panic at the disco.... give me five minutes to spaz out!

i've got a couple posts just waiting to be published....the LA trip from last weekend, some angsty self-reflective type posts that I'm still debating on whether to unleash on ppl (my emo-ness is fleeting but can be kinda intense and is usually a very very private deal for me), the travel series that is sitting, novel sized, in msword and being added to daily and etc. Mostly, I'm waiting for the pics before I post anything travel related. Where's the fun in talking about a place when there's no way to see it? Descriptive prose is great and all but I totally do not want to be like Tolkien.

I do have an update on school stuff tho. Illinois-Chicago said no. Not surprising. I expected it and it sounds rather spoilt of me to say that I wouldn't have wanted to go there anyway if they had said yes but that was my pov halfway thru the admissions process especially since the prof I was looking to work under did not respond to any inquiries whatsoever. What kind of message does that give prospective students? That and the fact that the anthro dept ppl there were total asses on the phone (I called to clarify some things about the admissions process way back when and was totally put off by the lady who talked to me like I was a particularly stupid child) meant that I was not looking to get in there but went through with the process anyway since I had already paid for it and paid for my transcripts to be sent there. If no money was involved, I would not have bothered. I still get huffy when I think about how bitchy that lady was on the phone. meh.

Hawaii....I don't even know anymore. They managed to not receive any of my transcripts and claimed they were missing a recommendation more than a month after apps were due. I've done everything I can on my side but I think I'm pretty much screwed. However, hope springs eternal, right?

Anyway, what's got me in a snit is that the prof in charge of the Angkor project sent out an email to me and some of the other participants to obtain more info from us for apps and passes and all that. That's great.....except she did it by forwarding the entire conversation I had with her prior to the email going out. So everyone on the email list read the convo and I'm really not happy about that at all. It had stuff like my GPA, who I've worked with so far, my resume attached, where I've applied, etc.

Yeah. I think it's really not done to do that.

Guess what happens after? I get this random email from one of the dudes on the email list saying he read the convo (ooh, big surprise there....but he did apologise for being nosy so, eh) and wanted to say hi because we're both Malaysian and he's going to Angkor and he applied to UW too. Urm. yeah. So what is the unintended side effect of this guy's casual email?? The loss of hope, that's what.  With one simple email, he totally crushes my hopes of getting into UW because apparently, he's a MA student at USM and is on the waitlist with me for a spot at UW. What's the problem, you ask? Well, I was banking on the fact that I was South East Asian/ Malaysian and the possibility of the uni doing work in Malaysia to give me an edge and the fact that I had visited and met the profs. Now, I find out that one of the ppl I'm up against is also Malaysian, has more experience in the area than I do along with definite contacts in Malaysia (my contacts are...urm....pending....), is more qualified (once he finishes his MA thesis this year), is going to work with UW at the fieldschool in the Philippines starting this week and has gone to all the regional conferences where he's met all the profs and even presented.

...........

Talk about being blindsided. So now, I have no edge whatsoever over the competition and overall, I'm less qualified. They should just send me the rejection already and be done with it.

I'm DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!

Well, that was part of my little spazzy panic attack when I got that email from him. Talk about a downer. But all is not lost, otherwise, I wouldn't be on the list up against super qualified ppl like that. Still crossing my fingers and toes. Maybe they'll be like....oh, this one has less experience = more trainable... and pick me. lol. who knows? could happen. here's to hoping but i ain't gonna spend anymore time spazzing out about it. It's times like this when I'm really grateful for my whatever attitude and total faith in well....fate and in karma and all that good stuff. If it was meant to be, it'll happen.....if not, something else just as great will creep up and boink me when I least expect it :) now, i gotta go look for cookies to console myself with. I love how my (sorta) angsty moments are wonderful excuses to ply myself with food :D

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Summer is looking much brighter :)

AAAAaaahhhhhhhh! Awesome news!

So, I've been in discussions with a prof at UH and she invited me to be part of her team on a dig in Cambodia! Just got back the details and really, how could I say no? I'm so totally there! That means I'm gonna be going home for summer, doing the Indiana Jones thing in Cambodia for a month and hopefully traveling in SEA for a bit after!!! Wooohoo!! Best part? She's partially subsidizing it :) And the rest is coming from my sister...no, it's not sugah mama money, it's her student loan money (which she is not using and only took 'just in case'....we think this qualifies as a 'just in case' moment so I will not entertain accusations of stealing her lunch money) and I'll have to pay her back but at least I don't have to worry about funding it for now!!!

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St patty's day + alcohol = stupidity in other people

Of all the sane people living on our street, how/why did we get stuck with the crazy losers?

Should have known that St Patty's day would draw out our obnoxious neighbours (they had been on a much appreciated down-low in terms of public disturbances). They had some friends over in the afternoon and started partying...and really, whatever. I get it's THE Irish drinking holiday in the states and I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is the fact that the neighbour and one of his/his gf's friends got into a fight at 2am in the morning and the most godawful racket resulted. It sounded like a Jackie Chan movie where the fight was going from room to room, furniture was breaking, holes were being punched into the walls, and there was the expected macho posturing bullshit and female screeching in the background. For a moment we contemplated calling the cops...but decided that it wasn't our problem. I'm sure at least one person had a phone they could use when they took a break from sounding like a dying muskrat. no way in hell were we going over to break that shit up; we've got some sense of preservation.

Anyway, it only stopped cos the neighbour left his place and was ranting outside the house while his equally crazy gf worked herself up into a frenzy and started heaving (dry or not, I couldn't tell....but if she puked on anything of ours, I'm gonna kick their asses). So I was graciously given the opportunity to listen to him rant on the phone and her making pukey sounds for about an hour or so. yeah, this is the soundtrack I want to hear at 3 in the morning. So, they wait for the cops but nothing happens so they go back into their place and once again, mortal kombat 2 starts up (but a less cool version). As before, it dies down when they leave their place.

The cops come at around 5am. I'm totally pissed and haven't slept because of racket (them, not the cops). The cop does his job and all is well. Yay. Except, not quite. We're really angry with them and the lousy neighbours being who they are, we know they're not even going to apologise for the crap last night.

The silver lining on this damn cloud?

I thought it was amusing that they got chased out of their own place TWICE by the guest they were fighting with. LAME. Even chimps do a better job of defending their territory than these two. *shakes head sadly* It's times like this when I wish technology didn't interfere with Darwin's evolutionary theory....life would be much quieter....and less filled with crazies.

In totally unrelated news, the ice cream trucks of my neighbourhood have stated using birdcalls instead of the usual circus music....I really wonder about that tactic.....

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reassessment...could this be my pre-quarter life crisis?

These last few months have given me a lot of thinking time and I've had the opportunity for quite a few candid chats with various people including my sister. That plus going through my memorabilia and trying to sort it all out for scrapbooking and blogging and just sighing in nostalgia have caused me to reassess my plans and back up plans (of which I have many, some of them highly unlikely, some of them distinctly implausible).

I'm feeling restless and now i'm not too sure if grad school would be the right option for me. Will that mean that I will reject an offer? I can't honestly answer that question. Does that mean I've heard back? No, not at all. If anything, decisions have been pushed back even further and I won't find out about acceptances or rejections until the end of this month or later.

Regardless, I feel a little helpless....like I'm drifting on a tide somewhere with no destination in sight. At this point, I'm kinda ready to say fuck it (oooh, notice the lack of self censorship? yeah, I can't be bothered anymore) and just go sign up for one of those work/travel things because I've been looking at the programs for quite a bit and the itch to wander is starting to get to me. Most of these opportunities to be a vagabond have age requirements that have gotten me thinking...there's so much to do in life and so little time, do I really want to waste it locked down somewhere stuffy for years on end? I'm thinking of starting up dance classes and hitting the gym and picking up sports (old or new) and volunteering and going back to community college for certifications in technical stuff that would be useful for the career if the whole grad school thing doesn't work out but above and beyond that, I want to do something for myself. Something fun without it having to lead to anything. *sighs wistfully* I used to do that but I got so caught up in societies demands and the judgment and all that crap.....nothing is fun anymore.

Soooooooo, pole dancing classes anyone? Or maybe llama herding in Peru?

My bucket list is starting to come together and that damn movie might have a point after all.

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iz in limbo. sigh. here's to finding out next month.....if i'm lucky.

in the meantime, expect food and travel posts :)

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Ahhh, memories. I'm so glad to have them...

was cleaning out the old blog and found many, many priceless gems from my college escapades. I crack myself up sometimes :D will have to post some here for old time's sake.

I was also watching my bellydance videos from my stint as an exotic dancer in the small retirement town of Novato, California and felt bad for myself...gosh, it was pretty darn bad in a cheesy sort of way. I mean, some of us have always been kinda iffy about the choreography that our troupe leader puts together but I never really realized how absolutely ridiculous some of the moves are. I do have to say that her veil work (what she's known for) is pretty kick ass but everything else made me want to meep and hide while watching it. And the costumes......oh gawd....in a troupe with mostly middle aged, overweight, white women....they were planned to hide stuff/blind ppl with reflective materials rather than reveal ...things...and it shows. I don't think I would try wearing the stuff for halloween which means that I have two fairly unusable costumes for home use.... hmmm.... perhaps, cleaning the house and rocking out to middle eastern songs might be combined? haha
embarrassing
I do have to say that I've got better control of my hips, isolations and butt now than I ever did back then :) maybe i'll return to the world of exotic dancing when I start earning enough money to pay for troupe rehearsals....I do kinda miss it alot.

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seriously shady...

so it's 2 am and there are some shady buggers parked right outside our driveway and talking really loudly (have been for a while too!). Oh, San Jose....you never cease to surprise me with how shady you can be. Don't take this the wrong way but our neighbourhood is mostly white and hispanic so the fact that black dudes might be dealing outside our house is kinda freaky. ummmm, hope they don't take the car. otherwise, we're screwed. lol. (I'm not being racist since i would still be suspicious if a bunch of asians/hispanics/caucasians/etc were practically hanging out on our front porch.)

okay, now that I'm done with that fun little bit of paranoia, racism and stereotyping, I'm moving on.

mmmm, back! yeah, it's been a while but I've been taken over by a writing frenzy and it hasn't stopped. Mostly it's been about all the traveling I've done in the last year or so but I've gone past 20 pages in the last few days and it doesn't look like I'll be stopping anytime soon. At this rate, I'll have a thesis or book by the end of the month. Will be posting bits and pieces of it up here so everyone can relive my memories of going round the world wit me :) and more food posts to come....half of which didn't quite turn out...oh well. laterz, i gotta go spy on the shady dealings from my unlit kitchen window. Yes, I'm one of those nosy aunties.

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CNY is hard work......what have I committed myself to?

I told myself (and everyone around me) that I would be ambitious and daring and bold for CNY. I'm planning to put together some treats in a bag for a couple of people I/we need to show gratitude to. So why not go all out and make everything from scratch? Yeah. It all looked so easy on paper and in my mind. lol. These last two days, I've embraced my inner auntie (although some people would suggest that my inner auntie likes to make appearances a regular thing) and made....

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and the neighbour saga continues.....

First of all, sorry about all the ranting and raving about the neighbours but they are kinda sucky and if I don't rant now, I'm gonna keep thinking about it til I drive myself crazy. Feel free to skip this post but if you read it, do we really sound unreasonable?

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the young and the old

We got to see our new (first? second? ) cousin today :) She's sooooooooooooooooooo cute!! She's got that chubby asian baby thing going on and her poof of hair could give Donald Trump's (fake? real?) combover a run for its money. She was totally mellow and kept blowing raspberries which was cute in a slobbery way. We didn't get to hold her though since she spent most of the time sleeping :( But it was good to catch up with Mei Hsia and her family. We got to see the new house which has a great back yard and Anya is so much bigger now. I can't believe she's already 5! ...man, I remember when she was this tiny little wriggling bundle. Despite all the pink she wears (I think that might be her mom's doing), that kid is something of a tomboy.

The rest of the day was spent vegging out on the couch with my sis and watching painfully bad sitcoms (to me at least. I'm not a lover of sitcoms). But we did have something interesting happen - the cops knocked on our door a while ago. For a moment, my sis thought the neighbours had set them on us (although why she would think that is beyond me....we weren't home the whole day) and I guess they probably thought we set the cops on them....heh heh. I wish. But no. It turns out that a little old lady with Alzheimers two houses down went missing around 5pm (Charl thought they were talking about Flora for a moment but then was like, noo....we just heard her calling for her cats just now....). Anyway, regardless if it was a little old lady we knew or not, it's the kind of situation where you just go... Uh-oh. That is not good.

i wish we could help out but there isn't anything we can do that the cops aren't already doing. I hope they find her soon cos it's really cold and dark out now and that's kinda sad.

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random thoughts on thursday

Hmm. Disney songs are an awesome way to brighten up a day :)

Also, I remembered the happy cow ad they had on tv a few months back and was wondering what had happened. So, google came to the rescue and clued me in.

It was basically an ad featuring "talking" cows from all over the world who were auditioning for a spot as the next real California happy cow (the catch phrase is that 'great cheese comes from happy [Californian] cows') in their search for greener pastures, love and the American dream. Utterly ridiculous but pretty entertaining. Well, apparently thousands of people voted (obviously because with the economy being what it is, loads of Californians have the spare time to vote for the importation of a cow) and while the South Korean cow, Soo, received more than 60, 000 votes, the Canadian cow, Kirsten won. Yay.

Go here to see Kirsten :)

But aside from the udder (haha, sorry that was lame) cow mania (interviews, wallpapers of your fav cow and even the option of buying a painting from California's premier cow painter), they have some pretty good info about buying local milk and cheese. Random but interesting.

Gonna start the cny cooking medley but the list is still pretty tentative. The thing that I'm really excited about making is kuih kapit since I wanna try out my moulds. The only glitch in that plan is that to make em the traditional way, I need charcoal and a grill but it's been raining and whatnot :( Hopefully it stops soon and I can see if making them is really worth the trouble.

Here's to another rainy Thursday.

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The continuous rant about the neighbours...

I'm really pissed off with the neighbours right now. We totally thought (prayed, wished, hoped) that they had moved out since we hadn't been hearing very much from them the last few weeks (although my sis says she's heard them) but alas, it is not so. The dude is playing really loud clubbing/heavy metal music that I can hear from the living room (so through two walls and a door). It's so loud that I can hear it from inside the car which is parked on the street. We've talked to them before when it got too loud for too long in the middle of the week (til 4 am on a tuesday night/wed morning) and they said they understood and were ....fairly apologetic at the time.
 

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Mooncakes

 

Baked mini red bean mooncakes

I'm not going to bother going into details about the origin of the mooncake festival and all that - I'm just going to assume that most people looking for a mooncake recipe already know some of the background and everyone else can google it. But I will tell you that I absolutely love mooncakes, especially the ones from home. There's so much variety (regular, ping pei, jelly, etc) and so many awesome flavours (pandan, coffee, durian, mixed nuts, etc)! Yum! I haven't been able to get my hands on the stuff from home and I don't really like the taste of the ones in US so I got a book and some plastic moulds the last time I went back and tested them out last year during the festival. I have to say that they're actually really easy to make if done in stages or if you cheat like I did :) Broken down, a mooncake is basically the skin (including a basic sugar syrup) and the filling.

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Lost in Seattle

Seattle and the space needle

 

I spent a couple of days in Seattle last week and had some seriously good weather - sunshine all four days with a light drizzle on the last day. And here I thought I'd be going from rainy California to wet, wet, wet Seattle. People kept telling me that it was a freakish bout of good weather and that it usually wasn't all sunshine and clear skies. I refused to believe them :) I know I got really lucky with the weather especially since it continued to rain and flood in California with interspersed tornado warnings (tornadoes in California?!? what??). But seriously, I'm glad it didn't rain cos with all the tromping about that I had to do, I'd have been miserable and soaked ten times over. Yes, I actually had a valid reason for heading to Seattle.

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Mama Carries

It's more of a Malay Raya cookie but biskut mama karries is something I remember vividly from home. Strangely enough, most of the Malaysians here that I've plied with my mama carries have not heard of or had them before. I keep telling people about it but they never understand what I'm talking about. *pouts* It might just be that I like to describe them as mama carries (in my mind, a mama carries is a mama carries) but apparently, it's not much or a description nor is it very encouraging for people who haven't tried it before.

So, what is it? Well, one of my taste testers tells it as it is. 

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