little late, but I think I'm finally creeping back into student mode though, which is a good thing because this month is going to be anything BUT pretty. Work, Roots, LSAT, and apps. They're going to be my best friends for the forseeable future, whether either of us like it or not...

My mom called me today, like she does every day. Ever since I left for college, my family calls me constantly. Yes, I know what you're going to say, "they call you because they love you." I get it, but that doesn't make it any less annoying. I've been really busy at work, especially since it's the end of Q3 and I'm up for a promotion and a raise. So couple that with working on stuff for Roots and studying for the LSATs, I really don't have much time to just chit chat. My family seems to think otherwise. Most of the time, I enjoy talking to them and indulge them in a lighthearted conversation, but today just was not a good day. I was already a bit irritated from work, so that in combination with my mom's incessant voicemails and calls just made for a lead straw that broke this camel's back. They complain that I don't call enough, even though I call them at least twice, if not more, a week. On top of that, they complain that when I do call, it's usually because I need something--sooooo not true. Either way, I just can't win.

Goodness! It certainly has been a while since I last wrote an entry. Life's been rather hectic once April rolled around and will continue to be until October. I've been studying and preparing for my LSATs, which are totally not fun. In fact, it's been the bane of my existence, but it'll be all over in about 2 months. Until then though, I'll have to continue to be a hermit. Here's a quick recap (in no particular order) of what has happened since my last post though...

- Hella birthdays! I made an exception in my studying schedule so as to attend friends' birthday activities, but for some strange reason, there were an outrageously high number of birthdays and birthday parties during this time.

- Pride. Awesome as usual. Saw a lot of old friends and watched some amazing dance performances on the API Stage. Can't wait til next year!

- Work. Busy. Exhausting. Oh, and I may be sent to Australia for short term assignment. More on that later.

- In Search of Roots and the motherland. I went on an amazing journey back to China in search of my ancestral roots along with 12 other interns. We had a fantastic time! There was great food, great friends, and more importantly, great memories! I'll have a separate post for this later once I get all the pictures and what not. To sum it up, I found my paternal grandfather's village, along with 9,000 cousins. Yes, it was an adventure!

- Back to the fatherland. I got to go back to Cambodia and hit up Phnom Penh and Siem Reap again. Al hadn't been there before, so I offered to be his tour guide and travel with him there since it was his dream to visit Angkor Wat. We got into Phnom Penh first and it offered me an incredibly warm welcome. I hadn't been back in 2 years, but my friends over at the Boddhi Tree still remembered me and it was awesome to be welcomed back so warmly. Siem Reap was a blast, despite some obnoxious airport staff who tried to scam me and Al on a taxi ride. The sign clearly read $7 for a taxi into town, but the guy totally asked for $10 thinking that I totally clueless. I pointed out the sign to him and he totally got defensive and proceeded to threaten all the taxi drivers to not pay any attention to us unless we were willing to pay the $10 he was asking for. I was pissed. I hate being taken advantage of and I hate rude people, the combination of which I just cannot and will not tolerate. Al and I walked out of the airport and found a taxi out on the road instead. It turned out to be one of the best things that happened to us because Som, our taxi driver, was pretty awesome. We hired him to take us around for the 2.5 days that we'd be there, and he really did an awesome job showing us around some additional sites that I hadn't seen before. If any of you are going to Siem Reap in the future, let me know and I'll hook you up with his contact information. All in all, Cambodia was amazing yet again, and I can't wait to go back again!

- More stamps in my passport! I can now add Vietnam to my list of countries that I've traveled to. We went to beautiful Hanoi and nearly got killed (multiple times) trying to cross the street and sitting in the car. Yes, they're that crazy over there with their driving--if you can call it that. We also spent a night in Halong Bay on a junk boat--totally cool! A couple of us even slept out on the deck underneath the stars! Yeah, it was pretty awesome--until the rain came that is, then we stumbled back into our cabins for cover. Yeah, I totally had a blast and I definitely want to go back, perhaps to Saigon the next time around.

Jetlag has been a pain in the butt, but I'm slowly getting over it. I've got hours and hours of footage from the Roots trip to edit, in addition to studying for my LSATs, and working on my law school apps, so if you see a zombie in the next couple of months, you'll know why. Okie, that's it for now. Yay! I'm more or less caught up with my life. Now if I could just keep it organized and on track!

I want hair like this...

I'm on the shuttle heading home now and earlier in the evening, one of the riders asked the driver what time the shuttle would arrive at a particular stop. The shuttle driver said he didn't know, but that we'll be leaving in a couple of minutes and explained very nicely to the man the order of the stops. The rider, thinking that the driver hadn't heard him correctly, asked his question again, but now more loudly and with more vigor. The driver again responds that he doesn't know as he doesn't have the schedule in front of him, and he also can't predict what traffic will be like. Not satisfied with the answer, the rider edges on. "I said, WHAT TIME ARE WE GETTING TO CARL AND COLE?" yelled the rider thinking that an increase in volume would somehow generate the response he was looking for...

Look nimrod, just because he doesn't speak perfect English doesn't mean that he doesn't understand you! Increasing your volume won't change his answer, it just pisses off people like me who are tired of arrogant assholes like yourself who think they can demean others just to mask their own laziness and ineptitude. Every shuttle is equipped with wireless, and all you have to do is turn on your laptop and look up the schedule to get your answer. Seriously, are you that lazy and spoiled that you can't even do that for yourself?! Where's your mother? Is she still wiping your ass for you?!

Honestly people, learn some manners!

It's 5 in the freakin' morning and I'm WIDE awake! No, it's not because I'm suffering from insomnia, but rather something more obnoxious, a snoring roommate...

I'm at my company's global conference and I got paired with a random co-worker who just happens to be the loudest snorer EVER!!!! I've not gotten a wink of sleep all night and the conference goes until the end of the week. I'm soooooooooo not a happy camper right now. I even had to resort to literally sleeping in the bathroom, but even then, I can still hear him. In a word, I'm MISERABLE!

Ok, I get it, it's not intentional, but come on people...

PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GET SOME HELP!!!!!

As the country prepares for one of the most pivotal elections we've had to date, I feel the need, now more than ever, to reiterate my continuing support for Hillary Clinton. Simply put, she is the best candidate we have for the role of President. Her experience and credentials speak for themselves, and she doesn't need billowing inspirational rhetoric to convince people that she's the better candidate--no, Americans just need to wake up out of the political vertigo that Obama has thrust us into.

I've said it time and time again, Barack Obama is a great candidate. He's inspirational, personable, and oh yeah, he's wet behind the ears. Did I also mention that the sole basis of his platform is change? That's nice, but how, exactly, are you planning to accomplish this Mr. Obama? Throughout his entire campaign, Obama has left us in a cloud of hope, with little to no idea whatsoever as to where we're off to next. Unfortunately, hope means nothing if we lack direction and a clear and cogent plan of action. You've given us political vertigo Mr. Obama, and while this certainly isn't anything new, it is something we can ill afford in this, our time of crisis. Again, I don't want inspirational rhetoric, I want to know exactly how your plan to address the growing problem with Social Security isn't going to ultimately defeat itself and place the burden back on the shoulders of our younger generations? How do you really intend to pull this country out of a recession when it hits? Beyond inviting the leadership to have tea and scones with you, how do you really intend to broker peace in the Middle East? Lastly, what are you going to do for the LGBT community aside from refusing to stand beside us and deny us our human right to be treated equally and be allowed to marry? Hillary has already promised to make repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", parts of DoMA, and passage of ENDA a priority for her administration, but what are you going to do aside from treating myself and my community as tokenized 2nd class citizens just because of our sexual identity?

It's time to wake up America! I know we've all heard Obama speak, but it's time we listen to his words and see where he's planning to lead us--nowhere. Too many times in our history, we've been swayed by empty promises and inspirational rhetoric. When will we learn our lesson and begin to make these candidates accountable to us and fulfill their promises? Currently, Obama is nothing more than a simple politician to me, incapable of leading a large country, let alone the free world. What we need now isn't another politician or actor pretending he knows what he's doing, what we, and the global community need is a statesman, and Hillary is just that.