| Nourishment |
[01 Oct 2008|10:47pm] |
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mood |
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 exhausted |
] |
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music |
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Epic Problem - Fugazi |
] |
Been feeling extra drained lately - it's midterm exam period, I'm dealing with a minor but annoying medical issue, I have some big projects due this week and Johnny showed up for a surprise visit from Toronto in the midst of this madness. Spreading my time really thin between so many things, I haven't been sleeping enough which means I'm a fucking emotional wreck. I don't understand how Melissa does it. Yesterday I had a crying fit that lasted almost 2 hours over almost getting into a car accident - it turned into a breakdown over everything that is wrong with my life, cascading sorrows like dominoes. Not very cool. With a calculus midterm looming toward me on Friday and a big programming assignment due the day after, I don't really have the time for breakdowns like that...
So besides TRYING TO SLEEP MORE I've been coping via two methods - good music and home cooking. Both of which I am compulsive about right now. On the music front I've gone crazy downloading and listening to albums from my past - a whole lot of late 80s and 90s emotional hardcore and post-hardcore mostly. Jimmy Eat World's 1996 Static Prevails (the opening riff to the first track "Thinking, That's All" takes me back so vividly to my later teen years, driving around by myself in Ryan's Corolla), Jawbreaker's 1994 masterpiece Dear You (which might just be my favourite album of all time...) and The Get-Up Kids 1997 Four Minute Mile, a record which I bought in early high school because I liked the cover, and spent countless nights listening to on headphones for the better part of a decade. Also the first albums by Fugazi and the Built To Spill guy's old band Treepeople, both released in the late 80s. This shit is like fuel or medicine - it's a little bit painful but listening to it feels like wrapping myself in warm blankets, reminding myself about my soul and what it looks (and sounds) like.
While I've been feeding my heart with the old-school tunes I've been feeding my face with real food for once. I was getting notorious about the frozen or pre-packaged dinners, and I think it was making me feel pretty hollow and pre-packaged myself. So I've been on a cooking binge. I guess it started a few weeks ago when I randomly baked a couple of loaves of cinnamon zucchini bread one night while I was feeling down. The taste of the fresh ingredients and the act of cooking cheered me up and revitalized me so much that I've started going nuts about it. (Which is sort of a bitch because I find myself thinking about food, cooking meals or reading recipes when I should be studying, not to mention that I'm probably gonna put on weight but what the hell, it's winter and I'm stressed out and hungry.) This week I made a pot of kitsune soba with aburage tofu, an acai berry and matcha smoothie with a whole banana in it and two big bowls of unagi donburi on brown rice, for less than half the price they cost at restaurants. However the pinnacle of the week's meals was the enormous oyster miso hot pot I made last night with some help from John. The dish is called "dotenabe", dote meaning "earthen embankment", referring to the inch-wide layer of miso that you line the inner rim of the pot with. We put huge, fresh oysters and tiger prawns, both firm tofu and age tofu puffs, chinese cabbage, leek, shiitake mushrooms, potato and carrots in (we didn't have any daikon or taro gelatin or I would have put those in too) and simmered it all in a huge pot of dashi stock, with the miso melting into the broth. It was the easiest meal to make, and served with a slice of hard-boiled egg in each bowl, some kimchi (for the spice and sourness) and seaweed salad on the side, it is also the most delicious thing I've ever eaten. Good thing it made for tons of leftovers and I even froze a few containers worth. I seriously think I'm going insane. I'm going to make crab omelette donburi tomorrow and I'm considering making my own salt and rice-bran pickles now.
Anyway that's where I'm at. I'll let you know how the pickling business goes - I hear it can be a real tough ride.
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| Dolly Mixture |
[05 Sep 2008|07:46pm] |
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mood |
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 working |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Headed for a Heartbreak - Winger |
] |
It's Friday night and I sort of wanted to go out. Maybe it's just habit. I'd like to go for a beer with the EA dudes, see a show or get some taiyaki and look for earrings and a new keychain at the Night Market with Melissa and Jess. But I've got this retarded idea in my head that I'm going to try to get good grades this semester - so here I am at the kitchen table studying instead. (Also eating some Dolly Mixture that my folks brought back from England.)
I ate all of the best ones already.
I swear I've done more Math in the last 2 days than I have over the past 2 years combined. And I even pledged not to watch any anime until after my math exam on Monday - which is, if you know me at all, kind of a big deal. It's also kind of a HUGE PROBLEM, since I just downloaded a new series called Peach Girl which looks like pure crack for my shoujo addiction. Two heavy school goals for myself this semester: pass calculus; get A grades in everything else. I have a few non-school goals too, but I'll save talking about those for another time, hehe. (^__^),
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| Unagi Inari Party |
[02 Sep 2008|10:31pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 annoyed |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Think Long - Mates of State |
] |
Bell Mobility is retarded. I really don't want to have to call customer service just to be able to send picture text messages but it looks like that's the only way to get my "Picture Account" activated. Weak.
My lunch
One of the reasons it's good to be home - Toronto is wickedly deficient in the sushi area.
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| We Keep On Running |
[02 Sep 2008|06:35pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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 refreshed |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Merry Go Round - Sasaki Nozomi |
] |
Whoa, hisashiburi Livejournal! It's 2 years to the day that I started at UBC so I'm feeling nostalgic. Livejournal was a fun thing I used to do with my bad cellphone pictures back then. John reminded me about it a few days ago while I was visiting him in Toronto. "This time last year was a really long time ago" - haha, no shit. So I guess I'm going to give this online diary thing another shot.
Today I downloaded iSquint and ripped the newest fansubbed episodes of Nogizaka Haruka and Itazura na Kiss to my iPod so I could take 'em to school with me. (If anyone is interested in knowing what other animus I am watching, I made an AnimeList last month that I've been updating regularly. Unfortunately it doesn't track dramas =p) I noticed on the plane back to Vancouver yesterday that my laptop battery is starting to go. I only had about 45 minutes on a full charge - that was sudden, but I guess it has lasted me 2 years exactly. Nice timing. I intend to buy a desktop PC in the next few weeks anyway, since I'm sick of doing programming assignments on a Mac and I miss my work set-up from EA.
What's that glowing blue deal on the bottom floor...?
Why it's the THINK TANK, suckas. Corporate your face. (World's biggest hangover MY face)
Speaking of EA, I took the bus past it today and looking up at the glass spire of Phase II was pretty poignant. Funny how it feels like I'm back where I started - just a kid on a bus with my nose against the glass, like I wrote about last summer. Except now all my friends are behind that glass sitting at their cubes, chucking sling-shot monkeys at each other, having stand-up meetings, bitching about their stand-up meetings, typing gogogoogogoogog to each other on msn before lunch, making fun of Tim and going for BANANATIME in the cafe at 4pm. Not to mention programming games... So it's even harder being on the outside now.
Well I gotta focus on the task at hand, which is getting through this final year of school so I can be an insider again someday. And on that note I'm gonna go do some Math homework. Buuuuu
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| Question |
[25 Sep 2007|03:34pm] |
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mood |
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 curious |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Blue Blood (Live) - X Japan |
] |
When it's rainy do you guys ever think you can smell the worms and slugs?
I do.
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| IMPORTANT |
[23 Aug 2007|01:23pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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rad |
] |
| [ |
music |
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No False Metal - Skullfist |
] |
This time last year was a really long time ago.
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[05 Jul 2007|03:10pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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drunk |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Whyte Hott and Spreadeagle |
] |
GONE ON TOUR!!!
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[25 Apr 2007|11:57am] |
went home
finding the softest, deepest comfort in disassociation
as usual
skytrain construction site building parking lot textures
all up in my mind like plush, bleeding, warmth
like standing on a concrete roof
under an overcast bludgeon of white light that swells and floods and exhales
around your head
and every-thing's okay right now
what kind of cliche makes this city a prescription for pretty numbness
fully rendered
bodies rolling smearing neon through the architecture
or darkly insignificant on a bridge
with mountains to the never changing always sleeping Giant Monster
north
neck deep by now
but still looking for and finding the thing
that thing telling you of your own mechanical, eating looking qualities
that manifest thing making you Feel your own mechanical, eating looking qualities
among robots and cars, rejoice
this:
the void of anonymous structures, crows, highway onramps and children with soap
that distracts you vaguely with its motion
and helps you forget that you are in love
For Melissa is Bored 2005-2007, and Burnaby in general
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| Processing |
[02 Feb 2007|04:11pm] |
| [ |
music |
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Let Me Put My Love Into You - AC/DC |
] |
 
Channeling Jess! So I'm strawberry blonde... today. Pictures for posterity 'cuz I won't be tomorrow.
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[27 Nov 2006|09:53pm] |
oden
not really anything but the boy still enough to cut my teeth on
or
just
to sink these longer teeth into
razor holding sharpness in empty hands
dirty fingernails and the smell of my own skin
at morning
sniffing tasting emptyhandedness
i'm crushed
sometime come the slaughter
cold children in the childless barren, cold wordless sand, cold rebellion sticking sweet to our fingers
in grit and dirt born
of suffered truths
and of human bondage that sticks us sweet together
while rending our hearts, flesh
and opened bodies into ribbon
your truths, i'll dare.
this might be
a violence soft
snowfall
ginger-spiced and hollow
hanging the power lines with utterance, unpromised
heavy but quiet
and unfinished the brutality of happy
in the slouching stillness before the birth of something
five years could pass in an imperfect instant
maybe
but older than ages, this compelling, drives, breathes, breeds and desires
and i'm leaning precipitously close
when i lean
and it's going to hurt
when i break everything in me empty
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| Alice Lidell |
[03 Nov 2006|01:23am] |
| [ |
mood |
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still awake |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Diary of A Madman - Ozzy Osbourne |
] |
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| generator.Random() |
[31 Oct 2006|04:11pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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cold |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Rocket Queen - Guns N' Roses |
] |
One reason why the Computer Science department pwns the entire Faculty of Arts:
The women's bathrooms are all almost always empty, and very clean.
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| Corn Maze of Destruction |
[23 Oct 2006|02:24am] |
| [ |
mood |
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indifferent |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Uncle Tom's Cabin - Warrant |
] |
And, we're baaaack! Thankyou, Limewire. Thankyou, Photoshop crack. More shit-quality pictures for you.
It's true! They don't! This is a long story, but it ends with Lauren and I, 9 years of friendship and counting...
We went to a corn maze in Chilliwack and it was cold. Maze rules like "no inappropriate language" and "no alcohol" crumble in the face of this individual right here.
This fire was crazy. Fucken alien fire. Fucken love that shit. The first of multiple fires Saturday night - this is where we nursed our "little cuts" from breaking the "no cutting through the corn" rule.
Good times by the fireside. Don't we look like we're about to sing "Kum-ba-yah" in SA harmony? ...or "You Give Love a Bad Name" at least?
Chillin' like villians in our individually customizable glow headbands. Too cool for you. Unless you're the guy who stole Post #9 out of the maze - that guy could have chilled too.
Not shown here: the other bonfire, extreme Jenga with creepy toys, Jenga with bonfires, me falling asleep, corn poo, the petting zoo, the "better one", me petting the "better one". Boo hoo, sorry.
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| I've Encountered A Setback Setback Setback |
[17 Oct 2006|08:54pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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drained |
] |
| [ |
music |
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Your Big Day - Ghost House |
] |
But I gotta gotta understand you have to move to Montreal
Where the weather ain't so bad, at least til next fall
When the snow falls in October and stays around until May
I'll be wearing a t-shirt and holding on to summer days
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