inside the wonderful world of vee

Mozilla is working on a new product — an application — called Ubiquity. Watch this video to see what it’s all about.

Ubiquity for Firefox from Aza Raskin on Vimeo.

Perhaps it is just me, but this kind of thing makes me angry. It is one step closer not having net neutrality as far as I’m concerned… maybe not officially, but apps like this contribute to the web becoming a smaller place… and not necessarily in a good way. It becomes a smaller place because it sections people more and more off from the web as a whole, and more into confined cubicles of websites that have already been tried and true. As you can see, all of the examples in the site are things like Craigslist, Twitter, Google Maps… with a lot of those things having commands explicitly for those websites alone. The command for Twitter is Twit. It’s not going to be able to be used anywhere else.

As technology develops, it becomes more and more scary, as far as I’m concerned. People want customize everything. Customize how this website looks. Customize what products you see on Amazon. Customize, customize, customize. Sure, customization might be cool for the general public — for people who don’t give an absolute fuck if they’re spoon-fed materials — but for people who ARE interested in finding out new things and ARE interested in making the web a place with legitimate competition, customization and programs like Ubiquity are a bad thing.

Perhaps it is disturbing to me only because I am a part of the web industry and my life revolves around having a chance “as a little guy” when there are hundreds of exisitng web giants competing in the same space… but it’s BAD!!!

I’ve been blogging for a while, but I’ve always blogged primarily for myself. Because I’m blogging for myself, though, I tend to write in disgustingly random and extremely incomplete thoughts that use a lot of ellipses and a lot of filler space. A lot of the paragraphs even start with “So…” and utilize strange words like, “Blah.” Not that I’m going to stop using the “blah’s” because I love them, but I’ve come to the realization that my posts have gotten worse through the years — form-wise and grammar-wise, because I just want to write them really quickly and get them over with. But with that lackluster writing performance comes lackluster writing in general, and I can only imagine that continuing to write terribly and for myself will only make my writing worse as time goes on.

What’s a girl to do, then, if a girl’s to want to improve on writing?

I suppose I will begin by using somewhat proper grammar and writing my posts as though they were targeted towards someone else rather than myself.

This change starts now, as I am posting while watching “Harold & Kumar 2″… I am shamed to admit. I just watched this movie with the actor Edward Furlong — you know, that cute little kid from “Terminator 2.” I had a massive, massive crush on him at the time, but no longer, as I just looked up a photo of what he looks like now. DON’T DO DRUGS, KIDS.

(LEFT) Eddie at a young age; (RIGHT) Eddie in 2005 :0 :0

lingo, on menstruation:
lingo: but, i just want to say, menstruation is disgusting
vee: yeah
lingo: cuz i’ve had to see it
vee: did u see the little livers
vee: hehehehehehehehehe
lingo: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
lingo: i caught a glimpse of it…
lingo: WTGF
lingo: yeah… topanga’s had a lot
lingo: this morning
lingo: i thought it was sweat
lingo: cuz i got some on my hand
lingo: and i wiped it across my forehead
lingo: until i figured out what it was….
lingo: then i ran around screaming…

i’m listening to… “in the bedroom after the war” and “today will be better, i swear!” by stars.

it’s the end of the world then, according to mayans, some chinese fool, and some other fools.

what’ll you be doing up until then?

why not live it up?

might as well, right? xP

i went skateboarding two times this week. wow. it’s like. fun. for some reason. i mean, it’s a fucking board on wheels but it’s fun?!!!! i went to artoleptec and ran into nancy cause skate like a girl had a booth there and she taught me skateboarding basics… which i kinda already knew but it was good actually having it concretely because i kinda made it up before. a skateboard feels much more comfortable now than it did before, i’d say. ;0 anyway, we went to skate barn in renton today and it was um quite entertaining. there were two other people learning as well but they seemed a little scared to get hurt. which i can’t blame them for really but i learned through snowboarding that if you don’t get hurt you’ll never get better. so might as well try and get better. that being said, falling while skateboarding hurts a helluva lot more than falling while snowboarding. so that’s not fun. but uhm, managed to go down a ramp today! YEAH! i tried it by myself initially and ate it pretty hard (wrist & hip) but after learning ‘how to do it’ it was fine. and a ramp is not a half-pipe. it’s just a ramp. @__@ ramps are less exciting. but still exciting if you knew what it feels like to go down it for the first time — aka, scary. D:

friday, phil and roxanne came up from california to visit. i picked them up at like 8am and then we went to point defiance zoo to visit sheepie <3. sheepie wasn’t as cute as before, but oh well. good ol’ sheepie. <3 the zoo was cool cool. watched mass feeding of fish. hmm… watched polar bears that were playing with a ball that had ice inside it. poor poor hot polar bears. it was so hot that day. they musta been dying 8[

after that, we went to eat at fort st. george and then went around pioneer square, which those fools were sorely disappointed by. they like, thought the place would be crazy awesome and huge but come on, people just go to pioneer square to club, go to bars, drink, beg for money, and look at old buildings. that’s it. so they weren’t too big a fan of that.

then i dropped them off at their hotel and picked them up again when it was eating time. went to umi sake house but there was a 1 1/2 hour wait, so we went to shiro’s!!!!!! it was really? good? but expensive as hell and like… expensive as hell. we were all still hungry. then we went to walk around UW for a while and then went BACK to umi sake house because people are crazy and obsessed with food. wow, so pointless. everything revolveth around food. it’s pathetic. americans.

the next day, lenny and i and lewis were supposed to go to derek’s annual party in anacortes, but lenny got a flat tire and shit, so we didn’t go!! :[ instead we went to linh’s friend krystal’s apartment and it was the most vietnamese people i’ve ever met in my life. kinda weird to be honest, cause i’ve probably actually known like… a handful of vietnamese people ever. but it was somewhat amusing and lenny passed out way early. lots of random conversation and lots of DRAMA. there was this girl named dao who’s boyfriend she had just broken up with yet he kept calling her to lie to her and say they should get back together because he had brain cancer and shit. and she asked him how he knew and he said it was a self-diagnosis based offa web m.d. — what kinda crazy shit? so she was crying and crap, and posa at some point picked up the phone and cussed him out, and then young decided to play the other side of the game when the guy called back again, and tried to be the “nice guy” and was like, “i just want to know what’s going on… blahblah”… and i guess ex-boyfriendw as mad because when posa was screaming at him his parents picked up (he still lives with them) and posa woke them up. so young said, “oh no, we didn’t mean to wake up your parents… always have to respect the elders… we like to keep it within the 20s so that was an accident…” which was just HILARIOUS.

but yeah. so first, dao starts crying, and then linh starts crying, and then krystal starts crying, and then rosalyn starts crying… to my understanding, anyway. linh’s sister tracie was also here for the weekend. she’s 17, i think? but pretty cool. word. anyway, there was a lot of crying and drama. oh, at some point young took a teddy bear and went into the room where all the girls were crying and just gripped the teddy bear and pretended to play dead and none of them even suspected he was awake! and he was eavesdropping the whole time and came back and told us exactly what they were talking about and i guess they kept talking about how posa was the perfect guy. lol. posa was like, what? i bet vivian has a different opinion of this. haha.

oh yeah also, dao had the last bottle of alcohol and was drinking it straight from the bottle i guess, so the guys were desperate for alcohol and kept asking around for alcohol… so posa got this idea to fill an empty bacardi bottle with water and swap it with the bottle dao had. and it WORKED. later, dao came back and like “gan-bei’d” with us and was like, “WTF THIS ISN’T ALCOHOL!” and it took her so long to realize it. O__o how odd.

anyway, drama is fo yo mommas.

it’s been quite a very long time since i’ve been unable to sleep. i cannot remember the last time. but tonight is one of those nights, and it is one of those nights primarily because i am very frustrated by the fact that my parents wield so much control over me. me, at 24 years old. me, at almost 25 years old. at what point will they leave me the fuck alone and let me do what i want to do with my life?

a lot of the people i have been talking to about this problem just so happens to be white people. or dudes. they can’t much fathom the idea at all. they can’t much fathom the thought. woe is me, fucking asian girl. woe is me, asian girl with asian parents. motherfucking suck ass motherfucker.

so here, i have been lying awake for the past… two hours (which really sucks on this particular evening because usually i have nothing to do the next day but tomorrow i start my part-time job and actually have to go into the office at 9am)… going through in my head what i would potentially say to my parents to convince them that i am not 12 years old anymore, and that they should allow me to travel europe by myself. for 5 days. it’s not going to fucking be that big a fucking deal.

but to them it IS a big fucking deal. and it is SO SO SO SO SO SO SO SO irrational. irrational beyond belief. people move to europe all the time. how do they cope? they certainly don’t know the area. people also move to work temporarily in europe all the time. is that a big deal? don’t they do fine? of course they fucking do.

not too long ago, xinlei went to scotland to visit a friend. TO VISIT A FRIEND. SHE ONLY HAD TO TAKE THE PLANE BY HER FUCKING SELF. yet my mom was like, “how could xinlei’s dad possibly let her go by herself?” TO SCOTLAND FOR CHRISTSAKE’S!!! WHERE THEY SPEAK FUCKING ENGLISH AND NO OTHER LANGUAGE BUT ENGLISH!!!

i don’t know why they think other countries are sOooOoOoOo much more dangerous than the fucking united states but i’d be way more scared being alone in new york than in say lisbon.

but how would i even convince them?

my only arguments are that… it is not that dangerous. it’s only for a few days. i could call them and email them if they REALLY wanted, practically every day. and on top of it all, OTHER PEOPLE DO IT ALL THE TIME! even people we as a family know. and yet they disapprove every time, with no concern that those people have the times of their lives traveling on their own and the fact that their parents let them go helps with peace of mind. but my parents (or at least my mom, i honestly don’t know my dad’s thoughts on the matter) don’t care for experience gained. they more are just scared of everything. every fucking fear tactic ever would probably work on them.

and the thing people don’t understand is… there probably isn’t any tangible thing they could DO to me. i don’t need their money and they probably wouldn’t do more to me than bitch. so why do i even care what they say? what’s the worst they would even do?

i don’t really even know. nor do i know why i fear my mother so much but let me tell you — the woman is pretty much terrifying. but i reckon now is a time better than any to stand up for myself and let them know that i’m tired of being treated like a 12 year old… that i’m not going to live the rest of my existence thinking about what i’m not allowed to do and where i’m not allowed to go because they find it to be dangerous… that i can’t even seriously entertain the thought of studying tefl abroad in a latin american country because they are ignorant and think every latin american country is waging drug wars… nothing ends. and it’s time it did. i don’t know how to do it 100%, but hopefully it works out. cause this is making me miserable. so miserable i can’t sleep!!!!!!!!! and considering that’s the first time in months, that’s pretty damn miserable.

yet, i don’t know if anything i can say can convince them that it is okay, and i’m terrified of their thoughts and bitching. TERRIFIED.

hey all of you who don’t have asian parents sure are lucky. they are fucking stupid. i’m fucking 24 years old. they treat me like i am 12. “oh no,” they say, “how could you possibly spend any time in europe by yourself?” “you have to travel with sherry and tinwin at all times.” godammit. like. fuck. it’s so stupid. asian girl dreams of backpacking across europe? will never fucking happen. irrational as shit. it’s fucking portugal, not a godamn third world country. it’s not fucking iraq. what’s the fucking difference between backing across europe and fucking backpacking across the united states? nothing at fucking all. so. fucking. stupid. i cannot stand it. i really fucking hate it. i fucking hate being born asian with asian parents. that’s the fucking truth. FUCK.

went paintballing yesterday and now i am quite very sore very quite very sore.

here’s the list of the who’s who of paintballing… quite random and excellent:
me
lenny
alex
chris (+2 co-workers)
eddie
josh (+2 brothers)
hsuken
hsuhan
austin
minho
sarah (+3 friends)
esther
ahram (+2 friends)
andrea
gina
jennie

it was most excellent. first few games were elimination… then some defense… then one game of protect the VIP… or “president” in this case. i didn’t get any bruises at all!!! got hit in the face twice, 3x in the back (same game) and 3x in the thigh (same game). killed probably about 6 people. but 2x was josh. HA HA! i killeth marine man!!

after that we went to eat korean food. dudes ate a buncha fucking bbq meat. i ate some freaking dukgook cause fuck that.

after that took a precious precious shower.

after that went to anthony’s because he was having a gathering of sorts, as he has just bought a house. i got there at like 10pm and boo! just missed jake reeves. haven’t seen him in forever. liz and sebastian were there, though, as was dean, and we played some “soul calibre 2″ for a while. i was the reigning champion for a bit. i feel kinda bad when i am reigning champion. musta been like… 7x. haven’t seen anthony in forever, too, so that was cool. apparently tammy vu knows him too (and has known him since childhood?!) which is weird. crazy viets.

after that went to nicole’s goodbye shindig since she’s moving to liverpool. got there at 12 and that shit was winding down, too. i basically just talked to her for a good half hour. there was some 20 year high school reunion going on outside the back room where they had there private party. it was at some weird spit fire sports bar place. odd odd odd.

so sore. i was crawling down the stairs at .2 miles an hour until getting to the last few steps, then it is massive running because the legs are too pathetic to stop.

friday evening lenny and i went to teatro zinzanni. it was freaking great. and hysterical. there’s a lot of improv, lots of dudes in drag, and lots of audience participation. some notable things:

- the 3 old guys who played the “bad guys”… they were so old. yet they were doing like juggling with their feet and shit. it was mind-boggling. they were the fittest old men ever.
- there was also this really cute old man in a blue jacket who was sitting across the room from us… so cute so cute so cute.
- manchester, the main dude, was a guy wearing a shitload of drag. he’s originally from seattle (the rest of the cast was not). he would harass tons of the men in the audience. the first dude he harassed was there with his girlfriend. his name was brandon. he continued to harass brandon (fairly good-looking guy) throughout the rest of the show. one of the last guys he picked was matthew from bothell (i know this because every time he picked a guy he would ask the guy where he was from and then announce, “INTRODUCING SIR ____ FROM _____!” so it was “NOW INTRODUCING SIR BRANDON OF SNOHOMISH” and “NOW INTRODUCING SIR MATTEUS FROM BOTHELL” for example. anyway, mr. matteus was SO into it… too much so i’d say… i was a little embarrassed for him… but he got makeup put on him and wore a dress for a bit and he pretty much loved every moment of it. i ran into him as i was leaving the bathroom and gave him a pat and good job.
- ELI! i saw eli from across the freaking room because i happened to be looking at his table. it was totally weird. he was there for gf’s birthday.
- the ‘queen’ of the show was this lady who was like a female austin powers. frankly kinda scary. at some point she did this dance, though, and it was pretty awesome. she took a huge gulp of water and would dance to the beat of some techno-ish stuff and then spit out water on every beat. not sure where she stored all that water. craziness.
- there was a silverware guy who would go around and rearrange everyone’s silverware if it was out of place, and put it back in order. haha. didn’t talk. the woman he liked in this show was this lady (who i was convinced was a man but no, it’s really a lady) who would walk around pouring water into people’s glasses but she’d either only pour like 1/10th of an inch of water or fill the cup to its very brim. she didn’t say one word the whole time and only had a very stoic look on her face. they did this cool ladder / swing routine that involved a lot of us looking up her dress (she was wearing granny panties, though).
- there was also this lady that was like a lady zorro. her character was pretty lame but she was really fucking good. she basically just did all these tricks on a rope suspended from the ceiling. she was probably the best acrobat there and she was OLD which is the crazy part. i mean, not THAT old but relatively old. she musta been like 40. so that’s amazing. she was reaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllly good. at some point she sat down to a guy next to us when his gf/wife was gone and would feed him with her sword. lol. she left before the gf/wife came back ;0
- there were these two chinese guys who were completely out of place and totally random… they were good at what they did and very fit but as far as the storyline goes, they barely did shit. and wore a traditional chinese outfit at some point. odd. they were ‘two princes from a far away land’ or some shit.
- lenny got fed by the “chef” in kiddie ‘choo choo train’ fashion. hahahahah. we got an extra soup out of it ;0 i ate it.

the food was fairly decent. menu is as follows (i got the corn cakes… mmmmmmmm. didn’t like the dessert, though):

First Course

Chevre, Fig & Melon
Fresh Goat Cheese with Olive Oil and Honey, Nestled with Honey Dew Melon sprinkled with fresh mint, and Royal ZinZannia Figs, Served with a Zesty Olive Tapenade and whole grain crackers.

Second Course

Fire-Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper Soup
with slight notes of celery seed, finished with a dollop of Avocado Cream.

Third Course

Summer Salad Sensation
Yellow and Green Beans and Red and Yellow pear Tomatoes juggled in a light red wine vinaigrette and served with triangles of Ricotta Salata cheese

Main Course

Grilled Rosemary Free-Range Chicken
Dressed in Saba, a deep but delicate reduction of Trebiano grapes (the sweeter and lighter cousin of Balsamic vinegar) and served with Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes, and Roasted Zucchini

~or~

Grilled Wild-Caught Albacore Tuna
With a Smoked Paprika Crust and served with “Sauce Wilma,” a smoother, dreamier version of Tartar Sauce (also known as Sauce Gribiche), Roasted New Potatoes with Herbes de Provence, and Roasted Zucchini

~or~

Corn Cakes with Salsa Verde
Paired with a Roasted Walla Walla Sweet Onion Bursting with Mushroom & Corn Relish, Finished with Cilantro Crema and served with Roasted Zucchini

Dessert

Carmelized Peach Dartois
With Fresh Blueberries on a Shortbread Crust

Coffee custom roasted for Teatro ZinZanni by Caffe Vita.

kinda depressed these days. it’s quite terrible. redefine just got picked up by virgin (you know, virgin airlines, virgin records, *the* virgin) and they’re trying out 50 issues first. not a lot. but good beginnings. unfortunately, i’ve got no money to print the next issue and thus far the people i’ve ‘hired’ to sell ads have been not particularly useful. so what doth one do? i suppose one doesn’t print the next issue and hopes that it won’t be like that forever. but it probably will. and that’s depressing. i’ve worked much too hard for this crap. in the meantime, i shalt wallow in mediocrity and be rejected by job after job because it’s sooooo fun. bleh. get me outta here. *__* i don’t know what i want to do with my life. and i’m poor. and it all feels terribly pointless.

lot of weird coincidences lately. i forget the name of the phenomenon, but this shit is kinda freaky:

1) one day, alex and i went to jack in the box in greenwood. we decided to eat outside because it was a nice day. some guy came by and asked us if we knew where denny’s was. we told him we didn’t. he was a black guy with really light-colored eyes. extremely distinct in his dress and physical appearance. the next day, alex, lenny, and i went exploring the downtown chinatown area, and we just went on a walk with no real objective in mind. he was sitting on a streetcorner, taking notes while watching a dvd on a portable dvd player. the day after that, eddie, alex, and i went to northgate mall and i saw him walking towards the mall as we were leaving. the day after that, i went to trabant chai lounge in the u-district to meet some people up. he came in!! i could scarcely believe my eyes! i meant to stay and talk to him afterwards but i was having a meeting and when i was done, he was gone i think he was in the bathroom for like 80 hours. but i don’t know for sure. and i waited a little but then decided to leave.

2) i read about something about guinea pigs that people brought from south america to america, and the next day there was a peru special and they showed the guinea pigs being roasted — they were called cuy or something. anyway. next couple days there were more mentions of cuy. odd.

3) yesterday, in vancouver, we were listening to the radio. after flipping through it, lenny settled on a station that was playing “georgia on my mind.” i look up at some point when we are stopped at a stoplight and the car in front of us has a georgia license plate. the song must have been playing for less than 30 seconds. when we turn left, the car goes straight. there was only that tiny window where we could have possibly been behind that car while the song was on. and then guess what street we turned onto? GEORGIA. fucking weird!!!!!!  BLAWRRGH!