Ostrich on the run!

Ostrich on the run!
Originally uploaded by audreytmv.

What's wrong with this photo? Look properly, it's a real photo that hasn't been tampered with -- there's a ostrich on the Golden Gate Bridge! Hahaha...apparently, this 6-ft tall bird made a run for it, escaping from the back of a truck and stopping traffic on the bridge around 4.50pm on Monday, Aug. 29.

The poor girl ostrich was on its way to a farm and was apparently saved from a butcher who was selling ostrich meat. Eww.

I just think it's a hillarious photo!

What's happened to Darren Hayes?

I just saw Darren Hayes' (one half of Savage Garden) new video from his latest album, "The Tension and The Spark" and I'm in DISBELIEF. I can only describe the new video for the single, "Popular" in one word -- sellout. Honestly, the video reminded me of Gay Pimp's "Soccer Practice" -- which was fun and all coz it was meant to be cheesy, tacky and funny but Darren's new video is just downright disappointing!

I'm at the verge of tears hearing the same guy who sang such beautiful and meaningful songs like "Affirmation" and "Two Beds and A Coffee Machine" sing lyrics like this:

I've got a plan to make it rich and famous...
I'm willing to sleep my way to the top
I wanna be POPular
I don't wanna keep my feet on the ground
I must confessed I've been a very bad boy
I've been sleeping around
My friends are all in limousines, my friends are all celebrities, in magazines

What in the world happened? I can only hope that the video -- complete with two tit-ful blondes in gold bikinis that are 2 sizes too small -- is a parody of pop music. And how cheesy is the video? It's like a tourist video in London! Complete with scenes shot in the Underground, on a double decker bus and at Madame Tussauds! If you don't believe me, check out "Popular" at Darren Hayes' Office Web site.

Then And Now

Feeling a lil' nostalgic. I miss you girls tons!

Spam has arrived.

No, not the one in the can. The annoying "Enlarge Your Penis" crap in your e-mails. I was going through my blog and comments and guess what I found? Some dick left some stupid SPAM in the comments box. Idiot. Hope he dies. If you don't believe, check it out, I'm going to leave it there for a week before I trash it. It's in the COMMENTS section of my "Snore Snore" blog.

The biggest asshole award goes to…

Telemarketers. Fucking TELEMARKETERS. I mean, fine…it's a job, someone's gotta do it, but if there's one job in the world that has absolutely no value to it, it has to be telemarketing. Except maybe for pastors, but that's another issue all together. The difference between the pastor and a telemarketer is that with telemarketers, they annoy everyone.

So here I am in the U.S. -- land of the fucking telemarketers, the idiots probably invented the concept. You know things are bad when they have to create a registry where you can register your phone number to stop telemarketers from calling you and of course, the most creative title they could up with was the Do Not Call Registry. Duh. I was highly skeptical and turning a lil' paranoid about giving out my information -- this being the land of stolen identities, even giving away your bra size could lead to a bad episode of "Single White Female" -- and the fact that the government has a collective list of private phone numbers is a little scary, but hell, nothing's more irritating than an asshole calling you at 8am on a Saturday morning trying to sell you a stupid timeshare plan in Timbuktu. The registration worked for a while, telemarketers actually stopped calling…however, if you read the fine print when you registered your number on the Do Not Call Registry, apparently, SOME people were allowed to invade your privacy -- any organization or company that you have been in contact with the past month (I think) could call you, the police, military and other big brother cronies.

When I first moved to the U.S., I was super polite, so whenever any telemarketer called, I found it very difficult to say no to them and I actually listened to the entire conversation and politely declined all offers, regardless of how good they sounded. And if you've noticed, everytime you say no, the deal always gets better for you, so if you're one of those suckers who decides to buy something from a telemarketer (what's wrong with you?), just keep saying no. For the record, I have NEVER succumb to any telemarketer, although to prove how sweet my lil' Zhuang is, poor guy actually bought an apparent cruise to the Bahamas for two people for $85. The cruise people later sent an information packet with a VHS to showcase the vacation. Now, the fact that it came in a VHS and DVD should have been a dead giveaway but nooo…as green as we were then, we actually watched the VHS and damn, the video was probably made in the early 80s coz everyone had big hair, really bad dress sense and were way to dressed up to be in the Bahamas. Everyone in the video is probably receiving Medicare by now.

You may ask, why my sudden angry barrage telemarketers? Here's why -- I'm NOT a morning person and will never be one and the last thing I want to deal with when I'm late for work and rushing out the door is a telemarketer. And even if I had time, it would be used wisely to chug down a cup of coffee and not pleasantly saying no to the idiot who's trying to convince you to switch from satellite to cable. So it's Friday morning, just 9 more hours before my week becomes stress-free, some idiot rings me up and has the audacity to ask for me by name and uses my name repeatedly throughout his fucking sales pitch. And guess what? Ooo…he was calling from the Sheriff's Office…which somehow in his stupid fucking mind that gave him some kind of authority over the regular assholes. And oh, on top of that, he started the fucking pitch by saying, "What I'm about to tell you will be very important to your community and this call might be recorded." So of course I let him continue, I mean, it could be something important like a police alert that a serial murderer was on the lose or something, right? Nope. Asshole was trying to get me to fucking donate money for more donuts or some drivers' education program. Hell, no! So I said, "I'm on my way out, this is not a good time," and guess what the idiot did? He said, "Oh, I understand, but with a simple donation of $10 you can help…" I was tempted to explain to him that I was a poor starving student who was in debt, but then I thought to myself, WHY? Why the hell am I taking time to explain my situation to a reckless idiot who decided to invade the privacy of my own home to pester me to do something that I refused to do? So, to hell with telemarketers -- cop or not -- I hung up. So here's my piece of advice to all you nice people out there, JUST HANG UP, telemarketers never call back, trust me. Or if you can't do it, get an answering machine. But trust me, hanging up on annoyance gives you a really satisfying feeling. And to all you jobless people out there, regardless of how desperate you get, working at Walmart has more of a redeeming value than getting a job as a telemarketer.

Snore snore

I am so sleepy, so very, very sleepy. And it's not like I went to bed late last night, I slept at 1 a.m. and woke up at 8 a.m., so that's seven hours of sleep. I'm not combating post-lunch drowsiness either, although hot chocolate and a 6-inch Subway sandwich probably doesn't help. Absolutely makes so sense. I'm sleepy sleepy -- my eyes can barely stay open. There is an extremely high chance of me slumping over the keyboard. You know you're getting old when you need this much sleep. ZZzzzz.....

Cruel, cruel summer

Ahh..Ace of Base, gotta love those cheesy Swedes. You know what I just realized? Ace of Base looks a lot like Abba (which coincidentally are from the land of Ikea too...hmmm)

And yes, this has been a cruel summer for me -- didn't go on a holiday, stayed in San Francisco the entire three months, which I guess isn't as torturous being stuck in Des Moines, Iowa but still... It's not that I mind staying in San Francisco, it's just really difficult when you're a poor starving student who's balancing two internships, paying through your nose to maintain your wee lil' Beetle who's an temperamental as I am and having to fork out practically an entire fortune to move (Budget truck, new desk, floor lamps, full-length mirror - woo hooooo!). I guess at the end of the day, it's worth it -- having your own place to come home to after a long day and knowing that if there's a speck of dust or spot of oil on the stove, I'm responsible for it. One thing that I've discovered moving into my own place is that I'm obsessive compulsive when it comes to cleaning -- arm me with a pair of gloves, lemon cleaning spray and kitchen towels and I have no qualms about getting down on my knees and scrubbing the kitchen and bathroom floor. Things don't have to be squeeky, shiny clean but I think one of the reasons I felt so frustrated at my old place was that everytime I cleaned, other people would mess it up. Sigh.

School starts in a week, soooo totally not looking forward to it. Ugh. All my classes start at 9am and if I'm not in class, I'm at work. Soooo that this is gonna be my last semester, totally sick and tired of studying, have had ENOUGH of it and I'm ready to just start working. Someone needs to start paying me some gooooood money for what I'm doing.

It doesn't help that my summer ends with sending my beebsie off at the airport and nothing sucks more than driving back home alone at 7am in the morning, having only slept for more than an hour the night before. It's crazy, but we've seen other off at the airport so many times that logically, by now, we should be used to it. But nope, no way...the best thing about sending him off at the airport this time is that I'm gonna see him in 4 months time and he's moving back to San Francisco! Yippee....

Better get to bed now, the "I'm not feeling too well" excuse will only work that many times. :)

The McDiet

To all you fast food lovers out there, let me first clarify that I'm not obsessed about my weight or my health but I'm a big proponent of good food. I don't understand why people are paying the same price for food that tastes terrible, is extremely processed and bad for you when you can get a much healthier alternative for the same price! And no, a salad at McDonald's doesn't count as healthy.

Here's the thing, I found this Associated Press article about this woman from Raleigh, North Carolina who apparently lost weight eating McDonald's for 90 days ala Morgan Spurlock (who did it for 30 days) in "Super Size Me" -- if you haven't seen the documentary, go out and watch it, makes you sick. Apparently, this woman felt that "Super Size Me" had "unfairly targeted the world's largest restaurant company and implied that the obese were victims of a careless corporate giant." So what does this fat mother-of-two who's probably digging an early grave for her children by feeding them Happy Meals decide to do? This woman, ate nothing but McDonald's for 90 days and apparently lost 37 pounds in the process. And oh, she works as a construction worker.

What's my reaction to this utterly stupid piece of news? Well, let's see -- to start with, the fat cow weighed 227 pounds at the beginning of her diet (that's more than twice my weight!) and she confined herself to only consuming 1,400 calories a day from McDonald's. Oh duh, anybody can tell you that if you were waaaay overweight and kept to a strict diet of the suggested daily calories, YOU WILL DEFINITELY LOSE WEIGHT. And to top it off, she's a freakin' construction worker for gawd's sake, the amount of physical activity she gets in addition to the 1,400 calorie diet that she apparently claimed she was on obvious helped her lose weight. Jesus. Even I consume more than 1,400 calories a day.

What this McDiet woman did was she went to the McDonald's web site and created a menu according to the nutritional information (Nutritional McDonald's - now there's an oxymoron). So off I went, to McDonald's Bag A McMeal web site where you can click on items that you want to eat and it counts the amount of calories for you. Here's what I've discovered (besides the fact that the woman's bullshitting):

If I ate a meal at McDonald's (which I never do anymore), here's what I would eat:
McNuggets 6pc
Sweet & Sour sauce
Small fries
2 packets of ketchup
Medium orange juice (not freshly squeeze, Minute Maid crap)
Total: 730 calories

A regular person would eat:
Double cheeseburger
2 packets of ketchup
Medium fries
Medium coke
Total: 1050 calories

A bound-for-early-death American would eat:
Big Mac
4 packets of ketchup
Large fries
Large coke
Hot fudge sundae
Total: 1780 calories [380 calories more than what the cow had a day]

And for you McDonald's skeptics who think that a salad at McDonald's is a healthy choice, you would eat:
Caesar salad with grilled chicken
Low fat Italian dressing
Medium orange juice
Total: 450 calories

Here's the deal -- unless the woman who claimed that she lost 37 pounds in 3 months ate nothing but the salad meal or splurged on a hamburger, small fries and medium orange juice (690 calories) twice a day, every day for 3 months -- there was no way that she would have lost weight.

I'm not saying that she lied about losing weight, but what I'm saying is that her experiment has so many flaws that I'm amazed the story was picked up by Associated Press. Think about it, physical exercise + 1,400 daily calorie intake + overweight person obviously = weight lost.

I think fast food is disgusting and is not only bad for your personal health, but bad for the environment as well. Because the food is sooooo procesed, it takes longer than usual to rot, which means more garbage! And then, there's the amount of plastic that's used -- the cup, straw, burger wrapper, ketchup packet, etc. -- problem is, there are tons of idiots out there who litter these things all over the place.

Go read the McDiet article from Associated Press and please tell me you're cutting back on fast food. Better still, not eat it at all!

Of feng shui and bad chi

So it's been almost a week since I've moved, left my old place and started my crazy moving into my new studio adventure on August 6. And damn, let me tell you that even though I've been slacking off by not going to the gym for the past 2 months, the workout I got from moving seriously made up for it. Rented a huge 10-foot truck from Budget, didn't get to drive it :( Zhuang drove it most of the time and I was sooo tired by the end of the day that I didn't even feel like taking the truck for a spin around the block like I planned.

As I was saying, left my old place - tiny ass room in a house that's just brewing with bad chi everywhere. There were two nice people but way too much politics with the rest. And to those who know my woes personally, you know who I'm talking about. Too much paranoia and too much negativity to deal with, so I had to cleanse myself of that and move out. Where did I choose to move to? Here's the ridiculous part - I moved to a studio unit (all the space, all to myself! Yippee!) but the only problem with it is that there's a medical research center across the street from where I live and a chinese cemetery two streets away. It's a nice apartment community, with a pool, fitness center and jacuzzi - so I'm kinda trading it off I guess. And my lil' Beetle (who gave me some trouble during the move, ugh) gets its own underground parking space. So in feng shui terms, my studio location is chock full of yang energy (me thinks, or was it yin?) and that's bad coz you want balance. I got a little freaked out coz of the cemetery (totally totally freaky even though I can't see it from my unit) so I went nuts over Lillian Too's feng shui books at Borders for 3 days before my move, but alas, at the end of the day, my mantra with decorating a place is that it has to fit my style and feel comfy -- and trust me, three legged frogs, bagua mirrors and $5 chinese paintings of mountain tops and flowing waterfalls from Chinatown aren't exactly my style.

I have yet to finish unpacking even though it's been 5 days and I seriously have waaay too much stuff for one person. How much stuff did I have? I moved out of a tiny one bedroom with barely any floor spcae and my boxes, bed, table and cabinet filled a 10-foot truck that's meant for 1-2 bedrooms.

I have no photos of my apartment to show yet - but I will post some once I finish unpacking. I haven't slept in for the past 2 weeks and have been getting up before 9am everyday so I seriously need to reenergize. My body is falling apart from the move -- doesn't help that I'm juggling two internships and car problems at the same time. I'm kinda proud of myself though, hehe...coz I mananged to get a really good deal for digital cable for my TV, which means HBO! Weeeeee...one thing I've learnt in this land of US of A, just be pissed, demand for a refund and service providers (cable, internet, phone, etc.) are going to cower in fear and bend over backwards for you.

Can't wait to go home, hang my posters up -- my larger than life-size B/W of Johnny Depp poster is getting lonely the box -- snuggle up in my olive green sheets. Mmm...