Top: First pair of glasses I ever had. Large, plastic, nerdy, but durable

Middle: Forgot to mention this pair in my original blog, but Piya's basketball story reminded me. Notice one side is broken off and there is a big blob of superglue that was obviously not enough to keep it connected to the rest.

Bottom: The soldered pair I talked about, broke at the bridge.

It was Olivia's bday on Friday and I have a couple people to thank for helping me out. First, thanks to Vira for going with me to get her gift a few weeks ago. I hate shopping alone and I have bad taste in picking out stuff so I appreciate it a lot. Second, thanks to Dennis for consulting his local "food people connections" to recommend a restaurant. We ended up going to Chicago Prime Steakhouse in Schaumburg and it was pretty good, I'd recommend it to anyone who likes steak. The filet mignon (Olivia's order) seemed to be a little better than the prime (mine), but both were satisfying.

Anyways, I told Olivia that she should be nice to all of my friends, if for no other reason than the fact that they are the ones who end up choosing what she gets for her birthdays, Christmas, etc., and stuff like that.

I was listening to the radio one time and someone was saying that guys should never get on their girlfriend's friends' bad sides. Because, when she goes out with her friends, they are the ones who will either keep her in check and loyal to you, or encourage her to dance and flirt with other guys. I guess I never thought about it much in that way, but it seems to make sense. Note to self: don't piss off girlfriend's friends.

Happy birthday wishes also go to Piya, Linda, and anyone else I might be missing. Dang, we're all getting so old. People buying houses and getting married and everything.

I think the best meal I have ever had (hopefully my mom doesn't read my blog) was a couple months ago at Bob Chinn's, with a steak and crab leg combo. The main reason it was so good is because I was so hungry beforehand, and it filled me up to the point where I was full enough, but not miserable, Yen-ching buffet style full.

For Halloween, I bought a couple bags of candy to give out to trick-or-treaters. Only about 2 groups of kids came to trick-or-treat at the townhouse, so if anyone likes Nerds or Butterfinger BB's, come on out to Palatine and get some. I'll even give you two, if you have a cool costume.

My brain is especially scattered on this Monday morning, hence the preceding part of this blog was not very good or organized. I'm gonna post something I wrote in more clear-headed moments, a collection of my major thoughts on friendship. It's an important subject, of course, as there are few things more valuable in life than having good friends. I started writing down these things a long time ago, and then added stuff once in a while whenever I thought of something to add. I don't know that it captures all my thoughts completely, but I think it's about as close to complete as it will ever be, so here it is.

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Expectations Of Friends

I think one area of my life where I've always had low expectations is friends. Basically, as long as we have some things in common, can carry a good conversation and have a good time hanging out together, then I'll be more than happy to have you as a friend.

The fact is, I don't need my friends to buy me gifts or do stuff on my birthday. I don't expect them to listen to me talk about my problems and be supportive (I'm not a woman, anyways). I don't expect them to put me ahead of their girlfriends/boyfriends to chill with me all the time. If I see a friend every day, or once a year, I consider them a good friend either way.

If we go out to eat, and you shortchange me on the bill once in a while, I usually don't sweat it. If we go out a lot, and you never buy me a drink, that's fine too. If you leave the bar without saying bye to me, I won't cry. If you don't return my email, my voicemail, or ignore me on IM, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt 90% of the time. I rarely worry about the little things. And if you need a favor, I'll always try my best to be there to drive you to the airport, loan you $20, or help you move out, without ever expecting anything in return.

As I make myself sound like a god, I really have to say that overall, I don't think it's hard at all to be friends with me. I have pretty low expectations, and honestly, if you happen to exceed any of the things I mentioned above (as most of my friends do), I always appreciate it that much more, and I consider it a bonus. So I'd say that as a result, I've been happy with pretty much all of my friendships, past and present.

However, I can't say that I have no expectations of my friends at all. There are still things that do bother me, and I take them seriously. For example, if you act fake towards me, I'll spot it right away and it will annoy the hell out of me. There's not a lot of things I hate more than people who aren't real with themselves and with me. The way I see it, a fake smile is worse than no smile at all. An insincere handshake is so insulting. And acting one way in front of some people, and a completely different way in front of others, that's pretty shady too.

If you talk behind my back, or talk about my friends behind their backs, tread carefully. The thing is, I can actually tolerate a little of that stuff, to some point. It's understood that everyone likes to spread some harmless gossip or complain about their friends once in a while, even though I try to avoid doing that stuff myself. But there is a line between what is harmless and what is not. If you let the unnecessary talking get out of hand, you will lose me as a friend.

If you have a problem with me, you should just tell it to my face. If it's unresolvable and we can't be friends, then the friendship wasn't worth it anyways. I'd rather have no friend at all, than one who just acts like they are my friend. Don't be a pussy and only talk smack to other people, what is that supposed to accomplish?

If I happen to "diss" you for whatever reason when you ask me to hang out, don't give me a hard time about it. That's just annoying. Because I don't make you feel bad when you tell me "no". Like I said before, I wouldn't take it personally if you chose to hang out with your gf/bf instead of me, or had other plans already. Or if you were too tired to do anything. Or you were just in a bad mood. Or it was just inconvenient. So what right do you have to get pissy if it was me in those situations? The answer is: none whatsoever.

If you are extremely selfish and/or self-centered, I can only handle that kind of attitude to a certain point. When you turn every little thing into a huge drama, you need to chill and get over yourself. It's time to realize that no, the world does not revolve around you and it's stupid to take every single thing personally. When something doesn't go your way, it doesn't mean the world is against you.

That's all I can think of for now. I'm not directing these thoughts to any one individual. Hopefully no one gets "med-student syndrome" and automatically starts thinking that all these things apply to them. It's mainly a collection of thoughts I've gathered from either personal experience or observing other people's lives. Mostly, I wanted to think seriously for a moment about what is important to me in friendships and what is not, and write it down somewhere.

And I know I'm not a perfect friend myself, but if anyone spots any of these things in me, do let me know so I can try to change. Because anything I expect out of my friends, I should expect just as much out of myself, if not more. And really, that's all I ask of people. Hold yourself to the same set of standards that you hold others to, stricter if at all possible. The world would be such a nicer, friendlier place if people could just do that.

Tales of a Vision Impaired Boy

Nearsightedness been a part of my life since I was in 2nd grade. Whether it was because I watched too much TV and played too many video games (my mom's theory), or because my parents made me do too much reading and math problems (my theory), or just plain heredity from my dad (the logical scientific theory that makes the most sense), the fact is that I've had to live about 2/3 of my life needing either glasses or contacts, and it sucks.

For the lucky people out there who have never had to wear glasses or contacts, I envy and hate you. The rest of you mortals, I'm sure you feel my pain. I've decided to share all of my nearsightedness-related sob stories in this blog.

From about 2nd grade through junior high or so, I had glasses, no contacts yet. If you go back and look at my old class pictures, you can see the progression through the years of my awesome style in eyewear. It started with the old, clunky, super nerdy plastic frame. Not only was it the most uncool color possible for a 8 year old boy (a sort of translucent light brownish beige), but it was also so huge that it covered more than half of my face. At least, if nothing else, it was a super durable frame, as I think I still have that original pair sitting somewhere in my room in Darien.

Don't underestimate "durability", either, because later on I would learn the full value of a frame that doesn't easily break. After one or two more pairs of ugly plastic frames, me and my parents finally got with the program and decided to move up to the metal wire-rimmed glasses. Score one for the little playa Joe and the elementary school ladies! But actually, my pimp factor did not improve very much, due to the fact that I had these super thick lenses to go with them, thus obscuring my pretty eyes and also making the frames look way too tiny as well.

In addition to this, whatever aesthetic benefits remained from the "upgrade" to wire-rim frames were quickly lost when I broke them playing basketball. When I say broke, I don't mean bent, I mean snapped in half where the bridge is. Now, instead of sucking up the cost and buying a new frame, my dad decided he had a better solution to fix my glasses (this story is very typical of my dad, by the way, and I love him very much regardless).

His solution was to go to Venture (the hip store in Darien those days before Walmart came along, now defunct), buy a cheap soldering kit, and solder my frames together. Yes that's right, I walked around town for about a couple years, wearing glasses that were soldered together at one side of the bridge. If you don't know what that looks like, just picture a big blob of melted aluminum at the part where the middle piece meets the oval part that holds the lense. I'd post a picture if I had one handy, but I don't. For now, just trust me when I say that it wasn't a pretty sight. Not that it mattered much... actually now that I think about it, my ghetto-looking glasses probably went pretty well with the rest of my look, with my tight sweatpants, cheap shoes from Payless, and purple bookbag.

To make matters worse about my soldered glasses, they didn't exactly hold up very well to the bumps and bruises that come with being in 5th and 6th grade. Every once in a while, they would snap again at that spot, at which point I'd have to go to my dad to slop even more solder there to hold it. I remember on more than one occasion having to go through half a day of school after breaking them in recess, holding the two separated pieces of my glasses in place with my hands the whole time, just so my blind ass could see the board. Needless to say, I looked and felt like quite the idiot on those days.

Then there was the time I was at Camp Edwards in 6th grade, when I got hit in the face playing tetherball. My glasses flew off, I couldn't see anything, and all I could feel was blinding pain in my eyes. They took me to the nurse, and when some of the tears finally cleared enough to see where I was, the first thing I asked was "are my glasses broken?" The nurse's reaction is one that I'll always remember: "kid, you just got your face smashed in pretty hard, your left eye is swollen completely shut right now, and you're worried about your glasses?" If nothing else, what a testament to how severely Chinese parents drill in their kids the importance of saving money.

Eventually, I moved on to contact lenses. (By the way, for anyone who is wondering, I'm pretty sure those soldered glasses are still sitting on a shelf in my room next to the huge plastic ones - in two pieces, no less). Again, it was a case where I enjoyed a very slight improvement looks-wise, but mostly found that it was just a continuation of all the frustrating experiences that come along with having bad eyesight.

Back then, with the contact lens industry not yet having been deregulated in our economy, contacts were a lot more expensive than they are today. Also, disposables were not very popular/common, as they are now. As a result, losing a contact was serious business. And boy, did I lose my share of contacts. There's too many stories involving times when I lost or almost lost my contacts to write about in one blog entry, but I will say that the most common way I lost my contacts was when I threw them away myself in a moment of absentmindedness. I lost at least about 5 or 6 pairs simply by rinsing out and dumping the contents of my contact lens case down the sink, when I had just finished cleaning them at the end of the day. Really makes me kick myself for being so dumb, especially when I think about the agonizing times I spent trying to find a lost contact in the family room rug or underneath my desk during class.

I also screwed myself over during the first few months of wearing contacts by not having common sense. For whatever reason, I treated the disinfecting solution and saline as if it were liquid gold, so I cleaned my lenses using literally individual drops of solution. Obviously, this was not getting the job done. On my next visit to the eye doctor, he took a look at my lenses and was like "these are completely covered with protein and enzyme deposits, don't you clean them every day?" Then he showed me how to clean them using a steady stream of solution to rinse it thoroughly enough, and I felt like quite the retard for my meticulous drop-by-drop technique. I was like "hmmmm.... no wonder my eyes burn so much".

My stupidity and absentmindedness don't end there. One time, I spent about 10 minutes searching every corner of my house trying to find my glasses so I could take out my contacts, only to eventually realize that I took out my contacts earlier in the day and I was already wearing my glasses. STUPID.... And just the other day after playing cards at Dave's house, I came home and started to try taking out my contacts, with my glasses on. I actually reached under my glasses, nudging them out of the way to reach for my contacts without for a second stopping to think that hey, if I'm wearing my glasses I'm probably not wearing my contacts. Of course, I realized it soon enough when I noticed that something hurt like hell, and guess what, it was me pinching my own eyeball. STUPID AND ABSENTMINDED...

Well, what originally inspired me to write this whole long thing was that I was thinking about how nice it would be to get that laser eye surgery thing and never have to worry about any of that stuff again. I'd say that if anyone needs or deserves it, it'd be me. Then again, stupidity comes from within, it just manifested itself through my experiences with contacts. Even if I got the surgery, I'd probably just find new ways to be a dumbass.

But anyways, I think I'm gonna start a little fund for myself to get the vision correction thing done in a few years. I'd do it now if I wasn't saving money for a house, and I'm also hoping they will make more breakthroughs in that field during these next few years, that would make it cheaper and have less side effects.

DST and the Celebrity Next Door

I haven't gotten around to figuring out what's wrong with my blogger code, so I can't link to the archive here, but one year ago I wrote an entry about how awesome Daylight Savings Time was. Basically, I was saying that we should just do the "fall-back" thing every 2 weeks so that we could all gain that extra hour of sleep 26 times a year, and the only price to pay was losing about 1 day out of the calendar year. I also remember someone commenting about how stupid I was, in neglecting the fact that with my idea, we would all be living in darkness for much of the year, and choosing an extra hour of sleep every other week over seeing sunlight was borderline retarded.

Well, I am now 1 year older and 1 year wiser, and I now fully see how retarded I really was. I got to enjoy that 1 hour of sleep for all of one day, before my body quickly adjusted and that extra time got pissed away among my list of daily activities. In return, I get deprived of 1 hour of post-work daylight every day for at least a few weeks earlier than I would have without DST. I guess that goes to show that my blog readers are much smarter than me and way ahead of their time. Thank you for pointing out the error of my ways.

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Between all the reality shows involving celebrities on TV these days, it's gotten to the point where these pop stars, football players, or actors are like just another one of our friends or acquaintances. Kind of weird, but some conversations I have had in the past few weeks include the following:

(someone burps)
Me: Dang, that was a loud burp... you should see my sister burp though, she shakes the ground.
Other: haha... actually, you know who burps really loud too?
Me: Who? (expecting it to be one of our friends)
Other: Jessica Simpson

Other: Awww.... that dog is so cute!
Me: It's aight
Other: But actually, Kelly has the cutest dog I've ever seen
Me: Who the fock is Kelly?
Other: Kelly Rowland... you know, from Destiny's Child?

Other: I see you picked up Santana Moss in our McNown League
Me: Yeah, I saw him in this thing on BET the other day and he seemed like a cool guy, so why not?
Other: Nice... he scored another TD today. Maybe I should watch more BET.

Then, there are the people who became celebrities after people saw them in a reality show. Survivor cast members, Joe Millionaire, the Bachelorette have become household names for many Americans. For me, I never really watched any of those shows, but I do have my personal favorite people from reality TV, none other than the guys from Jackass. I was watching the new show with Bam Margera a couple days ago and I almost died laughing. Ironing hamburger designs on all of his dad's clothes, setting off remote control hydraulics on his dad's van, that stuff seriously made me choke on my food. I didn't see as much of Steve-O's show, but every time I see that guy, something in my stomach tightens up because I know something crazy/disgusting is about to happen. And yet, I can never change the channel. This time, it was him sticking his exposed butt onto a porcupine. I don't know if I'm more repulsed or amused by that kind of stuff. A lot of both, I guess. My reaction is usually something like "OHMYGOD... AWWW MAN... .WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT??!", all while laughing uncontrollably.

Santa Mail and More

Today was the first time I clicked on a banner ad in a long time. That's not counting all the times I accidentally hit one of the pop up windows or annoying flash animations that have a close button but moves around so you can't catch it. I hate those.

Anyways, I was checking my Yahoo Mail when I noticed in big red letters at the top: "Get a letter from Santa!" linked to www.santamail.org. So of course, how can I resist that? I clicked the banner and found one of the more entertaining websites I've seen in recent days. Basically, it's a company that sends a fake letter to your kids from Santa, incorporating information that you give them like your hometown or the name of his/her best friend. They use Christmas-y looking paper, envelopes, and it's postmarked "North Pole, Alaska". All for a low price of $9.95.

Now, I can understand the concept of giving your kid a personalized message from Santa might be kind of a nice thing to do. I mean, even though my mom and dad are fobs, I remember my dad doing something like that one Christmas. He typed up a short little note, taped it to my gift, and told me it was from Santa. Being about 5 years old at the time, I easily believed every word of it and I thought it was awesome.

The thing is, do you really need/want to pay someone else 10 bucks to do that for you? If you are browsing the internet to a site called www.santamail.org, chances are that you have access to a computer with the capability to write and print a letter. Why wouldn't you just do it yourself, if you wanted it to include personalized information to begin with? What's your kid gonna do, examine the letter and be like "this stationery looks so inauthentic, you really expect me to believe this is from Santa?" No 5-year old is gonna care that the envelope doesn't have Christmas decorations on it, and even if he was smart enough to pick at that kind of detail, what's with the postmarked "North Pole, Alaska" BS? I know that's not fooling anybody.

But oh well, if anyone is bored, go ahead and check out that site. It was worth a good laugh for me.

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I think the movie I was thinking about in the last blog, with the Mexicans trying to cross the border, was called "El Norte".

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Some questions I have:

1. Does "not being unhappy" count as "being happy"? If you're not sad, angry, bitter, or any of those negative emotions, does that make you happy by default? Why or why not?

2. What is the point of "thanks"? When someone says "thanks", what exactly does that word mean? When I let someone merge in front of me on the highway and I don't get the "thanks"-wave, why do I get pissed as if he robbed me or something? I mean, if you do something nice for someone, shouldn't you do it out of genuine kindness, and not for the satisfaction of being thanked? So do we have a right to be pissed about not receiving thanks?

3. Why is it ok for rappers to talk about "chinky eyes"? I used to like that Holidae In song until I noticed the part near the end when Ludacris goes "my eyes are chinky", now it annoys me. I'm not someone who believes in censorship, but considering some of the other stuff they edit out for the radio, it's a matter of respect that they should do the same for something like that.

4. Why did they keep bleeping out Uma Thurman's character's name in Kill Bill? When is Part II coming out?

5. Yesterday at Target I overheard a kid telling his friend that he got a 19 on his ACT. What do you do when you get a 19 on your ACT? It doesn't necessarily mean you're stupid, but you're definitely not "top quartile" either. Do you go to community college, get a minimum wage job, and work your way up? Is your life pretty much a waste from then on, just trying not to become a homeless bum? Or do you end up in a happier state than all the so-called successful students who go on to their middle-class jobs, stress out about saving every penny, and struggle for the next 40 years to climb the corporate ladder?

6. Are there people who buy just part two of a DVD/VHS trilogy but not the rest? I think it would look so weird if my shelf had only Empire Strikes Back, Matrix Reloaded, The Two Towers, Austin Powers 2, etc., and nothing else.

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I saw the video for Linkin Park's "Numb" for the first time yesterday. I've really liked the song a lot since I got the CD when it came out, and I'm glad they made a video for it. The video is pretty good, not groundbreaking or anything, but it goes well with the song and I'd say it's one of the better music videos I've seen lately.

Also, I watched some of the Britney Spears Making the Video the other day. Don't really like that song or video much at all. And since when did she start acting like a stoner? Overall, I was unimpressed and disappointed with this showing. She seems to look a little older/not as hot, and her personality is more annoying. I noticed one of her backup dancers is an Asian girl though, and I think she looked pretty good. Better keep an eye out.