God Bless America, Land that I snub

31_05_05, originally uploaded by xdrjohnx.

Well, I am heading to the airport in 3 hours... gotta get a final US blog in (it's actually 4:30 right now, I always change the time to 11:59 if I post after midnight). Today was suprising pretty quiet. Started out by going over to the "Ebay store" where they'll take your stuff and put it on Ebay for a commission. I got rid of about 20 DVDs, an MD stereo, an MD player, an electric and an acoustic guitar, my video camera, my Nintendo 64 and GameCube and some other junk. I should get some money from that stuff in about a month. Then I got another haircut:

Short! The tops of my ears haven't seen the sun since about seventh grade... the second picture is just to convince myself I should get some Lasik surgery. I look better, right? Anyway, I hate damn glasses. Takes all the fun out of walking in the rain. Bangkok has some of the best/cheapest Lasik around...

My final dinner at The Macaroni Grill. This here is some Chicken Marsala; $12.50, I think. It actually wasn't that good. I thought it was gonna be a Chicken Diavalo kena thing (mmmm, Spagedies) but no. The portabello mushrooms on the top were good, though.

My grandmother came over to the house to eat and play cards. I wrote a few weeks ago that she sort of made everyone uncomfortable because you couldn't look at her without thinking about my dead grandfather. For me at least, that's gone now. I'm pretty relaxed around her and enough time has passed that I don't feel I have to be "somber".... but I'm leaving the country. Bye bye!

I drove the golf cart to dinner yesterday because my parents were invited to a cookout at someone's house. It had been raining all day and when I came out of the restaurant I was cold. I hadn't been cold in a month or so. I drove down the little path frowning and rubbing my arms and cursing under my breath. It was a good reminder, though. I made the decision to go to Bangkok about a year and half ago and, since then, I've been dealing with the boring details of actually making it happen... but I always knew it would happen. Everything I've experienced the last year and a half has been colored by the fact I would leave come June. I was only passing through. From that angle, Georgia isn't too bad of a place to hang around for a few months. But shivering in the golf cart I remembered how I felt before I decided to permanently leave the US. I remembered why I'm getting on a plane in a few hours. So I got no regrets about leaving... but I damn wish I knew this S'porean:

SLEEP TIGHT, YA MORONS!

(oh, i gonna be on a plane for a day or so plus lost in bangkok for a day or so ... i'll probably post something in three or four days. gotta rent a flat, lah)

Watch your ass, Gucci

30_05_05, originally uploaded by xdrjohnx.

I saw Star Wars today. I had read Roger Ebert's 3 1/2 stars (out of 4) review, so I guess I was expecting too much... cuz it sucked. Big fucking time. I don't wanna sit here reviewing the movie because y'all probably care as much about my opinion as I care about everyone else's. I just wanna say that it was depressing. It had all of the Star Wars "stuff" (big space ships, the same costumes, the same locations, the same characters) but it just didn't feel like Star Wars. It was dead. The original three movies were so fun and these are just so fucking boring.

I've heard it rains in Thailand. Must have umbrella. How to carry? Hands? Aiya, don't want to hold umbrella for two years. In my bag? No, gonna soak all my valuable papers. How can?
Got it, lah! I go WalMart, buy some good thread and prickly velcro. Then I throw at my mother:

Super!!!

Superduper!!!

HK Painting

29_05_05, originally uploaded by xdrjohnx.

Aiya, my dad unplugged the internet-thingy yesterday so I couldn't post anything - but now we're all set up at the new house. This picture is cheating a bit. I painted this back in HK for that chinese painting class I was talking about earlier. Actually, we weren't supposed to paint anything like this; I was just messing around. But this is the only work I have from that class because I threw the rest away. I was planning on saving everything, but when I rolled it all up and tried to shove it in the tube I bought specifically for that purpose, it didn't fit. I had a cab waiting outside to take me to the bus station to get to the airport so I crammed the paintings halfway in - ripping the outer ones, - grabbed all my huge bags, and I stumbled to the cab. In the front seat of the cab I kept trying to get it to fit by removing more and more outer paintings until it was skinny enough to get in. By that time the floor of my side was covered in huge wads of ripped, crumpled paintings. The taxi driver kept shaking his head reprovingly... eventually I got so fed with the whole thing I dumped them all in the trash and got on the bus for the airport.

A Cheesy Grave

28_05_05, originally uploaded by xdrjohnx.

I'm a bit embarrassed about today. From 10AM to 6PM I helped my dad move things from a storage unit to their new house. I eventually got into "the groove of it" because we were working for so long. So we got better and faster as we went. And even though I hated myself for it, I felt a sense of achievement at some times. I know better, though. I didn't achieve anything - I just hauled my parent's shit around and for free. It'd be like feeling a sense of achievement at streamlining a Nazi death camp or something. For some reason we're hard-wired to enjoy being the best cog we can be.

This was breakfast back at the Atlanta Bread Company. It's sausage, egg, and cheese on a cheese bagel. Very tasty and pretty fast, but I'm sure it's terrible for you. It reminds me too much of McDonald's breakfasts - so one hidden cost is the shortening of your life. I think these go for about $3.50... I'm going to sleep.

No More Kittens!

27_05_05, originally uploaded by xdrjohnx.

Nothing really happened today. I bought some floss at WalMart...

Instead of sitting peacefully as this picture suggests, I was really only taking pictures of myself and looking at them on the little screen.

Me and the sun.

Just got this today. Had been rather anxiously awaiting it. I mailed my passport, an application, and a chashier's check to the embassy in D.C. about a month ago. It was supposed to take a week and a half total... very glad to have it, though. Maybe I'll be entertaining tomorrow. Bye bye.

Sleeeep

26_05_05, originally uploaded by xdrjohnx.

One thing I really, really despise is being tired and not being able to just lie down and sleep for a while. That's how I felt all day, but I knew my sleeping schedule would be totally fucked if I took a nap in the afternoon. Whenever I get in a mood like that where I'm annoyed that I can't do something as simple and natural as lie down and sleep, I always imagine how it would be to live on a beach and catch/eat fish. Annoyed isn't a good word for the feeling, though - it's more like a feeling of mediocrity or being dissapointed in yourself. Because if I really wanted to, I could pack up my shit tomorrow and go live on a beach in Malaysia. But I don't. So I have no one to blaim but myself (and my mother when we're driving in the same car and she's assaulting me with that goddam voice of hers....my teeth are going to be ground to dust before I get out of here)

Not sleeping is interesting, though. Up until about 7 or 8 AM you feel really good... then you start looking at the clock: what the hell are you gonna do for 14 hours before you can sleep again? -> boredom -> tired -> cranky. If you didn't sleep the night before, the worst time is always from 2PM to 4PM. Vedddddy bad. You better be away from any sort of bed, in the sun, moving around, and have lots of coffee at hand.

I once stayed up for three nights in HK - about 82 hours I think it turned out to be. It was very interesting. I did it because I had to; I was leaving for Vietnam and I had a ton of shit that had to get done (visas, papers, projects, finals, meetings, planning, packing). At some points I felt seriously great. I'd be listening to music, dancing around my room... but other times I was a goddam zombie. I was doing my final set of chinese paintings for a class a few hours before I left and it was very difficult. I would concentrate as hard as I could but some thought would come into my mind and it would lead to another thought and another and I'd look down and find my brush was in the middle of a huge, growing blot of ink. That happened twice and I had to trash both paintings. After painting, I sat on my bed to write a short letter to a teacher. I took me at least an hour. I would be writing but, again, my thoughts would drift off, my hand would stop writing, and I'd be sitting there with glazed over eyes just think the letter through for fifteen minutes. The finished letter probably went off on a few tangents... I did a few tests at one point and found that when I closed my eyes, it took just five seconds before I started dreaming/hallucinating. Bizarre. After I had done everything, I was seriously contemplating just sleeping like a bastard all day and putting Vietnam off till the next morning. But I had sense enough not to so I headed down the mountain and hopped on the train. I actually didn't sleep for probably 5 hours until I got on the sleeper train from Guangzhou to Nanning... I had the top bunk, the light for the car was right next to my face, there was a speaker blairing something directly over my head, and I was asleep the instant I closed my eyes. Slept for a very solid, very REMy 14 hours...

MASS

25_05_05, originally uploaded by xdrjohnx.

This drawing I didn't plan very well - too big - so you'll have to click on it if you wanna actually see it. This drawing... took forever! I figured that since there are a lot of frames where not much changes, I would just draw one frame, copy and paste it, then add in the different changes.... JESUS... I probably spent three and a half hours in damn photoshop with this crap... oh my god. It's 4:40 in the morning... I'm staying awake tonight because I gotta be up at in three hours.

I had my blood drawn plus a tetnus booster shot today. The blood was to see if my Hepatitis A & B vaccinations are still good. The rather amazing thing was that the whole thing took less than four minutes. Sit down. "How are you?" Blood gone. Switch rooms. Nurse walks in with the shot. Jab. Tape. Out.

I was gonna scan four of those "sci-fi" paintings from John Harris (buy it here) but it took a hell of a lot longer than I thought it would. So I did two and I'll get the other ones tomorrow...



The first one, After The Fall, is a pretty small picture; probably no more than 2ft x 2ft (I could look it up but I doubt anyone is interested anyway). The second one, Leviathon, is 6ft x 15ft. It'd be pretty cool to see it up close. You can't really see in the scan, but the little black specks in the middle of the middle section are actually planes/spaceships.

This stuff is awesome, I think. I wish I'd had this book when I was 5. I woulda just sat around imagining what it would be like to be on one of these spaceships; exploring. When you're little, you imagine so much more. An older person may look at these pictures technically or historically - speculating on who influenced who, who influenced who - but kids will project themselves into pictures and not feel guilty about it. I think I'm actually going to give the book to a friend of mine's kid (I think he's three). ....or maybe I'll have to buy another one. I really like this book.....

Matsuri is currently Chiba-bound. hehe, not sure what to say about that (safe flight? lets all say a short prayer? I wish I was you? Eat some tasty food for us?). Oh well. I'll be talking to you soon...

thaiPod

24_05_05, originally uploaded by dragohnx.

Very lazy blogging day - this is a slight detour in the kittens adventure. Will continue tomorrow cuz, like Mr. Gray Kitten, I'm doing my damn Thai and can't be bothered about turning on the stereo. "Doing Thai" is:

I'm loading up my iPod with as much Thai language stuff as I can because I'm not gonna bring a computer to Bangkok. So with this I'll be able to practice all by my lonesome. As promised, two more tree photos:


I'm not sure whether I like or hate the last one. Looks like the early computer-generated images that were classified as "fantasy" ... as in dolphins floating around in space and really terrible models of naked women suspended above the ocean with a full moon directly over head.... terrible stuff. Like these beauties: 1 2

I've only read two good sci-fi books. One was a collection of short stories by Arthur C. Clark - very thought-provoking - and the other was a collection of oil paintings by a guy named John Harris. Harris has only published one book of illustrations (called "Mass") but I think his paintings are ... groovin'? I first saw the book while I was browsing around the graphic design section at Kinokuniya. I went back three or four times to specifically look at it (cost S$60, lah). I eventually bought it though, so it is now the only book of paintings I own. I'll scan some tomorrow...

Auto-mation. Git, git, git, gone.

23_05_05, originally uploaded by xdrjohnx.

Hopped out of bed at 2:30 today... my parents are kind enough not to disturb me when they wake up, but they've never totally accepted that I sleep in late. My mom called and I told her what time I woke up - the thousandth time I've slept in past noon - she still said, "No!? Are you serious? My goodness...." I think I need an automated menu for my phone:

"If you're calling because you're stressed about things in general, press (1) to leave a message that won't be recorded. If you're calling to talk about people that the user of this number has never met or heard of, press (2) to be connected to someone who gives a damn. If you're calling because you have a question that you already know the answer to but dialed this number instead of thinking for three seconds, press (3) to recieve an electric shock."

This may seriously confuse/disgust some of you. That's cottage cheese. Ever had? I think it's milk that's been halted on its journey towards cheesedom. One set of my grandparents used to feed it to me like mad, so I really like the stuff. I think most people eat it with fruit - my dad likes it with pineapple. That seems pretty damn sick, though, because pineapple is so citric that I can't even drink a glass of milk after eating it. This here cottage cheese was from the salad bar at Partner's Pizza where we had the buffet for dinner. Not helping my Thai-skinny... It was actually only $5.50, though, and the pizza was moderately better than most pizza-buffet places.

This is our "ride". Peachtree City has probably 100 miles of golf cart paths designed for people to get from place to place on. It's kinda dumb. Most people rarely use their carts cuz most people believe themselves to be extremely busy and prefer driving a car at 45mph to driving a golf cart at 15. I think both are too fast... even riding a bike scares hell out of me.

This was up in the sky post-pizza. I took a few pictures of it as we were going through a wooded area and I've been sitting here photoshopping them for far, far too long. Here's two of the four (don't want flickr to explode). Nighty-nite...

TomorrowDay

22_05_05, originally uploaded by xdrjohnx.

Tomorrow got me! More people have come by today than all other days combined. So scary; strangers running around clicking with their dirty pointers.... Someone was wondering how I know a bit of Singlish - I lived in Singapore for 8 years from '94 until '02. That's longer than I've lived anywhere else, so Singapore is kena my home. I went to the American school out at Woodlands by the way (and Ulu Pandan before that). Used to hang around Orchard quite a lot because I lived near there. Oh! Me and two other friends were sometimes on the show TeenTV which was on Channel 5 on Sunday mornings. Maybe one of you saw me as you were diving for the remote to change the channel...

For the new people, I draw a comic everyday and post it here. Recently, I've been drawing animals and nature-stuff... not sure why (I'm really liking these kittens) And if I eat anything particularly yummy I'll usually put up a picture of it. I also post crap like this:

THE PAPERWEIGHT

This story goes back six years to my freshman year of highschool at SAS. The freshman used to eat lunch and hang out between classes on the second floor patio beside the cafeteria. Between the patio and the cafeteria were about 10 big glass doors. One day I was sitting out there eating lunch when I heard this huge crash. Somebody tripped on a backpack and fell right through one of the doors. The whole thing shattered - the guy was fine though because the door was made out of safety glass. I went over there, picked up a cracked piece of glass, and put it in my backpack. Six years later I find it in a box:

That cafeteria has since been torn down (let record show that I had the last Sze Chuan Chicken ever served in that cafeteria. The Last.) .. yah, torn down, so I figured I'd like to keep the glass and try to make sure it doesn't break. My dad suggested glueing it to something rigid like a piece of metal, but I wanted to be able to see through it. I was in Home Depot with my parents so I wandered around and found some clear, hard plastic and some epoxy that dries clear. Cost about $5.50.

So I cut out a piece, traced the shape of the glass, cut it down to size, and glued it together.

Drying... then I took this drill-kena-sander-thing and shaved off all the extra plastic.

FINISH! Pretty, ah? Now the final step: testing.

(oh, and I realize that Thoreau's "throw the paperweight out of the window b/c you gotta dust it" quote from Thursday slightly goes against today's activity... but Thoreau never lived in Singapore. He never fed left over mee goreng to cats with kinks in their tales. He spent his whole life in Bumblefuck, Connecticut in the damn eighteen hundreds. If I were stuck in some frozen tundra surrounded by Quakers, I'd be throwing stuff around, too.)

XiaXue Speaks: A Four-Step Guide

XiaXue is a busy girl. She has her blog, her job, and a real life. How does a normal human like me make contact with the Queen of Asian Blogging?

1) Read her blog a damn lot - I happened to witness a phantom post the morning of May the 19th. It was there for a minute and then it disapeared. This is like seeing God vanish behind a cloud. Amazing. I know I'm not crazy because my googlecache saw it too:

2) Scour your life for any connection to her post - The link was to a modeling agency. One of the girls was wearing a shirt that looked pretty similar to one I bought in Little India for S$1:

ha HA! Not just a connection - a unique connection. Perfect!

3) Make a funny picture - XiaXue doesn't want to read "oh, that shirt looks like one i got in little india. lol." Hell, no. She doesn't have the time! I threw on the shirt, took a picture, photoshopped it and came up with this:

4) Get her to look at the picture - You have to link to the picture in your comment and she has to click the link. This is a lot to ask of an internet goddess. Getting XiaXue to click your pathetic, earthly link takes zen-like restraint. The fisherman don't chase the fish around; he gets the fish to come to him. You must be casual. You must be intriguing:

Notice the typo? So did I - makes it seem like its no big deal while we all know it is a HUGE deal. This is XiaXue!

The Result:

FIVE AMAZING WORDS!

Now turn on the aircon and put your feet up cuz your heart gonna POM POM TIAO!

Very tired...

21_05_05, originally uploaded by xdrjohnx.

Too tired to blog, lah. It's 9:30 and I want to sleep. Quick, quick: we went over to my grandmother's apartment complex today for a BBQ lunch. Crappy food and a bit of awkwardness because there's not that much to talk about. After that, we came back here and I walked around by myself. Five hours later and I'm back at the service apartment. My parents are eating somewhere right now; I'm skipping dinner to get Thai-skinny. MMmm.. sorry for the shit post. Here's a turtle I found!

Crash! Boom! Bang!

20_05_05, originally uploaded by xdrjohnx.

I woke up at 11:00 AM to a thunderstorm. The lightning was popping just overhead, the wind was screeching, and, oddly, it was really bright out. Being half awake I was sure a tornado was about to rip the wall off and hurl me three miles through the air onto a fence. So I stumbled out of bed and ran into the other room - actually between the two rooms using the divider for cover. No one was here; I was going to die alone! I grabbed the remote and turned on the TV. No tornado alert; must be on the next channel. Flip, flip, flip. I went through about ten channels and didn't see any alerts. The wind was dying down now and realized I was getting cold because I didn't have any shorts or shirt on. I changed the station a few more times then turned the TV off. I walked over to the window and parted the blinds - not that windy after all and the lightning was already pretty far away. I was suddenly very glad to be the only person in the apartment. Back to sleep.

That was by far the most interesting thing that happened today - and nothing actually happened. I got out of bed at 3:00 and had lunch at On The Border, which was where I had that Chicken Burrito two days ago.


This is their Margarita Chicken which goes for about $8. It was really good; just what I felt like having. It's basically just seasoned, grilled chicken on mexican rice with grilled squash, red peppers, and cucumbers. I could only eat half of the chicken breast it was so big. Tasty stuff.

The rest of the day was spent at the new house. I would have walked around for a few hours but it was raining. I need to thin up because "fat" is relative to who you're around. In the US I'm moderately skinny, but in Thailand I'm probably a fat-ass. And if I don't want to leave a trail of sweat everywhere I go, I need to get as thin as possible before leaving. But cannot walk today. So I napped.

Actually, I feel like an idiot about this picture. I had to set the camera up, put it on a ten-second timer, then run back over, throw on the blanket, and act like I'm "relaxing". Pretty stupid. But it was either that or a hold-the-camera-at-arm's-length-shot. Neither are very good, eh? But, hey, my fans demand it. hehe...

Alright, here's a gen-u-ine mystery. This is for people who knew me around freshman year of highschool. My church went to a summer camp called Centerfuge in New Mexico one year and this girl was with our group. I found these pictures while sorting through a box. I liked her at the time even though she was a few years younger than me. She had a little brother who wore glasses that was always slapping people with one of those sticky, stretchy hands. Anyway, I don't know her name or who she was ... anyone remember?