Tooboe

This sucks. This really, really sucks.

So I got the part of Mrs. Linde in a production of A Doll's House, which is super awesome. And I just got sent the rehearsal and performance schedule. It's only showing for two weekends and one of those weekends clashes with Yaoicon.

I don't know what to do. I really want to go to Yaoicon and see everyone from CoE and hang with my friends, but I also really want to be in this play with people I know from school and have more experience doing acting outside of a school environment.

My badge for Yaoicon has already been bought and I have a hotel room reserved for everyone from CoE. But I'm also already committed to this play and I know I'll leave the rest of the cast high and dry if I back out.

I had the crazy idea of just driving back and forth between the two that weekend, but the performances are on Friday evening, Saturday afternoon, Saturday evening, and Sunday afternoon... which is, like, the entirety of Yaoicon. Plus, it's an hour and a half drive time between the two.

*is miserable*

So here I am in the Taiwan airport waiting for my plane which got delayed. I can't wait to get back to the states.

Thanks everyone for the birthday wishes! Sorry China sucks at Livejournal.

Give me something to read when I get home. Tell me what series everyone is interested in right now.

Argh, having hard time remembering that far back... I blame the absolutely horrific headache I had at the time. Internet for the Venetian was expensive, so I just let it run out cause I didn't wanna pay for a whole day when I was gonna be asleep through the night and leave the next morning. Well, let's get right to it. We started out looking for the all-you-can-eat buffet at the Cafe Deco:


( Food behind this cut! )

Today I let mom drag me out to breakfast. Like, actually outside the hotel. I was hoping for some good ol' Taiwan street food.

We went to McDonald's.

The only interesting thing that happened was seeing two hookers on a scooter stop to talk to their pimp. The entire morning was full of boring. I did get to talk to Sabs again though. After getting our luggage packed, we decided to hit the streets one last time (for me anyway).


( Photographs, ho! )

My legs were next to go. My feet were so sore, I was beyond pain. But my legs were another story. I figured I must have strained the hell out of my quads somehow, because every time I use stairs or walk on a slope, it's agony. Oh, we're not talking about the "damn, it hurts so much to move" type of agony. This is outright "every step I take, the muscle trembles like it's barely holding on and my legs might give out from under me" type of agony. Which feels really similar to being stabbed in the thighs with several dull knives.

Regardless, I followed mom and Michael down a flight of stairs to the breakfast lounge. If there's one thing that would keep me going, it's damn good food.


( We're gonna go straight to pics )

Dunno if anyone else reads Looking For Group, but this totally cracked me up. Hell, even if you don't, watch it anyway. It's still funny XD

The next day started out with my mom barging into our room at 5am. Apparently, there was food to be got and it needed to be gotten at the butt-crack of dawn. Screw that. I let mom drag Michael out, but I stayed behind to call Sabs via Skype. After mom and Michael came back full of food, we all decided to explore the swimming pool and spa areas. We played around in the gym for a while, but didn't get to do any swimming.

This day was full of walking. There was so much walking. Painful, horrific walking. We first went back to the subway station and took a train to this huge bookstore. It's a 24 hour bookstore, which is wicked awesome. Well, except for the fact that everything's in Chinese. Including all the manga XD After that, we headed to the 101 building to meet mom's friend for lunch.


( Here come more pictures )

So things started off with me confusing exactly which day we were leaving. Good thing I'm pretty good at last minute packing. People who have previously dealt with me traveling know that more often than not, I miss my flight. This is generally counteracted with my mom's habit of leaving ridiculously early. The end result - we were checked in and through security only three hours before our flight started boarding.

It wasn't always the case, but seems to me lately that most airports discriminate against electric sockets. There seriously wasn't a single outlet to plug in my laptop. I didn't want to wear out the battery so early in the game, considering I have a 12 hour flight ahead of me and many chapters of D Gray-Man eagerly waiting to keep me entertained. Luckily I had a handy-dandy pack of cards with me, and for three hours, mom, Michael and I played rounds of Rummy and War.

The flight itself was amazingly boring. In fact, the only highlight was when food was served. It all tasted nasty. I'm not exactly sure how they got sealed containers of yogurt down to the same quality as the rest of the food. They probably injected it with cat piss. The remaining time was divided between sleeping and reading D Gray-Man manga, and somewhere along the line, I fell in love with General Cross. I don't know why. That man has an effect on people, and I am not immune.

By the time the plane was about to land, Michael and I were so delirious, we started giggling over the idea of fandubbing scenes of D Gray-Man with voices from Family Guy. I personally would laugh my ass off to hear Herbert's voice come out of Tyki or Joe's voice from Crowley.

( Here's where pics come in )

But apparently it is midnight back home, so everyone's asleep D:

I just had the most ridiculous dispatch ever.

So this fire alarm goes off, and I pull up the account. Like usual, I call the number for the fire dept associated with that account. The fire dept sounded slightly confused when I gave them the address, but they said they'll send a truck out.

About 15 minutes pass.

Fire dept calls back to verify the address. It was correct. They ask for a cross street. The account doesn't list a cross street. They ask for the resident's contact number. The account lists no contact numbers. Finally, they said "we're on ______ Street, but there's no number ____. This address doesn't exist."

Oh. Okay. So with nothing more they can do, they cancel the dispatch. I check the number for the fire dept on the account again, and that's when I noticed... the number for the fire dept had a 415 area code, but the number for the police dept had a 650 area code. Okay. Figuring they must've listed the wrong city's fire dept on this account, I tried calling the police dept number, figuring they could give me the correct number for the fire dept.

I get an answering machine for some investment company. So now I'm really confused.

I try calling 411 and asking for the San Mateo Fire Dept. They gave me a number. Wonderful. I call the number and... nothing. Not even any ringing. I dial the number and there's complete silence. Very weird. So I call 411 again and asked to verify the number. The operator said there was another number listed for San Mateo Fire Dept.

So I call that number and actually get a fire dept! I tried to dispatch them, but they were like "...we're the fire dept for San Mateo County. You want the fire dept for San Mateo City."

I was SO ready to start pulling my hair out. I asked if they had the correct number, but they didn't. However, they had a number to some company who is connected to the San Mateo City Fire Dept. Okay, it's another step forward. I call the number and the person answering on the other end was not happy. Sure, they dispatched, but they were a private line and the person told me not to call back. But they'll dispatch this once. Because they didn't have the correct number either.

And finally, a little over half an hour after the alarm initially goes off, the correct fire dept was on their way to the correct address.

It was a false alarm.

Rawr, finally home! That was utterly ridiculous. Mom had me go to the Chinese consulate (?!) in San Francisco to get our Visa stuff ready for our trip to China. There used to be a line-type deal, we just stand in line and wait our turn at the window. Now they changed it to a numbered ticket system, which is good for people who'd rather sit and wait or take their chance coming back. Or it could be bad, since the line system used to take less time. Well, I had number 167, and they were on 119, so I estimated about an hour wait, since they opened up half an hour ago. I guess I could've gone and had some lunch, then come back in under an hour... but it was only an estimate and I didn't want to chance it.

So I took a seat and ended up sitting next to this little girl from hell. She was loud and annoying, screaming in my ear and squirming all over the seat next to me. Then she lied down with her head on her mom's lap and her dirty, nasty shoes nearly kicking me. I gave her and her mother a dirty look, and the mother tried to chastise her, but she'd have none of it. Then she wanted to sit in her dad's lap and when he said no, she practically screamed. It was horrible. I was on the phone with Sabs the entire time and I think she left me talking to myself to get away from the little girl :P

Finally, they called my number (haha, exactly an hour) and I gave the woman at the window our passports and paperwork. For some reason, they changed the policy so we also needed copies of our tickets and hotel reservations. I had to call mom to get her to fax the stuff over, and in the meanwhile, the lady at the window took a couple more people while I waited. Finally, she stood up and went over to the fax machine and retrieved the papers. But it was only the plane stuff, not the hotel info. So I had to call mom again, and she said she'll fax them again. More waiting. Five minutes pass. I call mom again and had her try faxing it again in case, for some reason, it didn't go through. She did. More minutes pass. I ask some more. Still nothing. Ten more minutes pass.

I try asking the lady at the window between her helping other people, but she still kept saying there's nothing that came in. I asked her to check, but she got >:E and said, "Look, I can see the fax machine from here. There's no papers!"

So I go back to waiting. I hear from a different window, someone else ask about a fax. THAT lady got up to check on the fax machine. And I saw her put more paper into the damn thing. Immediately, it spat out a shitload of papers. Amongst the first are three copies of our hotel info. The lady at my window didn't even bother getting up to go fetch them, she waited until someone brought the papers to her. Then she helped me in silence.

By the time I got out of there, another hour had passed. Now I understand why people tend to blow up places like this. I'm tempted to myself.

It kinda pisses me off that I don't even have an appropriately sad icon. Two days ago, on June 10th, Carol informed me that Richard had died. She knew him better than I did, but he was still a good friend. He was funny and awesome... and my fondest memory of him was when we were in that one hotel room together in the middle of the night, trying to stay awake so we could watch this movie, but ended up passing out just a couple minutes into it.

He was also a fantastic musician, and I'm glad I had the chance to hear him play live. For anyone unfamiliar with him (my entire f-list except for Carol?) and would like to hear a sample of his music, you can go to his myspace.

Good bye, Richard. I wish we could have spent more time together. I'll miss you.

I didn't think anything could be cuter than this manga... until I saw the anime. The only downside is each episode is, like, a chapter of the manga. Meaning it's only a few minutes long XD


Episode 1




Episode 2




Episode 3

After adjusting my medication 4 times, I was due again for a follow up phone check up appointment thing with my psychiatrist.

He thought my name was Karen. :/

This isn't the first time he thought my name was Karen.

From the beginning of the week, I've been having a fight with my mom. Basically, I have a pet snake. Mom doesn't like snakes. Regardless of the fact that I keep him in my apartment that is an hour and half from where she lives, and is a place that she never comes to, she wants me to get rid of him. There's a lot of bribing and threatening involved. Eventually, I agreed to adopt him out. So for a while, I was posting ads, asking around, etc etc etc. But when I got involved in Romeo and Juliet, that kinda got put on the back burner. Now that school's over, I've started posting on Craigslist and stuff again. On Monday, it came up and there was a big argument. Over IM no less.

What she said that totally pissed me off:
"You should honor your word. I should know from the beginning you are not going to keep your word."

And then I replied:
"What the FUCK do you think I'm doing right now?"

So I got pissed because she's basically calling me a liar. And she got pissed because I used a swear word. After a lot more yelling over IM, she just stopped replying. So in return, I blocked her. That was back on Monday. Then yesterday, while I was out at a bar, she text messages me

"If you don't want to go on this trip, I'm going to cancel your ticket. Block me on AIM will only cause delay."

So I called her and told her I want her to apologize for calling me a liar. To which she said I was being disrespectful for using a swear word. Okay, fine. I apologized. But then she refused to apologize for calling me a liar because she thinks she's in the right. More yelling happens. I got not-drunk. Now today, more IM yelling...


( Come see the Asian Mom in full rage )


And then she stopped replying. Man, my head hurts... But going by how past arguments worked, we're just gonna go fume and next time we meet face to face, act like nothing's happened. I hate having a crazy Asian mom... I guess there is no way I'm gonna tell her about my motorcycle now.

I promised myself I'd do better with keeping up to date on my f-list and posting more... Apparently, I lied to myself. Let's try again. Here's some photos of edchii's visit, my last day of school and Fanime:


( Cut for your pleasure )


If you got through all that, congrats. Wow, 90% of the photos I took were of Sabs. Miss her ;___;

That's 17 inches in my hand.

I've taken so many pictures backstage, but I've been lazy putting them on LJ... They're on my facebook, however. And they're public, so if you wanna see them all, go there. But here, ( I'll post my favorite out of all the pics I've taken: )<3

Huzzah!! Tonight's show went really well, and fairegoddess came to see it! I was so happy to know someone who wasn't related to me or in the theater dept XD That just totally made my night.

The downside was there were people in the audience who kept text messaging, even after we gave the announcement to please turn off cell phones. It's really annoying. Like, you think you're hiding it well? You're not. Us actors on the stage can see the glow from your cell phones clear as day. And it's very distracting.

Speaking of which, while we were doing the prologue, someone's cell phone went off. I mean, come on! I know you're forced to be there because of a class, but have some respect! We were saying the teacher should give a student an automatic F if they're caught using their cell phone during a performance.

There was one girl who was texting during Dara's scene, and Dara went over to her and covered the girl's cell phone with her fan while staying in character. That was hilarious.

Another downside was that Alyssa got whacked in the head with a sword, and she had a huge welt on her forehead for the rest of the night. Thank goodness my first aid kit had an ice pack. That really helped. The MacBeth curse continues!