By the time I got to Bangkok for my last night before my flight home I was almost desperate for some company. Just someone I could speak some fucking English to. Those 21 hour bus rides and over night trains — no one to talk to. On the local buses I took, I was the only person that didn’t speak Lao. By the time I got to Bangkok, I was absurdly lonely. And for a big, confident, self assured gal, being absurdly lonely is…absurd.

Isaac and Kerry told me they’d gotten prettied up in Bangkok before they went back to the states. So I went to mall. I’d avoided it in Laos because I was busy looking at other things, but I do enjoy checking out malls in different countries so I went to the mall Isaac suggested. Indulged in some Thai underwear because Asian bras fit me (cause I’m Asian) and I spent less than $50 USD for 2 pairs of bras and 2 pairs of matching underwear — unheard of at Victoria’s Secret (and yet they were just as sexy).

I wore my cleanest dress. The one dress I’d brought for special occasions. The one I’d never worn before. It’s a travel dress; I bought it on sale at REI. It’s not that sexy. But at the end of the evening when I ended up at an Australian pub across the street from my hotel (only cause I knew there’d be English spoken there and they were playing MotoGP on one of their big screens), drinking Jamie’s all alone…the one guy who finally talked to me said he thought I was a Thai whore until he heard my English.

I guess part of me has to be proud that I could even pass for a Thai whore.

I’m looking forward to many things on the trip: getting away, seeing lots of new things, experiencing a completely different culture, tasting new food, walking endlessly, rain, heat, meeting new people, seeing new animals (if I’m lucky — you know how I love the furry things), and getting to know the couple I’m traveling with even better. I’ve never spent more than a few hours at a time with them so I’m immensely curious how this will turn out. I’m fairly certain it’ll be easy and fun, but I think the unknown is inordinately attractive to me and having never traveled like this — so intimately with so few people — it will be interesting. I’ve traveled solo and I’ve traveled with significant others and with large groups, but never by myself with another couple.

Other than yoga and the vaccinations I got, preparations include getting legal docs in order in case I die in Laos. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to and I think if my mother hadn’t died so suddenly and we hadn’t gone through probate, I wouldn’t even be thinking about it, but I am. Unlike any other trip I’ve taken before, this time I’ve got an emergency contact list to send to close friends and family which includes any information they might need in case I die like the person who has my will and the person who’d know about all my financials.

Another thing I’ve realized is that when you go away for a month and you’re uncertain of your accessibility to the internet, you have to figure out how to pay the bills. I’m not a big fan of autopay because I hate to store my credit card credentials with any sites so I’m realizing now that I need to prepay accounts or make other arrangements.

But that’s all the boring shite. Fun preparations include getting my travel reading list together, deciding on which camera to take, downloading podcasts, and figuring out what I absolutely want to see during my month in Laos. Goodbye internet, goodbye phone. I won’t miss you one bit!

One of them would swim up to me, popping her head out of the water and just look at me for half a second before going away. Then she’d come back and pop up out of the water in front of me and look at me again. As if I wasn’t already in love with her, she kept coming back. She retrieved toys off the floor of her tank and brought them up to show me. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.

I watched them doing all their mundane activities like grooming and sleeping and was completely and utterly fascinated. One of them slept floating on her back with her little teddy bear face to the sun, sucking on her hand. I wish I’d taken a photo.

Today, we stopped by Lemos Farm in Half Moon Bay. I’ve always wanted to visit and even though I lived 10 minutes from there for a short period of time, this was my first time there. There’s no admission to enter the farm so you can go and walk around for free and enjoy the Halloween decorations. I was enamored of the goats. They would come up to you when you stood at the fence and poke their heads out and make that little goat sound. Their chins are so soft. They wanted to suck and bite on my fingers and eat my clothes. I was in goat attention heaven.

I cleaned out the guest room the other day and happened to run into a card from an ex-boyfriend. It was so sweet and made me think fondly back to that person. I have no connection with him anymore. We didn’t stay in touch and we aren’t friends but for a few moments I felt affection for him again.

But it’s the past in the present — do I really need that? Do I really care to remember those times? What difference would it make if I never remembered them again?

The thing is that I have an awful memory so I probably won’t remember those times without the physical reminders — the ticket stubs, the journal entries, the cards I save in shoeboxes. I found a small photo of my son from when he was just a baby — a cutout of his head I must’ve meant to use for some craft or photo album. It was just the head, but I remember distinctly the photo it came from and it took me back to his babyhood. Nowadays I look at him and there’s no trace of that baby in him. He’s way too old and mature to spark that memory in me. But that’s what the photo albums are for.

I need to be a better purger of stuff. Because it’s not the things that you miss, it’s the memories that you associate with those things. And maybe you’re afraid without them those memories will disappear too — at least I am. But maybe if my memories only surface when I look at certain things, they’re not really worth recalling?

Me and Ed at Do Re Mi singing our hearts out

So we finally had our karaoke night that we’ve been talking about for like a year. And it was way less painful than I expected. In fact, it was fun the entire time. I think Ed or someone just started singing as soon as we got into our room and we were off. Then we were fighting over microphones and songs…no, actually there wasn’t any fighting, but there was lots of singing with and without mics. My favorite was “Dick in a Box” by Ed and Isaac — I wish they would perform that at every get together of ours! Sadly, the photos didn’t come out that great. I wanted to post the cute one of me and Ineke singing “I Kissed a Girl” on either side of Ed while he’s taking a swig off a flask but it was a little blurry. Instead you can enjoy my tonsils. I don’t even know what we were singing, but boy am I into it.

Do Re Mi was an interesting venue. You rent a room with a karaoke machine in it. It’s Korean — you can tell by all the Korean text I can’t read. There’s no bouncing ball over the words to help you time your singing to songs you don’t know so well. It just lights up the word at the speed you’re supposed to go. And the next line is above the line you’re singing. I found that a little weird. One of my other favorite moments in the room: Jess tearing down a wall light in the karaoke room. It took two men to fix it.

We went back to The Bar on Mission afterwards. One of us girls said something about not liking her body (wasn’t me!). And one of our male friends, god bless his soul, said something to the effect of, oh dear, if you girls only knew that i’d lick rancid butter off of any of you. Which I interpretted to mean you’re crazy. you girls are all crazy about your bodies cause you’re all so hot i’d lick nasty rotten food off of any of your bodies just so i could put my tongue on you.

Then it was on to my house where we set off all my smoke detectors and filled my living room with smoke at about 2 in the morning. Isaac says “You’ve never used the fireplace?! You’re breaking my heart.” Mike says “Fire?” I say “I have duraflames!” Light fire. Mike examines the flue. No one’s really sure if it’s open or not. The fire going in the fireplace smells like…melting plastic. Jess goes “cough cough”. Smoke detectors activate so we disassemble them all. Minutes drag on…we end up kiling the fire with a fire extinguisher. Fun while it lasted. This morning my entire living room was covered in ash.

So why didn’t any of us want the bouquet? One of us was just gun shy about marriage — she ended up happily married (just recently). One of us is unhappily married. Two of us quickly disentangled ourselves from our pending commitment errors — one of us at the very wedding where the unenthusiastic bouquet toss took place.

Every time I hang out with my friends lately, I find myself wondering how much of their relationship status affects mine. I’ll bet that if they were all single, I would probably be more inclined to stay so. Not to say that I’m in a relationship just because my friends are, but that their lives, given our closeness, can’t but affect me to some degree. I see their intimacy and happiness, and their flaws and strains, and my gut no longer recoils from it — the thought of spending forever with one person (or at least the foreseeable future) — in fact it seems potentially worth giving up my freedom for.

Two of our closest friends got married this weekend. It was a beautiful and touching ceremony — they had a close friend marry them, they had close friends read at the wedding, then of course, the traditional best man and father of the bride speeches. I guess none of that would be interesting if you didn’t know them, but since I do and know them well, I found it wonderful and sweet.

Another close friend lost someone close to her this weekend, too. I never know what to say to people when they’re going through something that raw. And I never really knew what to say to people who would say nice things to me when my mother’s death was still new. My heart breaks for her.

On the shuttle ride home while I was thinking about all this turmoil and change this past weekend, I couldn’t help but think how often the start of something is tied to the end of something else and warm memories blend in with heartbreak and maybe that’s a good thing. My mom died the day after my sister’s birthday so forever those two things are tied together. Our friend will remember her grandma’s passing on every one of our friends’ anniversaries. I think each year it gets easier to focus a little more on the birthday, but the death will always be there.

Every night this week I’ve run through the same ritual — come home from work, walk through the entire flat to make sure there are no murderers or thieves hiding in any of the rooms, get a drink and go to bed (not to sleep but to watch tv or work on my laptop until I pass out). This is my version of moping. I don’t want to see anyone or talk to anyone. I just want to be in my bed.

The other night this same friend (after I told him how I’d been spending my nights) said, Oh I get it — you’re in the living room because you’re pretending you still live in a studio apartment! You moved into a studio with “extra” closet space! Actually I moved into a two bedroom flat.

Every time I come up the stairs to my flat, I think ahead to how I have to walk through the entire place before I can get comfortable. But I realized that I must’ve done the same thing in my last place — it’s just that all I had to do then was to walk through the living room to the bathroom and I had seen the entire place. I’m not more anxious here; a two bedroom place just requires more walking through :)

This is one of my favorite costumes (seen early in the day):

Tucker was trashed, and Ed was trashed and sans his wife. Normally Ineke keeps him occupied and happy, and without her, he’s a little boy. The boys got into a tussle at one point and even when I know they’re messing around, I can’t stand to watch it — I can’t stand the idea that someone might get hurt. Tucker kept telling me what a good mommy I was the entire trip and I thought oh god…I’ve devolved to this…mommying my male friends.

This year there were a couple of nasty episodes — perhaps every year there is ugliness and I’ve never noticed before because I’ve been intoxicated. It makes sense that tens of thousands of drunk people must result in some nastiness. But it turned me off to the whole thing. But next year will roll around and I’m sure I’ll forget and we’ll be here again, in our dirty bathrobes, walking up the hill with a bunch of drunks and the giant floats they’re pushing into our ankles. (Pictures to come shortly).

One of the things I realized on his last trip was that one of the reasons I fight relationships is because I want to keep being one of the guys. I don’t want my boyfriend to take my place in my circle of guy friends! I don’t want to miss hanging out with them because he’s hanging out with them. I don’t like the idea that guys night out will actually only be for guys and not include me anymore.

The other thing I realized was that I’m being slowly edged out of the guy group whether I have a boyfriend or not. And after thinking about it for a while I realized that it’s been happening for a while now and I’m ok with it. I like hanging out with the girls — I actually prefer them. I was out with the boys one night last week and it was 3 of them and me (including my boyfriend) and they were talking about their bachelor party weekend and whatnot and I was bored! Partly because I’d heard all the stories before, but partly because there were no other women to goof on the men with me or to counter with bachelorette party stories with.

I don’t know why it is that as I get older I care more about my clothes and my earrings and my makeup and making aprons and photo albums and pretty little table settings. Good god, if I’d known this was what I’d turn into when I was 17, I probably would’ve cried my little heart out and tried to extinguish myself. But here I am, 17 years later and I’m having fun. And I’m a girl, goddamnit, a real honest to god girl and I never would have guessed it, but I like it.

Vegas is lights, slot machines jingling 24/7, hot women dressed in their sexiest clothes, guys trying to impress, drinking, smoking, dancing like strippers, and money blown like there’ll be no tomorrow. This is good for three days tops. In fact, a three day visit is the ideal length of time — you have at least two full nights of partying, plus a possible 3rd if you’re hardcore (which I’m not). This gives you enough time to enjoy the pool, gamble a bit, try out various restaurants, and still have enough time to rest a bit before each evening’s outing. I didn’t actually do much of any of that because I spent each day recovering from the night before — not in a sick kind of recovering — more a relaxed, sleep all day kind of recovery which was nice.

I was looking around me at the fascinating mix of people this weekend. It doesn’t matter how beautiful you are, there is always someone hotter, thinner, and younger than you in Vegas. Look at us — three cuties about to hit the town, and none of us could stop ogling the other eye candy around us — mostly women because as one cab driver said, Vegas is a place where women wear their sluttiest clothes and don’t look slutty doing it (well, he said something along those lines anyway :)

I thought Justin Timberlake said something clever when he said who came up with this idea that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? He said he was from Tenneesee and what happens in the backwoods there should stay there, but this shit that goes on in Vegas — everyone should know about that. The next night, I’m in a cab and the driver’s telling me how this thing about what happens in Vegas should stay in Vegas was the best thing ever — cause the girls just go crazy out here. I don’t know what exactly “crazy” means to him, but for me it’s letting go just a little — wearing the clothes I hardly ever wear at home, not being embarrassed about being drunk out of my mind, and dancing with my skirt hiked up to my ass with Ineke. That’s Vegas.

Favorite quote from this trip: She’s a classy broad. That’s why we bring her with us.

Recommendations from this trip:

• Forty Deuce is always a blast. The girls that dance there look like they’re having real fun, and the 3 man band is great. And I like the crowd mix.
• StripSteak had both really great food and really great service
• If you need a safety pin to pop a blister, the Logo Store has a great assortment of sundries (better than The Store in The Hotel at the Mandalay Bay).
• If you’re staying at The Hotel at Mandalay Bay and you ask for a fold out couch and they say they’ll give you one — they’re lying. They’ve lied to us twice about it now. But they will bring you up a comfy ass cot instead.

The musical was really good! We had a biggish group — eight of us, and every single one of us had a good time. We were talking about it well after we left the show — and some of us were still thinking of it today. My favorite (and possible spoilers coming up in case you don’t want to read ahead) characters were the Bad Idea Bears. Just imagine the cutest little baby puppet voices on Sesame Street giving you horrendous, unsolicited advice, then being really, really heartbreakingly sad when you don’t take it. For example: you’re depressed, your friends, the Bad Idea Bears, come to visit. In his sweet little baby voice, one says, you should hang yourself while the other one runs offstage, comes back, and in her sweetest little baby voice says (as she hands you a noose) with this piece of rope I found!. Their suggestions are so awful, but their enthusiasm is so contagious, and my goodness, you don’t want to hurt two of the cutest little baby monsters you’ve ever seen, do you?!

Ed said he heard something on the radio about how it’s supposed to be like life lessons for adults. It’s not just a parody of Sesame Street — it is Sesame Street fror adults. There are all these shows and educational programs about how to be a kid, a teen, a college student. What about when we leave college and we have all our fool headed ideas about what adulthood is like? Where are our educational programs about how to deal with our ever growing bills, or how to save money when you’re making minimum wage, or how it’s ok to have no idea what you want to do with your life even though you’re in your 30’s? What about those lessons, huh?!

Well, this show is it. It tells you straight up how a B.A. in English is a useless degree, how there’s a fine line between love and a waste of time, how everyone’s a little bit racist, depression isn’t uncommon, life is mundane, not everyone knows what their purpose in life is, the more you love someone, the more you want to kill that person, throwing pennies off super tall buildings is bad, the internet is for porn, everyone’s a little empty inside, and even well educated people can’t get a job. I feel so smart because I’m so familiar with all these lessons — it’s like reading ahead for the exam. Except the exam is every damn day. Thank god I have a good sense of humor and singing puppets are funny.

The show only runs until the end of this week (Sept 2) in San Francisco so see it if you can. You can find a list of other tour dates on the official Avenue Q website.

In front of the Rite Spot in the Mission (photo by Ineke)

Don’t laugh at me, but in a week and a half we’re going to Vegas and having another girls’ night out to see…Justin Timberlake. You’d think I’d rather die than make that admission, but I’m doing it for the girls. I only know that Sexy Back song by him, but apparently women all over the world love that scrawny little playboy so what the hell.

So work provides these bicycles to ride around to the various campuses. They’re called Gbikes (because everything good starts with a G, baby). I rode over to take a break with a couple of friends yesterday and as I’m leaving one of them says, You’re a girl. In a skirt. On a bike. I love you! I rode away smiling and thinking ah, if only all men were so easy to please, then realized…oh, actually, I think they are. All the men I know are amazing and that easy to please. I’m the one that’s the difficult bitch :)

I’m a lazy fucker and won’t get around to posting my pics for a while, but Christian posted his pics (see two borrowed ones below), as did Aaron. Aaron’s Yosemite photos are hilariously annotated.

My favorite quote from the trip: Dude, we’re all white.

First day of hiking…just starting off

Anyway, that was over 2 and a half months ago but I haven’t had the heart to rip apart the gift they all collaborated on. In the tradition of the very personal, German folded money gifts, they made me an apartment out of origami money. With an origami farm to top it off. It is beautiful (view all the origami pics).

Taking it apart was harder than I thought it would be — it’s not easy stripping off hard glue and double stick tape. I was staring at one bill trying to think of how I’d explain to someone why Abraham Lincoln’s forehead was peeled off the bill. Well, he was folded up into a chair and glued to a fake carpet.

me: I thought you said you were going to use the other rollers.
jess: I didn’t say that.
me: Yes, you did, you idiot.
jess: Uh, no, I didn’t.
me: Well, I can’t use these — my hair’s too thick, I can fit enough of these on my head!
…

jess: you’ve been mean to me all week, you bitch.
me: you’ve only been here one day!
…one hour later…
jay: I can’t believe you and your sister were fighting over hair curlers this morning.

Look, we got three hours of sleep. I’m on pain medication, she’s a mini pharmacy. Drinks, late night, early morning…go figure. We made up half an hour later and for the rest of the day I’d laugh about that stupid fight.

We did our 2nd Bay to Breakers this year. It is seriously just one long, unofficially locally sanctioned costume party / drink-a-thon. This year we came prepared with lots of food, drink, and water. I think our first year we didn’t have enough food or alcohol. I haven’t gotten my pictures up, but Ineke has!

i have to admit, though, that i got home and was feeling a little blue. the rush of the end of the year and holiday trips kept my mind going, but once i got back, i didn’t know what to do with myself. i’ve vegged out every night this week — watching tv and hanging out with ed & his ineke away from ineke, tuck. but i went to yoga tonight and had a good time and i’m forcing myself to write so i can feel less aimless.

while mindlessly watching tv (and one of the scariest episodes of the simpsons i’ve ever seen) i was browsing personals. i’m not ready for dating yet or trying to meet people, but i’ve been starting to check out the personals on yahoo and match and just seeing what kinds of people are out there. i swam through loads of search results and finally picked out three that i thought might be good matches, for, you know, in like two months when i feel ready to email them. but ed nixed two of them for being psychos. someone should offer a service where they review your profile picks and offer an expert opinion — especially facial analysis — it’s amazing what someone with expertise in facial expressions can see. of your five picks, ms. ahn, i’m afraid that this one is lying, these two clearly look like they have stalkerish tendencies, and this one has obviously falsified his photos. try again.

And the four of us — each of us is young, attractive, healthfully thin (I was the heaviest girl there and I can hardly be called fat) and successful to boot, and I don’t think there was any one of us that didn’t feel somehow inadequate, or had some memory of feeling inadequate at some time in our lives.

I know that the new space’ll be great — another wonderful window spot, closer to a micro kitchen, right next to a balcony, and right next to my co-worker, but I’m really going to miss those boys…

And even now as I’m sitting here typing in front of the fire, I’m trying to recall all the thoughts I’ve had recently — those ones I didn’t want to forget…and I guess it’s ok if I don’t remember them all because this is just a warmer up exercise.

I also start a new job in a little over a week after President’s Day. I’ll be leaving my group and joining another, but I will finally be a full time employee again. I’m very excited about the change though I’ll miss the hell out of working with Ed and probably spend less quality time with him than I already do. But he’s got exciting things coming up for him, too.

On Saturday night, we went and saw a Dance Visions performance. A gal from work was performing (and I love dance) and that was awesome, too. There’s another performance on January 21st and 22nd that we will be attending featuring three of the choreographers from Saturday night’s show, including Natasha Carlitz.

It’s always a fascinating thing to see people out of the context you know them in. We ran into Josh Kornbluth after his show and took a photo — and I saw him briefly, but to see and hear him out of character made him a slightly different person than the one I’d created for him. And finding out Natasha was a dancer and choreographer gave her a depth that she didn’t have before in our limited work related interactions. I think everyone is fascinating in some way.

I had an excellent day — had a really good lunch with a good friend — he and I are very in sync in the way we think about things. I love talking to him because of that — because he gets everything. He made a comment that’s been stuck with me all day — that I’m coming full circle. It’s funny and sort of true. I’m jazzed about work again and got to work on something fun for me all day. I found my motivation again — real motivation. It’s different than the motivation that I started the job with, but it’s working.

New search engine. It’s got a lot of stuff on the page. I’m not a big fan of that. How often are you going to need to sort search results by domain? Why so many different types of ratings? I do like the related keywords though. That’s pretty cool.
]]> http://kathyahn.com/blog/2004/10/more-misc-crap/feed/ 0 http://kathyahn.com/blog/2004/09/my-and-my-monkey/ http://kathyahn.com/blog/2004/09/my-and-my-monkey/#comments Thu, 30 Sep 2004 06:13:11 +0000 kat http://kathyahn.com/blog/?p=567 Oh my god…this is such a funny song. I’m not sure yet if I like Robbie Williams because I’ve only heard a little bit of him. Apparently he’s a megastar everywhere but in the U.S. This song (lyrics) was perfect for our Vegas trip:

In walked this big, bad-ass baboon into my bedroom
with 3 monkey whores
“Hi, my name is Sunshine. These are my girls.
Lace my palm with silver baby oh yeah
and they’ll rock your world”

(Though none of us ordered any monkey whores.)

Restaurants we ate at:

• Red, White, & Blue (Mandalay Bay): sucked
• Nine Fine Irishmen (NY, NY) — didn’t eat there, but the food looked awesome. And I love Irish music.
• House of Blues (Mandalay Bay) — yummy
• Raffles Cafe (Mandalay Bay) — ok, but wouldn’t go back
• Pyramid Cafe (Luxor) — yummy breakfast
• Fiamma (MGM Grand) — pricey, but incredibly yummy

Ghostbar at the Palms (oh my god, the beautiful women at the Palms!!) was interesting. And played decent music (as in music I’ve heard before including Beastie Boys) earlier in the night — pre 2/3am, and the view is amazing. And Club Paradise was the strip club we went to. That was nice — I’d go back, and everyone else enjoyed it way more than I got to.