ThisIsVlad

sunday afternoon, caryn and i went indoor rock climbing w/ my brother. i’ve gone once before, but this was caryn’s first time. i hate heights. like a lot. like sooo much. rock climbing is really not the sport for me. most of the time, once i’d get halfway up, i’d start getting pretty freaked out and would wish that i had never gone climbing. but then i’d finish the climb and get all excited about being able to do it. i guess i’m glad i actually push myself to do things like this that i’m naturally very afraid of. it always ends up being worthwhile in the end. unlike me, caryn was not a wus at all… she totally loved it. she did hella good for her first time and is already totally amped to go try it again.

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Saturday:

saturday was the day of the chinese new years parade, so caryn and i kinda planned our day around that. i’ve only tried dim-sum twice, and she had never tried it so we decided to go to Chinatown and have at it. we went to this place called Yank Sing. it was kind of an upscale dimsum place, and everything we tried (except for peking duck, yuck!) was wayyy good! we definitely wanna have dimsum more often from now on…. but hopefully at cheaper dimsum places cause the meal at this one ended up being 80 bux!!

after lunch, we wandered around Chinatown for a bit. i’ve never really explored that area so it was interesting to check it out. there were tons of decorated balconies, interesting store fronts, and other neat stuff to check out. we go to see how fortune cookies are made. there’s an assembly line that brings out all these flat cooked dough discs, and a lady grabs them one at a time, puts a fortune on top, and then basically bends them in half on top of a stick to make the fortune cookie shape. weird eh? after wandering around some more, we still had time to kill so we wandered over to the ocean and chilled on one of the piers.

eventually it was time for the parade to start. the chinese new years parade in sf is the biggest one outside of asia and is considered one of the top 10 parades in the world. walking around near the parade route, we could feel the excitement building. people in costumes were rushing around everywhere, people were yelling, firecrackers were being set off. we were able to find a place right at the beginning of the parade route… but that ended up being a bad thing, since most of the marching band groups just marched in the beginning and didn’t play till later on. in fact, the beginning of the route was pretty disorganized, and people kept starting and stopping etc as they got ready. all in all the parade was pretty cool. some neat floats, cool lion dancers and dragons, all sort of monkey costumes… but i think we both agreed that we probably should have only stayed for like 30 minutes instead of the full 2 hours!!

by the end of the parade, we were exhausted but we had tickets to go see Atmosphere that night. at first we weren’t very excited to go to the show, but in the end we had a really good time. atmosphere was really good and Eyedea, who opened for them, was really good as well. the show was dope, but after standing on our feet all day long, standing up for another several hours was so tiring! after the concert all we wanted to do was go to sleep, but we had promised tom that we would stop by his 30th bday. we cruised by, but only stayed for a tiny bit.

finally, after a long day, we went to bed at 2:30am…. or so we thought. at 3am erica, kevin, brandon, and others came home totally drunk and yelling and screaming. they all stumbled into the kitchen yelling bout wanting more alcohol and rummaging around. other than the fact that it was impossible to sleep at that point, i thought “oh shit!! the bottle of cachaca tom brought from brazil is in the kitchen… they’re totally gonna open it and drink it all”. so i had to get dressed and rescue my bottle. after that brandon started banging on our door for caryn to come out, so now we’re both groggy and chilling in the kitchen. we ended up taking shots w/ them, and then randomly these two girls who it turns out are our new neighbors, come over to hang out. it was pretty crazy. john kept telling people that he could do a headslide, and then to prove that he could really do it… he actually did a headslide across our kitchen floor. it was nuts!!! finally at 6am.. we were able to get some sleep…

here are 2 short videos of the headslides…

Click 1 and Click 2

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caryn came home friday evening and i went with her, sage, and catherine to this gallery exhibit that featured robotic interactive art. it was really cool. a bunch of small animated robots that turned on by the push of a button, or sound activated, or motion sensitive. you could try out each robot and they were all cool and artsy looking. the whole room was buzzing w/ robot sounds, whirring, and beeps. afterwards, sage suggested we go to a Senegalese restaurant. i’ve wanted to go to this place for a long long time, and so was pretty excited to finally try it out. the food was hella good!! i had been reading in my travel books that a lot of the food in africa is quite bland, but this was super flavorful and delicious. after that we dropped off sage and went to go hang out at the Fireside Lounge. it’s really nice having a cool bar less than a block from your house. that’s why i love Sf so much. you can do so much just within walking distance of your house. there are neighborhoods w/ local bars, local markets, coffee shops, etc. unlike the south bay where all you can do from your house is either stare at other similar houses or go visit the local strip mall.

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on sunday, instead of watching the whole superbowl, i took a break and watched the movie “Tape“. it’s by the same director who did Waking Life and Slacker. the crazy thing about this movie is that the whole thing is shot in one hotel room. there’s only 3 actors (Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke being 2 of them). there aren’t any crazy special effects, chase scenes, or anythhing else fancy. it’s just a very interesting story filled w/ several moral, philosophical, and psychological questions. i totally loved it. i’m all about movies that make you think and question things, and the fact that tis movie was able to do that in such a simple fashion was really cool.

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over the weekend i went to two parties. friday night we went to a party in the richmond at one of brandon’s friend’s house. the party wasn’t very good. in fact, we were all not down, but there really wasnt much else to do that night, so we ended up staying around for a while. the only cool thing about the party was that there was access to the roof. it made me totally wish i had a place where people could chill on the roof. sure, it’s kinda sketchy, but it’s pretty neat. afterwards, we all went back home and i ended up kicking it w/ colleen and john till like 5 am talking about religion, growing up, death, and all sortsa crazy shit.

the following night, caryn and i went to a party at li’s house. the theme was 40’s and pretty much everyone actually drank 40’s instead of wussing out and drinking other stuff. unlike the party the night before, this one was really fun. it’s good to be at a party when you know basically everybody. caryn made this cake called “dump cake”, that was super fucking good. um, yeah, i know the name is gross, but it’s called that because you just dump the ingredients in the pan… not for other reasons. oh yeah, the other weird thing that happened that night is that for some reason there was this scary blow up doll at li’s house. it had a weird face drawn on it and was just pretty damn bizarre. when joey and brian got drunk, they started forcing people to pose w/ it….

(and why is tom crying in the background of this photo?)

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thursday night i was driving home and npr was interviewing Afghani film director Siddiq Barmak about a movie he just released called Osama. Despite what most people would infer from the title, the movie actually isn’t about osama bin laden at all, instead it’s a look into life in Afghanistan during the Taliban’s rule. the story is about an all female family that is threatened w/ starvation because the Taliban does not allow any women to have jobs. in order to survive, the family has to dress their youngest daughter up as a boy in hopes that he can get a job and earn at least some money to buy food for the family.

i totally want to see this movie. it’s completely bewildering that life can be like that for some people, and that a story like this took place just a few years back and is not from some ancient history book. starting w/ september 11th, Afghanistan was thrust into the world spotlight for 2 years and all anyone could talk about was the terrorists that lived there. sure, there was some banter about the “poor suffering people” that we were hoping to “save” by invading, but a scant 2 years later, as soon as we found a new country to invade, Afghanistan was abandoned and is now hardly mentioned at all.

i think it’s awesome that there are films being made about the country and that people like Barmak are raising some kind of interest in a country that has been all but ignored by the rest of the world except for when it was being invaded. it was actually a pretty crazy interview. Barmak was only able to make this movie last year because the Taliban was overthrown. before that, there were no movies allowed to be made in Afghanistan. in fact, he tells of how when he found the girl who would later play the main role in the movie and asked her if she wanted to be in his film, her response was “what is a film?”.

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lately i’ve had to do a lot of work using linux. in fact, over the last month, i’d say that like half of my work has been linux stuff. when i first started using it, a little while back, i was absolutely fucking clueless. i spent a whole day just trying to figure out how to do the most simple of simple things like how to install programs. i hadn’t the slightest clue about gzip, tar files, rpm packages etc etc. and dont even get me started on the insanely cryptic and evil VI editor. ugh!

but now, i’m really starting to get used to it. it’s pretty cool to know how to all this crap from a command line and not need the graphical interface. i feel like i’ve learned sooo much over the last few weeks. i’m definitely not yet proficient or anything, but it’s been a lot of fun figuring stuff out and learning new shit.

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i watched the movie Thirteen tonight. the movie was about a thirteen year old girl who really badly wants to fit in when she gets to junior high. to do that she befriends the most popular girl in school, and is soon drinking, taking drugs, getting piercings, blah,blah, etc. her mother who loves her like crazy, is slowly being torn apart trying to deal w/ her crazy daughter.

while watching the movie, i totally couldnt help but think of all the shit that i pulled when i was young. i started going to raves when i was 16 and of course did all the stuff that goes along with partying. of course i didnt think it was a big deal at that point, but looking back on it now, it would be impossible for me to say that i would think it was no big deal if i had a 16 year old child doing that kind of stuff. and as time goes on, kids grow up faster and faster. they’ll be doing what i did when i was 16, when they are 13 or 12 or who knows! the worries i have can only be about things that i know about, and things i did myself…. but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. who knows what kind of new insane fucked up shit there will be for kids to try when they are growing up years from now. i’m sure the future will hold much more treacherous things than piercings and ecstasy.

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the rv that sharon and dave bought is fucking humongous. 30 feet. it is a monster, and they’re planning on towing dave’s car behind it when they go cross-country, making it even longer. i can’t even imagine how hard it must be to drive that thing! last night, a few of us drove down to santa cruz to check it out. sharon and dave took us for a tour inside:

this thing was so roomy! i always thought the inside of an rv would be cramped and stuffy. but in this one, sure there were a few tight squeezes, like the one dave is in on the left, but other than that it was nice and spacious. a big bedroom, a kitchen w/ fridge and stove, a living room. there was 6 of us over there and we fit perfectly. hell, we could have invited even more people!

anyways, they’re still working on the RV. they’re hoping to get all the repairs done by this saturday and finally start their cross country voyage. i bet they’re gonna have an insane amount of fun in the apollo three thousand.

oh, yeah, one more thing. we all went to saturn cafe too. it sucked! what the hell happened?? that place used to always be so fun and cool. now it was all stale and boring!

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after about 20 months, a couple thousand dollars in fines, 4 separate trips to the tow yard, and a grueling 2 hour long way down at the DPT, i finally got my J parking permit. now i can park in front of my house. of course, now that i finally have it, i will only continue living here for another 5 months, but still… at least i shouldnt get anymore tickets from now on.

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