blossom

Ch-ch-cherry Blossom Time!

Every spring, my backyard turns into a beautiful garden. For the last couple of years I've tried to take advantage of the blossoming trees before summer comes and the blossoms fall out.

Cemetary

Jennifer's dad. We've always felt a little eerie towards it because it had Jennifer's name on the stone. It was mean of us, but Katie and I would taunt her and say, "OMG, you're going to be buried here!"









My cousin at her father's. I remember when I was young, each time we went to visit my grandma, I also remembered to visit her father just so he wouldn't get lonely. I'm not sure what I thought during those times, but I knew that every grave needed a visitor sometime.



My UCLA alumni Uncle's baby girl. I bet my life that her first words were "USC! UCLA!". No, I'm SERIOUS. The parents are doing that to their little, barely 1 yr old, boy, chanting "USC! USC! UCLA!". Gotta get 'em when they're young I guess.

Notice the Swastika sign near my mom's head. It DOES NOT represent for the Nazi. This is a holy sign for Buddhism long before its association with facism and Hitler. Hitler just adopted the Swastika to represent the Aryan race when he was in his reign -___-.

"Is this what happens if I don't go to UCLA? :*["

I guess I've never noticed it, but this incense jar has been here for a long, long time. I usually don't pray, but I did this time for my grandpa and prayed for good grades. Behind the jar you see the name "Tran My Chau" which was my other aunt who died when she was a child.










I thought this was interesting. Apparently this is how the Burmese decorate their ancestors (with colorful paper).

I don't know who John A. Palacios is, but "BAA!!" certainly catches your attention.



My mom woke up up this morning, 30 minutes before we had to go to the cemetary for our annual visit. No one ever tells me about these things and it's ALWAYS last minute! It did damper my mood for the morning because I've never been comfortable in a place like the cemetary, especially after I found out the little cottage near the gates was a crematory (after Bobby's passing)

During the car ride, my dad had the window open and I didn't want to smell the air. It made my heart heavy and tired thinking about... things. The open air had this uncomfortable scent, but ironically, when I started to smell incense, I felt a bit at ease. Like, I could breathe again. It's a weird superstition, but if I don't smell incense, it feels like I'm breathing in the souls of all the deceased, which I don't want to do!

My dad made a wrong turn and drove all the way high up into a hill where the people didn't bury their coffins, but confined it into this box-like grave on top of the surface. -___- I prefer the dead underground, thank you.

Once we met up with the rest of the family at the RIGHT gravestone -_-, the tension inside me swelled up because there was a dug up grave right next to ours! I gritted my teeth and avoided eye contact with it. While everyone was praying, I took out my camera out of nervousness and my sister started questioning me,

Cindy: You're going to TAKE pictures of the graves?
Me: Yea I'm going to capture their souls. Oh! I see one right there! -snap-
Cindy: Huh, aren't they dead?
Me: Uh, yeah. I'm pretty sure everyone's dead here.
Cindy: Aren't they all in heaven though?
Me: O_o Heaven? You're a confused Buddhist!
Cindy: I don't know! That's what the T.V. told me!

.....

Cindy: You play fatal frame, watch people dissect dead people on tv, AND read about people dissecting dead people in all those books you have, but you're afraid of the cemetary?
Me: ........... Yep.


Luckily the mood got better when we got home because we got to eat all that food. Around 3pm, Jim E came over to give me the tickets to the football game, and then we ended up watching Sailormoon for a little bit before he went home.

Around 4:30pm I went to go pick up Valerie to go to the HP Pavilion for the game, but found out that it was 12 dollars for a damn parking space! I decided to just go park at the free lot a couple... 10 blocks away from the stadium.. hehe... It was pretty far -___-. It was the perfect day... to park really far, walk to the pavilion, without an umbrella, and have rain and homeless people coming down on ya. Great... just great. Also, when we walked down the narrow stairs from the garage, it smelled like freakin' urine! Gross!!!!! ACKKK Poor Val had to listen to me squeak and scream and what not. I was being really prissy about it.

So it started raining and we started to run around this corner and this homeless guy was like, "Hey! Let me ask you a question!". Urghhh... I didn't want to be rude, so I turned around and said, "What question?" The man took out his ID card and said, "I just got out of jail, and I live in Sacramento. I need money to go on the greyhound bus.. it costs 19 dollars..." I was too busy being nervous to look at his ID, gave him 5 dollars and said, "I hope you get home!"

I was really uneasy about walking around downtown when it was nearing dark and raining, so I told Val I didn't want to walk to the HP Pavilion anymore and called off the football game -__-. Waste of 4 perfectly good tickets. Instead I suggested we go eat at Tandoori Oven. =D We both shared a plate and got FUUULLLL... Chicken Tikka Masala YUM!! And a nice cup of hot Chai.

Since we weren't going to the game, luckily there was a theater downtown. I wanted to watch Tsotsi, but Val watched to watch a freakin' horror movie (Stay Alive). I gave in and we bought tickets for the 7:30 showing. When it was time to enter the movie room, both Val and I were apprehensive because there weren't a lot of people around and the door to the movie was in a dark corner. I chickened out and said, "I don't want to open the dooooooor! C-c-c-can we just trade our tickets, please!" Val dragged me into the movie room and fortunately there were about 7 other people inside. It still sucked cuz the rest of the row we were in were all empty.


I don't want to spoil the movie for the rest of you, but... I WANTED TO SCREAM MY ASS OFF. I CAN'T BELIEVE I LET VAL TALK ME INTO WATCHING IT! Oh the anxiety attacks it gave me! In the beginning I saw a face on the left side of the screen! A FACEEE ARHGHGHGH!!! I think I also crushed Val's fingers since I gripped so hard.

Surprisingly, it was a decent movie. I found myself yelling under my breath, "Don'topenthedooryoubitches!" and also, it had references to Fatal Frame hahaha. But UrGH.... no more no more. Why do I bother with horror films? -___-

The Healthy Burger

I decided to be lazy today and not do anything, but after 5 hours of staying at home, I got pretty restless. And when I do, I venture into my sister's room and lounge around on her bed, moping and basically being pathetic. Eventually we decided we had the munchies for burgers and drove to the grocery store to buy burger ingredients.

She wanted hamburger but I convinced her to agree with me on turkey burgers since they were 99% fat free. The other day I was at Barnes and Nobles looking through this one book that documented pictures of families from each country photographed with a week's worth of food they'd buy. Sad to say that the American families' food supply was completely supplied in CARDBOARD. Junkfood, cereal, tv dinners... it was horrifying compared to the European/Asian/etc families whose food consisted more of fresh meats, fruits and veggies.

Anywho, here are some horrific pictures of the burgers I made. The lighting wasn't very good, so I tried to use flash (which I hate doing) and one without (to which I butchered horribly in photoshop). The burgers were actually quite flavorful and might I say, MORE delicious than a hamburger and LESS greasy.




Ingredients:
Ground turkey
shallots
garlic
steak seasoning
salt/pepper
onion
lettace
tomato
bun
cheese
olive oil

1. Transfer the ground turkey into a large bowl
2. Chop the garlic and shallots and put into the large bowl with the turkey
3. Add salt/pepper, steak seasoning, and a table spoon of olive oil in the bowl and combine with the meat.
4. Slice up your tomato and onion, and wash your lettace to assemble in your burger later
5. Make a decent sized patty (a little bit larger than your bun because it'll shrink. Also, DO NOT PACK TIGHTLY or else the meat will be a dense hocky puck)
6. Toast your buns with a slice of cheese on the lower bun

When the meat is done, just assemble the ingredients and viola! A healthy burger without the guilt.