What I learned from Gossip Girl - My cousin's wedding

I've been really busy these past two weeks. Here's why. 

Serena: zzz… lets skip her

Blair: If you have a goal in mind and there are many obstacles along the way – scheme.

My objective: Attend my cousin’s wedding

The obstacle: I’m in Korea

The Solution: Scheme

Deadline: August 28^th

Obstacle 1: Getting to the US

A few months ago I had come to terms with the fact that I was not going to be able to attend my cousin’s wedding. So last month when I was in the US I met with my cousins and we had an awesome time hanging out. It was then that I realized that I really did want to attend their wedding

Option 1: Purchase the ticket by myself and take some vacation time

$2,000 for the ticket à Out of the question.

Option 2: Scheme. Blair Waldorf style.

[Three weeks until the deadline]

Long story short- after a bunch of calls, emails & persuading I finally got a few things lined up and they were all reason enough to be sent to the US. My schedule catches the attention of a few high level people and they agree to join me in the states. I was told to go to the states on September 6th because we will be having a company workshop and that I should attend it. Somehow, through my Blair Waldorf gumption, I get the company workshop moved to another week. Now I start to feel like I am really moving mountains.

Obstacle 2: Booking the flight

I get approval from the company and request to get my ticket booked. At this point it’s Tuesday and the wedding is on Saturday, I would want to fly out by Friday. All seats are booked up. A piece of me dies inside. I speak to another cousin who lives in Korea and will be flying out for the wedding as well. He wants me to fly the same flight as him. I told him it was pretty much impossible to get a seat on any of the Korean-run/direct flights that will get me to the US on Friday afternoon. Somehow even though all online sources and even our company booking agent claimed there were no more seats left, my cousin manages to get me a seat. I’m overwhelmed with happiness and I started to thinking about that confetti collection I used to have and wish I had it on hand because this was definitely a good time for confetti.

Now that the tickets, agendas, meetings etc have been fixed.. now it’s crunch time. I barely have time to prepare for everything that I have set up for myself.

The Conclusion:

Reflecting back on the scheming and working selfishly for my own personal happiness I came to the conclusion that the best way for myself to work is to work for a clear goal. Suddenly over the past two weeks I became so goal oriented it was nearing obsession. It was like I caught a big fish with a small pole but with enough effort, I reeled in that big sucker, stabbed it and ate it right away like sashimi…so even though that analogy didn’t quite work, I’m very happy that I hit two birds with one stone, I'm also thankful for the personal revelation that I came up with while watching the show. 

Now it’s time to get back to work.  

Twitter noob in the house

Twitter has always been one of those things that I’m just not very good at, but wish I were. In Korea I still don't have a smartphone, so tweeting just doesn't seem awesome to me... So last night I activated a beta account for this blog just to test the waters. So I started following a few people, and after a few hours had passed nobody was following me back and I started feeling small pangs of sadness. I like to call it twitter friendlessness syndrome (TFS).

I checked up on my twitter right before I left work and clicked on “followers” and to my surprise JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT was following me! Out of all 114,516 followers, I was one of the lucky 83 people he was following back I started thinking to myself, WHY…. WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD HE FOLLOW ME?!? *stars in my eyes* I started to think of fantasies of us becoming best friends and having late night conversations together laughing at inside jokes… going to carnivals together - eating garlic-buttered corn-on-the-cob together while riding a ferris wheel where he would finally pop the question. Speechless, I’d look at him wide-eyed and answer “YES! OF COURSE I WILL MARRY YOU!” we’d probably swap some spit and make our home on the ferris wheel where our love would last in an eternal loop….. and then I realized that I was looking at my “following” list. All dreams shattered. I’m just not that good at twitter…. Yet.

There is a link to the right if you want to cure me of TFS. 

One day i'll get JGL to follow me. 

Palm reading: secrets revealed!!

When I was a kid I was always secretly comforted by my palm-fortune. Based on my palm I’m supposed to live a long life, get married, have a hot husband and have a lot of money. Now when I look really closely, the marriage lines don’t actually connect, my lifeline splits in two directions and my money-line is starting to fade. Maybe my fortune just cannot be told. maybe I’ve been looking at the wrong lines all along. Maybe I should cut off my hands so I don’t have these pseudo-fortunes following me around. But then I wouldn’t have fingers to type with, and I’m not really in the mood to learn how to type with my toes. So for the sake of blogging, i'll keep my hands. 

Anyway, why the dark undertones today? I’m just in a foul mood.  so instead of going into detail about how I want to punch everyone in the face - minus jonny [my dog]  I’m going to give away a secret that I have always been reluctant to divulge since I was a child. It’s the magical world of palm reading.  

Here’s a masterpiece I drew up during some downtime when coworkers were not walking around:

1.  Sexy spouse: the highest line on the bottom half of your middle finger represents how hot your significant other will be. If your line is really low, then your spouse is probably the olga type, I’m sure she has a nice personality.
2. Money line. The higher the arch, and the higher the line goes up, the more money you will have. Some people often have plateau lines. Tough luck cookie.
3. Marriage: if the two lines connect then congrats, you’re getting married. If they don’t, then you're probably not getting married, but hey, Olga's single and ready to mingle. 
4. Life: if your life line extends all the way down your palm, then you will live a long life.

If your palm does not have the ideal outcome, then here are a few scientifically proven simple steps on how to achieve life happiness. [Note: this is just an excerpt. the full annotated version can purchased in exchange for your money line.]

Arch your palm in strange positions until you see the lines all assemble in the correct, ideal formation. Make sure the life line is long, mold your significant other’s physical attractiveness and make sure the money line is bold. Then tape your hand together and leave it there for at least 5 days. Your hands will start to cramp. When this happens dunk your hand in a fresh bucket of cement and let it solidify. Leave it there for another 5 days. After that, you should have the right lines.


... anyway, that was a total tangent.

In korea there are a thousands of “saju’s”/fortune tellers all over the place. I should set up a booth and charge people ten bucks. Maybe do some voodoo magic. This one time I sent my friend a thank you card enclosed with a goofy passport picture of myself and a lock of my hair. I am forever known as “the girl that gave a lock of hair” to her family. That’s real friendship. She could do voodoo magic on me, or look up my family genome, or clone me! 

6 thoughtful ways to surprise your boyfriend

Yesterday i was thinking to myself, hrmm... my bf never gives me gifts or surprises me. It's not like i'm asking him for a brand new Louis Vuitton bag, i'm just asking for a brand new Louis Vuitton wallet! -- i'm totally kidding.

If I bring this up to him then he'll think i'm a brat, on the other hand, if i never mention anything to him then he'll never get the picture [fyi he does not read my blog]. Certain days such as my birthday or our 100 days -- i should expect a gift,  but no gifts there! On the flip-side he buys me food. a lot of it of any cuisine and price range - so i'll give him that. For him [at least for now] food suffices.

More importantly, one thing i LOVE are surprises. I think i do my fair share of surprising him, i dont see why he doesnt return the favor and show the same charm...

As the thoughtful girlfriend that i am, here are several ways that i go out of my way to surprise him.

1. On occasion I hide behind bushes, statues, trees and jump out to surprise him while he is walking down the street.

Keep reading, more after the jump

Inception - I'm a projection

I’m showing up late to the party but better late than never. Last week I watched Toy Story 3 [released earlier this month in Korea] and like everyone else said, it was awesome – though I didn’t love the short animated clip showed before the movie.

Last night I finally watched Inception [released about a month ago in Korea] like most other people I am:

1.      In love with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and after stalking him online and going through his hitRECord website, I think he and I either need to be lovers or best friends. Since being lovers seems to be the unlikely choice, can we just be best friends?? okay, thats unlikely too - i'll settle for just giving him a high five.... and after our high five a fire will ignite in his eyes and he will drop his bags and hold my hand tightly and we will... make out. with passion. andddd back to "reality" anyway. 

2.      I have my own theories about what happened in the movie. Sometimes I don’t like to watch stressful movies because I’m scared it’ll give me white hairs haha.

3.      Am stuck in a dream.

After leaving the theatre I left feeling like I wasn’t in reality. After the movie I went to a restaurant and while munching on French fries, opened up my laptop and tired to connect to wifi, the internet required my Korean ID number, but it didn’t work. Edward logged in for me. Then I proceeded to tell him that the reason why I couldn’t log in was because I am not real. I’m actually a projection in his dream and that he needed to wake up. He told me that he was awake and then I revealed that I am actually a figment of his imagination and that he was really eating alone and talking to himself. He told me that I was acting funny.

If you've already watched inception, more after the jump... if you havent watched it yet, im sure these pictures wont give anything away but its more fun to watch it without knowing what to expect.

Menstrual cramp from hell and other tid bits

Some months are better than others but usually they’re pretty much the same. Today I’m not talking about work, im talking about this goddamn curse most call the menstruation cycle. If you are a man then you may not understand the pain, agony, annoyance we go through. Yeah, you sympathize and maybe hate the menstrual cycle a little bit because one week out of the month you can’t boink your lady, but that’s pretty much the extent of the pain that many men understand. I hate it when people joke about the period and don’t respect women for what we go through. Periods aren’t even the full extent. Do you know that when women give birth to babies, our vaginas rip to our buttholes, we shit all over our babies and our gobble gobbles stretch out so much that our vaginas make a clapping noise when we walk? Or what about a c-section, we get our abdominal muscles cut through and after giving birth we have to take care of our babies while we feel the pain of the cut.

Sometimes I wish I could transfer my pain over to other people just so they understand what I go through. I had the worst cramp ever yesterday afternoon. I wasn’t prepared with medicine because my period came at an unexpected time – two weeks late. Irregular periods have been a constant issue for me. I curse the day May 12^th, 1998 – the day I got my period. And yes, I do know and remember the day the curse began.  

On a side note – don’t women love carrying the burden of thinking that they’re pregnant all the time even during the times whey they’re not sexually active? Some months when I’m late, I’ll reason that somehow I pulled a virgin Mary and was inseminated by the heavens, or by some new guy I met last week got me pregnant via text message, or stupid things like sitting in a hot tub, etc.

Why don’t you just get on the pill?

In the states I was on the pill for years and it regulated my periods and my periods sometimes lasted only for two days! It was awesome. In Korea, the Birth Control Pill (BCP) is distributed OTC, oddly enough the morning after pill is only distributed in the ER or at OBGYN (gynecologists)…I don’t understand the logic of that. So when I got my OTC BCP I asked for the lowest hormone dosage, and he hands me their most popular BCP.  I took it for a month and I was fine, minus the week before my period, I started to cry over everything and freaked my bf out (I put him through a lot, he’s a very nice guy). The next month I was completely psycho and felt crazy for unexplainable reasons. Something as small as reading a slightly touching article would make me cry, or I would hear something and get absolutely annoyed and start cursing the world. Then I started having voldermort dark thoughts and then I pulled the plug on the pill. Fuck that.

Fuck this, fuck that, fuck everything.

So back to the story.

After lunch I went to the restroom and realized that the day had finally come. My confirmation that I am not pregnant. I was walking down the hallway in complete pain and almost fainted. Nauseous, sweating, on the verge of laying in fetal position under my desk, it was time to go home.  I left work at 2 pm and the moment I got home, I took that bundled toilet paper wad out of my crotch and stuck in a tampon and ptfo. Sometimes when your body is in too much pain, it just shuts you down and you fall into a deep slumber. I woke up at 7 pm and felt a million times better.

Maybe after I have babies I’ll feel that all of my agony was worth it, but until now I curse my period. If you have read this far into this entry, I thank you. and if you are a man, I didn’t intend for you to feel bad, but hope that I have shed some enlightenment. Maybe the next time your gf/wife starts her period you can do something nice for her. Do people even realize how often a period once a month is? Many people don’t even change their bed sheets once a month.  

If I do have babies, they better be brad pitt and Angelina jolie beautiful for all the pain I’ve been through.

Text message exchange:
Me: omg 생리통 (menstrual cramps).. i feel like im going to die
BF: omg... lady.. do not die.

My sister sent me this nice Article from CNN  that hypothesizes that maybe i'm screwed. 

Boy Meets World - Your Lucky Day

Another reminder that you just cant make money the easy way. Even the "easy" ways of raking up money come with effort, smarts and persistence.

Your Lucky Day from Dan on Vimeo.


I always wish that i could win the lottery. I even blogged once about strategies on how to win... but in reality im sure it's warping.

Thank Shawn Hunter [from Boy Meets World] for continually teaching me lessons.

I wonder what Topanga is up to these days... Not to completely play 6 degrees but Cory Matthews starred in a movie based on my hometown - strategically named "Palo Alto"

ok thats all the boy meets world of the day!

Stuck on a bus

My oh my, what an interesting weekend. Friday night I went out to meet up with some friends from LA. The night started at 8pm and went on til the wee hours. Four kebobs, several drinks and a little dancing later I arrive home. I set my alarm clock for 7 am and immediately go straight to bed.

I was supposed to meet the bf at the bus station by 8 but lucky for me, my phone died sometime during the night and I woke up at 8 am to my bf banging on my apt door. I got ready in 10 minutes, only packing the bare necessities and failed to bring extra clothes. The entire weekend was spent wearing the same shirt and skirt. it was also the hottest weekend ever and dripped at least a pound of sweat per day. Let's just say that I didn't smell like a civilized being by Sunday night. 

Anyway - back to the story. 

We make it onto the bus right on time and are relieved. A few minutes into the bus ride I start feeling very nauseous. So I passed out for two hours. I wake up as the bus is pulling over at a rest stop for 10 minutes and I picked up some snacks and juice. After 5 minutes back on the bus, I started to feel a strong sensation of having to poo… make that diarrhea…make that explosive diarrhea. I decided to try to tough it out esp bc there wouldn't be a rest stop for at least another 20 minutes and we had JUST gotten back from a stop. 

It was the kind of morning-after-drinking type of sensation where I could feel my poo boiling and churning up and down in my system. the kind of shit that makes you forget about any other troubles in the world. A sea of goosebumps on my arms, beads of sweat forming around my temples and toe curling pain – I concluded that I was either going to die or poo in my seat and then die from embarrassment. So the only solution to my problem seemed to be death. 

Believe me, I thought about asking the bus driver to pull over so i could shit on the side of the highway and wipe myself with leaves while all 50 people on the bus could watch for their enjoyment and pity. 45 painful minutes later and full support from my bf - I was back to normal. At this point I start to wonder what my bf thinks of me but at least I’m live and kicking. He’s stuck with me for now.

An island in Tongyeong 

The view after hiking up one side of a mountain on the island. Pure perfection. 

Korean Comics

A friend of mine sent me these funny and random korean comics. The ones written in korean are pretty much self-explanatory. Good ol funny comics with a hint of korean humor and perversion. Just what everyone needs on a Friday. TGIF.

A bunch more comics after the jump!

Just another convo

Me: HELLO????

Friend: I'm taking care of important things right now

Later...

Friend: Okay I'm done plucking my pubes now.

Grocery store fun in korea

Just some pictures i took a few months back of my grocery store experience. i rarely go to the market so its always super fun to go. My inspiration for taking a lot of pictures at the store started off early on when i stumbled upon two kids just sleeping straight up in a cart. if i could sleep like that, then i probably wouldnt dread long airplane rides so much.. 

I saw this from afar and just couldnt resist.

Yeah they look like corpses but it was really cute 

\

Huge carrots (my fave veggie) 

This aint new to people in korea, but stores have special escalators that you can just roll onto with your cart! they just stay there too. heres over 10 carts just chillin without any supervision. 

we bought 10 popcicles for 5,000 won (a little under $5 usd) we were so happy.. or actually I was so happy.  

 

five peaches for around $25 bucks. i literally almost cried. when i went back to the states i specifically ate a ton of peaches. mmm yammers.

Best cubicle ever

LOL omg he's my hero.

link

All of my friends are dead, voodoo girl and james

The first 10 pages of Avery Monsen and Jory John’s book

Alive

A favorite of mine, Tim Burton's Voodoo Girl:

Her skin is white cloth,
and she's all sewn apart
and she has many colored pins
sticking out of her heart.
She has many different zombies
who are deeply in her trance.
She even has a zombie
who was originally from France.

But she knows she has a curse on her,
a curse she cannot win.
For if someone gets
too close to her,
the pins stick farther in.

Another:

Unwisely, Santa offered a teddy bear to James, unaware that
he had been mauled by a grizzly earlier that year

Burton

My Busan Weekend

My weekend was spent in Haeundae, Busan. There were a total of 5 million people in korea at the beach and 1 million alone were at Haeundae Beach! Though the news claims this statistic, it didn’t feel that crowded there – but maybe I was just stuck in my own world.


Though we only spent a short weekend there it was definitely worth it. 

One of the most organized and packed beaches i've ever seen

At night while walking around, he would play his guitar and follow behind us. it seriously felt like we were in a movie with our own soundtrack. haha

MMMM look at those chunks of butter

Lady of the night 

my ghost picture

Highlights include:

Tubing in the ocean – which is a great workout, my armpits are super sore

Volleyball in the ocean

Roasting in the sun – kind of.

Eating yummy scallops

Drinking at local Busan spots (at least I think theyre local haha)

Eating patbingsoo and ramen on the beach

Feeling far away from Seoul