This morning I put on Give Up, and for the first time I heard it without a single tinge of sadness. It felt like freedom, as if I could finally have this music to myself now. And at the same time, as much as I cherish all the memories and emotions, it’s nice to be able to say that I’m past it all now, and I can finally share this music with others.

It’s only the drivers who yield to pedestrians who deserve a quickened step across the lane. I take my time, sometimes even walk slower, for the drivers who have no regard for the pedestrians.

Only patient people deserve patience in return.

“Is Petersburg really as you draw it?”

“I draw it as I see it”

—Onegin

When I woke up, it was just another day, and my room resumed its silence as I turned off my alarm in the darkness. When I got outside, it was just another morning, although the recent drop in temperature has frosted the grass and turned the pavement white.

When I got on the bus, the sky started with a plain, early-morning glow that seemed to stretch out in a tunnel towards my destination. As I traveled further east, the sky turned pink and red, and a perfectly vertical beam of cloudless light shot out from below the horizon, letting me know that the sun was waking up.

I watched the sun rise as the bus took me to work, watched the sky turn from grey to red to yellow to white. I saw the heavy morning fog snake through the trees of a forested green golf course, and saw it recede, as if the earth had chosen to display itself by lifting her downy veil.

There are days when I want to get off at every stop and take pictures of the graduating atmosphere. When the ride is a journey only experienced by bus.

If wine were a liquor, it would taste like sake. The statement doesn’t really make sense until one actually tries a cup of the warm liquid, and I have to admit, I didn’t believe Louise when she first said it.

Pat, Aaron, Trolley, and I, along with the respective girls/girlfriends, Jen, Karen, Andrea, and Loo, went to the Japanese Village for some celebratory teppanyaki. Pat found a new full-time development job, Trolley went from contract to full-time, and Aaron got an eight-month quality assurance contract, all within the same month. Everyone managed to make it out on the same night, which is not an easy task among the eight in attendance.

The last time we met together like this was when I first got my job at the beginning of spring, when we went to a little restaurant in Chinatown to celebrate, sort of like the meeting of the heads of the four territories in Infernal Affairs 2. It was important that my three closest friends in the city could make it last time, and this time, it just so happened that each one of them got new jobs.

Every main meal comes in six to seven courses with mushroom soup, salad (consumed using chopsticks), shrimp appetizers, mixed vegetables, rice, and sprouts. I got the filet mignon, which is unlike anything I’ve ever tasted; tender enough to stick through with a chopstick, but firm enough not to fall off. It’s so good, that I may sacrifice the excitement of trying something new the next time I go, for the savoury taste of their best cut beef.

Something that I desperately want to do again, but difficult enough to accomplish with everyone there, to make me appreciate the time when it comes.

So apparently, I’m not the only table tennis dork. For September, about 250 of 483 total referring search strings were about Biba Golic in some form or another, such as “biba golic nude pics”, “biba table tennis pictures”, or “biba killerspin”. This means that more than half of the search strings, sprinkled liberally with other random strings like “gay windmill photo”, “mexicans are stupid”, and “i hate john walsh americas most wanted asshole” (I’m assuming a reference to my John Walsh show post), are Biba related.

I think I’m supposed to be comforted by the fact that I’m not the only one who’s aroused by ball-smashing woman, but for some reason, I’m not.