went downtown last night…it was cold…and i think i inhaled about half a pound of wool from my scarf. mmm…wool. so yeah, yesterday a few of us wandered to Chicago and walked around. it was pretty uneventful but it was okay. a lot of stores close really early…even the sony store. boooo. i wanna go to the Sony store and look at the flatscreens. ah well…i think the walk in the bitter cold builds character…and if it doesn’t, we’re all screwed.

anyone ever watch those Discovery Channel-like safari adventures on TV? where you see a bunch of apes running around whilst a man with an english accent talks about their eating habits? well, i had a similar experience last night…i ventured to take a peek at the other end of the spectrum…yep, i visited a white party.

what can i say? i was uncomfortable (what do you expect? how would YOU feel if you were in a house full of strangers?) tho i must say that it was actually pretty interesting…the lot of them totally ignored me (which is fine with me…i’d be surprised if they didn’t). a lot of preconceived notions i had attained from TV and movies didn’t quite fit in with what i saw… i mean, you don’t really see lanky guys and ugly girls drinking their livers away in the movies…no, it’s usually “beautiful” people drinking their livers away. feh…anyways, it was pretty lame so i didn’t stay long. another thing…why do people drink at parties? it always confused me…it’s not like alcohol really does you much good (or tastes that great) …and buzzes can only last for so long. and getting drunk…i dunno about anyone else, but i like to stay in control…and well, when you’re drunk you tend to lose control of yourself. i mean, would anyone in their right mind let a chimp drive their car? didn’t think so. but i guess if you were driving a geo metro then it wouldn’t matter…makes sense.

whoa there…just had a scare. apparently someone somehow changed my password. luckily nothing was changed about my account and no one blogged under my name. but still…its kinda eerie to know that someone has changed your password without your knowing. i tried to log in and it wouldn’t let me…so i requested my password be sent to my e-mail account. when i opened the mail, i found that my password had changed to a one digit number. huh? i quickly logged in (yes…with the one digit number) and changed it back to the original *phew*. great…now i don’t remember what i originally wanted to blog about. ai yah.

Merry Christmas everyone…and have a kraaazy Kwanzaa!

i now have my very own R34 Skyline! here’s a pic that i took this morning at 6am as the sun was coming up:

SWEET huh? i had it imported directly from Japan…bwahahaha…i’m gonna have a blast racing this thing. i’m thinking about converting the steering wheel to the left side, but it’s okay for now…this thing is a beast!

anyways…so yesterday morning a bunch of us CCMC folk went to a local nursing home to keep some of the elderly company. first we sang Christmas carols, then a skit and then we broke up into pairs to talk to them individually. and what did i do? when i wasn’t playing guitar, i was running around with my camera taking pictures of the event. it was good fun and afterward KouBomb came over and we played guitar for a good few hours..heh heh…after that i went to Chinatown for dinner (i won a bet…but the victory was bittersweet). on the way to chinatown i saw a ‘dodge caravan R/T’…HILARIOUS…the minivan was debadged save for some R/T decals and it had an exhaust tip…i tried snapping a picture but we passed it too fast. after dinner, we walked around for a bit..then it started raining…rain sucks. ah well…at least it wasn’t snowing.

okay, i have a confession to make. the Skyline pictured above isn’t mine…HOWEVER, i DO own my very own Skyline…and it can totally waste any other car in its class…(including my brother’s new Celica GT-four) it was a gift from Jeff Chou who was in Japan earlier this month. heh heh heh…here are pictures:

i wasn’t lying was i? the pictures are the proof >=) … that i have a mini pull-back racer.

another CCMC Christmas party come and gone…another “white elephant” session over with. heh heh…for all of you that are going “huh? ivan has a white elephant?” or “is ivan drunk and seeing white elephants” (they’re pink mind you), “white elephant” is a gift exchanging game. basically everyone brings a wrapped gift and places it in the middle of the circle of participants. they then go around the circle and everyone can either pick a gift from the middle or steal one from someone who has already picked (but once a gift has been “stolen,” it can’t be taken away from its owner). anyways, the gift i brought was two matchbox cars (a pimped Celica and a pimped R32 Skyline). my buddy Dan Han ended up getting my present and i got a…i dunno what the heck it is. it’s like a stuffed…something…and when you throw it against a hard surface it talks. kinda scary…anyways…yeah. i also got a PSone controller! so now i can actually play Playstation. nice.

ah…the last day of school before break. most of my teachers are pretty merciful (with the exception of a statistics quiz) and we end up watching “the simpsons” or something. i didn’t feel like dressing for gym class, so i didn’t…well, i didn’t plan on it. apparently i wasn’t alone…about seven other people decided not to participate and my teacher was pissed. she threatened to give us all detentions and referrals if she found gym clothes in our lockers. whatta grouch. so we ended up going back to the locker room and changed to play volleyball! what fun. anyways…i just finished a five page APEcon paper about East St. Louis’ school system and how crappy it is. blah…why am i even trying anymore? i don’t know. as you can probably tell, my entries are continuously becoming more scattered and random. well…what did you expect?

i found this sticker on the window of my neighbor’s car:

what the heck is that supposed to mean? have the airbags been used before? would you see blood stains and teeth marks on them when they deploy? i wonder how much money ford (yes, this is off of a ford. surprised? not really) saves by plucking used airbags from totaled cars and putting them in new ones. har har har..that gave me the chuckles.

every other tuesday at DGS is ‘civility tuesday’ where we add an extra 15 minutes to second period to discuss “civility issues.” i wasn’t there yesterday and apparently they had a door-decorating contest or something. well, today as i walked into first period i noticed that most of the doors were decorated and the recurring theme happened to be ‘diversity.’ i looked at the decorated door to my first period class and saw a piece of construction paper that had this drunkenly scrawled on it:

IT DOESN’T REALLY MATTER IF YOU’RE
- BLACK
- MEXICAN
- ARAB
- POURTERICAN
- OR WHITE

i started chuckling…not only did they misspell ‘puerto rican’, but they seemed to have forgotten about all the other ethnic groups. DOES it really matter if you’re not Black, Mexican, Arab, Puerto Rican or white? interesting way of thinking if you ask me. there were a few more strange sights on that door…including two sheets of colored paper promoting US-Italian relations showing misdrawn Italian flags (the bars were horizontal instead of vertical) flying next to american ones with slogans like “america - peace - Italy”. huh?

ah…thanks for all of you who’ve been encouraging to me in my time of…silliness. i’m thankful to have such big-hearted friends that care. yeah…so thanks a bunch =) (HEY! i broke 3600! wheeeeeeeee!)