Category: San Francisco

… and that’s exactly it. no one has any damn thing at stake. 65% of the people in this country actually support this fucking war. unbelievable. and yeah sure, i’m sure it’s easy to support some war when all you have to do is sit there in a fucking office, sip coffee, and wait for the gas prices to come dropping down for your precious vehicle. if these 65% actually had to go over there and start shooting missiles at random iraqi targets… would they really still be so excited to start a war?

*sigh*

-v

wow, i really cant believe how fast people can build stuff these days. i looked outside my kitchen door yesterday and in just *one* day, our landlord had built all of the steps for our new stairs. so fast!! they’ve already got his much done: click!

heh, this is the small board across the kitchen door that saves us from falling to our doom: click!

-v

i got my employee review the other day, and it was a huge disapointment. in the past, all of my reviews here have gone really well. seriously, they couldnt say enough good things about me and all the comments were very positive about how well i accomplish all my stuff etc. for pretty much all the sections i would score a “1” which was “goes above and beyond expectations”. so, it was a total shock to me when yesterday my review was filled completely w/ all 3’s (acceptable performance, average). wtf? according to my boss, i do the tasks i get assigned well, but dont show enough initiative and he gets the feeling that i “dont care how well the company does”. dont show enough initiative?? dude, i am sooo busy at work, have so much crap to do, so many random assignments etc get pushed on me…. i dont have any damn time to show initiative. i need to be trying to plan *more* projects for myself?? sheeeez.

so anyways it all really sucks. part of me thinks that the review may have turned out like that because i have a different boss writing it now. maybe he’s not the kind of guy that writes glowing reviews? or maybe i’m really doing way worse now than i’ve done in the past. *sigh*.

-v

i woke up this morning and the stairs were missing. yes, missing. a couple months ago we had a party and a large section of the side of the stairs broke off. we’ve been begging our landlord to do something about it for a long time now, and it looks like finally he did. but the thing is… we kind of expected him to fix the stairs, not *remove* them!! and if he did remove them, we would have thought he might at least warn us. so now, when we open the kitchen door, there’s nothing there except for a 3 story drop, with only a small plank of wood nailed against the doorway to protect us from certain death.

it’s so weird to have a whole staircase just be missing like that.

-v

this thursday went to go see Zion I with sharon. neither one of us ended up paying too much attention to the show though, instead we spent most of our time trying to decipher life. we talked about life, physics, psychology, and the meaning of it all for hours on end… and it was exactly the kind of night i was looking for. since coming back from thailand, i’d been doing tons of thinking about life, and feel like i’ve really been looking for the answers to a bunch of questions… unfortunately, i dont even really know what the questions are, so finding answers has not been easy. heh. but i definitely think that having long conversations w/ people that really have something to say helps. it’s always good to know people who’ll expand your thoughts and views and sharon is definitely one of those people.

friday i woke up to find out that shit had gone totally haywire at work. spent all day long stressing and working like crazy… to the point where i forgot to move my car from the tow-away zone. FUCK. this is the 3rd time now that i’ve had to get my car from the Hall of Justice. and i had to pay off 7 outstanding parking tickets to boot. $550 later, my car was rescued. sheeez, parking around here is really breaking the bank.

spent the rest of the weekend up in tahoe. elena’s family owns a place up there so tash, marcell and i went up there to kick it w/ her and patrick. we didnt snowboard or anything, but just spent most of the weekend hanging out, drinking, and chilling. had a great time. oh yeah, we also went to reno to gamble for a bit. i dont know crap about card games etc, so i spent the whole time playing roulette. it was hella fun though. i decided i would limit the amount of money i blew, so i only got 80$ from the atm. since in roulette, it’s so easy to double your money, my bets of 20$ quickly grew to 40, 80 and sometimes 160$. chips are so weird. they’re money, and yet so dont seem like money. yet at the same time, watching the ball spin round the wheel and knowing that a whole $160 is riding on where it lands, definitely gives you a huge kick of adrenalin. anyways, i was up some, down some, all over the place, but in the end, i was actually able to pull myself away from the table without losing it all. and i actually ended up $125 up!! SHWEET!

-v

i’m finally over being sick. after spending last weekend (and the whole following week) being sick and miserable, it was good to finally get out of the house and have some fun. friday night sarah mazze was down here from oregon and it was great to get to see her again. saturday night some of us went to check out this bar called the phone booth. at the bar, kevin spent an hour trying to convince us that this girl there was Jamon, and when we had finally convinced him that it wasn’t her, by some totally random coincidence the real Jamon showed up. what are the chances of that? turns out she lives near by and the phone booth is her local neighborhood bar. sunday i checked out cirque du soleil. i got there expecting to be really impressed… and i totally was. the stuff these people do is just simply amazing! Afterward, i had to speed back to SF to catch the Sage Francis concert. it’s crazy, he’s gone from playing at Bottom of the Hill and not even packing the place, to selling out Slim’s completely. to mix things up a bit he played w/ a live band instead of a dj. it was cool cause it was different… but honestly i liked the last show he did a lot better.

all in all it was a really cool weekend. the last week had been so weird. being sick and home alone really made me feel like i was in this halfway limbo state… not still away in thailand but at the same time like i wasn’t really back here in the US yet. i was back home, yet couldn’t experience all the stuff that i love about being here. finally getting to get out and have fun and hang out with friends definitely makes me appreciate everything about here. it may not be the same as traveling, but if there is a place i’m psyched on living in… it’s definitely here.

-v

my month and a half long trip to SE asia was a crazy adventure filled w/ all sorts of risky moments. riding scooters through impossible terrain, going out to a cambodian shooting range, etc etc. like i wrote previously in my journal, pretty soon you start really feeling invincible over there. always in my head, whenever i’d go some place or try something new, i’d think “what’s the worst that could happen?”. well, apparently, sometimes the worst can and does happen.

today my friend forwarded me an email from someone currently traveling in Laos. 3 days ago a group of anti-government rebels shot up a bus that was traveling near vang vieng. about 10 people were killed, including 2 frenchmen who happened to just be biking by at the moment. how scary is that??? i was *just there*. only like 10 days ago. this attack could have happened just a little earlier and i could have been the one caught in the crossfire. it’s so freaky to think about.

all these unstable countries out there…. and sure it seems like this big fun adventure to go out and explore them…. like you can just go out there and be “roughing it” without any reprecussions… and then come back and think to yourself “wow, i just survived going to Laos, isnt that wild!”… but every once in a while, someone slips though the cracks, and it becomes very evident that these countries are *not* disneyland funparks… and there are people out there that mean serious business.

*sigh*

http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/asiapcf/southeast/02/06/laos.attack.reut/index.html

-vlad

this has been the worst weekend ever. i’ve been insanely sick for the last 2 days. friday afternoon i was taking a nap and woke up suddenly because i was basically shivering uncontrollably. i was *so* cold. so i ask my roommates and they tell me that it isnt cold in the house at all, in fact if anything, it’s hot. so i pile on tons of layers and hellza blankets, but i’m still freezing and shuddering.

hours later, all of a sudden, i’m burning up. everything is so *hot*. i have to shed blankets and layers just to be able to breathe. and that’s how i spent the next two days. sleeping the whole way through, except to wake up once an hour to either shed or pile on layers and blankets depending on whether i was freezing cold or burning hot.

what a fucking nightmare.

-v

here is the last (4th) set of photos from my trip.

http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=4290706277

-v

… cause the ride is a bit too insane now.

adjusting has been weird. i can’t quite put my finger on it… but something is definitely just not right. it feels strange to be home. and not just in a “awwww man, it sucks to be at work again” way… but more in a listless, lethargic, and unhappy way. you know the feeling you sometimes get after E, where the world just doesnt seem right anymore, and there’s nothing in particular bothering you, but at the same time nothing is good?

i guess that’s kind of what i’ve been feeling like for the last few days. then, today, i was talking to someone who i’ve been really close to for hellza years and found out some totally insane news that shocked me beyond belief. i wont post about it here, but let’s just say, that the rest of my day has been spent in a weird haze. i just dont know how to react, think, or feel about it. coming back has been surreal enough and now all of a sudden something fully unpredictable has occurred and everything seems even more unbelievable and unreal.

life is so…. confusing.

-v