THE CITY

It's the city ya'll. Mid week sorrows are starting to come in today, knowing I still have another few days until I am relatively free. I feel like an inmate whose looking forward to the yard, it's like you're not really out of it, you just have a quick break while within it; it being school. Oh yeah and Thanks to Coldplay for making the 10 minute breaks between my classes feel well spent other than walking or biking.
Today Rico and I are on a mission to Marshalls and Ralph's but first we make an appearance at Lindsay's where shes kicking it watchin....umm... The Omen. Her ACL is doing fine, so is she I guess, just don't ask her to defensive slide anywhere.
After all that fun, the journey began in the most inner-city-ish store that I really know, the discount clothing store. This one happened to be Marshall's but we soon headed to Ross too, but these stores are stocked with the strangest things, probably because if something isn't sold it still stays on the rack and things just pile up. We found this sick giraffe costume, but we don't know if Tiffany would fit in it or not. Oh and to all the stores out there, bring back flannel!
Rico was searching to look thug during soccer, but his skills will have to be the only will and testament to his soccer status for now as we couldn't find him any legit shorts or socks that would gain respect in the soccer community.
We found this though, no idea who would collect these, but hey I guess it looks cool. The city is so eccentric.
Bikes line every dorm, lecture hall, and library in school; With the road bikes commanding the most respect, and for me, especially the fixies. We saw some kids rocking their bike in old, rich La Jolla-ian traffic which could prove dangerous, especially with cops being so vigilante about bikers around here. One day the city will run on two wheels.

On the way back from a relatively unsuccessful mission, other than the fact that we got some stuff from Ralph's, which I'll go into later, Rico stopped by the Sixth piano room to drop some note on Chopin's Revolution. This man is sick on the ivory, or in this case the poorly painted white wood.

88 keys play the tune of the city, Revolution.

We stopped by Rebecca's suite as she hasn't invited us over yet until now, and since we're close, what the heck why not. Obviously Brittania wasn't too happy to see us, just kidding she's just pretending. Rico says the apartments over there are like inner city apartments, looks okay on the outside, and a little cramped on the inside. The only thing that was missing was the viena sausages being eaten with catsup and someone selling hair cuts. Here's Ricardo with a hand-typed second account of what went down in this apartment(take this in, this is his realllll typing, a realllll literature major kids; Take notes): 

We walked into the apartment.  my first impression--poverty.  to our right, a rusting sink, where the girls brush their teeth, lamented its existence.  two unwelcoming doors stood next to each other on the opposite side of the sink.  the doors had shoeprints and broken doorknobs, perhaps a metaphor--the prints, for their struggling lives; the knobs, for their broken dreams that not even the golden key of knowledge can open.  we carefully walked down the stairs.  as we walked down the stairs, the pungant smell of death hit us.  judging from the red markings on the walls, i could only tell myself, "something has died here."   at the bottom of the stairs, a modest-sized living room greeted us.  the couches looked second hand; the torn fabric of the couches only suggested domestic violence.  ten feet away from the living room, a small kitchen constructed of no more than a petite yellow gas stove and an old porcelin sink stared out the window, hoping the sunlight will, someday, unveil the reality of the 1200s way of survival.

Better than Blake hall in Revelle though I guess. These guys are always making the best out of their situations, so they're living pretty well for city folk. Rebecca and Brittania have made their flat pretty nice though, so props.

Fiores per mi amore.

Oh so we laced up Rose with some proper gear in the form of handlebar tape. The white is just so sick, if she didn't catch eyes before she will now.

Thanks to everyone who helped my bike get to where it has now, including Casey Quinn, Ricardo Gonzalez, and everyone else, oh and Chris Lim for giving me the first ride ever on a fixie.

This isn't the same night, but the next night Rigo's was in order because I was wayyyy too hungry wayyyy to late to settle for campus food, so the gang Volvo-ed over to Mira Mesa for the best food we've had in a long while.

Rico still ponders those long nights where he wonders if the city will ever have the hero it deserves.

UTOPIA

Rico says the best part of a game is the process between starting it and beating it. Well that part of the journey has sorrowfully ended for him, as has Bowser's life. He's pretty proud, its a nice accomplishment especially finishing in a few hours total of gameplay.
Speaking of Rico, he's also excited because he just got some new T-shirts from Cortney of none other than the sensai and his wise words, I don't feel i am worthy to utter them so you can just read his shirt backwards.

So we hit up Vista while Rico was sporting his new Tee because we were pretty hungry, keep in mind this is Sunday so we actually have some time to relax. For some reason whenever we sit outside at the canyon we decide to let our old skeletons out of the closet, and this time they were Tim Shib booom baby buya and Alton/BBgun/Bobby.

We just basically filled them in on what is going on with the living situation and the countless adventures we take on everyday. Alton saw his tag and was pretty flattered that someone would do that. I mean he's immortal now, he is basically superman; His kryptonite being a power washer and an angry janitor.

That night I felt in the mood for some more good food, so Jenny and I make a Trader's Joe run for some spaghetti and meat-ay-balls for some dinner for four with Thanson and Rico. For some reason I really like this picture of thanson. Oh and I remember Jenny was angry because we showed a little late and her spaghetti got dry, so sorry about that.

Here's the door that those fools in matthews b-1 have been working on, it looks alright, too bad they're missing a picture of the best suite ever. Don't worry I'll grace their door with a picture of Rico Alton and me.

This fog was a beeeeeeeeeeastttttt coming back, I have no idea why but UCSD has been getting foggier everyday, I think its a manifestation of the clarity of my mind as school gets deeper into the quarter.

Today Chen came over after class because he wanted to go to Price because we found that there are fresh Tamales with no lard being sold at the farmer's market, so I decided the fixie and the Nikon come for a ride.

Rose is just so unique and one of a kind, and overall just gangster. I feel she deserves her own parking spot to be appreciated because she is leagues above all these other bikes. She is like the Cinderella and the other bikes are like the ugly, mean sisters.

So at Price apparently they are saying No on prop 4 and 8. I don't know much about prop 4, but right now I hope you vote No on 8 because equality is constitutional and it's something we can't lose.

We finally arrive at the awaited Tamales, the Oasis, Utopia, or Paradise if you will after the journey in the desert. Once we got there we found the tamales were actually frozen and they cost about 3.50 which is impossibly ridiculous for a sliver of chicken covered in maza, I mean unless they were homemade mama ricardo's. I guess Paradise is Lost.

Remember kids no on 8, keep our laws in line with the constitution.

So at night we remembered to celebrate our favorite Indian holiday, DAWALI! We did it big with some cookies from Earl's place and candles as we were serenaded by Michael Scott's rendition of Jolly Dawali. Everybody crowded around the cookie plate as they were smelling 30% delicious.

Merry Dawali? who blows out the candles? Supposedly the lights represent the triumph of good over evil and this ceremoney is supposed to blow away the bad spirits of your life. Mine are still floating around somewhere in Matthews and just waiting behind a corner to pounce on me and make me feel like crap again, but for now I feel like a new man.

Happiness falls on us as Dawali commences.

Enjoy the lights and entertainment, enjoy life. The show: Michael Scott's singing. 

If you are what you say you are
a superstar
then have no fear 
the crowd is here 
and the lights are on and they want a show 

STOP THIS TRAIN

I haven't kept you guys updated about what's in the box but imagine your entire life bundled up into one piece of equipment. Well that's what arrived to Warren today for Rico. 
Kangaroo leather cleats, whatchu know about that? Rico's game is about to get to another level, if you're name isn't Marquez, you can't touch him, and unless your name is Maradona you might as well give up on offense, and unless your named Beckham, you don't have as many women flocking around you. word.

I remembered when I was a little kid, whenever I'd get a toy I would get home and play with it right away. So he laced up his kicks and put those marsupials to work.

This is the last look of my room before I depart for about 24 hrs. to my home in the LF! That's Lake Forest for you non-Orange Curtain Folks. Pack it up and move it out. Train of life never stops.

So I have my mom and dad awaiting my arrival watching some soaps when I get back, and like any parents would do they make sure to feed their college kid some real food. Beef stew and bread, welcome home.

Next morning is when we get cracking at the break of 12:30. Hungry, I decided that Yogi's is in call as it has been a while since I've had those amazing beef bowls with sushi. Actually I didn't pick it, but I was happy with the decision, it was actually Jenny's idea, yeah she decided to come along for the ride home; I'll introduce her more when she comes up.

Main event: hair cut from my barber, Bac "Fast Hands" Thao. It went fine, although he says awesome and perfect very often and in an accent that you would expect slathered on Dat Phan. He styles my hair strangly too, I'll have to change that later.

Grandpapa eyeing my camera. I see you. This dude is still sharp as a tack at 90 or so. This fool walks to Little Saigon everyday to get coffee and read the newspaper then comes back home. I sometimes am truly worried for him. I mean he's been hit buy a bus, fallen off his bike, and been hit by a car. This is a man without a cell phone also, I'm truly worried for you gramps. My wildests dreams are that your train will stop before it reachs the station.

This is the grandma that carried me from our apartment in the ghetto into Little Saigon everyday so that I could play in the arcade. She would buy me all the video games I wanted, and would walk me to school everyday. I grew up with her taking care of me rather than my parents. One of the most important people in my life, hopefully one day I'll be able to make her proud, and show her that all that heavy lifting wasn't in vain. Conducter, hit the brakes.

No asian house is complete without a Buddha statue.

Now I just try to repay them and carry them whereever their hearts desire. Today they desired a triop to the grocery store, and not any grocery store, the super asian mart.

Usually you find the most ghetto and sketch stuff in here but today look at what I found, who said you can't buy happiness? Get that person to Saigon City. Apparently happiness only costs about 3 bucks a box.

My grandma apparently passed up happiness for lemons, what irony.

So here's another important part of my life, Ms. Manegold, she's a little out of focus, but I was going for that. She apparently didn't mind coming, hopefully she had a good time, I'm glad she came.

Get those pears out of here.

I guess my grandpa already found his happiness. He likes DVDs a lot. His life revolves around technology even though he didn't grow up with much of it. He's just fascinated with his DVD player and one day I hope to buy him a videocamcorder, because everytime I see him around one its like seeing a kid with his face pressed up against the glass of a toy store before Christmas.

This is who Neyo was talking about in Miss Independent, she does her own taxes too. It's a hard knock life out there kids, especially in recession.

So my step grandfather is one of the best artists I know, the messages he conveys in his art come straight from the experiences and knowledge he has about Vietnamese culture, life, and identity. His work is just an amazing mixture of impressionism and surrealism. I'm glad to say I personally know a literally world famous artist.

This is the uncle and other grandma, shes a little sick so I'm going to leave her be as she isn't feeling well.

They have the sickest koi pond I've ever seen. I remember as a kid being so curious about these fish and even now so amazed by such a simple fish, so large that it seems like they grew through the years right along side of me.

Food was in call after that and my father always finds a reason for a photo opportunity. This is precious.

Black Angus, yum. Too bad the food took forever to get to us, thankfully some conversation and joking humor from my mom at the waiter got me through it. Good company helped too. I feel they never get any older when I see them, maybe their train already took a pitstop.

So after all waiting and prime rib we finish our trek with some music, night driving, and topped off with yogurt from yogurt world. UCSD needs to finish their yogurt world in the new Price Center already. Thankfully for Alice's grades it has yet to be finished.

The night ends with a visit from my favorite suitemate's mother, Rico's mom. No tacos in hand, but she came with some good company and humor. I wish I could just steal the steam from all my close trains because for me I wish they would just stay where they are.