James 3:13-18; 4:7

Who is wise and understanding among you?

By his good conduct, let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom.  

But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth.  This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic.  For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.  But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere.  And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

...

Submit yourselves therefore to God.  Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  

When I feel wronged it is hard to go to the Word.  I'd rather just feel wronged and let it ferment into a thickened agent ready for that sweet but subtle martyr-like whine.


Something funny; lately, when I feel wronged I think, "Be like Go Eunsung."  (from the Kdrama. Isn't that super dorky?  But she is so "good" - even when she's wronged.  And she has the right idea).  I will try.


Better yet, I'll go talk to James.  He has much to say.  And the wrongs against me pale against the wrongs and deceits in my own heart.

seriously...

http://jezebel.com/5496714/march-madness-the-cake-vs-pie-tournament


i couldn't resist.

If they had tiramisu.. all would have been lost... but i dono if Tiramisu is good enough to kill apple.

in the end, i still like my plain and simple tastes.  apple pie. apple pie.  apple pie.

i thought i loved pumpkin. but... yes, apple.

but.. ice cream cake.. mmmm..

going jogging in 7.5 hours.

in 4 days: MAMA CITA ARRIVES.
in 9 days.. ZHONGGUO!
in LESS THAN A MONTH:  MEIGUO
IN A MONTH: 再來臺灣！
IN TWO MONTHS:  .. meh
IN LESS THAN THREE MONTHS: 回家！！！

TT_TT

but .. they're both old!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8588544.stm

russell crowe as robin hood with cate blanchett as maid marian?
not to mention the guy from pride and prejudice (i don't even remember his face b/c that pride and prejudice was such MILK and WHITE BREAD that i tasted none of it)  who I at least remember as being young is the sheriff.

Not gonna lie, i LOVE stories.  I LOVE stories turned into movies.  I love cate Blanchett and although I'm not too thrilled at Crowe, I can't deny he's got acting chops.. but..

they're.. so.. old.

Doesn't "Maid" mean anything?  It's short for "maiden" not "Old maid."  Cate, you're gorgeous, but .. maid Marian?  :-(  and Russell Crowe is no strapping youth.  He's old.

Seriously even though he can't act, Taylor Lautner or Nick Jonas should've been cast for Robin Hood.  And while we're on this (gone unfortunately wrong) stream of thought, Disney should've produced it and made it fun and bubbly.

Okay, if we're going to do a serious version, then... pick... someone slim and limber.  Not a stocky gladiator

3D

"The problem is these decisions should be made by film-makers, they shouldn't be made by studios, because if it was up to studios they're going to sacrifice quality for lower cost," Cameron said.
...
Since the success of Tim Burton's 3D Alice In Wonderland, which was made into 3D after it was filmed, studios are looking to convert more movies.
...
Speaking last month at the launch of Alice, Burton said it is more about technique, rather than the process.
"With all these tools, you can see good 3D, bad 3D, good conversion and bad conversions," he said.
Transformers director Michael Bay has also joined the debate, telling movie industry website Deadline.com that he is "not sold right now on the conversion process". 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8586973.stm

Yikes, studios taking over is always a blah in my book.  Not to mention, I'm still not entirely thrilled with 3D.  For me, it still blares "Hello! I'm 3D!"  for me, the subtlety of losing yourself to the story is totally dashed by the "look at me reach out of the screen now" effect of 3D.

The idea of 3D badly done makes me shudder. 

My 2 pence.

Distance to drop movie and  back home: 2-3K
distance from home to park = .5 K
Park laps walked: 2 X 1.1
park laps jogged = 2X1.1

total: at least 7 K

WOW

I am on my way to 9 K!

Some things i learned:
If you find a gooood running partner (IE Tracy!!!) with whom you can talk, you can
1) regulate your breathing and prevent cramps
2) keep running!  the whole time without stopping
3) make time go by fast
4) learn new things
5) and only feel semi bad that your pace is the same pace as a mom pushing her 4 year old daughter in a stroller!  (still we ran it!)

ALSO
When you run in the city, esp. in Taiwan, you smell a LOT of smells... and burning exhaust. yuck yuck.
BUT it also passes by fast because you see lots of visual "milestones", have to constantly dodge people and cars, and so it doesn't feel that long.

anyway go me!

(go kathy!)

dyeing hair

in 8th grade i finally got contacts.
in high school i was allowed a cartilage piercing (which was cool for all of 5 minutes until my little sister was also allowed one)  and free rein over hair color .
the first time i dyed my hair purple.  the second time, pink.  during the second time, my mom did it with me.

I wonder what her mentality was.
maybe similar to this lady's  

Harmless.

but you know, i didn't act like that little 11 yr-old.  I whined for my contacts and i think i genuinely felt prettier once i got them.  when i dyed my hair, it was because i thought it was pretty.  but of course, i thought it was cool too.  then i mainly just had fun... since it was semi-permanent.  My sister did it too.  Hmm hmm.  i'm trying to think back to my thoughts behind that.

i guess what i'm trying to say is my mom lessened the potency of such acts by... being okay with it.  And I guess we were on pretty good terms since I told her about it first.  (although the later ear piercings were done spur of the moment, by myself with my sister.. at least it was in the confines of home.   Only once did my mom flip, but that's because my sister had a BUNCH of ear piercings in the span of like.. 3 months. lol.  okay maybe not a bunch; just like 2 more).

banana peanut butter oatmeal cookies

don't you LOVE it when a recipe has everything you need to use?

http://bakingbites.com/2009/05/peanut-butter-banana-oatmeal-cookies/

I used that recipe.. but stupid me, I used three bananas which is WAY more than 1/4 C banana.. WAY more.  -_-  Now i understand WHY b/c the banana flavor definitely overpowers... even after I eyeballed more amounts of oatmeal, flour, sugar, and peanut butter...The proceeding batter has more peanut butter still.

I was going to add choco chips but I feel like that may distract. (i did add a splash of vanilla)

thoughts?

It's sort of like.. banana bread; in cookie form.  (b/c it's soft).  and as per my usual baking endeavors, it's goshdarn tasty!

may make a batch with cinnamon
and a batch with some choco chips after all.

i have a BUNCH of dough.

Also, this is also one of those doughs that just TASTES good.. you could just eat it.  (it only has 1 raw egg anyway).  when I was just blending wet ingredients; gosh; peanut butter and banana blended with an egg and sugar?  Mm MMMmmmm!!!!

frivol

First off, gotta say, CUTE concept.



But here are my issues
* first of all, ain't he a little too forward?
* second of all, you can't SMELL gerbera daisies.  Anyone smell one before?  Smell one and you'll know; gerbera daisies aren't fragrant
* also, by now, wouldn't you go back and get your laundry?
* aren't you a little creeped out by a guy playing guitar in the laundromat?
* then in the final scene, I thought he had decorated the laundromat and I honestly thought, "Aww how cute!"  which was followed by, "How much SWEETER would it be if he had finished her laundry!"  .. but he didn't.  Instead, they slowdanced in a random patio... which brings me to my final point
*the dancing scene captures his prepubescent awkwardness only highlighted by his slightly feminine voice.  First of all, she's taller.  Second of all, he looks like a girl.

The end

oh tom, the 7th grade korean student.

*bell rings*

"Okay guys! Leave! You're Free!  You're FREE!"

*kids run out; Tom runs back wide eyed*
"What? what?  Sree?  Sree?" (holds up three fingers, confused)

*I'm momentarily confused*
No Tom.. FREE..

ghirardellhi (sp?) brownie tricks

although I'm a firm proponent of scratch  ("Did you make it out of scratch?" - Daniel oppa..  Hehahah Inside joke!  that .. only joy or jeremy (who doesn't read this) would understand)   ...  there are certain things where a baked good is not worth the effort.

BROWNIES are a prime example.  If you try to make it out of scratch, you have to use so many ingredients and the cocoa powder gets everywhere, and plus, they usually don't even TASTE that good.  Honestly.  Homemade brownies are le-suck.  

Now, Ghiradelli on the other hand... has an awful to spell name.  

BUT Ghiradelli has the BEST and i repeat BEST brownie mixes.  They used to be double chocolate (during my sophomore year of high school), now they're triple.

At costco, you can buy a huge box of 6 mixes.. for .. a decent price.  (Sanny claims Betty crocker is the best).

With Ghiradelhi, you just add 1 egg, 1/3 C milk or water and 1/3 C oil and voila!  finito!  325 in the oven for 45 ish minutes!

Then you get the fudgiest, moistest, chocolate chunked brownies ever.

Today, I figured out a way to make the bag go further than just 16 brownies.  Just add 1/2 C of flour and use 1/2C milk and 1/2 C oil.  Want to save on cleanup?  Just get a normal drinking cup, eyeball in about 1/2 C milk and then add oil until  it hits below the rim!  Then just dump that sucker in with the egg and mix.  You could probably add another egg too.  I haven't experimented too much yet, but I just sort of keep on randomly feeding it flour..  and it doesn't make it any less sweet.  Because that brownie is pretty stanking sweet already.  

So, I'll probably experiment some more.. I feel like the bag of brownie mix has enough brownie to back up double the recipe.. without using double the number of bags!

That's my brownie trick!  (thank you, thank you, thank you)

OH but another brownie trick:  DON'T bake in the morning when your hair is all loose from the night's sleep.  (you know how you shed hair at night?)   You'll end up with TWO.. yes TWO long hairs in your brownies.  EWWWWWW

I literally had to eat my words from a few weeks ago when I told Kathy and Grace about not eating food with hair in it.  In that conversation, I was shocked at how readily they'd return to a restaurant where there was hair in the food. blech blech.  But they said if it was a friend's they would just eat the rest of the food.  which makes sense i guess.  Anyway,  I pulled out the hairs, cut up the brownies, and serve them anyway to my unassuming 7th graders.  HAHAHHAA ^_^

Tom

“A long long time ago a man walked in a desert. He weared a gray t-shirt and a dirty brack jean ,and his face looked like nothing happyness.”

- riveting start of a story from a 7th grade student.  grammar/spelling intact.

my first time using Hat Trick. did i do it right?

Charles Spurgeon quote that I think corresponds well with Matt's sermon yesterday on James 4:1-10.  That was a very convicting sermon; still trying to formulate my thoughts (and actions) around it.  may share in the future.


You need not weep because Christ died one-tenth so much as because your sins rendered it necessary that He should die. You need not weep over the crucifixion, but weep over your transgression, for your sins nailed the Redeemer to the accursed tree. To weep over a dying Saviour is to lament the remedy; it were wiser to bewail the disease. To weep over the dying Saviour is to wet the surgeon's knife with tears; it were better to bewail the spreading polyps which that knife must cut away. To weep over the Lord Jesus as He goes to the cross is to weep over that which is the subject of the highest joy that ever heaven and earth have known; your tears are scarcely needed there; they are unnatural, but a deeper wisdom will make you brush them all away and chant with joy His victory over death and the grave. If we must continue our sad emotions, let us lament that we should have broken the law which He thus painfully vindicated; let us mourn that we should have incurred the penalty which He even to the death was made to endure ... O brethren and sisters, this is the reason why we souls weep: because we have broken the divine law and rendered it impossible that we should be saved except Jesus Christ should die.




HT: Challies

weekend baking endeavors.

lately i've been taking a lot of recipes from this Nicole's Baking Bites 

Today's was her Lemon Chess Pie.

I mean why not?
I had frozen lemon juice that I needed to use up, eggs, and graham crackers!

Well, it turns out I only had 3 normal graham crackers left and i did NOt want to use my cinnamon graham crackers for a pie crust.. SO I looked up normal pie crusts.
Then, I decided, why go thru all the trouble for a pie crust when I can just make lemon chess bars.
So i looked up a few lemon bar recipes and realized they were all around the same idea:
2 cups flour, 1 cup powdered sugar, 1 cup butter.

This is why america's fat people.

I decided to use up the rest of my graham crackers which made around 2/3 C and filled the rest with flour.
Then around 3/4 C powdered sugar and 3/4 C butter.

Mixed the dry ingredients while the butter melted in the microwave.
To save an extra pan, I simply mixed everything inside the baking dish since it has so much butter in it, it wouldn't stick!  Even though I cut out 1/4 of the butter, I still had way too much butter.

Oh and because ANONYMOUS roommate used the pie pan and didn't bring it back >:O I had to use a casserole dish.  that's okay, otherwise I would've had even more too much crust.  (that was not English, I know).

So then, I made it more of a tart rather than a bar since there was enough "bar" to push against the sides of my non-buttered casserole dish.

Then began to preheat the oven to 350 degrees

Then separated 4 eggs..  put the yolks into the bowl where I melted my butter and put my whites into a separate bowl.  To all you noobs out there; not even a SMIDGEN of yolk should be in your whites.  or any other type of fat.  Otherwise, your whites will NOT stiffen and form peaks!!

I say this because a teeeeny piece of yellow fell into the white, so I had to fish it out patiently with a fork.  by the time i was done, I deemed the oven hot enough to put the pie crust in to par bake.  (that means bake before you add stuff into the shell)

and in the bowl where I melted my butter, I wisked 2/3 C sugar, 2 Tb melted butter, and 4 egg yolks.
added 1/2 C lemon juice, 1 tsp of zest (eyeballed it), 3/4 tsp vanilla (eyeballed it), 1/4 tsp of salt (just a pinch), and abouuut 3/8 C flour (supposed to be 2 Tbs. eh oh well).. just eyeballed the amount in my 1/4C holder..

whisk whisk whisk.
Oh while adding ingredients, keep an eye on the time -- the shell should only be inside 10-15 minutes.  Of course when you have a bad oven with a live wire where everything is in Celsius, you have to play it by ear.  and sort of hope things turn out okay.


then with the 4 egg whites I BEAT ITTTTT..  and it formed foamy slight peaks. not huge stiff ones.  I think it's because of that piece of cholesterol that slipped its yellow self into my sea of whites. boo.

Afterwards, gently whisked it into my yellows mixture.  You should be gentle so you don't kill the volume of the whites.  but make sure it's all incorporated so no whites show.

Then poured it into my pie crust (that I took out minutes before; didn't have a chance to cool; wasn't even super done because my oven was too low).

Then because my oven is weird, I covered the top with aluminum and turned it on higher so that the bottom would cook.  (worried about my crust).  You're supposed to bake it at 350 F degrees for 30-35 min.

I baked it for.. I hope around that many degrees (Celsius is hard!) for about 25 min, then took off the aluminum, lowered the heat a little and kept it in there for 20 minutes more.

Then take it out, let it rest for around 15-20 minutes (that's when I did my book list) and thennnnn yeah!
you're done!

took some pictures.

it was SOUR! but GOOD.  I liked the hints of graham  cracker in that crust and I looove sour things.  It wasn't pucker your mouth sour but the lemon flavor was strong enough to taste.  That's what I get for cutting the sugar the recipe calls for virtually in half.  anyway, I liked it.

I think it's a pretty dessert since the whites separate from the lemon custard part in the middle.

Thankful for being in TW where I can bake, and where I have so many southern influences around me so that if I see a southern recipe, i recognize it for what it is!  The Lemon Chess Pie is very similar to Buttermilk Pie in consistency I believe.  It's actually sort of similar to a lemon meringue, now that I think about it.

..

speaking about pies, there's a Pie truck/van that drives around Taipei.
It's mega deliciosos~!


Oh Recipe for the ACTUAL lemon chess pie:
http://bakingbites.com/2010/03/lemon-chess-pie/

Time Magazine's All-Time Top 100 Novels from 1923-the Present (2005)

This list came out 5 years ago.
http://www.time.com/time/2005/100books/the_complete_list.html
I didn't like how they didn't exactly outline the CRITERIA for how they chose.
But then again, can we simply just put it on that Pritchard Scale? (ten points for those who know what movie i'm referencing! hehe)

Anywhooz; Crossed out if read; Bold if heard of it/want to read; Italics if I heard of/own it but don't want to read it.

**** out of four.
* = hate it
** = okay
*** = would read it again
**** = LOVE IT!!!!

The Complete List In Alphabetical Order


The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow

All the King's Men 
Robert Penn Warren

American Pastoral 
Philip Roth - technically "read" it for class. didn't really though

An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser

Animal Farm  
George Orwell  **

Appointment in Samarra
John O'Hara

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Judy Blume **1/2 .. hehehe.  "I must, I must, I must increase..."  hehehehehhe

The Assistant
Bernard Malamud

At Swim-Two-Birds
Flann O'Brien

Atonement
Ian McEwan

Beloved
Toni Morrison ***

The Berlin Stories
Christopher Isherwood

The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler

The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood  - love her.

Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy

Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh

The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder

Call It Sleep
Henry Roth

Catch-22
Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger *1/2 (it used to be a HATE; but this year i changed my mind coincidentally)

A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess

The Confessions of Nat Turner
William Styron

The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen

The Crying of Lot 49
Thomas Pynchon

A Dance to the Music of Time
Anthony Powell

The Day of the Locust
Nathanael West

Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather  - well actually CURRENTLY reading it.

A Death in the Family
James Agee

The Death of the Heart
Elizabeth Bowen

Deliverance
James Dickey

Dog Soldiers
Robert Stone

Falconer
John Cheever

The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles

The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing

Go Tell it on the Mountain
James Baldwin

Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell - too long

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck  - except honestly, never liked any steinbeck before..

Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald ***1/2 really do love it.. but not YUM. you know?

A Handful of Dust
Evelyn Waugh

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers

The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene

Herzog
Saul Bellow

Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson

A House for Mr. Biswas
V.S. Naipaul

I, Claudius
Robert Graves

Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace

Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison  - i started reading this in high school; i don't remember anything; it was HARD and blah.  graded a bunch of AP essays on it for CCS tho..

Light in August
William Faulkner

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis ****

Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov * 1/2 (it's gross)

Lord of the Flies
William Golding **

The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien ***

Loving
Henry Green

Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis

The Man Who Loved Children
Christina Stead

Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie  - own it; tried to read it a few times now; meh.

Money
Martin Amis

The Moviegoer
Walker Percy

Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf

Naked Lunch
William Burroughs

Native Son
Richard Wright

Neuromancer
William Gibson

Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro

1984
George Orwell **

On the Road
Jack Kerouac

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey **1/2

The Painted Bird
Jerzy Kosinski

Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov

A Passage to India
E.M. Forster

Play It As It Lays
Joan Didion

Portnoy's Complaint
Philip Roth

Possession
A.S. Byatt

The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark

Rabbit, Run
John Updike

Ragtime
E.L. Doctorow

The Recognitions
William Gaddis

Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett

Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates  -er, i just wanna watch the movie. HEHE

The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles

Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut  - is this good?  i'm ambivalent.

Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson

The Sot-Weed Factor
John Barth

The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner  - own it, no particular desire to start it..

The Sportswriter
Richard Ford

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
John le Carre

The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway

Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston **** LOVED IT

Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe ***

To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee ****

To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf

Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller

Ubik
Philip K. Dick

Under the Net
Iris Murdoch

Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry

Watchmen
Alan Moore; Dave Gibbons

White Noise
Don DeLillo

White Teeth
Zadie Smith

Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys



***

Meh; so lots i haven't ever heard of; few I've read; few i've heard of and don't want to read.

It's annoying how catcher in the rye and 1984 and animal farm are up there.  read all three freshman year and disliked all of them.... wondering though; if it's also because i really disliked the teacher;  recently reread catcher in the rye, and it was more tolerable.

fairest of them all

seriously? really? seriously?
FIVE MINUTES
FIVE MINUTES outside when the sun came out.
I took them outside to read and while the tidy little taiwanese children sat in the shade, i declared I wanted a tan, rolled up my sleeves, and stuck my smiling visage into the face of the sky.

and that day my face felt itchy and pink.

"Am i red?"
"Whoa, what happened?"
"I don't know!"


I wear my SPF15 face moisturizer everyday.


so WHY then, WHY is my face peeling and itchy?

A sunburn from five minutes in the sun?


really Earth? Taiwan? Sun? Skin?


I guess I should stay in Asia under a little sunbrella for the rest of my life. either that or risk being a marshmallow among a sea of nice tan Californians. :-/

teaching is the new currency for travel.

:)
i live vicariously thru travelettes.net


i saw this website: http://www.worldteach.org/index.html from Nick Kristof's column on a proposal for a "Teach for the World" program. Except for the fact that I think Teach for America sucks out your soul, I think it's a pretty sweet program.

I wish i'd been smart about things in college and really pursued the study of a language. Instead I stupidly dabbled in three and as a result, gained nothing in any.

I don't know why.
I used to be such a homebody.
but Wanderlust seems to be the new word in my head these days.

I think when my heart gets heavy and buys into the lie of "not being free" I try to remember Hebrews 11:13 and my modified Matthew 6:33 prayer(/passive threat) from the summer between freshman and sophomore year.

"Lord, heaven better be better than Spain." *


*this is MY blog; MY thoughts.. I don't NEED to put a disclaimer. but JUST in case: I'm not claiming that traveling isn't in line with seeking first His kingdom. Just for me, and my mindset, I need to be careful. That's all.

gave up twitter

at first i was excited trying to write under the character limit; oh the joy of formulating witty, minimalistic updates on your life. cramming as much meaning as possible into 140 characters.

tweeting was meant to be done purposefully - if an event requires more than 1 tweet, gotta rethink!

it got to a point where i seriously considered stopping my blog.

anyway, that's over.

thanks to buzz mainly.


yesterday, an 8th grade boy in my class stared thoughtfully at my face and then said, "You know, Miss Kim, you look like Nathan." (Nathan is a high school student. I don't think we look alike at aLL)

Other kids, "What? Ehhh"

Boy: "She does - you do! You have the same eyes.. and eyebrows."

Me (Trying to keep it humorous and non-awkward): "OH poor Nathan!"



then i went home .. and told kathy and grace.
kathy came to inspect my brows.. because truth be told, i haven't taken anything to my eyebrows since i moved to Taiwan. i just grew some bangs and got some huge classes to cover them brushy monstrosities. (as i have said again and again, in Taiwan, i've let myself go to see)

kathy was surprised, "Wow you really meant it when you said you did nothing! WOW.. WOW!"

I felt utterly bushy now.. especially with kathy's confirmation of 8th grade boy's comments.

so last night i shaped it a little and got rid of a lot of wayward hairs... i guess tonight i'll pull out the tweezers..

*sigh*

:-T

it was nice while it lasted

*yawn*

i'm tired of reading all those articles about how books will be replaced by the kindle/ipad/[insert electronic device here].

it gets me all riled up unfortunately.

i'm tired of reading all the refutations as well.

Honestly, I think it's because people have nothing to say so they drum up the same tired predictions over and over again so they can hit their quota and take home a paycheck.

Because we all know that half the predictions will be wrong and then 50 years from now, used as an example of how we never imagined "such and such" could have existed and even refuted it!.. I mean that's what we do now isn't it? Pick-and-choose research.

jewels.

every conversation with Lena Kim is a jewel. she's gullible, simple, and sweet. (I added the sweet part so she'll be conflicted on how to respond.)



me: este told me at the shower only 2 ppl were single
or 3 b/c she included me in spirit
i didnt tell her about my new vow.
of being only married to Jesus Christ

Lena: ................
no way junia
reallyy only 3??

me: taiwan has changed me for the better. i'm a new woman~!
Oh
YEAH
only three

Lena: ........junia noooooooooooo
you're going to be celibate for life?
but i want your children to play with my children so that my children can beat yours up
ahahahaha

me: ........

Lena: i just decided that instead of having my husband beat you up

me: OH MY GOSH THAT'S NOT FAIR

Lena: it's a little better if my kids beat up yours
heheheh

me: bECAUSE YOUR HUSBANDS A FREAKING HUGE MONSTER
and HIS KIDS WILL HAVE BIG GENESE
*GENES

Lena: ...uh

me: and my poor foster/adopted kids

Lena: junia, i don't knooowww who i'm going to marryyy

me: from emaciated Malaysia will get slaughetered.

Lena: .;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
but junia

me: well you might not know
BUT

Lena: you're realllyyyy strong

me: i bet you'll start like ... nosing into their gene pool to create some superman.
yeah, i'll just beat up your kids

Lena: AHAHAH

me: and why is it better for your kids to beat up my kids

Lena: you woudl neverrr

me: than husband?
I would - if they tick me off

Lena: bc i don't want a woman beater

me: ...

my husband (if i had one)
wouldn't
be
a
woman.

Lena: ...
OHHHHHHHHHH

me: lena this convo is ridiculous

Lena: ahaha
nono

me: plus he can't beat up Jesus

Lena: remember when i said i'm going to get my husband to beat you up
bc i can't
junia, are you seriousss

me: it's the best way for this situation at hand

Lena: why?????

me: because the world will end soon and i need to expend my singleness

Lena: ...
couldn't you expend your marriedness

me: i dono...
explain

Lena: isn't life just trying to exhaust it eitehr way

me: but Paul says
being single
is better.

Lena: .;;;;;;;

me: ?

Lena: is it meant that simply?

me: I'm just pulling your leg
i think this is funny
that our roles are switched
i think this conversation is ridiculous.
in ALL aspects
but it was starting to get boring b/c you were taking it too seriously.
Sorry lena for my evilness

Lena: .;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

me: to be fair

Lena: how dare you

me: im mean to grace too physically
and i said i just like to
and kathy told me that was bad
and it just made me want to do it more

Lena: .;;;;;;
actually
grae is strong too
but i think youre stronger

me: hahah
she's not
they dropped a pingpong table on her foot
and i was semi trying to kick it
(b/c she was limping)

Lena: ahah juniaaaa


----

i guess you had to be there.

Anyway i love to mess with Lena.

My favorite things to do to Lena:
- just grab her randomly to spook her
- spook her 3 times in a row by just saying BOo!
- taking pictures with her sandwiched between me and janet
- making her do ridiculous things (she's a surprisingly good sport)
- scare her by pretending to be insane
- make her go along with "what ifs"
- getting on her case for not wanting to marry someone younger even if the person was Jay (and Jay is standing right there making "attractive" faces at her) and watching her get flustered about her unholy thoughts.
- watch videos of her rapping.



she loves me too.

6:45AM FAIL

i'm over the whole feeling smug that anything pre-7am is a fail.
because seriously I have such a bad habit of self-indulgence.


I see a chocolate bar and I eat it.
Why? because i want to.

I stay up til 11:15pm reading New York Times articles.
Why? because I feel like it.

Not because it's healthy; not because I can't put it off until later; but because I am so good at lying to myself and justifying my reasons. And it just kicks me in the derrière the next day when I realize how stupid my decision was.

And WHILE I do the decision, I KNOW I'll regret it.

I see this as a form of sin (not just in the basic sense of sloth) but how this lack of discipline reveals that in the end, I care more about my instant gratifications more than God.

I KNOW that if i stay up late I won't have time in the morning for quality time with the Lord. I know that it's HARD to get that time in at other times. And, yet as the clock slowly ticks from 9-10-11... I find more and more excuses to read/bake/fold clothes .. etc etc. See, it's so insidious because the things I do aren't "bad" (TV got moved to roommate's room; I don't have it anymore)... but they ARE because as night strikes, I suddenly don't want to sleep.. I feel like I can stay awake... I'm so good at fooling myself.

vietnam poem

VICTORY

Bullet has muzzle velocity, so great
1235 feet per second
and 1.2 seconds later it meets Steel Helmet
who held up as well as he might, Bullet
but Bullets force was great and he
was melting and vaporizing and
spritzing out tiny blobs of lead
as Helmet gave in
inward bulged the steal and
on rushed Bullet 1.204 seconds
after leaving Muzzle-
jagged edges behind him he met
Hair who held him up nowise in his Journey
Skin gave way to mushroomed Bullet and
Bones deformed at his will
671 feet a second he went as he tore
vessels too surprised to bleed
then Bullet nosed through soft gray-white stuff
hardly hard as butter
First he cut through the memory of Mom
then a small gray dog
through a first car, a wreck, but what the hell
it ran
through a huge area of scraped knees and
pulled pigtails
a little bit of fear...about this
about
about bullets
then through a first kiss and the warm soft
skin of a girl and
plans for a boat--someday
and tear--
of acrid wine first tasted--
the remembrance of raucous birds calling in
the soft gray dawns of winter
of food cooking warm and pungent--
of sex and school and sandwiches and sorrows
then he was through that map of life and out
the other side easy as punch
flicking Helmet's edge
continuing on
erractic now, partly flattened
going 662 feet per second
slowing down until 853 feet on he
rests himself in a palm tree
sitting there warmly--
duty done--
to map Hell where Paradise had been.

--Ronald J. Willis

8:30am

So some asked what happened to 5am club.

well it died after i went to Thailand.
I revived it on Friday.. at 5:45am.. :-/

buut i woke up today at 8:30am on a SATURDAY; which is CRAZYtalk. so I'm pleased. I probably won't wake up too early on Sunday just because Sunday I need all my juices.



okay; so today I went to Taipei Mainstation with Mrs. and Dr. Owens to go buy cloth... (i'm playing around with sewing veils/bridal shrugs) and they introduced me to this amazing ice cream place. Two scoops for 35NT for GREAT not watery ice cream!!!!!

and then later i went to her place so she could alter my skirts for me.

I bought two a-line skirts from Korea but alas they were too big. and awkward.

So... Today I tried it on to figure out how much she needed to put in.. and... THEY FIT!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH



so i was one unhappy camper and I guess I won't be frequenting the 2-scoop-35NT ice cream stand any more.

and i guess i'll be going jogging with kathy again.


and i guess i'll stop making myself fudge and chocolate candies to eat at work.


HAHAHAHA

self-psyche

so, lately i've been psyching myself out.
today i went home and walked upstairs in the dark. i quickly darted into my room and avoided the closet as my coat was hanging and I kept on thinking "what if my coat was a man?" i quickly went to turn on the bathroom light and made sure nobody was following me.

afterwards, as i walked downstairs in the dark (i don't like to switch my lights on and off) i kept on thinking what if someone was following me? and was waiting behind me to knock me down the stairs? because of the bathroom light, my eyes hadn't adjusted to the dark of the stairwell, so i groped ahead holding the bannister and reaching with my foot. in the mirror reflection i saw myself and then thought "what if that isn't me, but is someone behind me about to kill me?"

then i walked downstairs and quickly looked behind me twice to make sure no one was after me.

then i actually did feel scared and heart pumpy and quickly switched on my living room lights.


the end.

LOL - TGIF!

Setting: Selina and I are on our separate computers. The door burst open and Dr. Owens comes in.

Dr. Owens: I just had to share this with you; this is just too good.

Selina and I turn around and give him our full attention; smiling and excited to hear this.

Dr. Owens (with gestures and self-pleased smile): A girl just made a graphic for the yearbook of the cougar - no a Jaguar.. a jaguar, but it has these red eyebrows and they just couldn't get it off. just couldn't get it off! so i told her don't worry, come Monday, I'll bring the Visine.

Dr. Owens smiles expectantly.

Selina and I are just blank.

Dr. Owens: You know; visine.. I'll bring the visine. Haven't you heard of Visine - it gets the red out?

Me (smiling but confused and laughing): Oh I'm sorry Dr. Owens!

Dr. Owens: You don't know?

Me: Oh! I feel so bad; you were so excited to tell us and we just don't get it!

Dr. Owens shrugs and leaves.

Selina: Different generations...

Me: Yeah.. maybe.

sonia - why are you so hard to me?

It feels like
your heart isn't big enough
your resolve isn't strong enough
your brain isn't large enough
your patience isn't long enough
the rewards aren't big enough
the love is nonexistent
and when the tide seems to slow enough
the storm clouds out the vision

but though the desert's hot enough
the mountains dot the horizon
promising that sand and dust
combines with a hope arisen

to produce a sunset bright enough;
to contrast a moon that's wide enough
to put your sorrows and their trust
back into hands bedizened *
with faith that is enough
and care that could heal enough
wounds of the hardened tough
in time that is short enough
to take the stuff that weakens us
that which makes us human enough
to love beyond what
I feel capable of doing.



* don't like this word; but like the sound.

so i guess i *DID* miss my dad!

Because after he left, I felt empty for a while! WOW.

You know, there's certain phrases I always laugh at or think about .. and i realize it's because of a long line of inside jokes with my dad. With my dad, they're mainly fob-jokes and he laughs at them a lot. No one else really does.

for example, I told my dad about how the flight attendant at Asia Air (YAGH no frills super cheap.. DEFinITELy DOn'T ride UNLESS you got a SUPER CHEAP Deal.. they make SURE you get NO Frills.. NOT EVEN WATER!!!!! (unless you pay for bottled)) said... "Have a presen- have a ples..ident flight!" AHAHAHAH. so funny right? well maybe not really; no one else guffawed. but my dad smirked .. because it's funny!

and these are other phrases

"I am not responsibility." (a fob "once said" that instead of "i am not responsible)

"You know ramen?" (You know what I mean --> you know I mean? --> you knorrimean...)

"I am determination!" (instead of I am determined)

adding any sort of +tion to a gerund or participle. (i LOVE how I know that now)

"flied lice"

"supplies!"

any poop/booger jokes.



I also realized my dad's stories begin with 'i knew a guy who..' or "once there was this guy who..." and recently I realized those weren't TRUE.. but just stemmed from that part in your brain where you think "what if there was this guy who..."

I know that because I have a habit of doing that too. Putting my theoreticals into objective memories that never happened. I think that's lying. Or it's a habit I'm trying not to do anymore; exaggerate or tell stories as if they were true.