I have some water leaks in my condo. I've uploaded some pix for the landlord and appropriate authorities to examine. We've been keeping notes and evidence, the leaks are getting worse and worse... More on this later.

Cat Thanksgiving

Haven't posted in a long time =( Originally I meant to do this every other day, then it became every week, and now it's been what almost two weeks? I wish I had the motivation and energy to keep it up, a running diary, like a xanga I suppose but minus the viruses. I'll work on it over break. Claiming my spot in cyberspace. Another of a huge long list of things I mean to accomplish.

My time away from here was not in vain though! We had a Thanksgiving with no brothers, but plenty of foreign relatives! I'd vote for the kimchee turkey or hotpot, but no...we had to have a traditional meal. I contributed mash potatoes smothered in sour cream and green onions (versus butter) and burnt brussel sprouts (burnt on purpose). They were pretty good. And we actually had good wine. Not good as in pricey, but good as in easy to drink. As we're immigrants, we can't tell good wine from bad, and as we're Chinese, we're incredibly stingy. So we ended up with a huge bottle of "white merlot." You know how they make white merlot? They take some white wine and dump it into the leftover merlot. Or maybe it's pear juice. Either way it comes out a delicate pink, and tastes like punch.

And after that, we went shopping! Now, 3/3 guests didn't have money and couldn't afford to buy anything. And everyone else has questionable taste in fashion. I'm the only one willing to spend hundreds on clothing that I'll never wear. I'm particularly susceptible to clothing fashioned from two+ types of animal fur, extra points if its shiny as well. But none of it fits!

To end this post I've included some Tiger pix. I remember when I was looking for cameras, some guy took this incredibly close up picture of the eye of his siamese cat. I wanted to replicate that image. So I got the same camera. I haven't done so yet, but as you can tell from the second shot, we're getting a lot closer. It's difficult to photograph a black and white cat though, the focus is never perfect, and as I've learned, photographing in ISO 1600 produces grainy images. The goal is to perfect this over winter break.

Good Times

Neither of these items exist any more.

Wild Animal Park

The Yellow Cat's having an awesome weekend. Went up to Anaheim last night to catch the Sharks destroying the Ducks in a 1-0 game. Stopped by downtown disney on the way, which is as great as the downtown disney in Orlando, with the same huge Rainforest Cafe, the large fanciful restaurants, and that Lego store where they have the giant Lego sculptures.

Today we got season passes to the Wild Animal Park, so we'll need to go many many more times. It was kind of empty today, but maybe as a result, the animals were really active. Here's a preview of what's to come: Remember...I get to go many many many more times!

Lion profile! He blinked during my first shot.

Flamingos - they actually have black feathers too. Also saw fuzzy shedding GREY flamingos, but no good pix of them.

It's a rhino w/a rhino baby. Hard to believe it's a baby since it's so huge. The park has too many rhinos.

So two things about this deer. 1) His mouth is open! Open the picture and see. And 2) it's like that forest god in Princess Mononoke, the same deer.

And lastly, lionesses ontop of a car. Part of the lion exhibit. I'm not sure if they're always this friendly, or if we were just lucky today.


Rest assured, there will be many many many more animal photos, as a result of the many more times I'll be visiting. Birds, different deer, okapi, super big pelicans...they'll all be here.

So I was lame this weekend...

I'm saddened by my extreme lameness this week. So I'm putting up pictures of the airshow I attended last weekend, when I was not lame. You can't be lame when it takes you an hour to get into the air base, and an hour to get out. That's what happens when they make the show free, with free parking. But don't worry, the military recruiters were out in full force, so I'm sure they got their money's worth. But it was still an awesome event.

We saw tons of military aircraft, like this helicopter...


And we saw planes refueling...


Ooh, and of course there were snipers...I don't think they were part of the show of course, but were added suppport.


And we saw tanks!


And they did military stuff like blow up the ground, and fly loud fast planes around, and everyone brought their fancy cameras with their huge lenses to take pictures, but really the pictures don't work out, it's much better to see it in person. And if you bring your big fancy camera and end up sitting next to me, I'll greatly hinder your efforts to capture images, by refusing to move, and shoving my elbow into your lens.

Yellow Cat + Mouse

Yellow cat got a mouse. It's male. Cost $1.99. Named him Vladimir.

The mouse sat on the Yellow Cat.



Yellow Cat had no reaction to the mouse.


Vlady now has a small green, purple and blue cage, and he lives next to the litterbox. When Vlady dies, Vlady II will take his place, and so on.

I was really busy last week...all schoolwork. It's terrible when you open the book and realize you know nothing about the subject. There's layers, the first where you think you understand it all, then the next where the issues blur and you get confused, then the last level where you become enlightened. Well, I'm not at enlightenment, but at least I made it to the point of utter confusion. At the end everyone knows the same material, it's just who's more capable of analyzing and rationalizing the issues and solutions. Anyhow, my point is I was so busy I didn't get to do much besides study. I don't think I even went out during the week.

I did go to a school party. I was motivated by a chance to win $1000. They drew 100 names, and also gave out money for costumes. It's the advantage of a private school, you give them so much money they can't help but throw elaborate parties. We had tons of free food, pretzels, churros, funnel cake, kettle corn, ice cream. They also brought in a sound stage with huge projection screens, and set up decorations. You can see the stage in the picture. Downside was no alcohol, everyone was locked into a really small space with no in or out privileges. Oh, and the fact that I knew almost no one there. I really do need more/new friends.

Yellow Cat on a Leash

Have cat, got leash, let's walk!

Fleet Week Adventure

Fleet week in San Diego! Every few minutes one of the Navy's ships would sail by. I couldn't tell you which ship was which, but I can say most were grey, and the sailors stood on the deck at attention as each passed. Here's a shot of the USS Midway (the museum) on the left, with one of the many grey passing ships on the right.


The highlight was a free tour of the USS Comstock, docked in San Diego. It was commissioned in 1990, and serves as a transport vessel. The line was about 30min long, but the tour was well worth it. Every year you get a different ship.


While on deck we saw the hovercraft fly by. It's incredibly loud and big, and moves very slowly, but from an angle can appear invisible.


The marines on board get their own dentist and medical officer, but by far the best thing we saw was the war room. It's got screens showing where all the ships in the world are stationed, as well as navigation charts, radars, and all types of old computers that no one uses any more. The whole room's lit with creepy blue light, I guess to calm people down in case something goes wrong. It makes photography difficult of course.


And of course they showed us the guns. This ship isn't made for combat, so the weapons aren't impressive. This is the largest gun on ship, and is operated electronically. The guy did shoot it, too bad it was unloaded. It would have hit the Midway.

Shh...don't tell anyone but it's my first visit to the computer lab. I'm sitting here pretending I know what I'm doing. Besides the fact that I never logged into this computer, it was just on, there's also all these slots for cards...an id card, an info card, I didn't use any of them. It's strange to me you can just sit down and start typing, without logging in or anything. What if you did something evil? Isn't there no way of tracking? I can see other people's previous documents...

Class is about to start. Computer class today =)

Advent Children

Hey I finally saw Advent Children last night! Amazing hair animation. I'm not sure if it really resolved the FF7 storyline, or if its storyline alone even made sense. And I feel like in certain areas they cheated on the animation, I won't spoil it, but it's semi obvious. However it was a great trip down memory lane. And now I want a ring tone like the one in the movie. You'll know what I mean when you see it =) And ya, I stole some of the images above. I'll remove them whenever I get a chance to take my own screenshots.

Went to La Jolla!

Sorry, no pictures. Forgot camera =\ Good things that happened in La Jolla today.

1) Got this incredible parking spot in downtown, that was the envy of all the cars later that day.

2) Saw two beaches, La Jolla Shores and La Jolla Cove.

3) Went to Roppongi w/brothers. Fancy restaurant, completely empty, but hey they served us, and brothers didn't go completely nuts.

4) Was not one of the people snorkeling without wetsuits.


Oh, my place now smells strongly of muffy. Thick and brown.

At school I eat lunch on a stone bench overlooking Tecolate Canyon. I have my own bench. This old man tried to sit there the other day. I removed him by talking loudly on my cell phone. The view's worth it. Off in the distance you can see Mission Bay.

Football weekend

I spent the day watching football. I'm not a fan, but I've never lived so close to a stadium before, it's only 2 miles away. At the grocery store, I saw people filling their coolers with ice and beer, buying up hot dogs, beer, and more beer. 10am, chargers fans drinking beer and tossing footballs in the washington mutual parking lot. Even more chargers fans, I know because they have their jerseys on, walking along Friars road. I saw them in the restaurants, already full at midday. I felt obligated to watch a game. And so I did. I've also been to Seau's restaurant, I've driven by the stadium, and now I've seen a game. I feel like short of actually going to the game, my Chargers experience is complete. And yet the season's just begun.

Bar review's great for outsiders not familiar with the city. You get a chance to see different bars/clubs every week, ones that you may not ordinarily go into. Friday night we went to Canes, a place right on the beach at Mission Beach. The view from the rooftop bar is absolutely stunning, you can see the entire coastline for miles on each side. There's the blasting music and crowds of strangers on one side, and the cool ocean breeze and quiet lap of the sea on the other. It's definitely my kinda place, laid back, but a good bar and good tunes. Don't go on Thursday nights though, it's completely deserted.

I went to Tijuana!

On Saturday I went to Tijuana, first time since I was tiny. It wasn't a planned trip, we actually went to the Hotel del Coronado, then somehow ended up at the border parking lot, waiting for a bus into the city. It's a lot closer than I thought, you can see the arch and the Mexican flag from the parking lot. We didn't have a tour book so we just walked up and down the main streets. We ventured into their local mall, which I've gotta tell you, isn't worth your time. You don't shop for clothes in Mexico. What you can get, on the side streets, are entire pieces of animals. Cow heads, pork heads, entire cow legs, nothing like anything you'd see in the states.

Below is a shot from a bridge over a "river." We were intrigued by this man washing his hands in the disgusting river. Of course you can click on the pix to enlarge. I've resized them from their original 6mega pixel size.



Next we have the US-Mexico Border. It's behind the McDonalds, the thing that looks like the great wall of china. It's quite formidable.


Headed for Mission Beach on Sunday. Noticed this apartment, facing the beach. Lynched pigeon. Why??


Southern California has its beaches done right. Mission Beach has firepits, allows alcohol, has lifeguards with all sorts of vehicles, and there's fancy vacation rentals with people blasting loud music and drinking cheap beer.

Check out the car BMW loaned me! It's an X-3.



Here's the new i-drive..it goes up and down by itself


And the car's got this HUGE AWESOME moonroof. Makes it feel like a convertible suv.

So I meant to upload the pix of my rented cars on Friday, but what happened was my entire first year class descended upon the library, taking the two books required for our assignment. A waste of time on my part, got very little done. Lesson learned: wait for the last minute to complete assignments. But I finally got around to it. First off is the Kia Optima, next is the Chevy Aveo. I've got Aveo currently, and it's actually a pretty good car. I'd think it was terrible for parallel parking though, because I can't see the hood of the car from the driver's seat. It slants down, below the view of the dashboard.




On Friday night I saw a large maine coon cat, and a raccoon (separately). Now I miss Muffy =( I wonder if she'd like it here. I could set up the 2nd futon for her. But only one window really looks out to anything, and some days, like today, it becomes suffocatingly hot. I'm already thinking of next year, I'll move to a smaller place, maybe one bedroom, forget the roommate, just me + the cat.

My Room!

As you can see, I've eliminated the need for a dresser by creating one out of my nightstand. This saves a few hundred dollars + moving headaches.

Is San Diego really Paradise?

So I chose to live next to the mall instead of the beach. Linda Vista instead of Clairemont. Of course it wasn't the only factor in my choice, I wanted to be close to school, Clairemont's kind of expensive, and the Vietnamese community surrounding my current place doesn't really bug me as much as it bothers others, but yes, it was a choice of mall over beach.

Now I live near two malls. And two shopping centers. The malls are absolutely huge, and every chain store you've ever heard of exists in one of these malls. I saw SIX t-mobile stores within a two mile radius. And today, a busful of little kids stopped at Fashion Valley. Apparently, a field trip to the mall. I could spend every day, not to mention every dime, in the mall. I'm not sure how I feel about this. It's so very materialistic, yet alluring. Is this what people do in this city, shop?? I mean, you should see the size of my closet. It's bigger than my bathroom. This is an apartment too! I wonder, when I move next to the beach next year, if I'll miss this. But then again, they are only 4 miles apart.

Oh, and my place is nice. You should see it. Maybe I'll put up pix later.

You know my yellow cat? The one this blog's named after? Well, after winning countless battles against cats of all colors and fur types, she lost. Now she's got this huge abscess on her flank, bruises, and a cat temperature of 105. After being shaved, poked, and drained, this is what the yellow cat looked like:

My hometown spent a ton of money on a new library. There's this salt water aquarium inside, beautiful inner courtyard, and large glass windows everywhere. It's a clean streamlined look, perfect for a desert(like) city.

The issue is the rest of the city. Simply put, it's going out of business. Seeing the city once every few months, I notice shops changing names, from well known franchises to less successful local stores to blank empty spaces. And its a trend that continues block after block, until complexes are bulldozed over, leaving an empty dirt block, awaiting redevelopement into new condos. But who's gonna live in these condos? And why move into a dying city?

Thought I'd try out the cardiovascular exercise concept. Keep heart rate over 100 for 20min, every day. So there's this tennis court nearby. I wanted to take advantage of it. Learned three things:

1) No one wants to play tennis with me in 90 degree heat.

2) The tennis ball machine wasn't functional (I found out when all the balls fell out of the feeder).

3) I suck at physical activity. Including tennis. I already knew this. Just conveniently forgot.

Yellow Cat's day

The Yellow Cat spent most of the day asleep in the closet.

Woke, consumed a can of food (5.5oz), returned upstairs.

Jumped on the desk, looked out the window.

Lay on the carpet, stretched out, fell asleep.

I wish I was a cat too.

Yellow Cat Reborn

Same little yellow cat.

I'm at my parents place today, we finished moving last night in a chaotic frenzy. Driving down to San Diego tomorrow to look at the place I'll be living in for the next year. I haven't had a permanent residence for so long now, what has it been, 5years? And I won't have one for at least three more years. Acquiring large items and non-feline pets becomes very difficult, knowing that at any time you may need to box up and move. This cat will try harder this round to integrate into city living. I did buy a tour book of San Diego, and I'm happy to get away from the bay area =)

In food news I mixed up green grapes, strawberries, and honey and dumped it on top of shaved ice for a summer lunch. And ya, it was colorful and good. I think peanut butter noodles for dinner? With thai chiles of course.

7am, off to socal. Here's hoping the car doesn't overheat on the drive down!