Hi there,

If you're looking for my picture blog, it's at http://nikkichau.blogspot.com/
For my alter ego @ Twentysomethingism, go to http://twentysomethingism.blogspot.com/

Holy penne. Four AM already?

Coming back to “civilization”, as I call my return from a 2-week road trip, is bittersweet. I’m exaggerating about the whole Encino man thing, of course, because I didn’t really wander too far out of town. Sure, I was in a few small towns and sleeping on a crash pad in a tent, but the closest 24-hour all-American supermarket was never any more than a 30 minute-drive away. Hell, I was 15 minutes from The Strip in Vegas for a week while at Red Rock Canyon.

The only real difference during these past two weeks was my lifestyle. I would wake up when the sun or the wind rattled the tent (which was unfortunately too often and too much). I resorted back to the most basic survival needs: keeping warm and keeping full. I would hike, climb, meet people, and curse or love the elements, depending on the day and the way the wind blew. Then when night fell, I would go back to the tent. James and I would cook, and by six or seven o’clock, we would be inside the tent, playing chess, reading, or writing, and we would pass out by nine or 10. Some nights, we would have friends from another camp site over, making a big ol’ campfire, and philosophize about climbing and the state of the world, or the state of our minds.

I admit, I really missed my computer. And by computer, I mean the Internet.

I missed instant messaging, my emails, my rss feeds, my celebrity gossip blogs, my dots, my diggs, my Ideal Bites on how to live greener, my girly mags on having great hair, flawless skin, glamorous office-to-cocktail wardrobe, and of course, better sex (There seems to be a collective American conscious that whatever sex we are having or not having, it could be better, as the myriad of magazine headlines loudly proclaim.)

And then amidst this depravation, this… this… "starvation" of instant information, something pretty remarkable happened.

Apart from the unforgiving and cynically cold wind, apart from the fact that hot water was a rare luxury, I really appreciated not having all that sensory overload. There was just this *one* book I had to read, not an entire book shelf of “books I’m gonna get to someday” or an amazon wish list. There were just pens and papers to write and my thoughts to lay down in words, not a million web pages to get inspirational or motivational or beautiful quotes and ideas on what to write.

In short, I became a little bit more aware of the things around me. I also became very, very, very thankful and appreciative of basic, common things that I have come to take for granted – things like a shower, hot water, a solid roof over my head, and electricity. Oh, glorious, glorious, electricity. If you are reading this now, stop for a second, and go kiss your heater. Go ahead, kiss it and tell it how much you love it, because you don’t know how much you rely on it until it’s night time in the desert and the wind is blowing 50 miles an hour and the only thing between you and that wind is a Mountain Hardwear tent.

So now I’m back in my studio in Long Beach, complete with heat, electricity, water, and all things a modern life blesses and damns on us. My mom told me that humans have a very short memory, and she was right on. I am already forgetting how I did the dishes in icy cold water and dreamt about a sink with soft light overhead and warm water ready to pour out of the faucet. There is a huge pile of dishes in the kitchen right now, and I am dreading it. Maybe I’ll head over to amazon.com, the ideal place to distract, procastinate, and fantasize, all in one click.

You can see pictures of my road trip at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonc/

I finished Special Interest in Calamity Physics today, and cannot shake it off my head.

Sadly, I am one of those Americans Gareth Van Meer speaks of on page 411, "L'Aventura had the sort of ellipsis ending most American audiences would rather undergo a root canal than be left with, not only because they loathe anything left to the imagination--we're talking about a country that invented spandex--but also because they are a confident, self-assured nation. They know Family. They know Right from Wrong. They know God--many of them attest to daily chats with the man. And the idea that none of us can truly know anything at all--not the lives of our friends or family, not even ourselves--is a thought they'd rather be shot in the arm with their own semi-automatic rifle than face head on."

It's true, I wanted to know, Know, what happened at the end of Before Sunset. Do they get together? Does he move to Paris? Is she gonna move to New York? What Became of Them?

But I digress.

Really. Who killed Hannah Scheider? Did Gareth have an affair with her? Was Andreo Verguda a private hitman?

Arg... all these questions... they haunt me like I'm Haley Joel Osment.

The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men. - Plato

I am asking around to see if anyone is going to the protest on Thursday. I can't tell you how people have responded, but let's say I feel like Steve Urkel on a particular Saturday night, having just been turned down for the umpteen time.

Am I dissappointed in my friends? Yes. But I also understand them. They probably hold other things as more worthy of their time, like I Have Lots of Work, and some arbitrary deadline, and Pointy Haired Bosses, and "oh man traffic is gonna be so bad", and "I have something else going on". Yeah, capisco. Gotcha. Point taken.

Next time though, when they bitch and whine about Bush this and Rumsfeld that and "that awful law Congress just passed" and how our country's so messed up, I will just slap them. Very, very hard.

It looks really bleak, but man, Robert Jamieson's commentary is right on.

Writer Gore Vidal is spot on when he says we live in the United States of Amnesia.

People are not attuned to the lessons of history. Citizenry isn't as informed as it needs to be.

And news such as last week's startling turn -- a bill that could empower the president to possibly declare even American citizens "unlawful combatants" who may be detained beyond the reach of court review -- draws a snooze.

Meanwhile, the country is titillated over the latest distraction du jour: the GOP Florida congressman who sent sexy e-mails to boys.

So long as we are distracted, we tend not to notice important things such as how former Secretary of State Colin Powell recently said the White House wanted to "keep him in his place" as he expressed Iraq misgivings. For stirring things up, President Bush put Powell out.

Distraction makes the public lose track of the erosion of rights that form the bedrock of democracy here. People grow numb to U.S. soldiers losing their lives abroad for a cause that seems adrift.

Thursday's "Drive Out The Bush Regime" event is being held in more than 150 cities across the country. In Seattle, the day calls for school walkouts and includes a morning rally at the University of Washington, a noon gathering at Cal Anderson Park and an afternoon march to the downtown Federal Building. (More information is available at the Web site worldcantwait.org)

The event has its heart in the right place, but one has to wonder if Seattle -- or the nation -- cares. An Iraq war with no end in sight has beat people into silence and paralysis. The way the federal government bungled its response to Katrina did make Americans angry, but they quickly returned to regular programming -- new episodes of "Grey's Anatomy" and "Lost."

It would be inspiring to see crowds turn out Thursday the way people did this year to support undocumented Latino workers.

But this being a land of amnesia and apathy, it seems as if people have forgotten the lost art of the war protest, which begs a question.

What good is freedom of speech or freedom of assembly when people seem unwilling to use it at this crucial juncture in history?

I'm going to the protest on Thursday in the afternoon. Comment/call/email/IM me if you'll be there too.


On October 5, people everywhere will walk out of school, take off work, and come to the downtowns & townsquares and set out from there, going through the streets and calling on many more to join us - making a powerful statement: "NO! THIS REGIME DOES NOT REPRESENT US! AND WE WILL DRIVE IT OUT!"


Seattle, WA
OCTOBER 5TH, 2006
All Day and into the Night
University of Washington, Capitol Hill, Downtown Seattle
We'll grow in numbers and spirit throughout the day and call on all of Seattle to JOIN US! THE WORLD CAN'T WAIT! DRIVE OUT THE BUSH REGIME!

Morning--School Walk Outs!
10:00 am--College and High School students from all schools in and around Seattle gather at Red Square on the University of Washington Campus followed by march to Capitol Hill.
12:00 Noon--Gather at Cal Anderson Park, (11th Ave and E Denny in Capitol Hill) followed by
1:00 pm--Rally with speakers and music
3:00 pm--March into downtown Seattle to the Federal Building (2nd & Marion)
4:00 pm--SIT-IN AT THE FEDERAL BUILDING--As the night unfolds, people will talk, debate, create music and art, and work together on visions and plans for driving out the Bush Regime and reversing the whole direction it has been taking the country and the world.

More to be announced! Volunteer now by emailing seattle@worldcantwait.org.

Come get organized and pick up materials on Sundays. Check this website under CHAPTERS for meeting times and locations.

PICK-UP LOCATIONS FOR POSTERS & FLYERS:

Not a Number Cards & Gifts
in Wallingford
1905 N 45th St
Seattle, WA 98103
206-784-0965
Hours: Mon-Thur: 11am-7:30pm; Fri-Sat: 11am-8pm; Sun: 11:30am-6:30pm

Respect Records
in Capitol Hill
1315 East Pine St
Seattle, WA 98122
206-320-1111
Hours: Tue-Sun: 12noon-8pm; Mon: Closed

DOWNLOAD & PRINT SEATTLE POSTER & FLYER:

Weblink: http://seattle.worldcantwait.reallyfast.info

phone: 206-322-3813
seattle@worldcantwait.org


From World Can't Wait's Site FAQs

Q: Does protest make any difference?

A: It does -- and it doesn't. Let's start with how it doesn't. Protest doesn't make a damn bit of difference if it's "protest as usual". Protest that trims its sails to the political terms set by electing Democrats, or that tries to be respectable, or that doesn't convey that THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE AND MUST BE BROUGHT TO A HALT. No, protest like that doesn't really amount to much. Never has and never will.


We're talking about tens of thousands going into the streets with a clear standard -- BRING THIS TO A HALT -- and a spirited call to others to join this. Our recent statement envisions "a great wave of people unleashed from the huge reservoir of people who are deeply distressed over the direction in which the Bush regime is dragging the country and the world, moving together on the same occasion, making, through their firm stand and their massive numbers, a powerful political statement that could not be ignored: refusing that day to work, or walking out from work, taking off from school or walking out of school -- joining together, rallying and marching, drawing forward many more with them, and in many and varied forms of creative and meaningful political protest throughout the day, letting it be known that they are determined to bring this whole disastrous course to a halt by driving out the Bush Regime through the mobilization of massive political opposition."


That kind of protest could and would make a difference. It would begin to galvanize into an active political and moral force the millions who hate the way things are going but are now paralyzed. The possibility of turning things around and onto a much more favorable direction would take on a whole new dimension of reality. This would send a different message to the whole world.


Face it: no great change has ever been won without protest, without people acting "from the bottom up" to set a new agenda, without struggle, without upheaval. No. The protests in 2002 and 2003 didn't succeed in preventing the Iraq war, but they let the whole world know that Bush was acting in the face of huge public opposition. They put him on the moral defensive. And they helped to set terms for the future - as the ugliness of the war got revealed and people increasingly have come to oppose it. The problem is not that our actions have had no impact; it's that we have not acted up enough. A new season of upsurge must start now, one that sets out to reverse the whole direction in which this society is now hurtling, and to dramatically change the course of history.


The stakes now are too high to keep going through the motions of protest as usual -- politics that say: the people in government exercise power and make the corresponding decisions and our only role is to protest certain things they do. Instead, we need to act on the truth that when people take massive and independent political action, they can change things very profoundly. People in the 60's did not ask the liberal Democrats then in office for permission to fight for civil rights and Black liberation or to protest the war. They just did it, mobilizing millions and effectively saying in the immortal words of Bob Dylan that "your sons and daughters are beyond your command." The whole ethos of a generation and a country changed.

This guy biked around the world and ended up in Fremont Washington and lost everything. Let's help him out.

If you live/work near Fremont, you can reach Rune Monstad through Daniel Humes at Marketime Foods.

Cycling around much of Central and South America, Mexico and the United States, Monstad had arrived in one of the safest neighborhoods in one of the safest cities in the United States.

Welcome to Fremont.

So when Monstad parked his bicycle in front of Marketime Foods on Fremont Avenue after spending the day pedaling 160 miles from Wenatchee, the last thing he expected was to be robbed.

Last week I went to St. Louis for a “Leadership Training”. (And by St. Louis, I mean, somewhere on the outskirt of St. Louis burbs). Oh yes, it is as intense as it sounds. (That’s right, I am a leader in training. Oh, f*** you).

In one workshop, we had to write down the name of five leaders.

Yeah, get a piece of paper if you want to play this game too.

So there I was, biting my pen as the moderator counted down the minutes. I scribbled the names that came to my mind first, you know the usual suspect, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Keith Olbermann, my mom, my boyfriend climbing 5.13 after eating a 5 lb bag of Jalapeno chips, …

"Ok, time’s up class. So WHO’s your leader?"

"Did you put down yourself?"

Only one person did.

"Well, you should put yourself down too. You are all leaders. We are all leaders!"

That’s right, beecheez, we are all leaders.

Ok, snobbery and snide remarks aside, this got me to thinking, “what is leadership training?” and more importantly, if we are all leaders, who will be the followers? What if my shadow wanted to take leadership training, what would I tell it?

I just want to sleep, sleep, sleep. Even when I'm awake I'm sleeping. Am I tired because mono is still at large, or because I haven't exercised in a month? I just slept 14 hours last night, woke up, had lunch, and now I want to sleep again.

I feel like a sack of potatoes.

Dave Barry had me at hello when he wrote "Dave Barry's Complete Guide to Guys", which got me through the awkward stages of dating and middle school dances and awful kisses, and the lesson that, no matter how many "Are You the One for Me" copies they publish or how many Dr. Phil episodes they air, we're always gonna have issues with each other.

Issues like commitment.

And I have commitment issues.

Ok, hold up, let me explain. This isn't just about saying "I do". It's about other things too, things like furniture, large and heavy and requires UHAUL, stuff that you can't walk away from cleanly, figuratively or literally.

I have been mentally getting ready to move, and I get tired just thinking about it, and then I reminisce the good ol' days when I backpacked Europe for months, having all my possessions on my shoulders.

I'm so scared of having stuff. It took me half a year to buy a futon for my aparment, and I still haven't worked up the courage to buy the bed frames, so I'm still just sleeping on a mattress.

Sometimes I lay next to James watching him sleeping, and a panicking thoughts creep in my head. Thoughts such as, "OH MY GOD IS THIS THE PERSON I'M GONNA SPEND THE REST OF MY LIFE WITH???", "Is this the person I'm gonna lay next to FOR THE REST OF ETERNITY???"

FOREVER EVER? AND EVER AND EVER?

Then I hyperventilate at such a possibility and have the utmost urge to bolt for the door. To run for the hills screaming.

Why do I do it? Do I not love James? I love the poo poo face. Do I not like nice furniture? Nice beds? Nice house, nice stuff? Are you crazy? Of course I do. But do I want to own it? To be responsible for it? En. Oh. No.

I have no idea why things with permanence implication send me to cuckoo ville, but there I am, trembling at committing to them.

Someone once described commitment to me as this: "The difference between 'involvement' and 'commitment' is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was 'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."

I guess I just don't want to be the pig, not just yet.

[19:15] eketo00: you and james are great together
[19:15] dragoncnikki: why do you say that
[19:15] eketo00: cause you too seem to have the right balance of love an dhate :)
[19:16] dragoncnikki: bhahhaahha
[19:16] dragoncnikki: quotable

One of my favorite comedians is Chris Rock, and some of my most favorite Chris Rock lines are from "Never Scared" when he talks about relationships. (If you ever want to see a small Asian girl imitating a black and loud comedian, just call me, I have his whole routine down to a T. And don't even ask how many times I've seen it. I've lost count.)

"When you're married, you want to kill your spouse. When you're single, you want to kill yourself. Better her than me!"

And the best one:
"If you haven't contemplated murder, you ain't been in love. If you haven't seriously thought about killing a motherfucker, you ain't been in love. If you haven't had a can of rat poison in your hand and looked at it for forty-five minutes straight, you ain't been in love. If you haven't bought a shovel and a bag and a rug to roll their ass up in, you ain't been in love. If you haven't practiced your alibi in front of the mirror, you ain't been in love. And the only thing that's stopped you from killing this motherfucker is an episode of CSI."

And so, this past week, nay, past month, I have held a can of rat poison in my hands, many, many times, and I suspect James has too.

It's an understatement to say that we fight, just like it is an understatement to say that sumo wrestlers eat. It's more fitting to ask, how much, how often, and how long.

Sometimes, it's sorta cute, like our trademark, or romantic, like Allie and Noah from the movie "The Notebook" (I know it's cheesy. DON'T YOU JUDGE ME!)

It's when Allie said, "Stay with you? What for? Look at us, we're already fightin'" and Noah replied "Well that's what we do, we fight... You tell me when I am being an arrogant son of a bitch and I tell you when you are a pain in the ass. Which you are, 99% of the time. I'm not afraid to hurt your feelings. You have like a 2 second rebound rate, then you're back doing the next pain-in-the-ass thing."

That's our relationship, right there. Arrogant son of a bitch and pain in the ass. Ain't romance grand?

Lately, the arrogant S.O.B and the P.I.T.A have been at each other's throat more often than usual. In other words, lots of rat poisoning intention.

It doesn't help that I have been sick and we have not been climbing. When this happens, we both get cabin fever and more impatient with each other.

So on Thursday night, the flood came. The gates were open, and every last piece of crap came blasting in. I cried until 3AM. We alternated screaming at each other and fuming, like boxers in the ring, glaring death stares at each other. Stares that would even K.O Muhammed Ali.

James put on his jacket, and I told him, "Fine, if you want to leave, leave! If you want to break up, it's over!"

Then, too exhausted to fight anymore, James crawled onto the mattress and laid down next to me. "Poo poo I'm sorry. I'm stupid and stubborn. I don't want to break up."

You're stupid. I hate you.

It's like what Chris says, "You have to love the person, every single part of them... way down to the inside. You have the love the crumbs at the bottom of the toaster."

So we made up. Then I passed out. Hey, I gotta get my energy back for our next fight.

I sat on the front row of the ACT Theater, feeling sorry for myself. Aisle 2, row A, seat 10 is a loner seat. A third wheel seat. A single's, I'm-here-by-myself kind of seat. Two, four. Six, eight.

Ten.

So there I was, wallowing in self pity that my boyfriend didn't come see the play with me ("It's such a depressing topic!") Regretful that I didn't call a friend. "They're probably busy", "It's such a short notice", "They probably...". Excuses I made up to either justify for my "I'm just a poor girl and nobody loves me" attitude, or for fear of more rejection that evening.

And then the light went down, and for the next hour and forty eight minutes, I watched "Mitzi's Abortion", aborting my own petty, petty egocentric melancholy.

Mitzi's Abortion tells the tale of a 22 year-old woman's grief and anger when finding out that her baby, six-month along now, is malformed and missing a brain.

She's a military wife and covered under Tri-Care Military insurance, which doesn't cover abortion, no matter what. No exceptions. The great men of Congress have said so.

Mitzi's world, like all of ours, involve other people, and my favorites are her bisexual friend Nita and gay Tim from her Esperanto group. My favorite funny scene was when Nita is blowing a fuse on the bus--figuratively speaking--about the ridiculous insurance policy and the irony of how a woman has to carry a dying fetus while the old men with small incompetent you-know-what can have as much access to Viagra as they damn well please. Then, in one tender moment, Tim told her not to take this abortion matter so lightly, and she said, "No, Tim, not you too!". Tim then asked, would his father keep him if he knew of his queer genes? No. What about all the female fetuses being aborted in China and India?

The play touched on all aspects of abortion. It dit not glorify it. It did not condemn it. It did what the tag line says: "One size does not fit all."

The play closes August 20. I wholeheartedly recommend seeing it.

When I walked out of the theater, I had made friends with the ladies I sat next to. Then I walked alone downtown, walked to Ralph's on 5th and Lenora and sat next to this guy Mike, who showed me Reason, an awesome digital audio mixing program.

Then I took the 358 home and wondered, is this what single life is gonna be like?

But that's the topic of the next post!

A long, loooong time ago, when I got upset with my parents, I would accuse them of not being my "real" parents. "My real parents wouldn't treat me like that, they're nice and you're MEAN!" I would yell at them and threatened to run away. (Of course, it never occured that if my real parents were so nice, why weren't they with me?) Sometimes, my parents would add fuel to the fire by jokingly (and cruelly) saying that yes, I was right, that they found me out back somewhere.

A couple times, I even grabbed some clothes and got as far as the gate or the garden, then sat and fumed to my cats.

Those days have long gone, and though no DNA tests have been done, I'm largely convinced my parents are, in fact, my real parents.

That, in some part, must be reassuring to my parents, who I'm sure would not want a daughter always accusing them of being fake parents. I'm sure any cuteness would have eventually worn out.

Though I sometimes wish I still had the logic of a 4 year old, because believing my real parents are out there somewhere, not disagreeing, not difficult, not stubborn, not... being parents, is so much nicer, and easier to cope with. Why must communicating with parents feel like this?

I am at my parents' place, cold and burning. My head gravitates towards the table, the chair, the floor. Mono is still alive and kicking, ya'll.

I'm unwell. I'm hungry. I just got off a long bus ride. I just read about the Church's demotion of women in the 6th century. Did I mention I've been monorific for a month?

So when she came, it wasn't a good time. Really, not a good time at all.

She came, uninvited. Didn't ask if she should leave me to my overdue lunch. Didn't ask if my mom and I were talking family stuff.

Oh sure, just invite herself in and sat down at the kitchen table, complaining about how she doesn't like this fruit and that fruit that my mom was offering.

It could have been fine had she stopped right there. Then she remarked about how these kids, these "African" kids have been messing up her garden. She wants to move because they bother her.

They're fucking CHILDREN! CHILDREN! Hello? Children make noises! Children like to pick flowers! Children like to play chase and run around. Not just because they're "Africans".

And don't you dare, don't you DARE make those condescending racist comments. No, no, no, get out, get out, really, GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY KITCHEN!

Oh, alright, it's not technically my kitchen, but you really need to leave.

But of course, I said none of this. I slowly and deliberated chewed my salad, making it the consistency of the avocado smashed between my teeth. I chewed and glared, both with the same intensity.

This morning, I just finished reading a book called In Buddha's Kitchen: Cooking, Being Cooked, and Other Adventures in a Meditation Center (which I highly recommend, by the way). In it the author describes her anxiety of returning to her disapproving family after living in a Tibetan Buddhist Retreat. "I don't feel any compassion when I'm around them," she professed. "You don't have to feel compassion to be compassion," said the lama. When I read it, it seemed like a simple concept. But now I just want to scream in her face at her bigotry.

In the book, a lama said that anger is when someone shoots a thousand arrows at you, and angry is when you pick them up and stab yourself, which clearly doesn't help.

And right now, I am bleeding.

If you don't see bloggin', it's cuz I'm dotting'...
Nikki's dots, updated 12 times a day (at least).

Watch Real Madrid beat the sh3t out of DC United. Or watch DC United beat Real Madrid, Rudy style. Or watch Beckham bend it... like Beckham. Just come watch The Beautiful Game!

I am going and I hope you are too!

WORLD VS. MLS

# WHAT: Real Madrid vs. D.C. United.

# WHEN/WHERE: Aug. 9, 8 p.m., Qwest Field.

# TICKETS: $30 to $125; available 10 a.m. Wednesday at ticketmaster.com.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/othersports/278705_soccer25.html

It's so tragic but I had to smile.

Two New Jersey hunters go hunting. After a while, one of the hunters clutches his throat and falls to the ground, his eyes roll back, and he's lying there motionless. The other one picks up a cell phone, dials 911, and says, "I think my friend is dead! I don't know what to do!" And the operator says, "Just relax. Calm down. The first thing to do is to make certain your friend is dead." There's a pause -- then a gunshot. And the hunter gets back on the phone and says, "Okay. Now what?"

After feeling somewhat sorry for myself, I started to look at the positive things about having mono:

+ Hey, I can sleep off this sticky heat wave and wake up in September!
+ The idea that I can *rupture* my spleen is kinda cool. "Careful! You're upsetting my spleen!"
+ James promises to cook me dinner every night
+ Loss of appetite = saving money on grocery
+ I don't feel so old going to sleep at 10.

Yay! Having mono is wonderful.

Ok seriously I am actually glad to find out that I have mono because otherwise, this sudden drop in energy and feeling like a perpetual hangover just ain't right.

After what seems like eon to the eon of battling running nose, sneezing out spleens and livers, having chills in the summer furnace, I caved in and went to the doctor this morning.

They just called and confirmed what I've been doubting and denying: I have mono.

There's no cure, but not to worry, it goes away on its own. How? When? Where? Can I send it Express? Overnight? Nobody knows.

The worst part is I shouldn't do anything strenuous, because my spleen is weak and fragile right now.

What's "strenuous"? Definitely not climbing, right?

* line stolen from Howie Day's "Collide".