Am in Hong Kong. Actually, I've been here for a week or so (starting on the 24th of June) but was too lazy to blog.

It is all normal. It looks very good at night, sparkly like it's Christmas or something (Christmas in Hong Kong is demented by the way... too many lights...), but in the daytime, it's dirty. Japan creeps me out because it's an Asian country and clean. Has been 33 degrees C out, and I wish we'd turn on the air con. The fan is trying very hard, to its credit. This is part of the reason why I escape to my cousin Fish's apartment (flat, my bad) ... because my grandma is worse than Nick B's dad. I don't think she's let a meal pass without commenting on my fatness (when people comment that I've lost weight she immediately goes, "No she hasn't!") And she serves fish at every meal and gets hella angry if I don't eat it (despite eating other things). Evil..I hate having a mouthful of bones- it's like eating a skeleton, especially since choking on a bone when I was little and having to be taken to a hospital.

And semi-escaping from my other cousin's flat because a) he's starting to inherit his dad's temper (this being the type of model family where the father is the disciplinarian and the mother is the nurterer- so that the daughter is extremely compliant and my other cousin is starting to yell at his mom..) Also, he's been running around shouting, having spiked his hair like David Beckham and is wearing a "Brasil" soccer (read, real football) jersey. Also, I have to go to church with them, which althought it hasn't been as offensive as it was last year (we got to watch videos on "converting the natives of Africa") but it's still awkward because I don't know anyone and people think I'm weird because I eat pizza with my hands.

Anyhow. Fish has been teaching me how to play Counterstrike. Yay, FPS. And "Typing of the Dead." Type or die!

"The Church says the Earth is Flat, but I know that it is Round. For I have seen the Shadow on the Moon, and have more Faith in a Shadow than in the Church." -Magellan.

Easter is boring, so I'll have to talk about yesterday.

Yesterday was a good food day. Food was basically the highlight of my day. I had.. um.. Breakfast/lunch at the IHOP close to RM. It was tasty. I wouldn't call it brunch, because that implies a snack between breakfast and lunch. That was my breakfast and lunch.

Bought a dress for my sister's wedding, and I guess for junior prom too by default even though I have no one to go with, since it seems a shame to buy like a $160 dress for just one occasion. It's real purty, but too big in the chest. Who'da thought? Still, I'm happy. I'll have to postpone cutting my hair though, since I don't want to do anything weird with my hair so close to my sister's wedding that I can't fix it beforehand.

Talked to my mom about my problems. Suckage. Problems seem to magnify when you talk about them.

Dinner at the Olive Garden, where I got to meet all my brother-in-law-to-be's relatives. I didn't know I had another sister. Geez. I'm so out of it. (Apparently she's my half-sister's half-sister so really not my actual sister... Maggie and I share a dad, but not a mom. Jessie and Maggie share a mom. So me and Jessie aren't related by blood at all.) Her boyfriend is cool though. (Selfishly) I hope they get married so I can hang out with him more. DAN DA MAN!

Went to midnight Easter mass to see Maggie baptized (to Margaret, named after the saint) at the Glorious Korean Catholic Martyrs Church or something. Many paintings in the hallways of Glorious Korean Catholic Martyrs being Martyred in various painful ways. Joy. I hate the word martyr now since Osama uses it so much.. Blah. First time attending a Catholic mass, unless you count watching midnight Christmas Mass by the Pope last year on tv... Lots of dunking faces into water, dudes in white robes, women in lacy veils and chimas, eating wafers, lighting candles, swinging censors, praying on padded knee cushions, asking for donations via baskets sent through the pews on poles, chanting and singing hymns in Korean, maybe some Latin. Some carrying around in a procession of what looked to be Jesus Onna Cross (I'd say stick but that'd be blasphemous). For two hours. I amused myself by calculating powers of two.. I got up to 8192 and then stopped. It's not very far, but my math sucks. My dad had attempted before Mass to swordfight with the unlit candles before my oldest sister acted properly horrified. Dan was lucky because my brother-in-law-to-be, Dongwoo, was sitting next to him and had a prayer book or something in both English and Korean so he could at least follow along. And he does know what's goin' on, being a disillusioned Irish Catholic. Blah. It was interesting, sort of though, and uplifting, sort of, and on the whole very boring. I used to be inspired by this sort of stuff at one time or another, but not anymore. Understood some works. "Isa-ray-el", "Egyptai", "Hosana" (should mean something, don't know though), "Deus." Familial comments on how my oldest sister married a Buddhist, and Maggie is marrying a Catholic, so what about me?? (Atheist, I'm thinking.)

Some good quotage all around.

"If you can't have fun at church, where can you?" -Dan
"Well, Muslims read the Koran in Arabic, and the original Christian Bible was in Aladdin.. er.. Latin.." -My mom

I went to church *again*. For the violin recital rehearsal. I swear to god, one of the guys there was Christine's pastor from Agape. Yeah, Christine dragged me off to a Bible reading session on Thursday. Well not dragged, I sort of volunteered. Anyways, I swear it was him. He was 'speaking in tongues' and healing the sick or exorcising demons or whatever. It was disturbing.

Shpachee went back to UM so I went with her to drop her off. Then her parents drove around the campus so that I could look at it. It was real pretty at sunset, with the sky reflected in the puddles and everything and Christmas stuff up, and colonial buildings and crud. Except for the fact that a bunch of trees were snapped like toothpicks from the tornado, the one that touched down in UM a week after September 11. The wrecked cars are all cleaned up though. Shpachee showed me a section of the stairway in front of Easton Hall, one part of which was made from dark red brick, and the other light red. Apparently, the light red brick is the part of the stairs that collapsed in the tornado, and was rebuilt in light red brick. She and her dad were in the tornado. I was talking to her online like 15 minutes before it happened. Apparently, people started screaming in her dorm, and someone's window got busted, the electricity went out, and everyone started running like hell. They got evactuated to the basement, where there was... a gas leak. So they got evacuated outside.

I can't believe UM has 26,000 students. I mean, RM has 2000 students already, so I can concieve of a college having 26,000, but it's still mind-boggling. The town it's in is called University City for good reason, I guess. And I can't believe UM is so close to Blair and Eastern. Eastern is being renovated. I never want to see that shit school again anyways, nonetheless.

I didn't get a chance to blog yesterday. It was my second Thanksgiving dinner, on Saturday. Because my sister and my... brother-in-law (god that sounds weird) had dinner with his side of the family on actual Thanksgiving. Once again, I am the king of mashed potatoes. ROCK. And this year, my brother-in-law didn't get drunk as shit and throw up in our bathroom. It made up for me spending all day with my parents in Wal-mart. -_-. At least I got me some Zelda strategy guides. And a magazine with interviews with Lord of the Rings people. All the women in this magazine (the "Women of Science Fiction" posters ad) are half naked. What a time of empowerment.

Went to church today. For a violin recital rehearsal. It's been forever since I've been to church. No love lost. It amuses me to no end that in Lufia, the RPG I got for my friend, to save the game, you have to go inside a church. Basically.. you must go to church to be Saved! It's pretty funny that there are so many church-like buildings in RPG's, but no one's actually Christian.