Reading a certain blog has really got me thinking of fun adventures and good and/or interesting times I've had in my life, which is often a wonderful thing to be thinking about. This particular instance was probably one of the most fun days I had in my freshman year of college. It was one of those days where everything (even the seemingly bad things) led to fun. And it all revolved around our tickets to a small, but popular U.S. tour by the Korean hip hop band Epik High. So thanks Tablo. I owe you one. : P
Let's start with a little recap. I met my friend Caitlin at the beginning of our freshman year of college through her roommate, my friend at the time who I'd known in high school. After a ridiculous first meeting (courtesy of my Wreck This Journal and Caitlin's perfect timing) I managed not to scare her off and we quickly became good friends. Through this friendship, I somehow adopted her obsession with all things Japanese, and especially pop culture, that she'd harbored from high school (my high school foreign country obsession had been England, which began my continuing love for The Mighty Boosh and Dylan Moran, although the obsessing has dropped in intensity).
To make a long story short, this Japanese pop culture interest lead to a Korean pop culture interest and that left the two of us, plus Caitlin's then good friend and several Japanese exchange students she knew, with tickets to the Epik High concert in San Francisco.
The day of the concert, we came into town early, although San Francisco is only about an hour and a half away, in order to spend the afternoon playing in the city before the concert that night. Being jobless college freshmen at the time, we were very budget-minded (i.e. cheap) and therefore, as was our custom, parked in the parking structure at San Francisco State for a $5 all day pass with the intention of taking the Muni across town to the concert venue, instead of fighting for parking and probably paying over $30 for the day.
Walking across campus on our way to the Muni station, we happened to be spotted by my good friend from high school, Mel, who I had serveral times visited there, but hadn't informed of our plans on this particular day. Being a Saturday, she had nothing planned and decided to hang out with us before the concert. The three of us- Caitlin, Mel, and I - hopped on the Muni and headed down to the pier. Once we arrived at the docks, we used our tickets to hop on a trolley (for those who've never used the Muni, it's an amazing combination of a sort of subway/light rail that travels both above and below ground, a bus system, and a trolley system. It's awesome if you don't want to spend much money because for the time period in which it's valid, one ticket purchased works for all three) and headed down to Pier 39 to run around and be touristy, for lack of anything better to do.
A few hours later, Mel had to head back to the Muni station to meet up with some friends back at school, but the trolley was crowded and we weren't sure when there would be another, so we decided to walk all the way back to Pier 1 (not a crazy distance, but still quite a ways, especially when it wasn't planned and you're dressed to be cute at a concert). When we got there, we all took a breather before saying bye to Mel. Caitlin and I sat in front of the Pier 1 building for about another hour, people watching and quietly judging the moves of the trick bikers that always hang out in that spot across the street, before we made our way back over to the Muni station.
Now, I'm not sure if it's in their best interest to do it this way, but often, when entering these stations (or buses. Or trolleys) there is someone in a glass booth and you flash your prepurchased ticket toward them and they wave you through without a very close inspection. Oftentimes, it is quite easy to get through with a recently expired ticket. Just cover up the time a bit with your thumb in a seemingly accidental way and bam - you're through (I actually spent the weekend with Mel on a different occasion and made it through the whole time using her expired bus pass everywhere I went). This time, however, we ran into the one woman who decided she needed to closely inspect the tickets. What's more, they weren't even expired for another five to ten minutes, but this woman insisted we buy new tickets.
Now, the tickets for these things are about $1.50 - not exactly unfair pricing. But being po' arse college freshmen, we were both unwilling to part with extra cash (jeez) and felt a sort of moral indignation at not getting away with our usual trick. Seriously, no one ever gets caught doing this! We have to be the only two?
A long story short (yeah, obviously working out real well so far. This long story is so short right now. So short), we decided to walk to the concert. The concert on the top of the hill. The concert on the top of the hill in San Francisco. Sigh. I don't know what we were thinking. I don't know if you're familiar with the hills in San Francisco, but, uh... they're tall. And I know they're not moutains, and it's not like the going's treacherous, but, they are pretty straight-the-hell up. Like vertical. Like climbing a lowercase L. Thinking back, I should have been happy to pay $1.50 to avoid that. But oh no. Moral indignation. Sigh.
So with maybe an hour and a half left before the concert at this point, we start to climb. From flat ground, all the way to the freaking top. Let me just tell you- there is quite a lot of cursing and heavy breathing involved in this process. This is the kind of hill that is almost harder to go down than it is to go up, only because every step feels like your stepping off the edge of the world and the slower you go, the more it feels like falling. Not that I'm bitter. But enough about hills... :-P
So we reached the concert venue slightly behind schedule and a bit sweaty and went to meet Caitlin's friend and the exchange students in line. Our seats were good for poor college kids - front few rows of the balcony, only slightly off center, but we knew we weren't getting anywhere near the stage. Epik High was featuring other bands on their tour - all of whom were Korean American (some kind of Korean solidarity, I believe) and most of them were good. I believe it was the first time I had heard of the Far East Movement, who weren't yet popular outside of L.A. Epik High puts on a great show, it has to be said, and this is coming from someone who knew little of their music previous to the concert.
After the concert, realizing that we didn't know where the closest Muni station was, we decided that we would simply have to walk all the way back down the hill to the one we usually use (I know, no more about hills. I'm sorry). I was secretly dragging my feet, hoping - like many other fans standing outside the venue - to catch a glimpse of the band after the show. But it was late and we still needed to get back to the school and then to San Jose where Caitlin is from and I was staying for the weekend. So we saw the boys (the Japanese exchange students) off (they had foolishly chosen to park at the venue, where they may have avoided sweating, but it cost them a pretty penny. Not like us smart people. Yup) and began our descent.
A few blocks later, there was a bit of a commotion going on in the distance. As we got closer, we realized that it was people scrambling to take pictures. With who, you ask? That's right. With the band. We ran into the band on the street after the concert. They had finally gotten rid of all the picture seeking fans as we approached and were about to cross the street, which we also needed to do. Wanting to seem cool and together, and non-fangirly, we walked next to them, said hello and complimented the show, before calming waving goodbye as we turned to continue down the hill and they walked straight toward their tour bus. The ones that spoke English thanked us for the compliments and for liking them, before nodding goodbye.
That's right, fan girls. I was close enough to Tablo to see that the beanie he wore onstage was sparkly. And that's not something you can tell from far away. :-P
How eventful could the night really be after that? We made it back to the car, got some stereotypical two in the morning Jack in the Box (or Jack in the Crack, as we artfully referred to our favorite late-night grease fest), and drove home to San Jose (my temporary for that weekend home). I'm pretty sure it was close to five in the morning after we dropped off Caitlin's friend and finally made it back to her house. Her parent's weren't thrilled.
What a great freshman year adventure. Just remembering it brings back my old (all of three years) wanderlust. :-D
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
Male/Female relations
No, it's not that you dirty perv.
Aaanyway- the other week my boyfriend was showing me a few of his favorite ridiculous youtube videos, featuring such classics as The Barking Cat (which is admittedly hilarious) and other gems. During this mini-marathon, we were offered as a suggestion for a video that was titled something to the effect of 'Women Can't Drive So Let's All Laugh At their Suckness', which my boyfriend decided to click on. The video contained some pretty horrible driving, so it's was funny if you like to watch people have a hard time at life and embarrass themselves (I do not share this particular enjoyment. I'm the person who frantically buries themselves under pillows and furniture to avoid viewing the embarrassing things people do on reality tv. Don't even get near me with the first few weeks of American Idol. ...or the rest of the show for that matter...). But the thing that got me was how many other 'women at shit at driving and life' videos there were in the related video section.
Still, it's been a while since then and I totally forgot about it until today, when some brilliant driving inspired me. Including the incident today, I have two good examples of men failing at driving. Both of the stories amuse me, both involve u-turns, but one is significantly more epic than the other. So just to even out some of this oddly sexist tendency on the internet, here are to friendly (ish) recountings of Men Fail At Driving and Such stories. Enjoy. :)
The first:
I've read that statistically men tend to make better drivers because they are nauturally more aggressive and that translates to being more decisive behind the wheel. I don't necessarily know if that's true (being that the one thing that I actually took from my high school statistics class is that statistics lie), but this is an example of male desisivness (and/or tendency to purchase vehicles too large to maneuver properly) behind the wheel gone awry- Today I was sitting at a spotlight on my way to work. I was coming from my boyfriend's house and when I do this, I find that I avoid more traffic if I take an in-road half the way, and the freeway the rest. So this road that I'm on is not very big. I think it was just two lanes at this point. But anyway.
So I'm sitting at the light and I'm watching as the left turn lane gets to go. The last person to turn across from me was this guy in a gigantor pickup that decides to make a fast just-beat-the-yellow-light u-turn. Unfortunately for him, he is either new at driving a truck this unnecessarily huge, or just kind of sucks at life, because he didn't manage to make the turn. This wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't now our turn to drive straight... Straight into him. Two lanes of traffic had to wait while this guy (who had managed to block us both by covering most of the two-lanes-merging-into-one area where we were headed) who then proceeded to cut me off from passing him by being too big and driving to slow. Then, for his finale, blew through the next light in a did-he-make-it-or-didn't-he fashion. Sigh. Silly man.
I think that last move proves that his bad driving is a constant thing and not just circumstance.
Now this second story was much more epic to witness, also involved a man and a u-turn, with the added benefit of a big rig. I know, right? You can already tell it's going to be awesome.
This was a couple years ago now. I actually might still have been in high school. Again I was sitting at a red light waiting to go straight, having just pulled out of the parking lot from dropping my sister off at swim practice and was heading home. Also again, the road I was on was fairly small - two lanes on each side.
At the left turn light opposite my lane was a giant big rig with two trailers. I won't say what company it was from, but I will tell you that there are two red circles involved.
Now, if you've ever driven anywhere near a big rig, you know that they need a lot of room to turn, to the point where they sometimes need multiple lanes just to turn right, let alone u-turn. Well, this particular driver decided that he was going to make a u-turn with mutiple trailers (the giant part of the truck that holds stuff. So two of those giant things) onto a small two lane road.
I and my fellow drivers watched with vague interest as the light turned green and this man made his attempt. I was initially surprised that the cab (the drivey part. You know, the part with the engine) even made the turn in the space allotted, and even more so when the first trailer managed to slide its way through, teetering slightly. But then, as I feared, the close space proved too much for the second trailer. I and my fellow drivers now watched in surprise and horror and the second trailer swayed a few times before actually TIPPING OVER, taking out the street sign and part of the stop light, leaving it swinging violently in it's wake as the trailer skidded over to the side of the road.
Needless to say, I was pretty shocked.
Cue the still swaying street light to turn green and the path of my lane covered by big rig tipping over type debris and said tipped over big rig just barely out of the road on the abnormally large shoulder.
That was seriously crazy to witness.
And there you have it, two of my personal examples of men failing and driving.
The. End. :P
Aaanyway- the other week my boyfriend was showing me a few of his favorite ridiculous youtube videos, featuring such classics as The Barking Cat (which is admittedly hilarious) and other gems. During this mini-marathon, we were offered as a suggestion for a video that was titled something to the effect of 'Women Can't Drive So Let's All Laugh At their Suckness', which my boyfriend decided to click on. The video contained some pretty horrible driving, so it's was funny if you like to watch people have a hard time at life and embarrass themselves (I do not share this particular enjoyment. I'm the person who frantically buries themselves under pillows and furniture to avoid viewing the embarrassing things people do on reality tv. Don't even get near me with the first few weeks of American Idol. ...or the rest of the show for that matter...). But the thing that got me was how many other 'women at shit at driving and life' videos there were in the related video section.
Still, it's been a while since then and I totally forgot about it until today, when some brilliant driving inspired me. Including the incident today, I have two good examples of men failing at driving. Both of the stories amuse me, both involve u-turns, but one is significantly more epic than the other. So just to even out some of this oddly sexist tendency on the internet, here are to friendly (ish) recountings of Men Fail At Driving and Such stories. Enjoy. :)
The first:
I've read that statistically men tend to make better drivers because they are nauturally more aggressive and that translates to being more decisive behind the wheel. I don't necessarily know if that's true (being that the one thing that I actually took from my high school statistics class is that statistics lie), but this is an example of male desisivness (and/or tendency to purchase vehicles too large to maneuver properly) behind the wheel gone awry- Today I was sitting at a spotlight on my way to work. I was coming from my boyfriend's house and when I do this, I find that I avoid more traffic if I take an in-road half the way, and the freeway the rest. So this road that I'm on is not very big. I think it was just two lanes at this point. But anyway.
So I'm sitting at the light and I'm watching as the left turn lane gets to go. The last person to turn across from me was this guy in a gigantor pickup that decides to make a fast just-beat-the-yellow-light u-turn. Unfortunately for him, he is either new at driving a truck this unnecessarily huge, or just kind of sucks at life, because he didn't manage to make the turn. This wouldn't be such a problem if it wasn't now our turn to drive straight... Straight into him. Two lanes of traffic had to wait while this guy (who had managed to block us both by covering most of the two-lanes-merging-into-one area where we were headed) who then proceeded to cut me off from passing him by being too big and driving to slow. Then, for his finale, blew through the next light in a did-he-make-it-or-didn't-he fashion. Sigh. Silly man.
I think that last move proves that his bad driving is a constant thing and not just circumstance.
Now this second story was much more epic to witness, also involved a man and a u-turn, with the added benefit of a big rig. I know, right? You can already tell it's going to be awesome.
This was a couple years ago now. I actually might still have been in high school. Again I was sitting at a red light waiting to go straight, having just pulled out of the parking lot from dropping my sister off at swim practice and was heading home. Also again, the road I was on was fairly small - two lanes on each side.
At the left turn light opposite my lane was a giant big rig with two trailers. I won't say what company it was from, but I will tell you that there are two red circles involved.
Now, if you've ever driven anywhere near a big rig, you know that they need a lot of room to turn, to the point where they sometimes need multiple lanes just to turn right, let alone u-turn. Well, this particular driver decided that he was going to make a u-turn with mutiple trailers (the giant part of the truck that holds stuff. So two of those giant things) onto a small two lane road.
I and my fellow drivers watched with vague interest as the light turned green and this man made his attempt. I was initially surprised that the cab (the drivey part. You know, the part with the engine) even made the turn in the space allotted, and even more so when the first trailer managed to slide its way through, teetering slightly. But then, as I feared, the close space proved too much for the second trailer. I and my fellow drivers now watched in surprise and horror and the second trailer swayed a few times before actually TIPPING OVER, taking out the street sign and part of the stop light, leaving it swinging violently in it's wake as the trailer skidded over to the side of the road.
Needless to say, I was pretty shocked.
Cue the still swaying street light to turn green and the path of my lane covered by big rig tipping over type debris and said tipped over big rig just barely out of the road on the abnormally large shoulder.
That was seriously crazy to witness.
And there you have it, two of my personal examples of men failing and driving.
The. End. :P
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Why having access to a child is fun.
Ew. Now that I read that title back, it sounds pretty pervy and gross. Allow me to explain:
Having a small child around (for example, my boyfriend's six year old niece) forces you to come up with wonderful child-friendly, creative activities when you might otherwise choose to sit on your butt all day and leave the house only to obtain food.
Basically what I'm trying to say is - today my boyfriend, his niece, and I had an epic water balloon-slash-silly string-slash-water gun fight on the (vacant) field of the nearby elementary school. It was so freakin fun.
Not that my boyfriend and I only participate in activities intended for children (playing in the local pool's kids play center, for example) when his niece is around, but that's besides the point. And since epic water gun fights are one of the very few times when I feel that running is legitimately required and encouraged (the only other example I can think of being getting chased by someone intending to do me bodily harm), I got lots of awesome exercise today without any extra effort or time on my part.
I guess the point of this is that I'm very happy with the way I spent my Saturday. :)
As a result of all that motion, I have spent my time since dinner laying on my boyfriend's bed with my computer propped up on my stomach, waiting desperately for the English subbed version of the new episode of 2ne1 TV to come out, listening to music, and reading a blog while he plays Warcraft III next to me because he's a nerdbomber. :D
We'll probably spend the remainder of the evening playing Kinect and watching movies because we're shmawesome. So there. :)
Having a small child around (for example, my boyfriend's six year old niece) forces you to come up with wonderful child-friendly, creative activities when you might otherwise choose to sit on your butt all day and leave the house only to obtain food.
Basically what I'm trying to say is - today my boyfriend, his niece, and I had an epic water balloon-slash-silly string-slash-water gun fight on the (vacant) field of the nearby elementary school. It was so freakin fun.
Not that my boyfriend and I only participate in activities intended for children (playing in the local pool's kids play center, for example) when his niece is around, but that's besides the point. And since epic water gun fights are one of the very few times when I feel that running is legitimately required and encouraged (the only other example I can think of being getting chased by someone intending to do me bodily harm), I got lots of awesome exercise today without any extra effort or time on my part.
I guess the point of this is that I'm very happy with the way I spent my Saturday. :)
As a result of all that motion, I have spent my time since dinner laying on my boyfriend's bed with my computer propped up on my stomach, waiting desperately for the English subbed version of the new episode of 2ne1 TV to come out, listening to music, and reading a blog while he plays Warcraft III next to me because he's a nerdbomber. :D
We'll probably spend the remainder of the evening playing Kinect and watching movies because we're shmawesome. So there. :)
Friday, August 5, 2011
Hello. I am not a hipster. I am, however, freezing to death.
At the moment, I am blogging (for the first time, mind you. Despite the fact that my 'About Me' blatently states that I had no intention of partaking in such activity. Life's funny, innit?) on my lovely (read 'old') laptop... in a coffee shop. Not just any coffee shop - a Starbucks! I doubt I've ever done anything that has made me seem more hipster, but I swear I'm not. Although, now that I think about it, all of this denial is only adding to the evidence of my hipsterdom... Alright, fine. I'm a hipster (that's how you know I'm not. They'd never admit to being one! Haha!).
So yeah... Now that I've gotten beyond that first completely useless paragraph, onto my thought:
I was in a ridiculously good mood as I clocked out at work today, which is quite a feat, considering I work in a disgusting warehouse and it is currently August and I live in Northern California so it is HOT AND AWFUL. Even on Fridays, my mood doesn't usually improve until I am far far away from work and in some sort of air conditioning (which Starbucks has graciously taken care of by freezing me out). It was also a very large change from the mood in which I left work yesterday, which very much resembled an atomic bomb of anger going off in my head, followed by a large mushroom cloud of resentment. That always happens when I'm overwhelmed with packages during the sort and not offered appropriate help, then expected to hang around for another hour to scan letters.
Today, however, was wonderful (as far as work can be wonderful). I had very few boxes in my can, and they all came at reasonable distances apart, and there were hardly any letters to scan. Having finished early I messed around with my work friend Keith (enormously tall, 30-something black man to my ridiculously short, 20-something white girlness, married with kids, but acts my age), who I proceeded to karate chop and kick whilst making Bruce Lee type noises only to promptly have him threaten to throw me over his should like a package. I then proceeded to run away giggling, nearly smacking into another (much less liked by me) coworker on my way to clock out. Sigh. Why can't every day at work be like this one? :P
Now I was bored and freezing (damn Starbucks air conditioner) waiting as patiently as I can (not very) for my boyfriend to get off of work so that I may spend time at his house. Although I could potentially get a member of his family to let me into the house before he got home, as his lovely mother did yesterday, I have chosen to wait at Starbucks today because, as much as I adore his 6 year old niece (who lives with him), it's hard to entertain 6 year olds for long periods of time. So instead, I have chosen to take some alone time in a coffee shop, listening to 2ne1 (as I often do), watching youtube, and reading Hayley's blog. And, to a lesser extent, writing this one.
And there you have it.
So yeah... Now that I've gotten beyond that first completely useless paragraph, onto my thought:
I was in a ridiculously good mood as I clocked out at work today, which is quite a feat, considering I work in a disgusting warehouse and it is currently August and I live in Northern California so it is HOT AND AWFUL. Even on Fridays, my mood doesn't usually improve until I am far far away from work and in some sort of air conditioning (which Starbucks has graciously taken care of by freezing me out). It was also a very large change from the mood in which I left work yesterday, which very much resembled an atomic bomb of anger going off in my head, followed by a large mushroom cloud of resentment. That always happens when I'm overwhelmed with packages during the sort and not offered appropriate help, then expected to hang around for another hour to scan letters.
Today, however, was wonderful (as far as work can be wonderful). I had very few boxes in my can, and they all came at reasonable distances apart, and there were hardly any letters to scan. Having finished early I messed around with my work friend Keith (enormously tall, 30-something black man to my ridiculously short, 20-something white girlness, married with kids, but acts my age), who I proceeded to karate chop and kick whilst making Bruce Lee type noises only to promptly have him threaten to throw me over his should like a package. I then proceeded to run away giggling, nearly smacking into another (much less liked by me) coworker on my way to clock out. Sigh. Why can't every day at work be like this one? :P
Now I was bored and freezing (damn Starbucks air conditioner) waiting as patiently as I can (not very) for my boyfriend to get off of work so that I may spend time at his house. Although I could potentially get a member of his family to let me into the house before he got home, as his lovely mother did yesterday, I have chosen to wait at Starbucks today because, as much as I adore his 6 year old niece (who lives with him), it's hard to entertain 6 year olds for long periods of time. So instead, I have chosen to take some alone time in a coffee shop, listening to 2ne1 (as I often do), watching youtube, and reading Hayley's blog. And, to a lesser extent, writing this one.
And there you have it.
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