I want what she has

“How did you get that plate?” I asked a girl in a white business suit—whose attire almost didn’t fit in the casual dress code of the tech event.

She smiled and said that she was always looking for caterers for dinner parties. “The caterer got me a special plate.”

My friend and I paused, nodding. Then she stuck her hand out, “I am Alyssa.” We both shook her hand, introducing ourselves.

She told us what she did. She was a partner and had the ability to work anywhere in the world. “I was just in Morocco two weeks ago. All I need is an Internet connection. I basically can take 6 weeks anywhere I want.”

I suddenly had stars in my eyes—fantasized with the job. She continued with all the exotic locations. We had more small talk. Then during a lull in the conversation, she suddenly said, “I am going to get a drink. It was good meeting with you.”

My friend turned to me quietly, “She was so full of it.”

Parents and parking tickets

“You are stupid. You are an idiot. You’re the dumbest person I know.” he relayed what his mom said after he accidentally got another parking ticket over a trivial less than 30 seconds late to the meter.

Tears wanted to run down my face.

Secretly, I am glad my parents aren’t like that, but tears want to come for the one whose are like that.

A repeating dream

I am almost appalled at myself.

A homework assignment. Math. Due in an hour.

It was ominous. They knew didn’t they. I could swallow my embarrassment, bite the bullet. In the class, I’ll have an innocent look on my face as students around me pass up their perfectly printed paper blue and white.

It’s not my fault.

I’ll pretend it didn’t happen and it’ll go away right?

And then…

I wake up

She and I never talked in high school

“You were quiet and sweet,” she said in response to why we were talking now. I could see she wasn’t lying, but they were words I always heard so often describing me. As if they were descriptive words for everyone by default.

I became slightly flustered. Having lunch with a high school classmate, I had intended to prove for once that one can’t expect a friendship just because two people went to the same high school. In high school, she was part of the outgoing crowd, the water polo team, the in crowd. I was a loner, quiet, antisocial…and almost an outcast, but not quite.

But I had insisted that we meet in person after she added me on facebook and then emailed me asking whether we could exchange birthdays because she loved sending handmade cards (and her birthday was in 2 weeks and we both know that our birthdays are posted on the facebook profile). I needed to figure out this friendship then pretend that we were always friends.

And after lunch, I found myself warming up to her. Sometimes they say with time, you forgive. For me, I think I have forgiven, but it’s impossible to forgive when I haven’t forgotten.

Then I started panicking

Lately, I have been receiving a lot of spam comments, obviously generated by robots. The comments vary from links to various sexual enhancement sites to just simply annoying random text.

As a dutiful blogger, I wanted to rid such comments and headed to my cpanel to block those ip addresses. I put in cpanel after my domain in the address bar and typed in my username and password.

Authentication failed.

Okay, maybe I mistyped something.

Authentication failed.

I carefully looked at my keystrokes.

Authentication failed.

Ok, calm breaths. I started wondering if someone hacked into my site. It had been a horrible laborious process last time and my blog site is full of information I would rather not lose.

Authentication failed.

I headed over to my password list that I kept. Perhaps my memory has forgotten the password? But no, since it was a very important password to me, I didn’t keep it there. Plus I had this account since 2003 and started my password list in 2004.

Authentication failed.

Perhaps the password was in my email? But wait, that was on my desktop PC from college. The one that I haven’t used for almost 2 years. The account information was sent to my berkeley address.

Authentication failed.

PANIC. I didn’t want to go through filing a ticket through the helpdesk. I am sure my password was right, RIGHT?

Authentication failed.

I decided to check my other website to make sure my password hadn’t changed there. Then as I was starting to type in the address bar, I realized that I had typed jennsim.com rather than jennism.com. She’s a cool photographer and blogger at least.

Then I corrected my spelling and got to my cpanel happily.

Things I learned on my trip to NYC and Pittsburgh

  • I really do love food in Pittsburgh
  • Eating Pittsburgh rare patty is like eating rare ground beef!
  • Don’t sit outside in the Pittsburgh summer in the dark especially if you’re me. You can get bitten many times
  • Use ice to decrease swelling from a bug bite
  • If you’re me, you really don’t need to go see the doctor every time you get a bug bite that swells up the entire foot
  • People really do remember me at CMU even though I don’t remember them
  • Expensive, trendy haircuts equals more expensive everyday maintenance
  • A sandwich with apples and cheese can be quite greasy (Autumn Sampler at the place formerly known as Craig Street Cafe now known as Eat Unique
  • Must remember to take advantage of no tax on clothing in PA
  • Kaufmanns has been purchased by Macys
  • Some things never change in Pittsburgh like helpful guy in the regular member line at Enterprise
  • Pittsburgh has a huge market for calendars with bikini models with tattoos
  • Pittsburgh model photographers are not sleazy at all. In fact, they are incredibly nice and welcome the fellow spectator
  • When packing, don’t forget medication that you take everyday
  • One thing I don’t like about the East Coast is the weather, particularly the humidty
  • I do love California summers, especially San Francisco summer
  • MarketNYCis worth it, especially designers like Sohung
  • Yelling “The prodigal son is here” and holding Toad up when arriving to the Nintendo store will elicit chuckles and claps from knowing employees, but not from anyone else
  • Umbrellas are useful when it rains
  • When you need an umbrella, look for one that is dropped in the subway station stairs
  • Airtrain doesn’t go very far but it costs $5 just to get to the subway and you have to pay an additional $2 to get on the subway
  • That’s pricier than the amount I pay to take the BART from the station closest to my apartment in SF to the airport
  • Native east coast people don’t leave baseball games stay until the last inning
  • If you want a souvenir cup from a baseball park, wait until most people have left. Someone always leaves something behind.
  • Columbia is not in Harlem according to Columbia students
  • Don’t go to NYC when it’s hot and humid.
  • A journey in NYC

    Toad and more Toad. During our journey, many people just called him Mushroom with the lack of Nintendo knowledge. And the importance of his character.

    And yes ok, my last lazy blog series of my journey.

    Toad and his fellow brothers

    A nice normal shot at the Yankee stadium

    Lele and me (and Toad)

    Toad flies like a superhero!

    Toad hoards all the peanut butter