I am part of the blame for this depression – although I try to sneak in some festive Chinese elements like a red shirt, I plot to appear at work as “normally” as possible.  Not gonna make a big deal out of it, just like how millions of other Chinese people will not take the day off or close their businesses to celebrate.  Unless you’re “in the know”, you would not even realize that the most important holiday to 4 million people in America has just gone by.  We kinda treat it like a big secret.

When I see the Japanese and Koreans put on traditional costumes for holidays and ceremonies, and when I see the Jewish observe their Sabbath ritual on a weekly basis, I often wonder, what the hell are we doing for our Chinese traditions?  If anything should be embraced as the Big Deal, shouldn’t it be the new year for the 1.3 BILLION people on Earth?  Unfortunately, it seems to be our cultural trait that we do not insist on sticking to our cultural traits.  We adapt and evolve, just like the essence of Darwinist survival.  We cook colorful General Tzo’s Chicken for stupid white people… heck, we make sushi and tacos, too!  We’re proudly Chinese by blood, and we don’t need anything superficial to prove or reaffirm this identity.  Or maybe we don’t even care?  It’s hard to say.

So it goes back to the Chinese New Year, the most glorious and festive holiday that somehow people don’t take as seriously as Cinco de Mayo.  I hate being reminded how pathetic we are toward our own selves.  What the hell.  One day, I’m going to change this.

Around New Year 2010, however, I “broke” my left hand.  According to the doc, it’s “just” an inflammation.  I think the formal name is deQuervain’s Tendinitis, but I wouldn’t quote myself on that :p   The cause was unknown – most likely due to overuse with the combination of office work, gym, and video games.  Or maybe it was as simple as a cursed bad luck

Well, four weeks later, as this problem was seemingly on its way to recovery, it got symmetrically reproduced on my other hand.  Now I feel like a big cripple with very restricted range of motion on either hand.  Performing certain simple daily tasks has become quite tricky.

Not sure what to say other than “this sucks”.  After one already unlucky year, this is not my preferred way of starting a new year.  But the benefit of being an Asian person is that, we do follow two calendars.  Therefore, instead of calling both 2009 and 2010 unlucky, I can simply think of the year of ox as the terrible one and pray for a real sweet year of tiger

Speaking of depression, a lot of those used-to-be commuters must be crying in the warmth of their homes after series of layoffs by just about every major employer.  I should probably work harder to avoid the next wave of layoffs.  After all, I won’t regret never experiencing the Great Depression myself.  That’s right, I should work harder.  Came into mind was the project plan that I should’ve sent out two days ago but didn’t go out because I skipped out of work early.  Skipping work sort of contradicted working hard, neither did missing deadline.  Maybe… I should work harder.  Stepping out of the tunnel to the brisk Seventh Avenue morning chill, I decided to walk toward the office on this holiday.

Putting down the left shoulder bag, the right shoulder bag, the baggy hat, scarf, and coat, I breathed a sigh of relief.  The relief from being extendedly fat.  Oh yeah I also took out the four things from the coat pockets and left them on my office desk.  The bags were really heavy because of the vodka and rum that I brought for the Thanksgiving dinner with family.  Good stuff they were, but the problem was that there were too much good stuff.  Who ever thought of drinking vodka with turkey, and who in the right mind cared for a mojito on a wintery night?  Ice wine beat them out in popularity, so they only served as decorative bottles after being unfrozen from my fridge and frozen and unfrozen again in the family fridge.  I brought them from Queens to Manhattan to Queens to Manhattan to Jersey and back in Manhattan again.  They were soon to return to Queens without even being opened.  They might make the record for the most travelled hard liquor.  I suddenly wanted a rum & coke.

My thirst for the rum & coke escalated.  No reason, honestly, or maybe there was a reason.  I stared at the water bottle next to the laptop and then stared at the coffee mug next to the phone.  Would it not be interesting to drink, and by drink I mean the happy hour sort of drinking, right here in this office?  I’d have consumed enough liquids and caffeine in this stressful environment so maybe it’s time to try something different while nobody was here to lay me off.  This would be the first time I drank in the morning and it’d be the first time I drank in the office.  Actually that sounded like Great Depression already.

I walked into the kitchen to find coke for my rum & coke.  I didn’t need much; just a little bit to symbolize this office drinking event would be enough.  I walked toward the fridge and was amazed by the number of water bottles left in there… I must not be the only one who skipped work before Thanksgiving.  When people work hard or moderately hard or even slack off just a little bit, the daily supply of water wouldn’t last more than three hours.  So, good, there was water.  And there was Hawaiian Punch and Canada Dry and Seltzer Water.  No Coke.  No joke.  Ah.  It’d be pretty hard to make rum & coke with no coke.  And by no Coke, I meant there was no Pepsi, either.  There wasn’t even a diet version of either of those left, not that I’d ever be sad enough to resort to a diet soda.  Damn it.  I opened the fridge and closed it.  The nasty free sample of Pom Iced Coffee that I put in there was still in there.  How come nobody wanted to try it?  And how come there was no Coke?

Frustrated, I took out a can of Hawaiian Punch and walked back toward my cubicle.  It wasn’t exactly that sad, actually, because now I could make vodka punch.  In fact, I’d much prefer vodka over rum.  I sat down in my nice ergonomic office chair, thinking how comfy this chair was and how the chiropractor told me that no matter how good the chair was working twelve-hour days in it would still be really bad for my back.  I reached into the bag that used to be on my left shoulder and unwrapped the t-shirt and plastic bag around the frosted glass bottle.  I pulled out the 750ml Grey Goose and it was dripping water from the defrosting process from the freezer.  I pulled the cork out of the bottle neck, and noticed a slightest scratch on the beautifully frosted glass bottle.  Damn it.  When did I scratch this?  I carefully examined the little white marks next to the “40% ALC/VOL” label, and wondered if the defect came with it from the liquor store.  Sigh.  Oh well.  I bought this Grey Goose for the vodka; for the beautiful bottle I still had my Belvedere at home.  No need to think too much at this point.  Remember how I came into the office so I could work harder?  I poured two drips of Grey Goose into the paper cup of ice, and filled it with Hawaiian Punch.  A droplet of the hot pink beverage remained on the top of the can.  I licked it off.  I held up the paper cup and had a sip of my first cocktail in the office.  Oh this was also the first time I had a cocktail from a paper cup.

I looked at the scratch on the Grey Goose bottle one more time and thought about this short essay that I read the other day.  It inefficiently used a lot of words to describe a small scene, going on paragraphs after paragraphs without really telling any story.  I thought it was an interesting essay, and now I thought I could try to write something like it.  Putting down the frosted glass bottle, I decided that I’d write an essay just like it but in English.  Maybe I would also mention in the essay how I needed to work harder and send out the project plan.

I had seen the first Batman movie many times as a kid where he battled the Joker.  This remake is nothing the original could compare to (pretty dark and scary too).

The story began when Steve claimed that he could eat 7 McDonald’s cheeseburgers in one go.  Didn’t sound like a big challenge to me but was unbelievable to the petite Sue (who wasn’t there when our team dined with a client at Morton’s, by the way).  She took us on a bet.  Steve and I took her on because it’d be a free meal on her.  Yeah, we guys are cheap like that.

So we sat down in a conference room and finished the stuff in just under 20 minutes.  The burgers were made fresh, but didn’t taste all that good after the 2nd or 3rd.  That’s probably why they don’t sell a Seven-Cheeseburger Value Meal.  I really didn’t care about the 2,100 calories or the 84 grams of fat, but the 5,250mg / 217% daily intake sodium scared me a little.  I also completed my meal with a can of Coke.  Steve had a Diet (because he needed to be on one!). Sue had her single cheeseburger, small fries, and a small drink, and got “too full”.

Right before the grand finale

In the end, it wasn’t that difficult of a meal (certainly not at the level of TWO Philly Cheesesteaks…), but it was my first competition-styled meal where I consumed large quantities of the same stuff (dumplings don’t count).  What made it slightly challenging was that we had to go back to work right afterwards.

Thanks for lunch, Sue!

I like the design and love the colors from this store, but the stuff is so darn expensive!  $235 retail price for merely five items!  Thank goodness for sale deals, coupons stackable with sales, and multiple checkout, I walked out with my stuff after paying only $115.

I’m curious about the business model behind this type of clothing stores, Barnes & Noble, and those online florists… there is always a coupon available somewhere, so if you’re among the few who don’t know about it and end up paying full retail price, you’re screwed.  It’s sort of like street vendors in China and their margin for bargain.  Yet that’s considered evil business practice while stores like Express is “high class”?

So the blog is back with a brand-new look.  b2 had served me well, but it was approaching five years old, not to mention how its support ceased right before I even started using it.  It’s finally time for me to join the community of WordPress users and enjoy the convenience of off-the-shelf upgrades, plugins, and themes.  Hope this configuration will last me another five years

Given my work schedule that will for sure prevent me from posting when I want to post stuff, I’ll consider blogging in Tim-style – with lots of retrospective posts.  We’ll see how it works.