Still groggy from the previous night at the hookah bar, the crew -- Kenneth, Trinh, Don, and Xixi -- reconvened on Saturday for a hot pot lunch at a dumpling house. Together, we re-hydrated while trying to reconstruct the night from the collective remnants of our memories.
We were joined by Thu and a co-worker of hers, a guy who initially seemed proper and professional, but after listening to our lunch conversation, quickly showed a cruder side, humorously profane topped with indiscreet misogynism.
Thu is a chick from Canada that works for the same suits as Titty and Kenneth, except in the Canadian office. I met her a little over a year ago when I was entertaining an offer from that company, and she was in town attending a training class. In that time span, I accepted another offer, left that job, and moved onto yet a new employer. Thu, on the other hand, is in town this year to lead a training class.
Her co-worker apparently holds a high level position in the Canadian office, though he didn't look or act like he was any older than his mid-late twenties, if even. Kenneth was accordingly very reserved around the guy.
-
Later in the night, Titty joined us and we took Thu and her co-worker to an upscale bar downtown with a live cover band that I think Trinh has some sort of man-crush on. The few of us from the previous night were still weary, though, so we were conservative with the drinks.
I baby-sat a glass of Sprite, faking drinks half the night.
The Canadian guy, however, came out hell-bent on making it a night as it was his last in town. He ordered rounds of Prairie Fires, which he claimed was a Canadian drink, though I doubt either tequila or Tobasco sauce originated from Canada.
At some point in the night, the guy told me that he wanted to pull some of "these bitches." When I asked him why he called them bitches, he said, "Because they're bitches!" I told him that he wasn't gonna get any if he kept calling them bitches, and he retorted, "You got to put them in their place. You got to tell them they're bitches, and let them know they're bitches, or they'll start thinking they're the shit or something!"
If he weren't Canadian, we probably could've been best friends.
-
At the end of the night, Kenneth was driving the Canadian guy back to his hotel, and just as the car pulled into the parking lot, the guy opened his rear driver-side door and hurled. As concerned as Kenneth was about partying with higher-ranking management in his company, the guy puked all over his car.
-
Tuesday, I took an extended break from the office and had lunch with Thu at a pho shop. We made catch-up talk -- I updated her on how things went downhill for me at my last place of employment and my outlooks about the new one, and she told me about her stuff and about the wedding she was going to have in -- I think -- September.
Some time just over a year ago, she was telling me about how she didn't believe marriage was a terribly big deal, and that she wouldn't care if she never married her man. At that time, I was telling her about how I didn't need growth and money to be primary factors in my career decisions as long as I loved what I did.
This year, I left a company of very friendly, very personable, like-minded peers and moved into a more structured, professional environment that conveniently came with better recognition and pay. Last year, I was chasing aspirations. This year, I chase paper. When asked what the difference was, my answer was simple: I can hold money.
I can only imagine that a ring might, likewise, be easier to hold than things like love and whispered promises.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Go, Cougs, Go
Friday night, I sent a text to the hookah bar girl to see what she was up to. She was working the night, so I stopped by, accompanied by Kenneth and Trinh.
It was Kenneth's birthday weekend, and he was in party mode. The plan was to just stop by the hookah place for a little while to kick it with the girl before heading toward Midtown to romp.
The hookah girl caught us at the door and seated us in her section near the bar. I told her it was Kenneth's birthday, and she immediately yelled, "Jägerbomb!"
She brought us a round plus one for herself. We toasted and she cheered, "Happy birthday!"
An older lady at the bar overheard us, a blonde haired lady maybe in her forties or fifties wearing a frighteningly thick wad of red lipstick. "Is it somebody's birthday?" she yelled over to our table, "Is it his birthday? Get them another round and put it on my tab!"
So the hookah girl brought out another round plus one for herself.
-
As we drank more and the night got later, we abandoned plans of going Midtown, and the rest of our party -- Tam, Don, and Xixi -- joined us at the hookah place. The hookah girl moved us out onto the patio to give us more room and some space for her to sneak a seat when she wasn't busy.
Midway through the night, sauced up and heavy in party mode, Kenneth stood up and asked the table, "You guys wanna see me get a cougar?"
I hesitated, because I'd seen the cougar in question, and I really did not think that his hooking up with her could possibly end well. But I'm a dick with a sadistic sense of humor, and ultimately, the answer to the question was: yes; yes, I wanted to see that shit.
And so it came to be, Kenneth disappeared for half an hour and returned with probably a handful of shots in his system and a lady twice his age.
As it turns out, the cougar was related to the owner of the joint, and he eventually came out to our party and joined us. This cleared the hookah girl of her work, for the most part, and she joined our party as well, drinking and getting her rowdy on. Eventually, even the DJ joined us.
-
By last call, I'd drank myself beyond stupidity.
The guys had gone inside and were dancing up on random chicks. Trinh found an obese one to keep him company. Kenneth danced with some other dude's girlfriend.
The hookah girl found me hanging out on the patio by myself and dragged me onto the dancefloor. She freaked with me for a little bit, did some crazy hands on the floor, ass in the air kind of shit. That was the point in the night when I realized I'd been taken too far past my limits.
As I watched the girl's ass grind up against my crotch, I realized that I was too drunk to be dancing. And if the night went anywhere beyond dancing, I was way too fucked up to be doing that too.
"What's up?" she finally asked me, "You cool, babe?"
I shook my head slowly. I think something inside me died. "Naw, sweety," I uttered, "I fucked up tonight. I don't think I can be doing this right now."
-
When the music stopped and the lights came on, the cougar and the owner told us that they were related to another guy who owned another club, and that we would be moving the party to that venue.
We all agreed. The hookah girl said she'd come join us, but she had to close up. I told her that I'd wait for her to finish up.
Tam, Don, and I hung out a bit outside the place as she closed up. I sat down somewhere and blacked out.
-
By the time I woke, there was sun in my eyes. I was not at home, and there were about two dozen missed calls on my phone.
It was Kenneth's birthday weekend, and he was in party mode. The plan was to just stop by the hookah place for a little while to kick it with the girl before heading toward Midtown to romp.
The hookah girl caught us at the door and seated us in her section near the bar. I told her it was Kenneth's birthday, and she immediately yelled, "Jägerbomb!"
She brought us a round plus one for herself. We toasted and she cheered, "Happy birthday!"
An older lady at the bar overheard us, a blonde haired lady maybe in her forties or fifties wearing a frighteningly thick wad of red lipstick. "Is it somebody's birthday?" she yelled over to our table, "Is it his birthday? Get them another round and put it on my tab!"
So the hookah girl brought out another round plus one for herself.
-
As we drank more and the night got later, we abandoned plans of going Midtown, and the rest of our party -- Tam, Don, and Xixi -- joined us at the hookah place. The hookah girl moved us out onto the patio to give us more room and some space for her to sneak a seat when she wasn't busy.
Midway through the night, sauced up and heavy in party mode, Kenneth stood up and asked the table, "You guys wanna see me get a cougar?"
I hesitated, because I'd seen the cougar in question, and I really did not think that his hooking up with her could possibly end well. But I'm a dick with a sadistic sense of humor, and ultimately, the answer to the question was: yes; yes, I wanted to see that shit.
And so it came to be, Kenneth disappeared for half an hour and returned with probably a handful of shots in his system and a lady twice his age.
As it turns out, the cougar was related to the owner of the joint, and he eventually came out to our party and joined us. This cleared the hookah girl of her work, for the most part, and she joined our party as well, drinking and getting her rowdy on. Eventually, even the DJ joined us.
-
By last call, I'd drank myself beyond stupidity.
The guys had gone inside and were dancing up on random chicks. Trinh found an obese one to keep him company. Kenneth danced with some other dude's girlfriend.
The hookah girl found me hanging out on the patio by myself and dragged me onto the dancefloor. She freaked with me for a little bit, did some crazy hands on the floor, ass in the air kind of shit. That was the point in the night when I realized I'd been taken too far past my limits.
As I watched the girl's ass grind up against my crotch, I realized that I was too drunk to be dancing. And if the night went anywhere beyond dancing, I was way too fucked up to be doing that too.
"What's up?" she finally asked me, "You cool, babe?"
I shook my head slowly. I think something inside me died. "Naw, sweety," I uttered, "I fucked up tonight. I don't think I can be doing this right now."
-
When the music stopped and the lights came on, the cougar and the owner told us that they were related to another guy who owned another club, and that we would be moving the party to that venue.
We all agreed. The hookah girl said she'd come join us, but she had to close up. I told her that I'd wait for her to finish up.
Tam, Don, and I hung out a bit outside the place as she closed up. I sat down somewhere and blacked out.
-
By the time I woke, there was sun in my eyes. I was not at home, and there were about two dozen missed calls on my phone.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Opening The Box
A small group of the guys from work decided to have a team-building dinner at an Indian restaurant tonight, organized by our infrastructures lead. I wasn't apart of their team, though we share the same open-bay office space, but they invited me along because I was working late, and they caught me on the way out the door.
During dinner, their team joked around and cursed and insulted each other's mothers. Their team has seemingly better chemistry than mine because the majority of them are relatively young, whereas my own team is composed mostly of older, more serious guys. The kind of cats that pop Centrum pills and test their blood sugar after every meal.
We had pili pili, goat curry, and a sampler plate with chicken, beef, and lamb kebabs.
-
After dinner, one of the consultants from Seattle asked if I knew of any good hookah bars. He and the guy from Austin thought it was too early to head back to their hotel rooms, and the guy from Austin, though living in a college town, had never smoked a hookah before.
The infrastructures lead joined us, and I showed them to a little joint on The Strip that I knew about because it was next door to a bar I regularly visit for happy hour. By the time we arrived, it was pouring a storm, but we took a seat on the patio under a curtain-drawn gazebo-looking structure anyway because they were blasting loud club music inside.
A cute, petite girl came out to wait on us; she wore large neon green hoop earrings and a necklace of colorful beads. Her hair was tied on both sides into little tails with more neon colors. She looked like the kind of girl that loved getting smash and using it as an excuse to do dumb things -- but very cute and petite, nonetheless.
I playfully gave her a hard time with the drink orders, requesting Stella and Amstel and other beers that I knew a dinky shack of a bar like this wouldn't have. After a few runs back to the bar to check on my beer orders, she came out with a bottle of Dos Equis and declared, "You're drinking Dos Equis, man, I don't care what you want. I'm not doing this anymore."
We laughed, and I told her, "I'm just giving you a hard time, dear, Dos Equis is fine." Then, I followed up, "I feel kinda bad, sending you running around like that. Why don't you just sit down and chill for a bit? There's nobody here, anyway, and it's raining."
She acquiesced.
The girl was not the least bit shy, and she began leading our conversations, diving into topics about drug-induced adventures and sexual experiences. She revealed herself to be a marijuana-enthusiast former college track runner -turned- skater and surfer.
She badgered me for my age, and I refused to answer seriously. I insisted that I was nineteen, and predictably, she knew I was lying. I was self-conscious because my co-workers were present. Since working at the new gig, I made it a point to not time-date myself because I knew that I was the youngest person on the team. I was staffed on a project backed by a multi-million dollar business proposal, and there would be meetings where I might voice my opinion, possibly make corrections or suggestions, and even criticism. And being so young and briefly removed from school, I did not want to have my youth become a hurdle.
So throughout the night, she tried to pry my age out of me, and I kept telling her that I was nineteen.
-
Sometime in the night, her manager stepped outside, looking for her, only to find her loitering about at our table. He came over to figure out why she wasn't working.
The guys and I started talking up a clamor, telling him about how great of a waitress she was, how she was so much fun and making the bar a better place to be, and how drunk she was getting all of us. So he cheered up, told her she could stay and even drink with us.
And so the girl started to drink with us. That was all it took for me to throw inhibition out the window. The whole table of us drank ourselves beyond professionalism, and stories began to leak out -- the kind you don't share around the watercoolers at work. The kind that'll make you want to avoid eye contact the next day.
Then, she asked me again about my age. She said that everybody was already drunk and telling embarrassing stories so I didn't need to try to hide things about myself anymore. I agreed, but still didn't give her an answer. So she took a guess, and she guessed my age exactly. "On the dot," I said. She replied, "Good. That's how old I wanted you to be."
-
At around 11pm, we decided to disband. We thanked her for her company and went our separate ways. Unsolicited, she wrote her number on a blank order slip and said to give her a call to hang out sometime.
During dinner, their team joked around and cursed and insulted each other's mothers. Their team has seemingly better chemistry than mine because the majority of them are relatively young, whereas my own team is composed mostly of older, more serious guys. The kind of cats that pop Centrum pills and test their blood sugar after every meal.
We had pili pili, goat curry, and a sampler plate with chicken, beef, and lamb kebabs.
-
After dinner, one of the consultants from Seattle asked if I knew of any good hookah bars. He and the guy from Austin thought it was too early to head back to their hotel rooms, and the guy from Austin, though living in a college town, had never smoked a hookah before.
The infrastructures lead joined us, and I showed them to a little joint on The Strip that I knew about because it was next door to a bar I regularly visit for happy hour. By the time we arrived, it was pouring a storm, but we took a seat on the patio under a curtain-drawn gazebo-looking structure anyway because they were blasting loud club music inside.
A cute, petite girl came out to wait on us; she wore large neon green hoop earrings and a necklace of colorful beads. Her hair was tied on both sides into little tails with more neon colors. She looked like the kind of girl that loved getting smash and using it as an excuse to do dumb things -- but very cute and petite, nonetheless.
I playfully gave her a hard time with the drink orders, requesting Stella and Amstel and other beers that I knew a dinky shack of a bar like this wouldn't have. After a few runs back to the bar to check on my beer orders, she came out with a bottle of Dos Equis and declared, "You're drinking Dos Equis, man, I don't care what you want. I'm not doing this anymore."
We laughed, and I told her, "I'm just giving you a hard time, dear, Dos Equis is fine." Then, I followed up, "I feel kinda bad, sending you running around like that. Why don't you just sit down and chill for a bit? There's nobody here, anyway, and it's raining."
She acquiesced.
The girl was not the least bit shy, and she began leading our conversations, diving into topics about drug-induced adventures and sexual experiences. She revealed herself to be a marijuana-enthusiast former college track runner -turned- skater and surfer.
She badgered me for my age, and I refused to answer seriously. I insisted that I was nineteen, and predictably, she knew I was lying. I was self-conscious because my co-workers were present. Since working at the new gig, I made it a point to not time-date myself because I knew that I was the youngest person on the team. I was staffed on a project backed by a multi-million dollar business proposal, and there would be meetings where I might voice my opinion, possibly make corrections or suggestions, and even criticism. And being so young and briefly removed from school, I did not want to have my youth become a hurdle.
So throughout the night, she tried to pry my age out of me, and I kept telling her that I was nineteen.
-
Sometime in the night, her manager stepped outside, looking for her, only to find her loitering about at our table. He came over to figure out why she wasn't working.
The guys and I started talking up a clamor, telling him about how great of a waitress she was, how she was so much fun and making the bar a better place to be, and how drunk she was getting all of us. So he cheered up, told her she could stay and even drink with us.
And so the girl started to drink with us. That was all it took for me to throw inhibition out the window. The whole table of us drank ourselves beyond professionalism, and stories began to leak out -- the kind you don't share around the watercoolers at work. The kind that'll make you want to avoid eye contact the next day.
Then, she asked me again about my age. She said that everybody was already drunk and telling embarrassing stories so I didn't need to try to hide things about myself anymore. I agreed, but still didn't give her an answer. So she took a guess, and she guessed my age exactly. "On the dot," I said. She replied, "Good. That's how old I wanted you to be."
-
At around 11pm, we decided to disband. We thanked her for her company and went our separate ways. Unsolicited, she wrote her number on a blank order slip and said to give her a call to hang out sometime.
Saturday, July 5, 2008
The Day We'll Fight Back
For Independence Day, Binh gathered a small crowd together at The New Cage.
The New Cage is Binh's new apartment, which he recently moved into, maybe a month go. The Old Cage is our old apartment, my brief stint as his absentee roommate. For simplicity, "The Cage" will from hereon just refer to the current one.
Met up with Krys, Ivan, and Gene at the Cage for some beers. Binh had a PC hooked up to his big screen, so Anton being Anton, surfed around YouTube and Entensity, finding fucked up borderline snuff videos to help the alcohol kill our brains.
The latest YouTube craze is apparently a Mad TV skit with Bobby Lee called "Dragon Hunter 2."
-
At around midnight, the crew shuffled out to a pub near Town Center, where we quaffed as many pitchers as we could before last call. There was a live band playing.
They sucked.
-
Back at the Cage, someone devised a new card game called Ba Cao For Shots.
Someone asked, "How do we play?" To which, Gene replied, "We play Ba Cao ... for shots."
And so we took turns drawing cards and drinking Hen.
Blake and Chu stopped by after a night at some club, and they brought two girls. The chicks were both drunk. And crazy. Not the good crazy.
One of the girls was skinny with a long horse face, and either wore too much make-up or was ghastly pale. She was an attention whore, and made it a point to be loud and announce her presence with inane rambling the moment she stepped into the place.
The other girl was shorter and noteably cuter and slightly less annoying. But equally crazy. She had security issues or something, and at one point in the night, locked herself in the bathroom because she was drunk and was afraid of making a fool of herself. Which, in my personal opinion, was just a tad counterproductive. Her attention whore friend had to console her and remind her that she was a unique and beautiful snowflake.
I was also told, through whispers, that the shorter girl had a forty-some year-old boyfriend that had been lighting up her phone all night. Forty year-old boyfriends are usually a good indication of daddy issues.
The attention whore kept clinging onto Binh's girlfriend and trying to be best friends with the girl, though the whole room could tell she was just trying to sip on Binh's Kool-aid.
-
Sometime in the night, the neighbors called the cops because we were too loud. We continued drinking, though in whispers, swearing under our breath at the people around us for trying to lead civilized suburban lives.
The party slowly fizzled and died, and as the sun rose, we one by one bowed out and went home.
The New Cage is Binh's new apartment, which he recently moved into, maybe a month go. The Old Cage is our old apartment, my brief stint as his absentee roommate. For simplicity, "The Cage" will from hereon just refer to the current one.
Met up with Krys, Ivan, and Gene at the Cage for some beers. Binh had a PC hooked up to his big screen, so Anton being Anton, surfed around YouTube and Entensity, finding fucked up borderline snuff videos to help the alcohol kill our brains.
The latest YouTube craze is apparently a Mad TV skit with Bobby Lee called "Dragon Hunter 2."
-
At around midnight, the crew shuffled out to a pub near Town Center, where we quaffed as many pitchers as we could before last call. There was a live band playing.
They sucked.
-
Back at the Cage, someone devised a new card game called Ba Cao For Shots.
Someone asked, "How do we play?" To which, Gene replied, "We play Ba Cao ... for shots."
And so we took turns drawing cards and drinking Hen.
Blake and Chu stopped by after a night at some club, and they brought two girls. The chicks were both drunk. And crazy. Not the good crazy.
One of the girls was skinny with a long horse face, and either wore too much make-up or was ghastly pale. She was an attention whore, and made it a point to be loud and announce her presence with inane rambling the moment she stepped into the place.
The other girl was shorter and noteably cuter and slightly less annoying. But equally crazy. She had security issues or something, and at one point in the night, locked herself in the bathroom because she was drunk and was afraid of making a fool of herself. Which, in my personal opinion, was just a tad counterproductive. Her attention whore friend had to console her and remind her that she was a unique and beautiful snowflake.
I was also told, through whispers, that the shorter girl had a forty-some year-old boyfriend that had been lighting up her phone all night. Forty year-old boyfriends are usually a good indication of daddy issues.
The attention whore kept clinging onto Binh's girlfriend and trying to be best friends with the girl, though the whole room could tell she was just trying to sip on Binh's Kool-aid.
-
Sometime in the night, the neighbors called the cops because we were too loud. We continued drinking, though in whispers, swearing under our breath at the people around us for trying to lead civilized suburban lives.
The party slowly fizzled and died, and as the sun rose, we one by one bowed out and went home.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Same Shit, Different Toilet
I started at my new place of employment this week, sub-contracting at a Client that deals in oil drilling, transporting, and distribution.
My on-boarding was a mess since I was catching the tail end of a Sprint cycle; everyone was hustling to meet their marks. First day, they basically tossed a laptop at me and a gig worth of documentation to read up on.
The place is pretty state-of-the-art. They've got monitors on those adjustable arms so you can position the screens all over the desk at your whim. The desk and chairs both have motorized adjustment mechanisms with four memory settings, I guess in case there are days you feel like sitting high and other days you feel like lying back.
These big blue-chip index companies are pretty damn strict about their policies, particularly in regards to safety and privacy. The first two days comprised primarily of reading these handbooks, and then I had to take these dumb quizzes over the material. I call them dumb because if you answered a question incorrectly, it displayed the correct answer and asked you to try again.
I read the first handbook thoroughly because I didn't want to be "that guy" who failed the on-boarding quizzes, but then I realized that there was no way to fail, so I just clicked through the rest of the material.
-
It was mid-week by the time I'd gone through the on-boarding material and was given my laptop, account, and on-line access. I have a buddy, Nick, from high school who I knew was contracting at The Client, but at another building downtown, so the first thing I did was pull up his name on the internal chat messenger and catch up.
The Client licenses this software called WorkPace, which advertises itself as a way to help "achieve safe and healthy work habits." It's basically this process that runs in the background and keeps track of how active you've been at your computer -- how fast your mouse is moving around, how often you're clicking, how fast your keystrokes are -- and tries to remind you to rest if you breach a certain threshold.
The threshold on my machine had been set to 75 words per minute. I easily sustain close to 90 words a minute casually.
Almost as soon as I began chatting with Nick, the little WorkPace panel started popping up, telling me to chill out and take a break. And because of my machine-gun-esque typing, the panel popped up every five or ten minutes, trying to slow me down.
I mentioned this up to Nick, and he told me that he ignores it. That he likes to sometimes type as fast as he can and see if he can make the little smiley face frown.
I thought that was something I'd like to see, so I began chatting and writing e-mails as vigorously as I could. Turns out, the smiley face never frowns. It keeps smiling until it locks your damn machine up and sends a warning message to somebody somewhere, probably telling them that there's a little dick in room C1202 that won't comply to company safety policies.
-
Sporadically, these animated windows pop up on the screen with directions for various at-your-seat stretching exercises, and it displays a thirty-second timer to practice it. One of the exercises is to stare at the lower corner of the monitor and allow your eyes to drift, to rest and relax your mind and eyes at the same time.
I've always liked to just let my eyes to wander low and away, not to relax, per se, but because I'm a bit of a sloth and it lets my mind float lazily while looking semi-busy. I always wondered, whenever I did things like that, how all my co-workers always managed to have something to do and were always so diligent about it. I wondered if other people were just moseying around, trying to look busy like I was doing, or if they were actually more productive than me.
Now, I can do it with a guilty-free conscience, knowing that everybody around me has to do it too.
My on-boarding was a mess since I was catching the tail end of a Sprint cycle; everyone was hustling to meet their marks. First day, they basically tossed a laptop at me and a gig worth of documentation to read up on.
The place is pretty state-of-the-art. They've got monitors on those adjustable arms so you can position the screens all over the desk at your whim. The desk and chairs both have motorized adjustment mechanisms with four memory settings, I guess in case there are days you feel like sitting high and other days you feel like lying back.
These big blue-chip index companies are pretty damn strict about their policies, particularly in regards to safety and privacy. The first two days comprised primarily of reading these handbooks, and then I had to take these dumb quizzes over the material. I call them dumb because if you answered a question incorrectly, it displayed the correct answer and asked you to try again.
I read the first handbook thoroughly because I didn't want to be "that guy" who failed the on-boarding quizzes, but then I realized that there was no way to fail, so I just clicked through the rest of the material.
-
It was mid-week by the time I'd gone through the on-boarding material and was given my laptop, account, and on-line access. I have a buddy, Nick, from high school who I knew was contracting at The Client, but at another building downtown, so the first thing I did was pull up his name on the internal chat messenger and catch up.
The Client licenses this software called WorkPace, which advertises itself as a way to help "achieve safe and healthy work habits." It's basically this process that runs in the background and keeps track of how active you've been at your computer -- how fast your mouse is moving around, how often you're clicking, how fast your keystrokes are -- and tries to remind you to rest if you breach a certain threshold.
The threshold on my machine had been set to 75 words per minute. I easily sustain close to 90 words a minute casually.
Almost as soon as I began chatting with Nick, the little WorkPace panel started popping up, telling me to chill out and take a break. And because of my machine-gun-esque typing, the panel popped up every five or ten minutes, trying to slow me down.
I mentioned this up to Nick, and he told me that he ignores it. That he likes to sometimes type as fast as he can and see if he can make the little smiley face frown.
I thought that was something I'd like to see, so I began chatting and writing e-mails as vigorously as I could. Turns out, the smiley face never frowns. It keeps smiling until it locks your damn machine up and sends a warning message to somebody somewhere, probably telling them that there's a little dick in room C1202 that won't comply to company safety policies.
-
Sporadically, these animated windows pop up on the screen with directions for various at-your-seat stretching exercises, and it displays a thirty-second timer to practice it. One of the exercises is to stare at the lower corner of the monitor and allow your eyes to drift, to rest and relax your mind and eyes at the same time.
I've always liked to just let my eyes to wander low and away, not to relax, per se, but because I'm a bit of a sloth and it lets my mind float lazily while looking semi-busy. I always wondered, whenever I did things like that, how all my co-workers always managed to have something to do and were always so diligent about it. I wondered if other people were just moseying around, trying to look busy like I was doing, or if they were actually more productive than me.
Now, I can do it with a guilty-free conscience, knowing that everybody around me has to do it too.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
LA Trip: Day 3 & 4
By day three, I was burnt. Literally and figuratively.
I'd spent the last two days in a row walking along the beach under the sun drinking nothing but alcohol. And that's a generally bad idea.
My skin was peeling and my head was pounding, and I feel like I'm at an age now where I tend to listen to and abide by what my body tells me. So I stayed in bed straight through the day till the sun had gone down.
Found a small phở shop near Manhattan Beach for dinner. Turned out, however, that there wasn't a single Vietnamese person in the place -- it was owned and run by Japanese.
The food was terrible and expensive as fuck all.
-
I got a hold of Audrey late at night, and I met up with her downtown for some aimless walking around. Audrey is a chick I'd met some time ago through mutual friends. We circled Little Tokyo and landed at a mom and pop Ramen shop for a late night meal at around 2am.
There was a sign-up sheet on a clipboard at the door to sign your name and wait for it to be called for seating. When Audrey and I arrived, we were the only names on the list and caught the last available seats.
After we'd been seated, I noticed a large group of maybe six to eight people sign their name on the list and then loitered outside the door on the streets. Another large group of similar size appeared after them, signed the sheet, and also dawdled about on the sidewalk.
That was one of the most peculiar things I'd ever seen. That shit would never fly back in Texas. It's hot as fuck down South, and people are grumpy and impatient; I'd have never waited in line like that for food.
-
Because I'd gotten a hold of Audrey so late in the night and on the tail end of my trip, we agreed to hang out again the next morning before my flight home. She took me for a trip to Chinatown, which she refers to as "old" Chinatown because apparently there are newer, "unofficial" Chinatowns, kinda like the one I went to in San Gabriel Valley on my first night.
We checked out bootleg "Adiaas" and "Pumu" shops and haggled prices with street vendors over imposter beanie babies.
There was a sign set up in the manner of the famous Hollywood sign that read, "Chinatownland." I'm not sure why "land" was suffixed at the end of it.
I was looking for a street vendor that was willing to chop a live chicken's head off for me a la Chris Tucker's character from Rush Hour 2, but no luck.
-
I milked practically every minute of my trip, and was the absolute last person to board my flight, catching it just as they were closing the boarding door.
Had I been just a minute slower, I would not have been allowed to take that trip back to tedious work life and shit weather.
I'd spent the last two days in a row walking along the beach under the sun drinking nothing but alcohol. And that's a generally bad idea.
My skin was peeling and my head was pounding, and I feel like I'm at an age now where I tend to listen to and abide by what my body tells me. So I stayed in bed straight through the day till the sun had gone down.
Found a small phở shop near Manhattan Beach for dinner. Turned out, however, that there wasn't a single Vietnamese person in the place -- it was owned and run by Japanese.
The food was terrible and expensive as fuck all.
-
I got a hold of Audrey late at night, and I met up with her downtown for some aimless walking around. Audrey is a chick I'd met some time ago through mutual friends. We circled Little Tokyo and landed at a mom and pop Ramen shop for a late night meal at around 2am.
There was a sign-up sheet on a clipboard at the door to sign your name and wait for it to be called for seating. When Audrey and I arrived, we were the only names on the list and caught the last available seats.
After we'd been seated, I noticed a large group of maybe six to eight people sign their name on the list and then loitered outside the door on the streets. Another large group of similar size appeared after them, signed the sheet, and also dawdled about on the sidewalk.
That was one of the most peculiar things I'd ever seen. That shit would never fly back in Texas. It's hot as fuck down South, and people are grumpy and impatient; I'd have never waited in line like that for food.
-
Because I'd gotten a hold of Audrey so late in the night and on the tail end of my trip, we agreed to hang out again the next morning before my flight home. She took me for a trip to Chinatown, which she refers to as "old" Chinatown because apparently there are newer, "unofficial" Chinatowns, kinda like the one I went to in San Gabriel Valley on my first night.
We checked out bootleg "Adiaas" and "Pumu" shops and haggled prices with street vendors over imposter beanie babies.
There was a sign set up in the manner of the famous Hollywood sign that read, "Chinatownland." I'm not sure why "land" was suffixed at the end of it.
I was looking for a street vendor that was willing to chop a live chicken's head off for me a la Chris Tucker's character from Rush Hour 2, but no luck.
-
I milked practically every minute of my trip, and was the absolute last person to board my flight, catching it just as they were closing the boarding door.
Had I been just a minute slower, I would not have been allowed to take that trip back to tedious work life and shit weather.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
LA Trip: Day 2
Early the next morning, I rolled out to the Santa Monica strip, which was a recommendation of a drunk guy from one of the bars on Venice Beach. Santa Monica Beach is the beach you normally see in movies or on TV where there are big steroid addicts pumping iron along the beach front.
It's also home to a community of pothead bums.
The first sight I saw of Santa Monica Beach was a crowd of people gathered around a performer, a fast-talking Jamaican fellow with some pretty clever quips. He did a flip off of a chair and landed on a pile of broken glass, and then demanded everyone donate money into a black box. When the crowd dispersed, he angrily cursed at them for not being generous.
I thought it was peculiar for a beggar to get angry at people who wouldn't give him money, but I quickly discovered that this was actually the norm around here.
The next sight was a mime, who quickly demanded money as soon as he noticed me staring. Mimes don't fucking talk, asshole.
Around noon, a small camera crew set up around a graffitied wall and started a photoshoot with some bikini model. She was pretty damn hot, so I stood around and watched. Pretty soon a crowd of people gathered around, staring at her go through her poses. I always imagined models were sequestered on some artificial set or at least shielded from onlookers, but apparently not. By the time she was finished, there were a good dozen or more guys just standing around ogling her.
Welcome to the West Coast, Lucky, you ignorant little country boy.
The most astonishing thing I saw at Santa Monica was a gazebo along the beach, and sitting in this gazebo were two white kids in probably their early twenties and an old Asian lady in probably her fifties. And the three of them were passing around a blunt. At two in the afternoon on a weekday.
In fact, there were fully grown men and women riding their bikes along the beach, smoking marijuana, and just taking naps in the grass in the buttfuck middle of the day. California is an expensive ass place to live in; if everyone's high on the beach at two in the afternoon, who the fuck is working and paying the bills?
-
I finished the afternoon at a homey little bar that feels like someone had just set up in an alleyway between two buildings and threw a roof over it. It was a bar in the classic sense, with a woodgrain counter and stools, and an old balding bartender with a full beard of white and lots of stories to tell.
I always wanted to find a bar like this back home -- a hole in the wall with bottles that aren't filled with piss liquor and a bartender that knows how to mix his drinks and tell his tales.
He carried the conversation while I muled over a Van Winkle Mint Julep, telling stories of his younger construction worker days, and of the kids that worked alongside him that lost their arms or legs or even heads to accidents.
As the five o'clock hour approached, the working class shuffled into the bar to wash away their tediums. An old school jazzy song played in the background, and the bartender mixed drinks and entertained his patrons.
I made idle chatter with the locals, trying my best but failing at pretending to not be a tourist. I talked mostly about the software industry in the area and in the Bay Area, where it has a stronger presence. I honestly don't know how serious I was about it, but I was curious if a kid like me could stack paper out West.
-
Dinner was served through a door. Literally.
I ate a Mexican dish in an alleyway, right next to a door that led to a kitchen. It was a split door where the top half opened while the lower half stayed shut, and a Mexican dude took and served orders through it.
I don't remember what the plate was called, but it was beef and chicken cooked into a doughy tortilla looking thing. It was fucking delicious. And for two bucks a plate, I took two more orders for the road.
-
At around midnight, I met up with Dylan, a good friend of mine from high school who had packed up his things several years ago and drove west out to Hollywood to pursue a career in the film industry -- which the locals refer to as The industry.
He showed me to a dive bar in West Hollywood that was supposed to be a popular place among the college aged kids. There were beer pong tables set up and various other drinking games. That particular night, however, was unfortunately barren and dead.
We killed maybe three pitchers of Dos Equis anyway before last call. We took a pit stop by a gas station on the way back to Dylan's apartment and grabbed three cases of beer. Apparently, they can sell beer a lot later in LA than they do back home.
Drank until the morning hours, talking about work, life, religion, and all the topics that you regret talking about as soon as you start. Crashed at Dylan's apartment.
It's also home to a community of pothead bums.
The first sight I saw of Santa Monica Beach was a crowd of people gathered around a performer, a fast-talking Jamaican fellow with some pretty clever quips. He did a flip off of a chair and landed on a pile of broken glass, and then demanded everyone donate money into a black box. When the crowd dispersed, he angrily cursed at them for not being generous.
I thought it was peculiar for a beggar to get angry at people who wouldn't give him money, but I quickly discovered that this was actually the norm around here.
The next sight was a mime, who quickly demanded money as soon as he noticed me staring. Mimes don't fucking talk, asshole.
Around noon, a small camera crew set up around a graffitied wall and started a photoshoot with some bikini model. She was pretty damn hot, so I stood around and watched. Pretty soon a crowd of people gathered around, staring at her go through her poses. I always imagined models were sequestered on some artificial set or at least shielded from onlookers, but apparently not. By the time she was finished, there were a good dozen or more guys just standing around ogling her.
Welcome to the West Coast, Lucky, you ignorant little country boy.
The most astonishing thing I saw at Santa Monica was a gazebo along the beach, and sitting in this gazebo were two white kids in probably their early twenties and an old Asian lady in probably her fifties. And the three of them were passing around a blunt. At two in the afternoon on a weekday.
In fact, there were fully grown men and women riding their bikes along the beach, smoking marijuana, and just taking naps in the grass in the buttfuck middle of the day. California is an expensive ass place to live in; if everyone's high on the beach at two in the afternoon, who the fuck is working and paying the bills?
-
I finished the afternoon at a homey little bar that feels like someone had just set up in an alleyway between two buildings and threw a roof over it. It was a bar in the classic sense, with a woodgrain counter and stools, and an old balding bartender with a full beard of white and lots of stories to tell.
I always wanted to find a bar like this back home -- a hole in the wall with bottles that aren't filled with piss liquor and a bartender that knows how to mix his drinks and tell his tales.
He carried the conversation while I muled over a Van Winkle Mint Julep, telling stories of his younger construction worker days, and of the kids that worked alongside him that lost their arms or legs or even heads to accidents.
As the five o'clock hour approached, the working class shuffled into the bar to wash away their tediums. An old school jazzy song played in the background, and the bartender mixed drinks and entertained his patrons.
I made idle chatter with the locals, trying my best but failing at pretending to not be a tourist. I talked mostly about the software industry in the area and in the Bay Area, where it has a stronger presence. I honestly don't know how serious I was about it, but I was curious if a kid like me could stack paper out West.
-
Dinner was served through a door. Literally.
I ate a Mexican dish in an alleyway, right next to a door that led to a kitchen. It was a split door where the top half opened while the lower half stayed shut, and a Mexican dude took and served orders through it.
I don't remember what the plate was called, but it was beef and chicken cooked into a doughy tortilla looking thing. It was fucking delicious. And for two bucks a plate, I took two more orders for the road.
-
At around midnight, I met up with Dylan, a good friend of mine from high school who had packed up his things several years ago and drove west out to Hollywood to pursue a career in the film industry -- which the locals refer to as The industry.
He showed me to a dive bar in West Hollywood that was supposed to be a popular place among the college aged kids. There were beer pong tables set up and various other drinking games. That particular night, however, was unfortunately barren and dead.
We killed maybe three pitchers of Dos Equis anyway before last call. We took a pit stop by a gas station on the way back to Dylan's apartment and grabbed three cases of beer. Apparently, they can sell beer a lot later in LA than they do back home.
Drank until the morning hours, talking about work, life, religion, and all the topics that you regret talking about as soon as you start. Crashed at Dylan's apartment.
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