I realized that if you\’re not online in AIM or writing within my blogosphere, you almost don\’t exist to me.

I am leaving for Boston and New York very soon. And my ride is supposed to be here in a few minutes. Omg, he\’s on time. Punctual. A rare quality.

I am crashing this bash.

America\’s Obsession with Cake

I am a person who loves the best of both worlds. When it comes to decision-making (especially those difficult ones), I try to mesh the best two together. Let\’s say there\’s a party tonight and an important midterm tomorrow. You\’ll never find me sacrificing one or the other. Last semester, I wanted to take a design class but it would have costed me an extra $5000 and sucked up a lot of my time. In the end, I took only half of the class and paid $2500. A compromise.

This Thursday, I am leaving for Boston and New York City. It was a compromise of my find-myself travel trip, which got downgraded from a trip around the world to Asia and Europe to a quick rendezvous of the East. The East Coast. (I know people say I should travel around the world by myself, but I can\’t find it to do in me when I don\’t know many people abroad.)

\”Talking to you was like pulling out teeth,\” he said.

I laughed. It had been almost 2 years since I last saw him. Admittingly, at this point, he had a beer but I was as always sober.

\”So what, you think I am normal now because I actually talk?\” I asked.

He didn\’t respond but nodded with a smile.

Pretty minty!

In my perspective:

There are review sites for electronics, cars, books, and the like. You go to amazon to read about books. You go to imdb.com or rottentomatoes.com to read about movies. But where do you go to find out about beauty products? Sure, there\’s eopinions, but it\’s target isn\’t for small products like these.

But from a personal perspective, I don\’t know the difference between a $3 shampoo and a $20 shampoo. Last month, I bought Aveda\’s Shampure just to see the difference, but was unconvinced. Was the feeling that I splurged on myself or was it the feeling that it was a better product?

Last weekend, I saw a man purse. My friend (a he) was carrying an Aeropostale navy green \”bag\”. In it, he carried his wallet, his (g5) ipod and other misc. items. It was intended as a gift for his former girlfriend, but she didn\’t want it (she had good taste, probably). He didn\’t want to waste it and started it using as a bag for his ipod. Because after all, an ipod can\’t fit into a pocket.

Right? When I sat next to him in the car, I pointed and shouted in my usual manner of excitement, \”You have a man purse!\”

Utter denial. My good friend in the front of the car squealed, \”Murse!\”

But seriously. Personally, I have never been fond of carrying bags, because it was something extra to remember. Something I couldn\’t have with me if I was say…running. Something that someone could take. Something that I had to set down if I was participating in a rigorous activity. But then came technology. Digital cameras. My ipod. My \”fat\” wallet stuffed with cash, coins, credit cards, gift cards, id cards, frequent buyer cards, library cards, exercise class cards, bart tickets. And then I of course needed a place to keep my business cards clean, so came the business card holder. Then cell phone. Then sunglasses and case. Then chapstick. Then headache medicine (you never know when stress will come). Then suddenly, the preparation of an impromptu oops-it\’s-too-late-now-to-go-home-impromptu-sleepover supplies. Oh and keys.

I might need a bigger bag. But at least I am not male. After all, I have…female issues.

In other news, I also have a tendency to not look normal in photos.

I always have had a nose for free food. But nothing is ever truly free, right?

Out of the much admiration of the geekdom in the Valley (I actually heard several people use that term today), I attend my first Lunch 2.0 today at EchoSign. Free food (bbq!). A nice networking event.

It was my first time to such a thing so I wasn\’t sure what to expect but it was rather interesting the type of people that attended. Most were after trying to network with other people — getting contacts, pushing their product and exchanging their business cards. I got use out of my special card holder, a graduation gift from Carnegie Mellon.

\”I admit that the reason I don\’t want to visit you is because as you get farther away from San Francisco on the BART, it gets whiter. I am afraid of white people.\” a friend said several years ago.

At the time, I was slighted. We were classmates in Berkeley. I drove to visit her in the city, out in the projects, where I got lost multiple times and was slightly fearful that someone would break into my car. She didn\’t want to take the BART out to the safer suburbs where I lived, where Caucasian people were dominant and Asians were not.

Looking back, perhaps, she was afraid that she was judged. But it wasn\’t that she wore clothes that weren\’t equivalent to clothes of people out here. Or she acted lesser than those in affluent suburbs. The demographics do change depending on the direction of the BART train. It\’s true that riding BART on the yellow line towards Pittsburg/Bay Point, the riders became more and more Caucasians. Usually business people avoiding the traffic from San Francisco. It wasn\’t people who didn\’t have a car or the elderly who didn\’t have shuttles. It was more about people who wanted to save the environment and bought discount passes from corporate employers.

Over the weekend, I met up with people from Rescomp – where I used to work while at Berkeley. I would say working for them was one of my greatest achievements in my undergrad, establishing a job network, knowing how to talk to people, and making money to create a bad spending habit.

On Thursday, I met two Rescomp young\’uns – a sysadmin and desktop admin. And my friend, a unit supervisor. They were geeky and nerdy. Awkward. And underage. They talked about the greatness of cellphone technology. And how someone should buy a 30\” apple plasma display. Some Harry Potter and Star Trek was thrown in. I bought them drinks at Starbucks after I had dragged them through Civic Center trying to find Citizen Cake. I felt old.

But then two days later, I went to Zeigeist in the Mission District and later sat on the rooftop of a new San Francisco condo building in the freezing night, right next to the freeway. I thought I was meeting Rescom people of my generation, but I met more than that. There were people from pre-2000. They talked about the glory times when the office used to be housed in a room in Unit 1. Where there were really no roles yet. No \”adults\”. It was more student-run than the way it is run nowadays. Nearly everyone offered their business card to me when I said I was job hunting. Talk about drama and the good times. I was apparently one of the youngest – the new one. I felt young and inexperienced.

And then on Sunday, I met up with some Rescomp people of my generation. We sat on the edge of Lake Merrit watching kids falling in love with rubbery duckies. Everyone really knew each other at Rescomp despite of the years difference. Six degrees was more like two degrees here. And we talked about downloading movies during our time. How we wanted to take the old computers — the old macs and the 19 in Sony crts for our own. And how much we wanted to get away with but didn\’t. We ate tacos from a truck while I struggled with the spiceness that was warning to turn my face red, further after I had spent the morning at the Pride Parade.