cindy's world

Mr. W and I spent a lot of time wandering along Waikiki beach and its shops and tourist areas on foot while waiting for the class to arrive (we got there Saturday and the class got there Thursday). One afternoon we went into a Wolfgang Puck Express to order lunch to eat outside in the patio area and enjoy the street scene (facing the beach). While in line, I noticed a 50-ish homeless-looking black man when he entered and greeted another homeless-looking white man heartily. The two sat and chatted with each other as they ate. The first man was in amazing spirits singing along with the radio playing in the restaurant — I think it was some 70s R&B song, practically dancing as he emptied his trash from the food tray into the trash can. He then waltzed back to the table and wiped off his crumbs and emptied that in the trash, too. Mr. W and I, upon receiving our food, took it outside and nibbled at a sidewalk table. I fed a pigeon and was instantly surrounded by other shamelessly begging birds. Minutes later, the two homeless men walked out, strolled by us and the black man turned and said to us, “Success is great even [he held up his index finger professor-style] in small increments, ya know what I mean?” He finished his statement with a wink and I smiled at him. He hummed and walked off into the sunshine.

“Why’d he look at me when he said that?” Mr. W asked.

Mr. W spontaneously got the day off today, so he came by my house after he left work, helped me pack, and then I fed, watered, brushed, de-earwaxed Dodo, and we came back to his house to get him packed. Here’s the good news:

I asked him if he’s bringing his laptop, and he said yes. There may not be an internet connection, but he said something about just going out and finding a kiosk or something for looking up things to do in the area or restaurants to eat at. He said if there’s internet available at the hotel for a price, we’d just pay for it so he could use his laptop.

That means I can still read your blogs! Yay! (What? You want me to write blog posts while I’m in Hawaii? I’m on vacation!)

He’s already purchased VIP seating tickets for a Cirque Hawaii show tomorrow night.

Here’s a reminder in case I can’t post this weekend: FALL BACK AN HOUR ON SUNDAY!! It’s not gonna do me that much good, tho, cuz we lose a couple of hours in the Hawaii time zone anyway. Hawaii also does not observe daylight savings time, so on Sunday, we’ll be 3 hours behind. Eh, it doesn’t matter. I’m on vacay; I can sleep till I wanna get up.

Driving to work this morning, I was coasting to a stop and passed a car on my right that I happened to glance into. The woman driving was putting on mascara in her visor mirror. And her SUV wasn’t even stopped yet. I rolled my eyes, and mid-eyeroll, when my eyeballs were positioned at the top of my head, I happened to catch reflected in my rear view mirror that the woman in the truck behind me was madly scrawling on her eyeliner, and HER truck wasn’t stopped yet. At least wait till you’re at a full stop, ladies! Or do it at home! I wonder if any of these people have ever poked an eye out.

I’m all alone right now and there’s no one to call cuz my phone doesn’t work. And no one’s online.

🙁

My cell phone would not make one phone call after work yesterday. Mr. W kept trying to call me on it and said he just got a “service out” automated message. When I dialed, “Connection error” or “Network busy” would appear on my screen. It was pretty frustrating. We went to a Cingular store and the salesperson explained that a couple of the Cingular cell sites went down, and it’d been down since 4pm that afternoon. Today, I tried the phone again in the morning. The message “connection error” still flashed on the screen when I pressed “send.” I used Mr. W’s phone to check my voice mail. My mom had left a stern-sounding message asking where I was at 8:30p last night. I called them at home and left a message on their machine explaining the phone issues and leaving them Mr. W’s cell number. We checked with a Cingular kiosk earlier today, and the girl at the booth told me that Cingular is phasing out AT&T cell sites, so they’re doing major maintenance stuff and switching certain numbers from one source tower to another, so some numbers may be down for a few hours. I explained it’s been over 24 hours. She said sorry, there’s nothing they can do, but service should restore itself on my phone automatically.

It wasn’t until half an hour ago that my mom called Mr. W when we were sitting in his living room watching a DVD of United 93. My dad’s in the hospital. He’d been there since last night. They couldn’t reach me on my cell all day, and she hadn’t been home to get my message until now because she was at the hospital with him all day, and didn’t even leave his side to eat. He hadn’t been feeling well in his stomach for the past 2 weeks, but figured it’d go away. In the middle of the night Thursday night, my dad got up and was instantly having cold sweats, then he felt too weak to stand. But like a typical stubborn Asian person, he still went to work the full day on Friday. That night, he realized it was internal bleeding, and went to the family doctor, who confirmed the internal bleeding and told him to go into the emergency room right away. His blood pressure was 80/70-something. In the hospital, they paged the on-call doctor over and over, starting at 11a, and the guy didn’t wander in until 4p. Anyway, it’s too late to visit him tonight, but I’m going to go in the morning. He has some procedure scheduled for 10a, so I’ll be there to talk to the medical staff in case there’s any language barrier for understanding instructions or situations. I also called the hospital and talked to my dad, who seems to feel that this isn’t a big deal — at least that’s how he’s putting it to me.

My phone STILL isn’t working. My dad better be fine. If this is the last conversation I have with him I’m going to !@#$ sue the ass off Cingular.

MAN, you people! BLOG something! Entertain me!

I haven’t worked out since last Friday, so this being a long weekend, today was spent walking around at Disneyland and California Adventure, we got back in the late afternoon, and then the rest of the evening was spent Zainoing Mr. W’s car. That car looks niiiiice! A damp terrycloth bath towel slid across the hood and fell off. Of course, through the entire process, even tho I told him I’d do the whole thing myself, Mr. W kept complaining about his labors. I said, “Oh, you’ll feel better when everyone’s admiring your car at work tomorrow. And they’ll say, ‘Gosh, I wish MY wife/girlfriend gave enough of a crap to wash, detail and polish my car for me!’ And you didn’t even have to buy the products!” In the end, I asked doesn’t he have this great sense of accomplishment now with this great looking car that’s gonna end up blinding people on the freeway tomorrow? No, he said disgruntledly. He’d rather pay to have the car washed for him, and he doesn’t expect to ever do this again. I bet he’s gonna take that a car to an automated carwash and have the crap scratched out of it, even tho we just spent hours claybaring and polishing it (3 layers with Gloss Enhancer Spray in between!) with the Z5 swirl remover polish. =P Well, if he doesn’t, this polish job lasts 6 months and all he needs to do between now and then is to wash it with a mild car wash and spray a mist of Z6 anti-static sunscreen Ultra Clean Gloss Enhancer Spray on it. How hard is that?!

*Sigh* I’ll end up doing it when I wash my car, I bet.

Happy Moon Festival Day! Have some moon cakes. And don’t be getting greedy and popping an entire bottle of anti-gravitational vanity pills. If you do, say hi to the bunny in the moon for me!

And for Monday, Happy Columbus Day! It’s a court holiday.

And if you’re Canadian on Monday, Happy Thanksgiving!

I wonder what it is about washing a car that makes it more effective than an Indian rain dance. Today, for instance, I’d only planned on washing and Zaino-ing the car (and I’m pretty excited, cuz I’d be Zaino-ing for the first time so I’ve put aside the entire evening for it; James said it should take about 4 hours), and this morning, it rained. I can’t even remember the last time it rained.

“Rain is OK if you are going to wash it today!,” James emailed. “Just hope it doens’t rain tomorrow. If it does you should walk to work instead to keep the car clean.”

Four-hour process, man! Wash, claybar, wash, polish, remove, polish, remove, polish, remove. I’m gonna take before and after photos. And NOT with my sucky cameraphone, either. (See previous entry’s photos of cats for sample of sucky cameraphone pictures.)

This guy, a 26-year-old named “Mike,” called a talk radio station this morning with a dilemma. Here’s what he said happened.

Yesterday, he and his girlfriend got into a verbal argument over the correct spelling of the word “vegetable.” He said he’d already been having a bad day at work and wasn’t in the most tolerant mood. The fight escalated and the girlfriend snatched Mike’s pen out of his hand and refused to return it. So Mike grabbed for the pen, managed to get it back, but she still had the pen cap. He demanded the pen cap, there was more yelling, and then she ended up throwing the pen cap at him. The cap landed on the ground. He told her to pick it up and give it back, she refused. They argued about that some more. Then the phone rang, she got up to pick it up, but because they were in mid-argument, Mike walked up and hung up the phone. She then “promised” that if she could call back her friend and finish the conversation, that she would pick up the pen cap. He agreed. She called her friend back, they finished their conversation, and then she went into the room, got dressed and put on her makeup, and then left to go to a party with her friends, having never picked up the cap. Mike was fuming, so when she returned, they fought again and they broke up.

The radio show personalities, along with most of the callers, reamed Mike out for being stupid and petty. “It’s a PEN CAP, do you realize that?! Who cares about a damn pen cap? If you can’t get over a PEN CAP, you’ll never get anywhere in a relationship.” Mike insisted it’s more than just the pen cap. It’s the fact that she lied to him and then left. People said, “If she lied, she lied about a PEN CAP! Hello!!”

I tend to agree with Mike. It’s not about a pen cap, even though that’s the subject of the argument. But the pen cap is just a variable, it could’ve been anything that mattered to Mike. The fact is that the girlfriend is physically confrontational (snatching a pen out of his hand, throwing things at him), doesn’t respect him, and is okay with saying “F you” through her actions of saying, “I promise to do this,” and then just leaving without doing it. His feelings are of no consequence to her. Sure it’s a pen cap now, but the fight reveals a lot about her attitude, and the future fights will be the same but about bigger things. Like maybe it’ll be really important to him that she not have this one drink at an event but she insists on the drink and everyone will say, “It’s a DRINK. Get over yourself, Mike,” but really, she’s an alcoholic. People were yelling about how small Mike was to not pick up the damn cap himself. But what about her? She didn’t pick it up, either. They both could’ve stopped it at any time, but both were too stubborn. Who says the guy needs to give first? She was the one who threw the cap.

The fight as I pictured it in my head made me laugh, but it’s full of real red flags to me. These are the kind of red flags you look for early in the relationship as indicators of how the other person deals with problems. I’d like to be (and be with) a person who says, “I may not understand what the big deal is, but I can see that it’s important to you so that’s fine, I’ll do this little effortless thing to make you happy.”