the loonies in la la land

this weekend i went to LA to go visit some cousins. so that went well... the girls have longtime boyfriends, while us guys seem to have no game at all.

on to my lunch today. i went to a burrito place with my cousin in a quest for a free burrito on election day. there, we met a lady in line who was new to this whole burrito process. i explained to her the intricacies between hard and soft tacos and the various different burrito options she had, and then she mentioned that she wanted a burrito without the tortilla. i pointed her to the burrito bowl and she said "yes, that is just what i want!" however, after finally making it to the front of the line, she told us she decided that she didn't want a burrito after all and left the store, thus wasting my efforts in her burrito education. i don't get some people.

another interesting happening today occurred just after i had received my burrito and was filling up my cup with soda. i was trying to figure out what the black specks floating in my sprite were when i was approached by an older (40's?) lady wearing a form fitting exercise outfit. our encounter went something along the lines of this:

lady: are you filipino?
yao: no....

i was a bit confused as to why she asked me this and was going to tell her that i was chinese, but she quickly followed up with this:

lady: you're cute.
yao: oh.
lady: ...
yao: ...
*yao stares at black specks in his soda*

at this point, i have no idea what this lady is trying get at and i was trying to think of ways to get out of the conversation. the thought of possibly diverting her attentions onto my cousin crossed my mind, but i didn't think he would have appreciated it.

lady: what's wrong with you? i'm trying to pick you up! do you not like women?
yao: ?
lady: are you gay?
yao: no...
*lady leaves*
*yao pokes at black specks and they sink to the bottom of his cup*

people from LA are weird. older women are cool, but i'm not sure i'm ready for someone twice my age.

foiled by arrow's theorem!

while i was in san jose today, i was rather surprised to see a large group of people along the street holding up bush/cheney signs and things that said "honk for bush". strangely enough, even in the liberal state of california, there were a ton of people honking their horns. now i don't mind people holding up bush/cheney signs, but it really annoys me when all the cars around me are honking like crazy. alas, their efforts are almost certainly for naught given the US electoral process.

i'm not sure if i'm going to vote during the elections this year, but i did register to vote this time--something i didn't do 4 years ago. i'm not really sure who i would vote for if i did so. but it's pretty obvious that a lot of people take it very seriously. one of my friends even got mad at me when i told her i was undecided. it seems a lot of people are quick to dismiss undecided voters as uninformed and apathetic. while in my case, they might be right on the apathy count; however, i would say that people who are undecided are more likely to seek out and learn more about each candidate's platforms and thus be more informed than people who blindly vote with/against one party or the other.

so on to my apathy. i don't not care about voting because i don't see eye to eye with the candidates on most of their issues (though that's clearly a detractor). my gripe is that the electoral process itself precludes any candidate that i would genuinely approve of from even getting on the ballot. and that doesn't even include the lunacy that is the electoral college. granted, plurality voting may have seemed good enough hundreds of years ago, but with all this research having been done in electoral theory, why do we still use it? of course, kenneth arrow wisely noted that no election scheme can be "fair" using the independence from irrelevant alternatives criterion, but surely there is something better...

feel free to post your opinions on voting schemes or other issues. perhaps i can become less uninformed.

SATCC (CC = city of chandler, where i am)

so yesterday i was out with some friends... who brought some people i didn't know. a fairly common occurrence. only this time, i wasn't really introduced to the strangers, and my friend and i just sorta went off on our own.

so after a bit, we found these two girls on the dance floor and started dancing with them. after we had achieved a certain level of familiarity, we introduced ourselves and starting talking to them (to the best of our abilities with all the music anyway). things were going pretty well, i thought, until this random girl, whom i will call 'redshirt', comes over and starts trying to take our picture like a mom at prom. apparently she was a friend of a friend of a friend, so she was in our group. my guy friend tried get 'redshirt' to stop taking pictures and go away by using subtle hints such as his middle finger, but she was quite persistent. the girl i was with asked me if i knew this 'redshirt' girl and since at that point i had no idea who she was, i just sort of shrugged and said no. shortly thereafter, 'redshirt' tried to take a picture of me as she kissed me.

needless to say, some time between when i said i didn't know 'redshirt' and the time when 'redshirt' tried to take a picture while kissing me, the two girls we were really interested in sort of disappeared.

let this be a lesson:
1. do not go around taking pictures of guys as they are trying to attract the interest of girls.
2. do not go around kissing guys as they are trying to attract the interest of girls. <------ (very important)

out of the frying pan...

having recently moved to a new area has necessitated my need to go out and meet new people. and as a part of meeting a new person, the question of "so what do you do?" inevitably comes up. generally, i tell people i'm in manufacturing. however, that's a pretty vague description and people typically are less interested in what work on as much as who you work for. so i end up telling people who i work for (whom we'll call company 'i').

the strange thing is, when i tell people i work for company 'i', they go "oh". and this isn't the "oh, how interesting!" type of "oh". it's more like the "oh, i feel sorry for you." type of "oh". and i say this because after learning that i work for company 'i', people tend to respond with thoughts like, "wow, i heard it's really cutthroat there" and "isn't the pressure there really intense?" now, if one or two people say these kinds of things, it's easy to play it off as hype. after all, how many of them have actually worked for company 'i'? the thing is, this didn't happened with just one or two people. this is coming from four or five people--complete strangers even. and when people start giving you advice like "watch your back" and "make sure you get credit for your ideas", it makes you wonder if there may be some truth to it after all.

i just hope that i still have a job in 2 years...