Tag Archives: strangers I am grateful for

You did not heed the warning from the man in Chinatown

There. You did it again.

Remember in the movie Gremlins? No water. No food after midnight. And of course the rules were immediately broken, WTF that nobody EVER EVER listens to those who live in Chinatown? Seriously? monsters were created and hijinks ensued.

Do not feed a closeted egomaniac.

You never heed the warning.

Blame this raging Navel Gazing post on Silvia @ A Bourbon for Silvia and Trish @ Patty Punker. They gave me water and fed me food after midnight. So to speak…

So after they broke the feeding rules, they now want ME, the monster they have created, to follow some rules… Fine. You have to at least obey your own Dr. Frankenstein(s), eh?

Thank the person who gave you the award.

If you have never visited A Bourbon for Silvia, please do. “From here – Under the water” is one of my favorite posts. Ever. It makes you want to go skinny dipping. Not in a drunken teenager and Imma gonna live to regret it way. But in a good, self-realization way.

If you have never visited Patty Punker, please do. She has a foul mouth and is proud of it. But underneath that hardness is one of the softest and truest heart. (Now she’s going to kick my ass for saying this about her…) Her “wtf work bathrooms” is epic. She’s my kind of working woman.

List 7 things about yourself your readers do not know.

Awww. You want me to talk about myself? No. I can’t possibly. I clearly do not like to talk about myself and that’s why I have a friggin’ blog!

Award 5 bloggers who you’ve recently discovered.

Well, this has to wait until I am done talking about myself! Because this post is all about me. ME. ME!!!!!

*Cue maniacal evil laughter* <— For real. Do NOT click if you are at work!

It took me a while to come up with things that I have not shared with you already…

Ok ok. This is a good one: I am an oversharer. And then I feel guilty for oversharing because I don’t want to burden people with my oversharing. Rinse and repeat.
I am full of contradictions. I am a Closeted Extrovert and a Closeted Introvert rolled into one. Implosion any minute now.
I am hormonal all the friggin’ time. I swear I am affected by the movement of the orbiting Moon. I never fake cry. I can force myself to cry. And when I cry, it is for real.
This is going to make me sound crazy, but I am the most self-deprecating egomaniac ever. EVER!
Like Patty Punker and Wicked Shawn, I *heart* polka dots, so much so that I created a tumblr dedicated to polka dots in May.
I may have minor OCD, as evidenced by my obsession with going through ALL pictures with polka dots in them on google (current count: ~5,900,000). Once I start a task, I cannot stop until I am done. The way I deal with this? Start nothing. Can you see how blogging is seriously affecting my mental health? There is no end in sight to this thing!
I am cynical and gullible at the same time. Or maybe I am just an idiot who has been lucky so far. My brother once told me that he could hear the music by twirling a cassette tape with a pen through one of the holes. I believed him. I was in junior high then, and coincidentally I was the Valedictorian-equivalent in my class.

Sadly, the time alloted for me to talk about myself, again, has come to an end, today. Now on to passing this award on to five beautiful human beings I have recently met…

Ok. Pause. One more thing you need to know about me…

I suffer panic attack whenever I need to do something like this: choosing, and by this act of choosing, excluding others. THIS has got to be the hardest part for me as a blogger. If I read your blogs, that means I think you are beautiful inside and out. I have very limited time so I am very selective. I may not be by for a while but it is because I have decided to have more sex. Or the attempts any way…
Another thing you need to know about me: I am a sneaky bugger. I have figured out that if you tell people you cannot do something because you need to have sex, people will understand. Oh god, please do not let my kids read this. Or my blog in general.

*Cue maniacal evil laughter* <— Seriously. Do NOT click if you are at work!

Here are five of the beautiful bloggers that I would like to introduce you to, if you didn’t know them already:

Mature Landscaping – Southern and liberal. Come on. You know you want a piece of it!

IslandRoar – I swear it is because she is a good writer and not some ulterior motive for being invited to Martha’s Vineyard one day…

Fuck Yeah, Motherhood! – Anybody that uses single motherhood and long-hour job as an excuse for not parenting well should read this blog. She makes it sound so easy even though you know it cannot be easy.

here where i have landed – She came from Asia to the US around the same time I did. She lives in beautiful downtown Chicago. She is a working mom. Not hard to see why I lurv her, eh?

Bar Mitzvahzilla – Jewish and liberal in Arizona. She is fighting a good fight there!

Vote for the Best Just Posts of 2009!

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First of all, an apology…

Now on to official business…

Alejna over at Collecting Tokens and Holly at Cold Spaghetti host a monthly feature called “Just Posts for a Just World“: monthly roundtables of blog posts written on personal blogs that, in words of one of the founders, “speak to the same thing – the lifting up of our planet and all that inhabit it.” Anybody is welcome to submit a blog post that “reflects or informs others on social justice issues” to the panel. Posts included in the past have come from bloggers that I have come to know and love and who are also frequent visitors here: Amber, Mary Lee and Velva.

After much sorting and reviewing and evaluating, the Just Posts panel has finally decided on the nominees for the Best of 2009 Just Posts. This is a collection of some of the best blog posts on social justice issues that you could conveniently find all in one place. Please if you have time (ha ha ha I know…) do check out the posts, and vote for your favorites if you wish.

Now regarding the someecard I posted at the beginning… one of my posts, All things on cable TV considered, I wish my hotel had porn… is nominated for the Humor category. This post however is not a plea to buy your votes. I really believe that if you have found value in my blog, for sure you would appreciate the posts nominated for this award. I am really honored to be included in the company of such wonderfully-written and well-argued posts. And I am going to proudly display the button here. Peace out!

Warning Signs: To hell in a handbasket

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I know that the Catholic Church, and many other Christian churches, has a complicated relationship with Science. So I appreciated the fact that they DO indeed include Science in the curriculum for Catholic schools. In the public schools that my kids have been to, Science has always been taken as a given. There was never an attempt to try and define “Science” before the kids started taking science classes. This was why when I chanced upon the display of children’s works in the hallway of this Parochial school, I was absolutely intrigued. However, I still don’t quite understand what was going through the teacher’s mind when s/he decided to ask the children in a parochial school to make posters on what they think “Science is…”

Was it done with a sense of self-awareness and irony? Most likely not. How many other people that passed by this hallway actually noticed the irony in these innocent words of children with alarm and fascination the way that I did?

No wiser words have been spoken in this hallway...

Science is... What?

The other day as I was driving by the same school and church, my oldest pointed out this sign to me. We thought it was hilarious. But of course, I have an out-of-whack sense of humor which alarmingly is being passed down to my children. As I am heading to hell in a handbasket, please heed my plea that my children however are innocent victims of nurture and nature.

Srly. I thought you are supposed to teach people to be nice, at least when you are right outside the church...

This brings me to several of my favorite warning signs:

From our beloved The Bloggess

I srly want to post this in my house. Like I said, I am hell bound...

Warning: Facetiousness Ahead

Update: I believe someone at Huffington Post is spying on me… Two days after I published this post, they came out with “The Craziest Prohibition Signs: Who Would Try These Things?” Really, when you post a question such as this in your title, you are just daring people. Here’s looking at you, kid…

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Cashews Are Nuts…

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And so are YOU!*

* Tis said with love and affection and gratitude…

This post is a belated thank-yous to many of you who have bestowed me with love and support and honors.

Chris over @ Vintage Christine (whose subtitle “I’m not old, I’m vintage” has become my battle cry) sent me a surprise Valentine’s Day gift box.

It went down like this: her cat sat on a card with my name on. Cat nip, my friend. Cat nip.

Valentine's Day Surprise from Vintage Christine

Thank you, Chris, for the wonderful surprise! I would like to tell you that yours was the ONLY Valentine’s Day present I received. But, my lovely husband beat you to it by putting away the Christmas tree without me asking. (Truth be told: I almost got an orgasm when I came home on Valentine’s Day and saw the empty spot where the Christmas tree once was… He does know me very well. Probably too well for our own good…)

Andrea over @ A Little Bit Rock n Roll tagged me in January THIS YEAR to learn “10 things about me”. I am more than 10 kinds of crazy, that’s for sure, but I digress… The first thing you need to know about me is I WUV YOUR BLOG.

A Vapid Blonde @ A Vapid Blonde and Magda @ I’m Just Sayin’ both shared with me the “I LOVE YOUR BLOG” award that they themselves have deservedly won. Thank you, ladies! And, at the risk of sounding like a valley girl, I love you crazy women on the coasts. I do!

I LOVE YOU BAAACCCKKK!

To accept this award, apparently I also need to tell you something about me.

Elizabeth, or “Mrs. Darcy” as I like to secretly call her inside my head, @ The Sky Is Falling also shared with me her award, “THE CIRCLE OF FRIENDS”.

You complete me. Yes, all of you!

To accept this award, I have to tell you 5 things that I enjoy… This is easy.

Sex

Well, usually that’s not how it goes down over here. So my second best choice would be:

A clean house. (Preferably not by me)

Shelli @ Shaking the Tree gave me a two-fer:

Thank you Shelli! I especially love the “50 Cents” award as I consider his story of rising from a drug-dealing youth to international renown to be rather inspiring.

Randa over @ Sometimes I Even Amaze Myself passed along a beautiful award… Thank you, Randa! Now I also need to tell you 7 interesting things about myself.

I am truly honored that y’all see enough in my irreverent ramblings to stop by my little piece of therapeutic heaven and actually listen to what I have to say, let alone sharing these awards with me. Thank you so much.

Seriously, guys. There really is not that much about me that’s exciting. Whatever I have, I have been letting loose here on this blog. Are you sure you are not bored already?! So after I have done my math and drawn up a Venn diagram, in order to follow all the rules, I will share with you 5 things that I enjoy and 5 more things about myself.

5 things I enjoy that may or may not be within my easy grasp, am obsessed with, and/or covet (in addition to sex and a clean house):

The ocean (or more accurately, staring at the ocean)
Toblerone
The smell of oncoming rain shower on a hot summer day
People watching (preferably in a sidewalk cafe, even better if in Paris…)
Bubble tea (No, Elly, it is NOT ok to mention “Pearl Necklace” to me when I am telling you how much I enjoy Pearl Bubble teas…)

5 things about me (in addition to me being Chinese and ALL THAT this tiny fact indicates…)

I am certifiable anal retentive. I cannot relax until the dishes are done, the floor has been picked up, and “things” have been put away. I have been known to wake up in the middle of the night to clean up the house. That being said, I only need everything to be off the floor. So what if I have 3 hampers of clothes waiting for me to fold? As long as the clothes stay inside the hampers, I am fine with it. I am a Hypocrite when it comes to housework, I guess.

I am obsessed with multi-tasking and efficiency when it comes to housework. I NEVER EVER walk through the house without picking up and putting away anything. I actually plan the next piece of dish I will wash as I am doing the dishes. It is hard to explain. You need to be there.

Things that have profound effect on me in my youth: Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, Wim Wenders’ Der Himmel über Berlin and Hermann Hesse’s Demian (Yes, I am Cliche Himself… Don’t judge…)

I have attempted suicide in high school. No. I really did not want to die.

I can make myself cry on demand. If we see each other, I can demonstrate for you. It’s really amazing.

(HOLD THE ORCHESTRA!)

As a reward for sitting through my lllloooonnnnggggg acceptance speech, I will present the

I GIVE GOOD BLOG award

The best name for a blog award. Hands down.

JennyMac over @ the immensely popular Let’s Have a Cocktail really surprised me when she presented me with this award last… ummm, eh, huh, hmmm, December… (I am very embarrassed… I got distracted by all your wonderful blogs. So stop judging me!)

Following the rules, I get to pass this award along to four wonderful blogs. This is rather difficult since I know way more than four blogs that deserve this award. I have been agonizing over this since last December and I am driving myself crazy over this! No wonder Simon Cowell is always so grouchy. The pressure. Ah, the pressure gets to you…

After making the heart-wrenching process called “drawing names from a hat” (since I do not have a cat like Chris does…), I shall pass this gorgeous, sexy award to the following four hot steamy sexy blogs:

A Little Bit Rock n Roll

Brilliant Sulk

BugginWord

The Sky Is Falling

As the rule for the award dictates, I shall go mix up a cocktail for myself and I hope you will be able to do the same. I hope too that you will be able to find time to visit these blogs mentioned above and I am pretty sure you will like what you find there.

Thank you again for the support you all have shown me. Knowing that you are out there really makes my Tron-like existence rewarding and ironically, my life in flesh more bearable.

Just Award, Or, I can’t think of a witty title so early in the morning*

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Through this blog, I got to know a lot of crazy people who likes me for who I am, which is kind of ironic because I am staying anonymous on the Internet with this “persona”, therefore technically they don’t really know WHO I am. Even more ironic, and I am not sure if you put an irony on top of another irony whether that makes it NOT an irony any more or whether it just means I am a lousy writer, is that this anonymity affords me to be honest, free to be who I am. Really, I am just wary of people at work finding out how emotionally unstable I really am since I do try to keep a professional demeanor in the corporate world. So the mask is the real person.

God. I am so witty. So philosophical. So pretentious. I totally scream: Woody Allen Fan! And indeed, I am, my friend. I am.

Nancy over at If Evolution Really Works gave me the above “I HEART your blog” award. I am just going to assume the “heart” means “love” and not because she cries so hard when she reads my blog that her heart starts bleeding or something… It is really tempting to neglect to tell you that the award went to lots of other people, not just me. BUT Nancy made the “award ceremony” in SUCH a creative way, and many of the other blogs that she mentioned (including her own of course) I also adore and am secretly plotting to imitate a la Single White Female,(only that out of these three things, two of them don’t apply to me, but we will deal with that issue later…), THAT I consider it a crime to not tell you about the post in which she gave the award to me, and many many other blogs worth checking out.

I know there are English Teachers amongst you. You know who you are. I am sorry if you are screaming inside your head right now.You can flog me for botching the English language in the above paragraph when we see each other in person. Or you can zap me through the Internet.

This award comes with NO string attached, hence I don’t get to talk about myself. *sad*

I am going to pass the “I Heart Your Blog” Award onto a few wonderful bloggers whose writings help them deal with whatever life has thrown in their ways, and along the way, I get to share a glimpse of their lives and, even better, their interpretations of those moments captured through their writings.

Overly Obsessed with Minutiae is something unique. Stream of consciousness prose. First-person narration directed towards an unseen, mysterious, recipient. Heartbreakingly beautiful at times. The paragraph that got me:

“I tell her no, and she smiles and says That’s good, because I don’t think there is actually anything else that I could offer you! And this is how I feel about myself, now, all the time. I don’t think there is actually anything at all that I can offer you, or anyone.”

(From “Bloodless“)

The Sky Is Falling is a brand new blog, just started this month, in time for NaBloPoMo. Ever since I chanced upon it through the NaBloPoMo Randomizer, I have been religiously reading it every day. I don’t want to take words from her mouth, but you can learn more about her here. The thing that attracted me to her blog right away is her About Me description:

“I’ll tell you who I’m not: Kaiser Sose. Spartacus. Your father.” Perfect.

The post that got me hooked was “Not Included: Suzanne Vega’s ‘Luka’, Fetal Position“. You had me at Suzanne Vega.

Worn Ragged: Mommies on the Edge has a PhD in “medieval gynecology” (I am still not sure whether that is a stand-in for her real major. In the end, I had to admit that you almost need to be there in order to know that it exists…) You will know that she is a great writer: satirical in a way so subtle, so dry, that if you don’t pay attention, you will miss it because it is at the same time sweet, by reading what I consider one of her best posts, Voodoo.

Our Little Peanut is a new mom’s conversation with her miracle baby. Miracle in the literal sense since she survived ovarian cancer and after almost all infertility doctors gave up on her upon hearing that she only had one chemo-treated ovary left, she found out she was pregnant. The reason why I point this out is because, without this backstory, it is hard to understand imagine the joy she now takes in every little thing involving the baby. Even at the most frenzied moments a new mom would certainly face, she manages to show, indeed, that every baby in itself is a miracle. I wish I knew better when my kids were babies to just enjoy their babyhood. Instead I was always wishing them to grow up faster. Faster. Now I live through her dialogs with baby Kai vicariously. Except of course, when poop is involved.

NathanRising also documents a new mom’s life with a baby. I sometimes wonder whether we would have turned out to be different mothers if we had the Internet, especially the blogs, to help keep us sane when our children were babies. And speaking of poop… Jen has no qualms in describing poop accidents. I appreciate her not romanticizing motherhood: poop is a common, and important, subject in any household with a newborn. Say it like it is. And you take the stinks with the sweetness wholesale.

* Or, so late at night. I started writing this post at 6 am this morning. It is 11:58 pm now. Same effect though. Still can’t think of a witty title. Witty is overrated anyway.

** Please: if your blog/style is not the kind for you to acknowledge the award on it, please do not stress. My purpose of mentioning your blog in this post is my way of letting you know, even some of you may not even read this, that you have a fan lurking in the cyber space, to say Thank You. That’s all. Let me borrow what Mrs. Blogalot*** says: “You just can’t keep a good blog down!” Or to yourself.

*** I am waiting for the creation of an award called “Women I would Run Away With” to honor thee.

Hey, I am not the only one who thinks that the Smiley looks like a pervert!

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Jane over at They Call Me Jane has been calling for everybody to share their crazy search terms, i.e. the keywords with which people were led to your blog, and she calls this Friday The 13th,

Share Your Crazy Search Engine Terms Day!

It is Jane. Naturally I ~~obliged~~. wanted to be in on it. (Just confirmed my suspicion by really looking the word “obliged” up: it has the connotation of doing someone a favor. Doh. It is the other way around. Hence the correction). Not only that, because she used to be a teacher, and you know, “Once a teacher, always a teacher”: I even did my homework assignment in EXCEL. Yeah, I am a teacher’s pet. Bite me. (Not to mention the free blogging idea to fill the daily quota for NaBloPoMo… But Shhh… Don’t tell Ms. Jane, please)

Unfortunately, none of my search terms are overtly exciting… As you can see for yourself: (You will also see that I don’t get too many hits. But THAT is ok. Really. I mean it… I am having fun. More importantly, I have made a few great friends in the process…)

One search term (or group of search terms) that did get my attention is “Smiley Pervert”. There are 15 searches that used similar terms: perverted smiley faces, pervy face. I am happy to confirm once and for all that I was NOT the only one wondering: What is the deal with the smiley faces looking so similar to a pervert? Once again, the Internet helped me prove that I am not insane.

I did remember seeing the search term, “what a serial killer look like,” but it did not show up in the summary my Blog Stats showed me. Oh well. Maybe the serial killer wannabe also hacked into my account and got rid of the record because he did not want to leave any trace of him ever wondering what a serial killer looks like.

Since my own search terms are not bizarre at all, I decided to artificially provide random blogs with bizarre search terms such as,

“Cow Poop For Dinner”

“My Girlfriend Hot Mom” Warning: Searching this term will result in lots of pornographic sites. No shit.

“Dung Beetle Soup” and then “Dung Beetle Salad”

“Frog Milkshake” This actually does exist as a food item somewhere in South America. Dreamed up by one woman who, clearly, has lost her mind!

“Hippo Vomit Sandwich” Some lady is going to learn that the announcement of her pregnancy attracted this bizarre search term…

“Ninja Sex” Well, turns out Ninja Sex Party is a comedy troupe. So I modified it to “Ninja Sex Lunchroom”. A poor, unsuspecting Book Review Blog will be pondering over the stats tomorrow, wondering… WTF?

But I swear, I was NOT the one that searched for Wrinkled Boobs, which coincidentally was the genesis of Jane’s Share Your Crazy Search Engine Terms Day bonanza.

I hope I don’t get an F in this assignment…

Bring back Thanksgiving! Please, no Christmas decorations until Black Friday…

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Veterans Day.

I always thought it is a fitting coincidence that Veterans Day falls in November, right before Thanksgiving.

As you know, Veterans Day is celebrated in other parts of the world. On November 11, 1918, at 11 am (Paris time), the Germans signed the Armistice that officially ended World War I. The day was originally celebrated as Armistice Day (also as Remembrance Day in Europe). In 1954, the U.S. Congress passed and amended an act to officially make November 11 the Veterans Day, honoring all veterans, and not just those who served in World War I. What took them so long?!

I don’t think I will be able to say anything more eloquently, more heartfelt, than this blog post, “The Greatest Casualty is to be Forgotten”. As she put it so well, you don‘t have to support war to support a Veteran. [Update: The blog I linked to has since become inactive. But the saying “The Greatest Casualty is to be Forgotten” will continue to resonate]

Thus begins my tirade against the demise of the significance of Thanksgiving in the face of overwhelming commercialism…

Are you ready for this?

I started campaigning for a forced postponement, a temporary deferral, of celebrating Christmas until AFTER Thanksgiving Day four years ago. I even registered for the domain name: BringBackThanksgiving.com (which is still available… Any takers?) I stopped paying for it after two years when I realized that with a full time job and three boys to take care of, I simply did not have the capacity to deal with Microsoft FrontPage. (Yikes. Do you remember the days, the days before Blogger, WordPress, etc. when one had to use a software such as FrontPage in order to have one’s own website? *shudder*)

“Curb your enthusiasm!” I beseech you. “As you recover from the sugar high from all the Halloween candies. As you dispose of the spider webs, the goblins, the mummy tombs, the rotten carved pumpkins.”

Please, oh, please don’t switch directly from Orange and Black to Red and Green. However tempting it is when you move all the Halloween boxes down to your basement and see all the Christmas boxes beckoning at you. The smiling Santa with the chubby cheeks. The snowman. The reindeer. Resist the temptation: Didn’t Jesus die on the cross partly to teach us this lesson? Be strong for the sake of your children.

The children need you to show them that, Yes, you believe in the meaning and significance of Thanksgiving Day. Yes, it is important that we take one day out to deliberately remember and show gratitude to all the people who add meanings to our lives, to all the material goods that we are blessed enough to own. To strangers who give you a smile in the street and thus brighten your day. To strangers who by merely doing their jobs are making the world a better, safer place.

My heart aches upon seeing houses adorned with Christmas lights right after, sometimes even before, Halloween. Of course I am not intimating that the homeowners are therefore not thankful. No siree. I am simply dismayed that the significance of Thanksgiving, the arguably ONE holiday that we should all be able to agree on and celebrate, is undermined sandwiched between Halloween and Christmas.

(I admit: I may be putting my foot in my mouth by saying this. I have no clear idea how the native Americans take this holiday though I suspect there must be a lot of conflicting feelings. Do they sometimes wish that Squanto were not so kind as to assist the pilgrims? FWIW, by reading “Thanksgiving: A Native American View” and “Teaching About Thanksgiving“, I am convinced that Thanksgiving is indeed deeper and bigger than just the Pilgrims and the Indians… I hope I do not offend should anyone of Native American descent stops by this post…)

I blame the turkey.

You heard me right. It is the turkey’s fault. In terms of merchandising, turkeys are just not as attractive as say, bunnies, chicks, Santa Clause, snowman, reindeer, and so on. I have not seen any child hugging a plush Turkey toy lovingly.

turkey

To be honest, that red thing hanging down the throat freaks me out. Pardon me for being crass, but it always reminds me of testicles. I don’t know why. But it does.

Many, especially Hallmark (bless their heart!), have tried to turn the turkey into an adorable icon: but seriously, how adorable can you make a turkey?

Turkey for eating

Even more sickening is that in these cutesy depictions of turkeys, they are all forced to celebrate the event in which they will be slaughtered, cooked and eaten! The abomination!

No cute icons, no easy way for merchandising. No easy way for merchandising, no rampant commidification of Thanksgiving. No rampant commidification of Thanksgiving, no shelf space at your local drugstores and grocery stores.

(I am grateful for no longer being in the academia which affords me the opportunity to posit theories full of holes and preaches them on the Internet with no qualms… I am like Glenn Beck on an anti-Turkey path…)

But with your help, we can stem the tide. We can start it from inside of our homes.

Perhaps we can all start a tradition of having each one of the family members mention one thing that they are grateful for, every day, in the month of November. No matter how small or how trivial.

Perhaps we can start a quiet movement to resist the Red and Green color scheme from popping up inside of our own houses. Until the day after Thanksgiving.

On the morning of November 27 this year, I am moving up the Christmas Tree from our basement first thing in the morning. I am really looking forward to it. And to optimize my effort of transforming my house into a winter wonderland for Christmas, I shall keep the decorations up until after Valentine’s day. Thank goodness for the lllloooonnnngggg winter here. That is, of course, until one of you starts a campaign for bringing back Valentine’s Day…

If you keep a “life” blog and therefore experience existential crisis on a regular basis…

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You have got to read this:

Blogging for Dummies by Aunt Becky (she’s actually young and hot) over at Mommy Wants Vodka. As someone who has experimented with making my own bacon-flavored vodka, she had me at the name of her blog…

When I stumbled upon her genuine, honest, tell-it-like-it-is advice about blogging and perhaps more importantly, keeping your sanity while blogging, I was in awe. She has such a Zen attitude towards this whole life blogging adventure, arguably one of the most daring things each one of us, for one reason or another, has decided to embark on by baring our souls, putting ourselves out there. The agony first about who will be reading this thing that you meant for yourself, and soon turning into how come nobody is reading it…

To see the entire list, please do the bunny hop over to her post. The following are the ones that really struck a cord and have been keeping me thinking since last night:

“Blogging for Dummies” – selected gems from Aunt Becky’s MOST USEFUL BLOGGING ADVICE, HANDS DOWN, EVA.

No one will read you for a couple months. It’s okay. Soldier on.

If you want people to read you, read other blogs.

If you want more comments then comment until your fingers bleed.

And finally, this advice that made me forever in her debt since it reminded me that I am an adult and thus saved me from reliving schoolyard clique nightmares…

There will be bloggers who will NEVER visit your blog no matter how many amazing and witty comments you leave. Period. Move on if it hurts your feelings.

There are a lot more on her post. Do check it out. I have a feeling that the list may give you the peace of mind you don’t even know you are searching for…

p.s. Wondering whether she has considered making a poster out of this? I need one on my wall for late night musings.

“The Simple Grace of Sharing a Meal” Or, My first gig as a guest blogger

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Velva over at Tomatoes on the Vine kindly asked me to be a guest on her blog. I had to agree because if she was crazy enough to ask me, who knows what’s going to happen if I had said No to her?

So, please hop over now (but NOT like a frog) and visit Velva’s lovely blog if you haven’t already, and while you are there, please read my ramblings on how I couldn’t cook (and why was I a guest blogger on a COOKING/FOOD BLOG?! I told you already, she lost her mind! Must be all the Martinis she drinks over there down in the South, aka Florida.)

In this scintillating tale I shall illustrate how to properly entertain Southern Gentlemen…

I will also show you what happens when there is no minimum legal drinking age…

If you are still here, I am running out of ideas to entice you… Fine. Do I need to pull a The Bloggess (God, I miss that woman… wish she were not frolicking in Japan right now and were working hard to keep us entertained with her high jinks…) and tell you that I will be sharing a revealing photo of myself over there?

Really. I swear.

There should be a law against laziness… (Wo)man up, Award Time!

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On 17 October 2009, the lovely Jane over at They Call Me Jane temporarily lost her mind and shared with me another award that she just won. It is displayed below as Exhibit 1 Exhibit 2:

Kreativ Blogger Award

If I don’t end up in the nut house, it is partly because the love and support from a stranger, who no longer feels like a stranger any more, and her name is Jane. I am not saying this because Jane has given me two awards. Two awards! That’s got to count as something, right?! She is one of the most level-headed, fair, rational, understanding, sensitive, thoughtful, and wisest people I have come to know through this thing invented by Al Gore. Her blog is like a fresh breath of air: a thinking blog that does not put your to sleep. And the most important thing is? She is REAL. She is NOT pretentious. She is naturally cool without having to say one single cuss word.

At this point, after reading her blog on a nearly daily basis, Jane can say nothing wrong in my book. If she says, one day, and this is purely hypothetical, people, that she is actually a bunny killer, Imma gonna guess it is the bunnies’ fault. Just sayin.

It took me more than 2 weeks to officially “accept” this award because I have to come up with 7 random things about me. I guess nothing X-rated is allowed… And you all know, at least those who have read my blog on a semi-regular basis (i.e. more than 3 times in the past 6 months), that I am Asian, more specifically, Chinese. There goes my Number 1 through Number 3: Hi, surprise! I am Asian/Chinese. I can speak/read/write Chinese. I like rice. (I DO! DAMN IT!).

Ok. Here it goes, in no particular order:

I am secretly obsessed with angels. As in, I believe in them. Or, I strongly wish they are/were real, even though I am not Christian. I envision them to be the angels in Wim Wender’s “Wings of Desire” (Der Himmel über Berlin). NOT the Nicolas Cage one. Oh, god, no.
I am agnostic because I am too cowardly to make up my mind. I want to have my cake and eat it too.
I am a classic insecure overachiever. Psychotic. A bit bi-polar. I guess I should have added these to my “About” page. Oh well.
Laziness and fear of embarrassment are the driving forces of my life.
I played Lizzie Borden in a play when I was in graduate school. In fact, I played a few other homicidal characters, including Hamlet and one of the women in “Unfinished Women Cry in No Man’s Land While a Bird Dies in a Gilded Cage” who gets to wield an ICE PICK! (I was totally typecast, I suspected…)
Being on stage was the only times when I felt completely free. I miss that feeling with a heartache, barely noticeable except during the night, when I am writing to nobody. Like now.
I also played Billy the Kid (adapted from Michael Ondaatje’s book) and I had the best lines in my acting career:

After shooting Gregory
this is what happened

I’d shot him well and careful
made it explode under his heart
so it wouldn’t last long
was about to walk away
when this chicken paddles out to him
and as he was falling hops on his neck
digs the beak into his throat
straightens legs and heaves
a red and blue vein out

Meanwhile he fell
and the chicken walked away

still tugging at the vein
till it was 12 yards long
as if it held that body like a kite
Gregory’s last words being

get away from me yer stupid chicken

I am kind of depressed now because I just realized that none of these things that I have shared with you I share with my co-workers after more than 5 years working together, in a very small office space. Because I don’t think they are interested in hearing about it.

Without further ado, I am going to pass this award along to…. Drum roll please…

Tomatoes on the Vine

Velva’s food/cooking blog is more than that. She genuinely believes in the simple ritual of sharing a meal as the way we create and maintain a community. Besides, it is always yummy to look at the photos.

booshy

On her blog, Jessica comes up with ideas. Lots and lots of ideas. I honestly cannot tell you what her blog is about. But I enjoy reading her ramblings. They make me smile. Her latest “scheme” is to get everybody to come up with a “I am thankful for” list and send it to her before November 24. So why not?!

Life is Not a Movie

I think Robin is a bit insane. I said that with affection and as a compliment. She is a woman of many talents: a radio show, a photography blog, and who knows what else. Warning: She is an avid Kevin Spacey fan. So don’t say anything bad about Kevin. Or introduce yourself as Mrs. Spacey. I never know what to expect when I click on her blog every day. But it is always a nice surprise.

My Wildlife’s Words

Jennifer Lynn is a wildlife biologist. Seriously, I’d never thought I would meet someone in that line of business. She is saving the earth for all of us! And her observations of life are full of interesting perspectives that will make you go, How come I’ve never thought of it that way? (Well, you would have if you were a wildlife biologist. And if you are, do let me know! I’d never thought I would meet TWO!) She is probably going to protest and say, “I don’t write about THAT topic on a regular basis. It was an one-off special edition. Limited time only.” But her post on Elk Vagina, yup, you read that correctly, is educational and hilarious.

Where Insulin Meets Insolence

Lynn is a great writer. She has a great way with words. And metaphors. (Well, duh, all great writers are good at these things. This is why I am not a good writer). This post is one of my all-time favorites: Four on the Floor. I think she should publish some of her essays. They are that good. This is her personal blog where she can be, well, “insolent”. Her essays are over at “I have measured out my lives in MP3s”.

The Absence of Alternatives

My therapy sessions…