Had gone out to dinner with my extended family, where it was revealed that Maggie and Dongwoo had bought a house, and during the toast at the end of dinner, was enveloped in a bright aura of promise of the future as we toasted their house, Stella and Jonathan's baby due in September, and me going to college, and it seemed that a new and wondrous page was being turned in everyone's book of life simultaneously.

After dinner I got into the car with my parents and the mood left me as my mom talked into the dark of the car about being upset that Maggie didn't consult them, her own parents, about the big decision to buy a house, and my dad being "disappointed" (in that soul-crushing way where your parents being "disappointed" in you is worse a hundred times than them yelling at or punishing you;) that although Maggie knew that he was a realtor and was having a hard time selling houses she still didn't think to buy from him or at least even call him to talk about it. And here he talks about how when he was getting his license with only two months remaining, his friend just went out and sold his house, and my dad was like.. couldn't he have waited just two months to help out a friend? And how you can't count on anyone and the only one who can help you is yourself. It was horribly depressing.... I think I would have done the exact same thing as my sister, though I heard in the car how much it hurt my parents, and was sorry and burdened with the guilt for what I would have done in twenty years- I think of my dad as my dad and never consider having a professional relationship with him. It would be weird, like having your dad as your lawyer or agent or psychiatrist. And being two responsible married adults who want to start a family, buying a house would be our decision- not that it's none of our parents' business, but that I'd just never think to seek their approval beforehand. And I told my mom this in my rough Chinese that sounds fluent, but in reality can express only the concrete well and the abstract badly, and she dismissed it because I am a teenager and don't know the ways of the world. When Maggie told us at dinner about buying the house I didn't notice anything at all wrong, and only was glad for them that they'd be moving out of their apartment. And Stella and Maggie are very close to each other so my parents speculated whether they had talked to each other about it beforehand and if so, why hadn't Stella told Maggie to consult with our parents? So there it is, the collective guilt of the three American daughters.

Went home, and read some To The Lighthouse: For that reason, knowing what was before them-love and ambition and being wretched alone in dreary places-she had often the feeling, Why must they grow up and lose it all? I am a teenager and don't know the ways of the world and when I grow up I will lose it all or what I haven't lost quite yet (which is probably an extraordinary amount that I take for granted), and am sad for it but can't stop growing. And was made even more horribly depressed tying the two random thought threads together like some Virginia Woolf character, because FOR GOD'S SAKE, real estate and my sister and lighthouses have nothing to do with each other!!! Why I am connecting them, (like how Lily in the book, with her Chinese eyes, connects philosophy and Andrew and pear trees and kitchen tables at the bloody same time and makes for a damn annoying read), I have no idea. Malex IMed me asking me, "what's up" as I was typing this post, and though I had a lot to say, at the moment I couldn't say anything except "nothing" and he logged off five minutes later and my opportunity to talk to a friend passed, and now I am being wretched alone in dreary places again.

Went to the barber's, which for me is the basement of an Asian woman's house by Emory Lane (on Hornbeam, actually). She was with another client, so I played pingpong (formally known as 'table tennis' to the uptight) in the basement with my mom, was pleasantly surprised that she knew how to play. She was pleasantly surprised I knew how to play. It was fun. Was glad the hairstylist noticed I lost weight. Cuz obviously, if you tell people you're on a diet they'll be belatedly like, "Oh, yes, I can see you're a lot skinnier" but you can never tell if they're being polite. Her cat gave me horrible allergic reactions since it jumped and stayed on my lap while I was getting my hair cut (I think it was the cat though it could have been a ton of other things) before it ran away from the blow drier, so that my eyes got all swollen and my nose got clogged up and my throat constricted. But I'm better now. Shall need to go over to Malex's house one day in a living experiment to see if close proximity with cats does cause my allergic reactions.

Went home, took a fun online IQ test that my mom took and printed out at work and compared with her coworkers- I asked her if she didn't have anything better to do at work. Well, it's a government job. I'm 135: Word Warrior. My mom is 129: Visual Mathmatician, which is good for an engineer. Those visual math problems annoyed me.

In Angie's Angry War News: Heard this morning on the radio coming to school about the two marines who died sleeping when they got run over by a marine vehicle. Was outraged about our own idiocy, but even more morally outraged over the shooting by Iraqis of thousands of civilians in Basra who tried to escape the city. See, at least when we hurt people we're just morons, while when they hurt people they actually have malicious intent.

Asian American Assembly was remarkably good, though it could be much improved, being just its first year performed. For example, I disliked all the emphasis on martial arts.. it's not like the only thing Asian people do. The umbrella/fan dance was very pretty, though not choreographed as well as it should have been... the move that everyone inarticulately calls "that circle thing" was really fantastic though. It was hilarious that what was dubbed as a 'traditional' fan dance was actually performed to a Chinese oldie.. I was sitting with all my third period Chinese class people, so we were all cracking up about that. I wonder if anyone else noticed. The actual official pop dance, J-pop I assume, was performed without much gusto, so it looked basically like Asian step team but suckier. Still, I'm glad they had the guts to go onstage and break musical stereotypes. Yes. Asian people can be "down with it." If only we actually were. I really liked the videos; the Japanese-American soldiers in WWII video was great for showing stuff we actually didn't know. The video on influential Asians suffered from bad editing. Ex: when running the outtakes/credits from "Rumble in the Bronx" for the Jackie Chan segment, they kept on the captioned names of other miscellanious actors, which probably made no sense to anyone who hadn't seen the movie. Whenever the news switched to a shot of a white anchorperson in the Connie Chung clip, the editors would do a fade so that the white person would slowly and surrealistically morph into Connie Chung's face, like a CNN version of Dali's Persistence of Memory, with the melting clocks. Editing problems aside, the video was good for showing Asians in atypical job positions like Connie Chung and Yao Ming and Margeret Cho, as well as the usual subpar slew of martial artists. Though Xu, now known as Ray, got a lot of flak for the "Mongolians have small eyes" comment from Mr. Gaffney (who was subbing for Econ) and you often couldn't hear the interviews over the music, the stereotype video was humorous and down to earth, and the break dancing wasn't educational but a crowdpleaser. The martial artists were very good, much better than the white samurais we got on International Night who everyone was making fun of.

I felt we needed more representation from non-Chinese and Japanese cultures, like Thai, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Mongolian, Nepalese, Malaysian, Filipino, Polynesian... though in particular we need more Indian/Pakistani culture. It's the Indian subcontinent for God's sake, India being the second most populous nation in the world. Where are my dark-skinned brothers?

The [East] Asian American Club, as Andrew dubbed it. Xu told me in econ that AAC and Desi simply didn't get along, though I don't know if I believe him. It'd deserve some satirizing in the Tid, except that many of the people the article would be aimed at wouldn't have the English proficiency to actually read it. Of course, I'm too lazy to actually write it.

I think Archaeology has become amateur story time, as Rachel detailed the book she will write, about Leonardo Da Vinci's fictional apprentice, part of her planned Atlantis series. I, in all my geeky glory, was reminded of Catherine Janeway. I tried to explain it to Rachel.. "Um, she's Leonardo Da Vinci's holographic apprentice.. I mean.. the holographic Leonardo Da Vinci's holographic apprentice.. I mean.." I didn't work out very well, but I amused myself. I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who's inspired by IB European History to write novels. History is more inspiring to my writing than actual English.

Mary tells next week, and I the week after that. I ought to get my act together before then.

Well, helicopters are actually getting shot down by Republican Guard anti-aircraft now. I'm not sure if it's more reassuring that they're being taken down by enemy fire and not themselves, or if it severely sucks that helicopters are being shot down.

Despite my bitchings about the war, I still think, to rebuff the main argument of anti-war protestors, we're doing all we can to avoid civilian casualties, and Saddam's forces are lowlife bastards. All of this comes at a price: we peacefully approach Iraqi soldiers and civilians who wave the white flags of surrender, only to shoot at us when we come close, we avoid cities and population centers only to have us attacked from behind once we pass them, and we have civilian men shooting at us from buses and taxis.... I think it's something for anti-war activists not to take lightly: every time we go out of our way to spare Iraqi lives, every time we compromise strategic gain for moral reasons, it puts American lives at risk. This is definitely not to say we ought to go around killing innocent bystanders or that they don't matter, only that we must appreciate the extreme risks our sons and daughters are taking in order to save these civilians. Anyone in this country who perceives our military as 'American imperalistic butchers' (it's understandable for the Iraqis caught in the middle of all of this) are being grossly ungrateful. Not to mention that in Nasiriya Iraqi soldiers are forcing civilians into the streets to be human shields and wiring bridges and city buildings with explosives, killing their own civilians to blame it on the Allies... we are showing remarkable restraint in light of all of this and I admire our soldiers for what they do.

PS: Though I know you aren't reading this, a word out to my online friends in Iraq. Come home safe.

Yesterday was spent randomly moving furniture around, making space for more furniture. Apparently, this guy my dad knows is moving back to Hong Kong and so was like, "You can have all my furniture for $1000." So, being the packrats we are, we took the offer and for a while on Saturday morning and afternoon my house was literally barricaded as lamps and easy chairs and cushions and other household debris blocked the way into the living room and my bedroom and random carpets were piled up in the bathroom. Amazingly, due to the same bizarre phsyics-twisting laws of household time and space that allow a month's worth of groceries to, after much rearranging, all fit into one refridgerator, we've moved things around so that while my house has the same volume as before and we had enough furniture before, all of the new furniture has somehow been crammed in, and we're still in this state of enough furniture. My house is, actually, neater now with more stuff. Go figure.

Why do we suck so much? We shot down the British!

We are so seriously retarded.

Way to go, making our allies hate us more.