I was speaking with my friend V the other day about marriage and rings and what not. Now the chances of me getting married are pretty slim to begin with but i told her that i think i would feel very uncomfortable with someone giving me a $10,000.00 ring. She said that 2 months salary (gross) is not too much to spend on a ring but i think that's a lot. Apparently, it's not uncommon to get a 3 month salary ring! This assumes that the guy i marry will be making at least 5 grand a month before taxes so he would basically have to save up for like 6 months to a year (depending on what other stuff he's got going on) to buy a damn ring! does this make sense to people? it must be me. traditionally you'd have to wait a while before even thinking of getting married and then you'd have to wait until that guy saved his money to buy you a ring before he proposed. that just seems like a lot of time and energy. my mom never had an engagement ring and neither did my sister. the most expensive accessory i wear is my $12.99 watch from Sears. i can't imagine being responsible for something so valuable and so small. If someone ever gave me a ring so expensive, i'd go straight to the bank and chuck it into a vault! But is that the weight of being a committed and responsible adult? Is a ten grand ring necessary to feel secure in someone's love and commitment? I feel like i'm missing something here. i know my mom thinks i should be more girly and wear nicer clothes in softer colors but is this the mark of a woman? i think i need to find a place that offers classes in becoming a better girl.
1.27.2005
1.16.2005
The clapping thing . . .
what is up with the clapping? the Japanese clap their hands at everything, even when they aren't part of an audience. i was in Voice with some students and they asked me about my break so i tell them i went back to the US for a couple of weeks. Their response was, "sugooooiiiii!!!!" followed by a round of applause. Why are they clapping? i've not achieved anything, i've not passed any tests, i've not won any prizes. i just went home. but even stranger than the hands clapping thing that they do is the fact that it has rubbed off on me. i find my english has become slower, my gesticulations have become wilder and more overt, i over-enunciate words, and i clap now that i've acclimated myself to japan. somebody slap me.
1.13.2005
Catching up with a side of heartbreak
Ok, so I know I said that I would be keeping better record of myself this year with this blog and I realize I haven’t yet so let me begin with my apologies. So here’s a brief recap to get you up to speed since the last entry:
Miranda and I went to LAX to get The Train (Leilani) and big huge surprise! The Captain (Marcy) was there too! So it was the four of us roaming around LA together which was fun. We went to all the touristy places like Hollywood and Highland, Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, Pink’s, etc. The sucky thing was that the weather sucked ass while we were there cuz it was pretty much raining everyday. Los Angeles is a great place when you can do things outside which was not possible during this visit so I felt a bit bad for Marcy who had not been out here before. Hopefully she makes a return visit. We spent new year’s eve in LA and then dropped Miranda off at the airport and went back to Long Beach. Mom prepared a gianourmous new year’s day feast with all the things that a Japanese or an American person could possible want to eat and the next day, the parental units plus aunty were off to Las Vegas. The girls and I went back up to LA and then had to book it back down to have dinner with my white parents, Mark and Barbie Mayo. Then the girls had to go back to their respective lives and jobs back on the east coast and I was left to fester again alone for a bit. But I got to catch up with my buddy Rose that afternoon and then I spent my last couple days finishing up my shopping and saying my last good-byes to my family. Boooooo! I miss them.
But I am now back in Tokyo and back at work (although today is my day off). There are workers fixing the leaky wall in my building and the noise is making me mental so I have become one of those people whom I hate some much: a laptop carrying coffee house asshole who sits in her own world typing god knows what while she sips an overpriced caramel latte and listens to Dr. Dre. God, I hate myself at this very moment. But I can easily see how people would want to do this. It puts you in a social situation without actually being social at all. I am in a very crowded place and yet I am one of the most isolated people here. Weird. Except for maybe that guy. Yeah. He’s a loner too!
My hatred against the coffee house culture has mainly to do with its pretentiousness. At least in America, people seem to sit around for hours in a coffee house making pseudo-intellectual small talk, or posing as a “Friends” type wannabe with their giant cups of crappy coffee and their eight dollar biscotti. The problem with Japan is, that everyone does this here because it’s normal. People don’t stay home here (unless they are shut ins and of course society doesn’t really care about them); they will go out in even the shittiest weather to do what Seinfeld calls “nothing.” Perhaps it is a symptom of the pedestrian society. I wonder if New York has this problem.
And now for something completely different. . . .
Yes, on a different note, I had a bit of a heartbreak recently. I won’t specify who or what it was or even when but I’ve been wondering if I’ve been handling it better than my previous heartbreaks. Clare picked up that something was off yesterday but she didn’t push too hard which is good cuz I don’t think I can explain it well enough (is it ever really possible? Do they invent such words? I should know, I was once an English major . . . .). I’d like to think that I’ve grown as a person and I’m now feeling what I feel instead of manifesting it into anger (that is not to say that I don’t feel angry cuz that just wouldn’t be me!) Genuine anger is OK. But I’ve been sculpting myself to not change hurt, disappointment, frustration or sadness into anger. Anger is malleable, it’s empowering. I can take it, use it, and kick some ass. But those other ones are tougher to deal with, changing them anger the easy alternative. Maybe I’m not as healthy as I think I am.
On a tangential note, why is it that no matter how many times I rehearse what I’m going to say, it never NEVER comes out the way I planned? I do this thing where I want to say something so I lay in my bed (now futon) at night and rehearse over and over and over and over again until I think that it’s perfect but when the moment comes, it just gone like a fart in the wind. And the instant when the moment is gone I bang my head into a concrete wall until I concuss cuz I didn’t get it right. Why isn’t life scripted? I’ve written myself the coolest lines . . . .
Oh well. Let’s try again tomorrow.
Miranda and I went to LAX to get The Train (Leilani) and big huge surprise! The Captain (Marcy) was there too! So it was the four of us roaming around LA together which was fun. We went to all the touristy places like Hollywood and Highland, Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, Pink’s, etc. The sucky thing was that the weather sucked ass while we were there cuz it was pretty much raining everyday. Los Angeles is a great place when you can do things outside which was not possible during this visit so I felt a bit bad for Marcy who had not been out here before. Hopefully she makes a return visit. We spent new year’s eve in LA and then dropped Miranda off at the airport and went back to Long Beach. Mom prepared a gianourmous new year’s day feast with all the things that a Japanese or an American person could possible want to eat and the next day, the parental units plus aunty were off to Las Vegas. The girls and I went back up to LA and then had to book it back down to have dinner with my white parents, Mark and Barbie Mayo. Then the girls had to go back to their respective lives and jobs back on the east coast and I was left to fester again alone for a bit. But I got to catch up with my buddy Rose that afternoon and then I spent my last couple days finishing up my shopping and saying my last good-byes to my family. Boooooo! I miss them.
But I am now back in Tokyo and back at work (although today is my day off). There are workers fixing the leaky wall in my building and the noise is making me mental so I have become one of those people whom I hate some much: a laptop carrying coffee house asshole who sits in her own world typing god knows what while she sips an overpriced caramel latte and listens to Dr. Dre. God, I hate myself at this very moment. But I can easily see how people would want to do this. It puts you in a social situation without actually being social at all. I am in a very crowded place and yet I am one of the most isolated people here. Weird. Except for maybe that guy. Yeah. He’s a loner too!
My hatred against the coffee house culture has mainly to do with its pretentiousness. At least in America, people seem to sit around for hours in a coffee house making pseudo-intellectual small talk, or posing as a “Friends” type wannabe with their giant cups of crappy coffee and their eight dollar biscotti. The problem with Japan is, that everyone does this here because it’s normal. People don’t stay home here (unless they are shut ins and of course society doesn’t really care about them); they will go out in even the shittiest weather to do what Seinfeld calls “nothing.” Perhaps it is a symptom of the pedestrian society. I wonder if New York has this problem.
And now for something completely different. . . .
Yes, on a different note, I had a bit of a heartbreak recently. I won’t specify who or what it was or even when but I’ve been wondering if I’ve been handling it better than my previous heartbreaks. Clare picked up that something was off yesterday but she didn’t push too hard which is good cuz I don’t think I can explain it well enough (is it ever really possible? Do they invent such words? I should know, I was once an English major . . . .). I’d like to think that I’ve grown as a person and I’m now feeling what I feel instead of manifesting it into anger (that is not to say that I don’t feel angry cuz that just wouldn’t be me!) Genuine anger is OK. But I’ve been sculpting myself to not change hurt, disappointment, frustration or sadness into anger. Anger is malleable, it’s empowering. I can take it, use it, and kick some ass. But those other ones are tougher to deal with, changing them anger the easy alternative. Maybe I’m not as healthy as I think I am.
On a tangential note, why is it that no matter how many times I rehearse what I’m going to say, it never NEVER comes out the way I planned? I do this thing where I want to say something so I lay in my bed (now futon) at night and rehearse over and over and over and over again until I think that it’s perfect but when the moment comes, it just gone like a fart in the wind. And the instant when the moment is gone I bang my head into a concrete wall until I concuss cuz I didn’t get it right. Why isn’t life scripted? I’ve written myself the coolest lines . . . .
Oh well. Let’s try again tomorrow.
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