bits and pieces
So the only reason I've been neglecting this place is because when it comes down to a choice between sleeping and updating my weblog, trust me, I would much rather sleep.
Anyway, I was informed by various unreliable sources last weekend that my writing style is intimidating, that I'm "detached" from my weblog, that I'm giving everyone a complex about writing and standards and heavy words, and that I need to sit back and chill out and discuss my non-existent soap-opera-drama life in more detail. Seeing as how I have neither hilarious nor profound stories to share at the moment, this sort of criticism is gratifying, because it means I don't need to have any coherent structure for the following post.
As our friend explained his weblog, "My life is as dry as bath soap in its packet. But I pretend like it's the ending sequence of some Bollywood flick."
Good enough for me. So here's my recent drama-queen life, in all its boredom-inducing glory:
- I don't like raw red bell peppers. I definitely don't like yams. And I promise I will stop talking about vegetables for now.
- My friend N dragged me to the drugstore yesterday so she could pick out some hair dye. Her hair is dark brown, and she wanted to dye it deep black. She asked for my opinion, and I said, Whatever. So she browsed the aisles while I grimaced at the cover of Ladies Home Journal and People magazine and whined, "Are you done yet?" I personally recommended the orange or purple hair colors, but she didn't take my advice into account. Then again, would you trust the opinion of a girl whose hair you've never seen? Besides, the short, seldom-brushed wannabe-rocker hair I'm sporting these days isn't exactly a favorable model of the perfect girly hairstyle anyway.
- I need to turn in my application for this year's Women of Color Conference. I'm thinking of designing a workshop for it, too, but we'll see how that works out.
- Yesterday morning's Philosophy 15 (Bioethics) lecture was torture. I ended up sitting next to a guy who wouldn't stop biting his nails for the entire ninety minutes, and in front of another guy who didn't think anything of subjecting the entire class to his perpetual nose-blowing. I'm surprised he didn't rupture his eardrums with that amount of pressure. And the professor was magically sporting a golden tan she didn't have the day before. I bet you anything it came out of a bottle. I sat there thinking, Someone get me out of here already!
- My Psychology 130 professor is cool. He's young, Indian, with a Ph.D. and no accent. This makes communication so much easier. He tells us cute stories about his daughter, a toddler who falls asleep every night listening to techno music.
- Speaking of South Asian, I'm only one of two or three in my Asian American studies class. I have never before been so aware of my Pakistani-ness.
- Muslim misfits at the MSA meeting. Love the alliteration. 'Nuff said.
- Last night, I was IM'ed by someone I had almost forgotten about and whom I haven’t spoken to in two and a half years. Interesting conversation. I was chided for being rude, though I prefer to think of it as straightforwardness. If nothing else, the conversation reinforced the fact that I'm just as stubborn and hard-headed now as I was when I was twenty. Good for me and my Pukhtun genes.
- I love Berkeley.
- Parking at Berkeley is not so cool though. I'm talking about university parking lots. At my university, students can often be found speeding down to end of parking lots, hopefully asking the people passing by, "Are you leaving?", cutting each other off for spaces. At Cal, the students wait patiently in a line for parking. Berkeley, of all places! Holy freakin' smoley, what is that all about? I'm so disappointed in Cal. I couldn't understand why everyone was parked in a line, why the people in front of me weren't moving their cars, so finally I maneuvered out of the line and prepared to make my way through the lot in search of potential spaces. Two seconds later, the parking lot attendant stopped me and pointedly asked, "Are you leaving the parking lot?" I guess the kindergarten rule still holds true: Cutting in line is cheating.
- I love it when people I barely know, who were introduced to me months ago, remember my name and shout it from far away. What's even more awesome is when they pronounce it correctly, too. Automatic rockstar status right there, I say.
- Chocolate milkshakes from In 'N' Out make my evenings beautiful.
- This morning, I sat next to a girl who had once spoken of me to someone else as having "the most fucked up attitude she had ever seen." [Not while I was there, of course.]
Hearing of it later, I remember laughing, "But I love my fucked up attitude!"
She acts like we're still great friends, and I act nice to her, because that's just me. Such is life, and that's the way this wheel keeps working now.
- This post is making me sound like I have issues with everyone and their momma. I promise, my life is really not this dramatic.
- I grew up watching mainly He-Man and G.I. Joe. What's up with all the boy cartoons? And I wanted to be MacGuyver, but then decided marrying him when I grew up would be the next best thing.
- I think my family is making a hobby out of changing wireless phone plans every few months. This time, we've switched from Cingular to T-Mobile. According to T-Mobile, they'll ensure we keep the same cell phone numbers, reimburse us for any expenses incurred with Cingular until our account with the latter is completely cancelled, and we can even buy the unlock codes for our phones off eBay and keep using the same phones with T-Mobile. Anyone know anything about that unlock code business? I need to return my ugly trial-period Nokia phone to T-Mobile and request another one anyway, since Nokias don't do jack for me. All I can say is, if this turns into a repeat of last September's experience, I'm going to laugh hysterically and thrown my phone away. Please, no cell phone is worth that much hassle.
- Speaking of phones, I received a call this morning from a girl with a San Francisco area code, asking, "Is Andy there?"
"Sorry, you have the wrong number," I answered.
"Oh. Is this 925-___-____?"
Funny thing is, that is my number. Andy, whoever you are, you missed out, buddy boy. The next time you write down your phone number for a girl, try to make it legible. Or enunciate when you speak. Whatever works.
- I'm registered for twenty units this quarter. Man, oh man.
- I'm so behind in replying to emails, it's not even funny. Actually, it never was funny, but that's besides the point. If I owe you an email, I'm sorry. You're a rockstar, and I'm just a lazy girl with no excuse.
- It's probably a good thing that I'm taking a psychology course on human memory, because my memory just plain sucks these days. I used to be so good at remembering faces and names. This especially came in handy during my high school work on the journalism and yearbook staffs. Once I started college, however, it all went downhill – faces were easy to remember, but not names. I've been trying to make a conscious effort to improve recently. The result: I now remember names, and not faces. Wonderful. For example, I've had the following names stuck in my head all week: Claudia, Bessy, Aaron, Mena. The problem is, I keep forgetting who these people are. Clearly, I have issues.
- Gas prices are currently at $2.17/gallon. It cost me $30 to fill up my tank yesterday. Good Lord.
- Because I am so easily amused, I couldn't stop laughing yesterday when L accidentally answered a question with the word "coronary" instead of "coroner."
"You mean, like the artery?" I asked, before dissolving into laughter.
Later, out in the parking lot, as I was busy making fun of L, H said, "Oh, come on, if you spoke four languages…!"
"Oh, come on," I mimicked, "I could speak four languages if I tried. You gotta admit, that was still hella funny."
We walked to our cars, staggering under the weight of shared laughter. Good times.
- New philosophy: Good friends are those who let you make fun of them and don't care.
- I don't mind not knowing where I'm going, so much as I hate being lost. Those are two different things, somehow.
So the only reason I've been neglecting this place is because when it comes down to a choice between sleeping and updating my weblog, trust me, I would much rather sleep.
Anyway, I was informed by various unreliable sources last weekend that my writing style is intimidating, that I'm "detached" from my weblog, that I'm giving everyone a complex about writing and standards and heavy words, and that I need to sit back and chill out and discuss my non-existent soap-opera-drama life in more detail. Seeing as how I have neither hilarious nor profound stories to share at the moment, this sort of criticism is gratifying, because it means I don't need to have any coherent structure for the following post.
As our friend explained his weblog, "My life is as dry as bath soap in its packet. But I pretend like it's the ending sequence of some Bollywood flick."
Good enough for me. So here's my recent drama-queen life, in all its boredom-inducing glory:
- I don't like raw red bell peppers. I definitely don't like yams. And I promise I will stop talking about vegetables for now.
- My friend N dragged me to the drugstore yesterday so she could pick out some hair dye. Her hair is dark brown, and she wanted to dye it deep black. She asked for my opinion, and I said, Whatever. So she browsed the aisles while I grimaced at the cover of Ladies Home Journal and People magazine and whined, "Are you done yet?" I personally recommended the orange or purple hair colors, but she didn't take my advice into account. Then again, would you trust the opinion of a girl whose hair you've never seen? Besides, the short, seldom-brushed wannabe-rocker hair I'm sporting these days isn't exactly a favorable model of the perfect girly hairstyle anyway.
- I need to turn in my application for this year's Women of Color Conference. I'm thinking of designing a workshop for it, too, but we'll see how that works out.
- Yesterday morning's Philosophy 15 (Bioethics) lecture was torture. I ended up sitting next to a guy who wouldn't stop biting his nails for the entire ninety minutes, and in front of another guy who didn't think anything of subjecting the entire class to his perpetual nose-blowing. I'm surprised he didn't rupture his eardrums with that amount of pressure. And the professor was magically sporting a golden tan she didn't have the day before. I bet you anything it came out of a bottle. I sat there thinking, Someone get me out of here already!
- My Psychology 130 professor is cool. He's young, Indian, with a Ph.D. and no accent. This makes communication so much easier. He tells us cute stories about his daughter, a toddler who falls asleep every night listening to techno music.
- Speaking of South Asian, I'm only one of two or three in my Asian American studies class. I have never before been so aware of my Pakistani-ness.
- Muslim misfits at the MSA meeting. Love the alliteration. 'Nuff said.
- Last night, I was IM'ed by someone I had almost forgotten about and whom I haven’t spoken to in two and a half years. Interesting conversation. I was chided for being rude, though I prefer to think of it as straightforwardness. If nothing else, the conversation reinforced the fact that I'm just as stubborn and hard-headed now as I was when I was twenty. Good for me and my Pukhtun genes.
- I love Berkeley.
- Parking at Berkeley is not so cool though. I'm talking about university parking lots. At my university, students can often be found speeding down to end of parking lots, hopefully asking the people passing by, "Are you leaving?", cutting each other off for spaces. At Cal, the students wait patiently in a line for parking. Berkeley, of all places! Holy freakin' smoley, what is that all about? I'm so disappointed in Cal. I couldn't understand why everyone was parked in a line, why the people in front of me weren't moving their cars, so finally I maneuvered out of the line and prepared to make my way through the lot in search of potential spaces. Two seconds later, the parking lot attendant stopped me and pointedly asked, "Are you leaving the parking lot?" I guess the kindergarten rule still holds true: Cutting in line is cheating.
- I love it when people I barely know, who were introduced to me months ago, remember my name and shout it from far away. What's even more awesome is when they pronounce it correctly, too. Automatic rockstar status right there, I say.
- Chocolate milkshakes from In 'N' Out make my evenings beautiful.
- This morning, I sat next to a girl who had once spoken of me to someone else as having "the most fucked up attitude she had ever seen." [Not while I was there, of course.]
Hearing of it later, I remember laughing, "But I love my fucked up attitude!"
She acts like we're still great friends, and I act nice to her, because that's just me. Such is life, and that's the way this wheel keeps working now.
- This post is making me sound like I have issues with everyone and their momma. I promise, my life is really not this dramatic.
- I grew up watching mainly He-Man and G.I. Joe. What's up with all the boy cartoons? And I wanted to be MacGuyver, but then decided marrying him when I grew up would be the next best thing.
- I think my family is making a hobby out of changing wireless phone plans every few months. This time, we've switched from Cingular to T-Mobile. According to T-Mobile, they'll ensure we keep the same cell phone numbers, reimburse us for any expenses incurred with Cingular until our account with the latter is completely cancelled, and we can even buy the unlock codes for our phones off eBay and keep using the same phones with T-Mobile. Anyone know anything about that unlock code business? I need to return my ugly trial-period Nokia phone to T-Mobile and request another one anyway, since Nokias don't do jack for me. All I can say is, if this turns into a repeat of last September's experience, I'm going to laugh hysterically and thrown my phone away. Please, no cell phone is worth that much hassle.
- Speaking of phones, I received a call this morning from a girl with a San Francisco area code, asking, "Is Andy there?"
"Sorry, you have the wrong number," I answered.
"Oh. Is this 925-___-____?"
Funny thing is, that is my number. Andy, whoever you are, you missed out, buddy boy. The next time you write down your phone number for a girl, try to make it legible. Or enunciate when you speak. Whatever works.
- I'm registered for twenty units this quarter. Man, oh man.
- I'm so behind in replying to emails, it's not even funny. Actually, it never was funny, but that's besides the point. If I owe you an email, I'm sorry. You're a rockstar, and I'm just a lazy girl with no excuse.
- It's probably a good thing that I'm taking a psychology course on human memory, because my memory just plain sucks these days. I used to be so good at remembering faces and names. This especially came in handy during my high school work on the journalism and yearbook staffs. Once I started college, however, it all went downhill – faces were easy to remember, but not names. I've been trying to make a conscious effort to improve recently. The result: I now remember names, and not faces. Wonderful. For example, I've had the following names stuck in my head all week: Claudia, Bessy, Aaron, Mena. The problem is, I keep forgetting who these people are. Clearly, I have issues.
- Gas prices are currently at $2.17/gallon. It cost me $30 to fill up my tank yesterday. Good Lord.
- Because I am so easily amused, I couldn't stop laughing yesterday when L accidentally answered a question with the word "coronary" instead of "coroner."
"You mean, like the artery?" I asked, before dissolving into laughter.
Later, out in the parking lot, as I was busy making fun of L, H said, "Oh, come on, if you spoke four languages…!"
"Oh, come on," I mimicked, "I could speak four languages if I tried. You gotta admit, that was still hella funny."
We walked to our cars, staggering under the weight of shared laughter. Good times.
- New philosophy: Good friends are those who let you make fun of them and don't care.
- I don't mind not knowing where I'm going, so much as I hate being lost. Those are two different things, somehow.
Labels: Glorious mundanity, Suckool
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