#37 - spring new products show

this weekend i went to the spring new products show all by myself! aren't you proud of me? ha, nah, it was fun, but i realized something... i'm a loner. i went there, hardly talked to anyone, then went to ala moana, didn't interact much with anyone either, and had a grand ole time doing so. haha. but let's start out at the expo...

okay, so it was not quite the huge thing that i thought it might be... here i was picturing fancy new gadgets and inventions and mostly what i saw was t-shirts, cookingware, and jam. not that there's anything wrong with jam... but i was looking for cool new toys and things that maybe i could buy to put in my new home (in december). but, i did see a couple of cool things:

1. waterless car wash - this stuff really works pretty darn good... i bought a set for my sister's b-day 2. reliable landscaping co. - for future yard planning purposes

3. spiderman - yeah, guy dressed as spidey... in spandex... signing autographs for kids... they didn't have a table or chair for him (i guess spiderman can't sit behind a table to sign autographs) so he stood up and then had to squat down to sign pictures on a tiny little kiddie table

4. pop noggins - a new party rental thing where they set up a green screen with a tv monitor with headless dancing bodies, then they superimpose your head on the bodies and you boogie down to usher and jt

5. hot models - haha, there were a couple of model agency booths and they made their girls stand up on chairs and pose, it was lamely funny... but also kinda hot

6. bioelectric therapy - so there's the contraption that kinda looks like a tesla tube right, the kind that makes static electricity and you put your hand on the metal ball and all your hair goes right up, and it sounds like a thousand angry bees trapped in a tin can and you're supposed to put it in your living room, turn it on every night and let the electromagnetic waves soothe your karma into a balanced state of living.... right.

anyway, here are some of the other things that i bought!

1. a couple of shirts = $15 each on sale2. some photos to put up in my new home... to go along with the others in my collection.3. okonomiyaki for lunch at the ala moana food court, but......way not as good as kristen & lisa's yummy ones.

#36 - a whale of a tale or the tail of a whale?

my sunday night dream...

I was in my bedroom at home, except that my desk was turned out to face the door, I was working on my computer because I wanted to change the color scheme on the computer, but I was having a hard time and the computer was giving me crap so it took such a long time and I got frustrated and went out into the living room where there was a pool table in the middle of the room. My family was watching a tennis tournament on tv, it was a professional tournament on clay courts, but for some reason it was being played on the big island. Then they showed like a webcam shot of the courts and keane n. (random dream cameo) was playing on the courts and we were all surprised that he was part of a professional tennis tournament. Then, I was even more surprised when I looked outside and saw that all those same courts were in our backyard, but the courts looked really beat up and even know they were supposed to be clay courts, they were just really brown and dirty hardcourts. So I went outside to watch keane play and it was pouring rain and I thought 1) well, I guess they can still play in the rain because it’s clay courts and they can tolerate a little bit of rain, and 2) darn, now I’m not gonna have tennis lessons because it’s raining.

So I went back in the house and some people were playing pool and laughing and cheering and I thought, too bad I can’t play pool very well because the pool cue is too long and I can't serve without hitting the ceiling (because for some reason I was thinking that I’d have to serve like in tennis with the pool cue), so then I thought, “when I get my own place maybe I can get a ping pong table instead.”

Anyway, by that time it was getting late, like 9:30 pm so I decided to go home. So I was driving home in somewhere that kinda looked like the H2 by mauka, there were these big rolling hills off to the right side of the freeway and it was very grassy with large walkways and little exercise stops and benches along the walkway. There were two guys who were pulled over by the cops and they were taking a sobriety test by standing face-to-face and putting their hands together, like in “london bridge.” Then next to them was this other guy who I knew was an escaped convict and they were arresting him and these other police guys were taping off crime scene areas and laying tarp down over a stairway to look for evidence. So I drove past them (and all the cars in front of me were going super slow because of the cops) and I saw an old lady walking down the sidewalk towards the cops and I said to myself “gee, that old lady is taking a stroll out here all by herself at 10:00 at night? That’s kinda dangerous.” But then I looked around again and everything was bright and sunny, like it was 10:00 am. That was weird I thought, I must’ve fallen asleep while working on the computer and it’s actually not as late as I thought.
So I was driving for a long long time, and then suddenly instead of driving, I was walking. I was walking down a nature-y type of path and I was going down this hill and at the bottom of the hill it turned into reef and I was at the ocean.
There was a long, narrow path of reef rock with lots of overgrown seaweed on it and I walked along that path and thought, “wow, look at that, I walked for so long that now I’m on kauai already.” The ocean was really nice, shallow reef all around me, there was even like a little hole in the reef were you could hear the water in underground caves below (kinda like a spouting caves blowhole, kinda like this:) but I didn’t want to walk all the way to kauai so I decided to turn back, but I had to take some pictures with my digital camera on the way back so I stopped to take some, but then the reef started moving. So I walked a little bit faster and came to that blowhole and I was gonna step over it when it MOVED! And then I realized it was REAL blowhole and the “reef” that I was walking on was actually the back of a whale! So I ran as fast as I could as the whale was moving until I got back to real reef and I jumped off the whale which had it’s tail in a little cave and was gonna swim out of the cave. I was so scared, but since I was on real reef I took a couple of pictures (very cool pictures) of the whale swimming away. And then I looked down into the cave and there were two tourists (a guy and his daughter) playing with the whale’s tail, because all of a sudden the inside of the cave turned into like y’know in stan sherrif arena how they have those hallways where the players come out of? It was like I was sitting in the stands right above that entrance and the whale and people were down in the corridor. Anyway, then I saw my dog allie down there playing with the whale too, so I called her to come back because I didn’t want her to jump on the whale and be taken out to sea.

So as I waited there, the water receded and the bottom of the cave was actually cement so I thought it would be safe it jump down, and when I did I realized that on the other side of the cave was an exit to go to some seaworld-like theme park, so I went out that way with allie and the two tourists and we were walking past some theme park food stands and there was one stand that had a guy (who kinda looked like mario, y’know super mario) who came up and allie started sniffing him and I was gonna yell at her to get down but then the sign on his cart said “let your dogs sniff, $5” or something like that. So I let her sniff.

uh... that's about all i remember. weird.

#35 - bite me anyway

okay, so a week of feeling like this... and after googling my fingers off trying to find a way to get the webcam to operate on it's own (i even tried to reinstall the old XP webcam software, it worked so well, so simple), or to make vista recognize it's own damn camera.... i found out that it's actually easy to convert a .bmp file to a .jpeg file... fine, but the point is that i shouldn't have to take each pic i take with my webcam and save it into a new format.. why can't it just go to .jpeg automatically when i take the picture like it used to? i'm still mad about having to use these other auxillary programs to open the webcam itself...

grr... microsoft bad... vista can bite me and if you didn't see the pic before, this one's for you microsoft:

#34 - bite me, microsoft

so... microsoft sucks.

after the last post a week ago i spent the entire weekend trying to install that darn vista. here's what happened... i bought my new laptop computer around october or november last year, knowing that the whole vista thing was gonna come out at the beginning of 2007. but i said, forget it, i wanted my own laptop and i found one i really liked (which doesn't happen very much) so i bought it. so since it was just a few months before vista came out, the deal was that they'd sent me a copy of the vista program when it came out so i could upgrade for free. sounds like a sweet deal huh? that's what i thought.

first of all, i had to back up all my data. fine, not too horrible, plus it was a good idea to burn all my pictures and stuff onto back-up discs anyway. then i tried to install vista. stopped in the middle. great. tried it again. everything installed, then when i tried to turn my computer back on, poof... blue screen... nothing worked. great. gotta reinstall AGAIN. the thing said it takes about 20 minutes to install vista... bullshit, it took like three hours, so by this time it was like 1 am on sunday night and so before i went to bed i uploaded it one more time and let it run while i slept. in the morning... still not done.

well, after working on it for the entire weekend, i would've been crapped if i was gonna let that damn computer beat me. so... i took it to work. haha. so there's me at work, clicking through here and there between therapies... then by some miracle by the time i left work i had managed to FINALLY install everything from the installation cds and it looked to be working okay.

but of course that can't be the end of the story... so i go home and notice... the internet doesn't work. hmm... okay... that took another afternoon to fix. then i notice... the webcam (the one that's BUILT-IN to the computer) doesn't work... fine, that one took another evening to "fix." then, even after installing all the drivers and whatever, vista says that it doesn't have a program to open it's own frickin' webcam (y'know, the one that's BUILT-IN to the top of my computer screen, genius right?), so i have to use some other media/movie making program to open it (which, of course, is only a trial version that you need to buy later if you want to keep using it). on top of that, it takes pictures in .bmp format when in windows XP it was taking it in .jpeg format... well, blogger doesn't recognice .bmp, so my pictures come out like this:

wonderful

yada yada yada, everyday this week i found another program that stopped working or something else i can't connect to, blah blah. sigh... now it's saturday and at least it's working well enough for me to post. big question now... is vista worth it? hell frickin' NO! okay, the see-thru windows are kinda neat, i never use that 3D flipper thing (why take a simple concept like clicking on the tabs on the bottom of the screen and turn it into something that's flashier, but takes more mouse clicks to use?), the little gadgets on the side are neat but not so useful. and i'm still pissed about my webcam (the one that's BUILT-IN)... anyone know of a program i could download or something to run the camera on it's own?

the morale(s) of this story:

1. vista sucks
2. can microsoft get it's monopolizing butt off it's fat ass corporate chair and make these things actually work for once?
3. it's not a good idea to pretend to punch your computer screen in anger after reinstalling programs for the 5th time because you might have bad depth perception and actually hit the screen
4. never take a system on a computer that works just fine and switch it out for one that has no guarantee of working right ever again
5. heed these words or you might wind up like this:

ha, can you tell what i'm doing in this pic?

#33 - that's what i was told to do

took the a-dawg for a walk today, man, dogs don't like to pose for pictures, what's up with that? anyway, i tried to take many many pictures of dog-walking, but this is the only one that came out (when she was sniffing the camera lens). it looks kinda creepy yah?

anyway, today's post is about what i did today and why i did it. i think this is becoming a prevailing trend for me... not listening to my brain. if you subscribe to freudian theories, i'm talking about the ego, because i think my ego has been winning the war for the past 25 years and i'm a bit sick of it. who is it to tell me what to do? sure, that superego is sitting up there all self-righteous and being a poser, but it's that frickin ego that makes me force myself to be "productive" everyday and workout at the gym when i'm too tired and stay up when i should be taking a nap. yeah, i've done all that already, y'know where it got me? it got me turning things that i like to do (workout at the gym, go lap swimming, surfing, tennis, eating yummy food, taking naps) into things that i don't like to do, either because i feel guilty about not doing it enough, or not doing it completely, or not preparing myself so that i'll get the most out of it. for example, from christmas time to spring break i forced myself to go to the gym twice a week to work out because i told myself that i would regret it if i didn't... but then that meant going to work out when i was too tired, or not motivated enough, or too preoccupied with other things going on to concentrate on what i was doing or to even have fun doing it. then, when i told myself not to go to the gym on any particular day i'd feel tons guilty about not going, or when i did go and wasn't prepared to make the most of it, i'd feel guilty about that too.

so, during spring break (when i wasn't working and had no excuse not to go to an empty gym every morning), i decided not to go to the gym at all because i had already turned it into something that didn't make me feel good about doing (or not doing). i told myself i'd start back up when i went back to work and again make it something i could do for fun, to relieve stress, whatever. so that's what i did. and it worked. and now i don't listen to my brain to tell me what to do (because my brain wants me to do too much, and i can't do all of it). i listen to what my other brains tell me to do (that sounds not like what it sounds like, let me explain).

i was watching "fat: what no one is telling you" on pbs the other night and there was an interesting segment on the digestive system. they were saying that the nervous system that regulates the system is really like a second brain (or third brain if you count the brainstem as one primative brain, then the cortex as a more advanced brain) that sends signals to the brain in your head to regulate feeding and fasting. doesn't that make sense? in fact, why should our body be regulated by one brain at all? doesn't that seem silly? everything in nature comes with built-in redundancy, so why is it that we only have one, non-regenerating brain (that's not to say that the brain doesn't self-heal... when neurons die they don't grow back, but they form new connections to compensate for the lost cells)? in fact, one point the show made was that in gastric by-pass surgery, the weight loss does not occur because of the reduced physical capacity of the stomach, but actually because during surgery, some neurons that send "i want food" signals to the brain are severed and so appetite is supressed.

anyway, i liked the documentary (minus the gushy emotional-psychological crap, y'know, the "boo hoo, i'm fat" stuff) because it explored the physiology behind fat and discussed the fact that we're all in survival mode, and the body wants to make fat. so simple really. i was watching "planet earth" and they were showing polar bears who lose half their weight from winter to spring and humpback whales that live off of fat for 5 months and it underscores the role that fat plays in survival situations and how useful it is.

anyway, i'm a big advocate of learning about healthy living and eating. i recommend FSHN 185 to every single college freshman because of the science that it imparts to eating and nutrition, after that class everything just made so much sense to me. and it's amazing how little most people know about nutrition and what they're putting into their bodies. i was so close to getting into public health administration in college, but i didn't want to get my master's degree (but look what happened anyway, i'm a dummy). anyway, one thing i didn't like about the documentary were the sob stories about fat people and their "success" stories about "accepting their bodies." while i agree that every human is very different and weights and fats and muscle masses and whatever are different for everyone, there still is healthy and not so healthy, and obesity falls into the latter category. you feel bad that you're fat? well you should, that means that you can change it. fine, some people say it's hard to change, or they can't change. to a certain point you can't alter your genetic make-up, but that doesn't mean you HAVE to be unhealthy, you may not be a model or star athlete, but you can be healthy. otherwise you can die. i think the alternative is not so good.

okay, not like i'm so against fat people, i think i'm just against people complaining about discrimination. i've probably still got some fall-out from that "nappy headed ho's" thing (which i still think is pretty funny, the whole situation i mean, that someone said it, that someone else got so offended, that it turned into such a huge thing, y'know?), but to everyone who feels they are discriminated against because of their ethnicity, gender, fatness, i say poo to you. because for everyone who can claim they've been a "victim" of fatness discrimination there's someone else who gets "discriminated" for being too short, or too tall, or too blond, or having too many freckles, so just stuff it.

hmm, this post turned out kind of angry at the end huh? that was not my intention at the beginning, but oh well, i guess that's what was on my mind...

ps - wish me luck, i'm gonna try and upgrade to windows vista tonight.. i'm gonna cross my fingers and hope i don't lose anything!

#32 - american idol top 8

wow, long time no idol post huh? so what's been happening? it's still been the funniest season of idol, i think. my favorites are still intact and getting better. i haven't won our family pool yet (we vote on who's getting out, and the tie-breaker is to name everyone in the bottom 3), but that's just because darn PHIL WILL NOT LEAVE! grr... i want him gone. anyway, just to recap, here's my top 5:

1. melinda
2. jordin
3. blake
4. chris r.
5. lakisha




i think jordin has a real good shot at winning too (because melinda's kinda old)

but honestly, i wouldn't be all that disappointed if sanjaya made it in there in place of the last two on that list (but i WOULD be very sad if he beat out any of those top 3). i was a bit sad that gina got out last week, not because i really like her, but because she sang well... but MOSTLY because PHIL was still in... grr... he's gross and needs to go.

anyway, just a short post because my sister just had a stroke of genius that i had to share... latin week right? sanjaya missed his opportunity man, he could've gotten ALL the first place votes if he sang SHE BANGS! right?! wouldn't that have been awesome? i mean, c'mon, he's already the biggest media joke in the world, why not play it up? that would've been way too awesome. too bad, sanjaya, ya missed out buddy. but, good choice to sing a song in spanish:


man, i swear, he's the creepiest guy, but darn it, you just gotta keep watching.

#31 - over-sensitive much?

i just heard about this on the news the other day... apparently, this guy Don Imus has a comedy show on the radio. now, i didn't really have any opinions either way on rev. al sharpton, i don't really know that much about him other than what i see on saturday night live, but based on this one situation now i've got stuff to say.

here's the situation as i've heard it...

so this guy don imus has a radio show, and on it he was commenting on the women's college basketball game between Tennessee and Rutgers that he watched. he heard a sportscaster say that rutgers was "a lot tougher team," and on his radio show he agreed that they were tough, that they had tattoos, etc, and then apparently he called them "nappy headed ho's."

pfft! so what? tough luck, that's funny. see, but rev. al sharpton says that was a racially motivated remark and is now calling for this guy to be fired for it. racist, smachist! he's doing a comedy show, he's trying to be funny.

then, this don imus guy goes on rev. al sharpton's radio show (he has a radio show?!) to apologize and rev. al sharpton is all attacking him saying "nappy is racial... saying wannabes and jigaboos is racial." haha, what's a jigaboo? now, the sad part of all of this is that this guy goes on rev. al sharpton's show and is beeing a total wuss, taking his words back and back-pedaling all his words to apologize. whatever. you said it, you said it. if you didn't think it was a racist comment to make, then say so. if you did, then say you made a racist comment and apologize for that, or not if you feel like you don't need to. the whole time rev. al sharpton is calling for him to be fired and saying he's insensitive and blah blah blah.

then this don imus guy goes on to persecute himself by continually saying what a horrible thing he did, saying things like:

"black people, at the core of their soul, don't believe that white people like them... at some point when something like this happens with someone like you, who they would - who a person could, you would think, could trust and would be on our side, he said, this just confirms that whole fear. He says, so it's an egregious sin that you've committed, and I said that I understood that."

what egregious sin is it to make a joke on the radio? boo hoo if someone feels hurt by that, hey, here's a tip... DON'T LISTEN! problem solved.

then this don imus guys goes on to try and defend himself by saying how much good he's done for black people, like trying to help fund sickle-cell anemia and whatever, then rev. al sharpton says:

SHARPTON: before we go there, let me say this. I don't think the issue is that you may have done good things. The issue is whether we can afford a precedent to be established that somebody can say something that you admittedly say yourself is wrong and I say is racist and sexist, and it just be glossed over. That's the issue here. Because then, if you walk away from this unscathed, the next guy could say whatever he wants and just say, I'm sorry.

IMUS. Unscathed? What are you, crazy? How am I unscathed by this? Don't you think I'm humiliated? Don't you think I'm embarrassed? Don't you think -

SHARPTON. You're not as humiliated as young black women.

boo frickin' hoo. who are these young black women athletes who are so deeply stricken by what an old white guy says on his comedy radio show? (by the way, there are white people that go to Tennessee and Rutgers, and gosh darn it bet there's some asian people and jewish people and whoever the heck else people you want at those schools). so, here's the hilarious part... that don imus guy tries to defend himself by telling rev. al sharpton:

"Let me tell you, I'll bet you I've slept in a house with more black children who were not related to me than you have."

HA! probably didn't come out the way you wanted it to sound don.

anyway, the point of this whole post is to try and get my point across (and of course, my logic is far superior to everyone else so y'all should listen and obey my words). here's my point:

if you're looking for racism, you'll find it. if you're not looking for racism, you'll find mean people. and once you do, you've got a choice, get upset or get over it! you don't like to be called names, don't listen to the people talking. you think everyone who uses the phrase "nappy" is racist and insensitive? take a look in the mirror. how much more of a culture of racism and separation are you creating by entertaining these arguments and sustaining this conflict? in other words, get over it.

#30 - renewal

on a more serious note...

this past weekend was easter, a very cool four days of church. no really, mass of the Lord's supper on thursday, the passion of the Lord on friday, easter vigil on saturday, and easter sunday of course on sunday. before grad school i wasn't all that excited about going to church, but it seems like once it was my choice completely to go, it became so much more meaningful. anyway, i didn't get to go to all of the masses this year, so i'm kinda bummed about that, but it's not so much about attending services as it is about the new spiritual year. six weeks before this was the lenten season, another aspect i didn't appreciate until grad school (seems like a lot of this happened around that time because 1) grad school was crap and it was a tough time so that led me back, and 2) around the ages of 21-23 is when your prefrontal lobe becomes firmly established, up until then it was still growing and changing, therefore, the person that you are and the personality that you have at the age of 23 is most likely who you will be for the rest of your life, unless you have a tbi (traumatic brain injury) or some other neurologically altering condition, haha).

traditionally lent is about sacrifice and almsgiving and all that, but growing up all i knew it meant was: gotta give up something i like. usually it was french fries, or candy or something (in fact, one year during or right before high school i gave up candy, and after that, and to this day, i hardly eat any candy anymore, unless it's a situation where it'd be rude to refuse or something like that... except for small chocolate mints... like andes chocolate mints. one year i gave up alcohol... but even though that was a tough sacrifice (and i gave all the money that i would have spent on alcohol to donations), it really didn't do much spiritually for me. so this year instead of giving something up, i decided to make myself a promise, be nicer to the family and engage in conversation with them.

boy that was tough... if you don't quite understand my situation, since moving back home during grad school i've been keeping myself independent and since we don't all have very much in common (and they irritate me constantly!) i've been keeping a short relationship with my family. so i think that was a good thing to do, and as it turns out, during lent i found out that i would be moving out at the end of the year, so it was really good timing to try and mend some of those relationships before i really separate myself from them.

anyway, flash forward to the day after easter and i really thank the Lord for the strength He gave me to keep my lenten promise, because now i don't have to think about when to make conversation with the family, it happens more naturally and i don't have the short temper with them that i used to. so... easter, new religious calendar year, a time for renewal. renewal's looking good this year. but why is it that it takes things like this to instigate renewal? why is it so difficult for me to keep constant and vigilant in my faith and how my faith guides my life? well, that's the human in me, but i'll keep praying for the strength to overcome that.

hey, here's a nice renewal song from relient k's new album that i listen to constantly, if you haven't heard of them yet, man, the lyrics hit me, y'know when you find those songs that you think, "man, that song could've been written just for me." it's like that with all their songs, which doesn't mean that they're in tune with my life and thoughts and i can channel it through them, nope, it just means that everyone goes through these things, and everyone has these thoughts at one time or another, so look around you and we're all so much alike, and we can all help each other because we know how each other can feel. start off with a positive thought tomorrow and see how much nicer the rest of the day becomes.

"up and up"

yesterday was not quite what it could have been. as were most of all the days before. but i swear today with every breath i'm breathing in. i'll be trying to make it so much more // cause it seems i get so hung up on. the history of what's gone wrong. that the hope of a new day is sometimes hard to see. but i'm finally catching on to it. yeah the past is just a conduit. and the light there at the end is where i'll be.

#29 - death to haircuts

man do i HATE getting haircuts... it's not about the actual cutting itself, although it is kind of nerve-wracking to walk into a shop with no idea what's going to happen to you and very little control of it. i hate them because they just never turn out right. i used to think i just didn't know how to explain what kind of haircut i wanted, but now i think i'm just destined to never have a nice haircut ever. which is why my wait between haircuts is getting longer and longer. case in point, the last time i cut my hair was december 11, 2006. after almost four months my hair was this long: whew! i actually liked it a lot as it was growing out... but then it got a bit ridiculous and i was on the verge of mullet-ness for awhile so i decided that it was finally time to get it cut. so last sunday (first mistake, i didn't realize it, but it was April 1st... dumbass), i went to get my haircut (second mistake, i went to supercuts, i don't know why i keep going there, i think it's because it's the most guy-friendly place and i'm comfortable sitting in there and waiting... i actually tried to go to that new regis place in town center, but i was scared away, haha). so i'm sitting there in the chair, and i think i did a pretty good job explaining how i want my hair cut, "about an inch off on top, the sides and the back are really overgrown so you can cut a lot off over there and blend it into the top... etc." this is what she did (all very slowly, by the way, it was pretty obvious that she didn't know what the hell she was doing and i wouldn't be surprised if she was just sweeping up hair and cleaning out the trash two seconds before i walked in that door):

1. cut 1/2" of the top center of my head, think reverse mohawk, that's what it looked like
2. took tiny, tiny snips off the tips of my hair around my ears and at the bottom of my neck
3. turned me around and said, "how's that?" like she was done or something

so, of course, i told her "uh... can you cut it down some more?" duh, lady, i came for a haircut didn't i? anyway, then she snipped around for about another 3 minutes and turned me around again and took the frickin' coat thing off, so i was like, screw this, this lady ain't gonna be able to do any better. so i paid her, no tip, and got the butt out of there. when i got home i looked in the mirror and saw this... what the f***? what the crap kind of look did she think i was looking for? the 1960's austin powers' fembot look? what the crap kind of haircut is this?!?
needless to say, i was completely pissed off my ass. but i didn't want to go back to that supercuts because i knew that lady wouldn't be able to do any better. so i called the other supercuts in mililani, but they were all booked for the day. but no way in hell i was gonna go to work the next day looking like some circus freak so luckily i called fantastic sams and they were still open so i rushed my buns over there to fix it.
and this is the result, still not a good haircut, but after my horrendous experience at supercuts i would've been happy if she shaved my head bald. but, she cut off my sideburns! that made me really angry, she didn't even ask, she just buzzed it and before i could even react it was too late, then i couldn't say anything because i couldn't walk around with only one sideburn (or could i? hmmm...). so now i'm left with this totally koreanized haircut with no sideburns and super long horse mane bangs. grrrrrrrrrrrrrr................. the next day i cut my own bangs. at least that was something i could do myself, so it's a tiny tiny bit better, but still... all i can do now is wait for my hair to grow out again. it's so sad, it's like all that effort to grow out your hair and your sideburns is destroyed with the flick of a razor. all that hard work down the drain. and now there's nothing you can do but wait for it for months until it comes back again.

thus, i hate haircuts and they're stupid and they can bite me. if i never have to get another haircut again as long as i live i'll be the happiest bastard in the world. if anyone out there knows any kind of decent place for a guy to get a haircut that doesn't make him look like a freak PLEASE let me know... i'm in desperation mode, well, not really yet, but i will be in another 3 months when i'll be forced to cut it again.


on the other hand... maybe i'll go sanjaya and let it grow out completely, ha!

#28 - camping

LONG story... but i won't go into all of it. since it's the end of my spring break vacation, the only thing that's really important is that i got the opportunity to enjoy nature and the outdoors on the other side of the island. last weekend we went camping at the beach park near chinaman's hat for a night. i don't think i like camping as much as i thought i did... but it was an experience for sure, so that's cool. probably the coolest thing about camping out all night was that the moon was almost full and nighttime was almost just as clear as day. i'm not exactly sure the physiology behind those rods and cones in our eyes and how they relate to night-vision and clarity, but i could swear that i could see clearer and farther in the dark, whereas things would be blurrier in the daylight. unfortunately, it's a bit hard to describe, and no picture could really do justice to being out on the beach in the middle of the night surrounded by the mountains in the backdrop and chinaman's hat pointing out of the water in front of you. but here are some shots i tried to take, check it out:
i had a tough time trying to get the pictures to focus in the very little bit light, but since there was an almost full moon i got some night shots with the palm trees...
a shot of the lights across kaneohe bay from the grass along the shoreline...
another shot of the moon and stars...
then in the morning before sunrise i snapped this pic of chinaman's hat with this weird breakwater barrier that ran along the shore...
a cool little trick with the slow shutter setting...
the sunrise... finally!
here's a shot of the mountains in back of us...
and lastly, my impression of an artistic photo, a shot of a tiny shoreline wave breaking inches from the sand (i'm especially proud of this one because it took my super-quick reflexes to keep my camera from getting wet).