I am a tourist

So after sitting around for a week, I actually got off my ass and went out of the house to see people this weekend. At one point, I was hanging out at a friend's house and saw a tourist guide to San Francisco. It turned out that my friend's boyfriend had been using it this past month to explore the city. He grew up in Santa Cruz and moved to the city a year ago to live with her. I realized, once again, that I was also pretty much a tourist in this town, since I've never lived here as an adult. I grew up here, but moved away when I was eighteen, so I really only have a kid's view of the city. So I've decided to write this blog entry with a tourist slant.

On Friday night, I hung out with a friend I'd known since we were eleven. The choices of hang-out venue were either Pinoy Pop (a music night organized by and for Philipino kids and featuring local bands) or to go out for a drink. Since it was late and I am old, I decided I didn't want to go somewhere to get tinnitus with a bunch of people 10 years younger than me, so we went to Rohan (on Geary and 2nd) for their fabulous soju-based foofy cocktails and their little plates of yummy nibbles. The drinks and food were great as usual, but for some reason the DJ insisted on playing her music so loud we had to shout to hear each other. After a couple drinks, our throats were getting sore, so we went home. (So much for trying to avoid tinnitus; and the group of guys sitting next to us may have been about our age, but they were acting ten years younger.)

Yesterday I met up with this friend, her boyfriend (whom I adore, but not in that way) and another friend I'd known since I was 14 for lunch at El Toreador (in West Portal). Mexcian food is one of the things I have never managed to get in Dublin, so I was happy. Plus, I'd never been to this restaurant and it was supposed to be good. They had awesome fish tacos, and the spinach enchiladas were great as well. They give you a whole carafe of their surprisingly spicy salsa when you sit down.

After lunch, and with the boyfriend safely sent off home, we went down to Good Vibrations (on Valencia and 17th) to play with the vibrators. I tried to think which one would be the least embarrassing were it to be pulled out of my bag at an airport security checkpoint. After a few minutes of this, we decided maybe ice cream would be a good way to cool down. We drove to Pollyann's (on Ortega and 30th? Somewhere around there, anyway), which has been there since I was in middle school. But they've expanded into the spaces next to them and is now huge and shiny instead of tiny and crowded like I remember. They've got more flavors than any decent person could want, and if you can't decide, they have a huge wheel-of-fortune type wheel that you can spin and choose for you. I got a cone of the Jamocha fudge almond, which was good, but not nearly as awesome as my friend's jasmine tea flavor. It tasted like what you'd expect jasmine flowers to taste like and I totally regretted my choice.

We then went back to my friend's place in the Sunset and just hung around for a few hours, watching TV and listening to a new song she'd written. We talked about our upcoming high school reunion, which is a pot-luck barbecue held in San Mateo, for Pete's sake. We read through the e-vite responses and looked at the invitation list to see if we even remember anyone, let along cared enough to actually go and see how they've changed. It turns out, not surprisingly, that I don't remember any of them.

When we got hungry, we went to to King of Thai nearby (on Noriega? possibly?) where we all ordered huge bowls of noodle soup. Mine was seafood in a red bean-based soup stock, and was good, but kinda salty. After stuffing ourselves, we left to go to a bar that a friend of theirs was holding his birthday party in. It turned out the bar was Lone Palm (on Guerrero and 22nd, sorta Castro/Mission area), which I'd actually been to before, a couple of years ago. We arrived a little before 10 and managed to find a table, but the place filled up quickly, and soon was packed. My dirty martini was too dirty, but my friend's apple martini was just perfectly apple-y. The birthday boy bought us all shots of Patron and we managed a toast before the place got so crowded we couldn't see the different sub-factions of the birthday party anymore. It was a good crowd- people our age mostly, but not painfully hip or styly. Everyone was friendly and in good spirits. However, once again, our age caught up with us, and we left shortly after midnight.

Making drama

The absolute best moment at the wedding was when the photographer walked up to a knot of us bridesmaids and asked, innocently, "Do any of you bridesmaids have significant others?" A loaded question at any gathering, as any female of marriageable age with aunts knows. At this gathering, it was even more loaded, as each bridesmaid was in her own personal relationship purgatory. Anyway, the poor hapless photographer's question was met with, like, 20 seconds of the densest silence ever. We just sort of made quiet “Uhhhhh” noises as we tried to figure out what to say. My brain went through all the possible answers: “Yes” was untrue; “No” was also strictly untrue; “Maybe” was not really an answer; “Er…it’s complicated” would have been the best answer, but that seemed like it would require further explanation, which we did not feel like giving. After a couple of awkward exchanges, the photographer slunk away to people with slightly less complicated love lives.

We laughed and laughed and laughed. It was awesome. It was so awesome, we were unable to stop laughing for a while. But maybe you had to be there.

Anyway, all this made me feel like maybe I didn’t have enough drama in my life, ‘cause it seems like it could be fun. I generally try to live without too much drama; I always thought that most people make their own lives difficult, when they could just let most things go and live more peacefully. But recently, I’ve been thinking- why the hell not stir up some shit? Why try to glide through life without making any waves? It’s just another way of making yourself invisible and lessening the influence of yourself on the world, isn’t it? But then I thought, Dang, that seems like it would take a lot more energy than sitting around and reading the newspaper.

Reading: Just finished Jon Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People. Man, I love Jon Stewart. Why don't they export The Daily Show to Ireland?

West Coast Tour

As many of you know, I’m back in the land of the free and the home of the brave for a few weeks. I flew into Seattle, where I was met by wonderful friends who whisked me straight to sushi. (That’s how you know they’re good friends.) This first evening turned out to be indicative of the rest of my visit, which was filled with friends and food. I confess there was also a certain amount of shoe-shopping.

After a few short days, I took the train down to Portland. My time in Portland was spent doing wedding prep-type activities and, uh, also shoe-shopping. Hey! I needed shoes for the bridesmaid’s dress! The shopping was successful: I and another bridesmaid ended up with the most fabulous bronze heels. Later, when I saw the uneven lawn the wedding party was to walk on, I nearly regretted the choice of 4-inch heels, but it was impossible not to buy them- they were fabulous. The wedding went off without a hitch. My ankles, as well as all entering couples, emerged intact. The ceremony was short, the alcohol abundant, the bride and groom waaay too cute.

I had a lot of time to hang around with my girl friends in both Seattle and Portland, and it made me sad, because I have no such friends in Dublin. I mean, it’s not like I need people around to discuss big important feminist issues or whatever, I just want people around to drink wine and try on dresses and giggle with. Of course, these are people I’ve known for 5 years or more, so that may have more to do with it than gender. It’s easier to be yourself around old friends. However, I'm now back in San Francisco, and I have yet to see any of my high school friends here. I sat around for two days before I even started calling any of them. What does that say?

Reading: Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore. Hilarious. It's a send-up of religion. With a talking fruit bat. Beat that.

Since you asked

In reponse to Jennifer and Debbie's comments, here is a picture of both my butt and the boy. My butt was not yet sore at the time this picture was taken, though.


Heh heh heh.

Last weekend

So a couple friends arrived last week to visit me and the Emerald Isle. They threw caution to the wind and decided that the left side of the road was a perfectly reasonable place to drive and so, last Friday, rented a car and headed West. On Saturday the boy and I took a train out to Galway to meet them (It took less than 3 hours! We were shocked!). We drove through the Burren in Co. Clare, but, alas, did not have time to stop and look around. In Doolin, we checked into our respective B&Bs and headed out to see the Cliffs of Moher. It is only one of the few times I've seen the Atlantic and, dammit, what a place to see it from.



We had a run of lovely weather, so the sky? Really was that blue.

We had dinner at a pub, where, mercifully, we could not hear the traditional Oirish music being inflicted upon the place. I had mussels (mmmm...mussels...) and we stayed around for a few pints afterwards. Miraculously, we actually managed to find out way back to our B&Bs.

The next morning, we took a ferry from Doolin out to the Aran Islands. The ferry stopped at Inis Oirr, where we walked around for a couple hours, and then continued on to Inis Mor, where we stayed the night.

Inis Mor ("Big Island" in Irish) is only 9 miles long, so, despite my reservations, we rented bicycles to get around the place and see stuff. It really was the best way. Besides, there were barely any cars on the island and the hills were totally manageable. (Yeah, okay, so I walked up a couple of them. So what, huh?) We biked to Dun Aonghasa, a stone fort built in 2000 B.C. and overlooking the Atlantic.


Rather refreshingly, they do not fence off the cliffs around the fort, so you can go right to the edge and look down at a beautiful, but cold and rock-filled death.


Isn't the color of the water awesome? We thought so.

The other good thing about renting bikes was that the B&Bs we stayed at served the traditional Irish breakfast, i.e. Heart Attack on a Plate, so it was good to be able to work off at least some of the food. Also, the B&B on Inis Mor has a stray cat and her kitten hanging around. I tell you, Chloe came this close to having a new "friend."

After seeing some other really cool stuff and eating even more, we and our sore butts left, half of us back to the car in Doolin and the other half to Galway to catch a train back to Dublin (stupid work).

P.S. At least a couple of these pictures were taken with my camera. But not by me. So there.

Well, I warned you

Listen people, I only yesterday found the time to go to the grocery store for the first time in 2 weeks, all right? And that's only by skipping yoga, which means that's 3 weeks I've skipped it.

And it's not like I'm super busy or anything. I've discovered that I really need to have time when I'm not doing anything. If I don't have a few evenings/days a week when I know there's nothing I have to do or pay attention to, then everything feels too crowded. Even if all the "stuff" I have to do and attend to just exactly fills up my time and I don't have to hurry from one thing to another, it still feels rushed to me. And things have been feeling a little crowded lately; I haven't sat down and watched 3 reruns of Scrubs in a row for weeks now, and that sucks. In fact, last night, as I was sitting down to eat dinner, I went to turn on the TV and noticed that we have a different TV! Then I remembered that old housemate had moved out with his and it had been replaced last week, but last night was the first time I'd had the opportunity to watch it. And then I couldn't find the remote or anything.

Also, for some reason, work seems especially busy this past couple weeks. Possibly because we're trying to put out this paper, possibly because some people are on holiday and I have to pick up slack, possibly because I've been too lazy before.

But! This past weekend I got out to Galway and the Aran Islands and, when I have the time, I will write about it and put up some pictures. (Don't be silly, of course they aren't pictures I've taken. They're pictures taken by the people I was with.)


Reading: Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake. It's, like, my biography. Only, uh, Indian.

God, I'm lazy

I've never been the most energetic of people. I've never really participated in sports, for instance, 'cause it just seems so...tiring. I manage to drag my ass into yoga every couple of weeks, but even then I sit on the mat at the beginning and dread the sun salutations that are supposed to get our hearts going and warmed up. I've never understood people who bar hop or pub crawl. Surely the sensible thing to do is find a nice place, with some seating, and then stay there and do your drinking in warmth and peace? And if I'm already home after work, with my shoes off, sitting on the couch reading or watching TV? Almost nothing will get me up and out the door again. If you want me to go drinking with you after work, it's gonna have to be right after work.

All this I knew and have accepted about myself. However, I've noticed recently that I've become even more lazy, if that's possible. Going to a party, right from work, with work people, but requiring a 15 minute walk? God, that's just too much work for a party. Walking the extra few blocks to go to the main library instead of the local branch? Too much hassle. Paying more for groceries at the yuppier place because it's closer to the bus stop than the bigger, cheaper store? Perfectly acceptable. Getting up from my chair in the office to go the 20 meters into lab to check an experiment, for Christ's sake? Eh, I'll just wait until I have a few tasks lined up to do in there. It's getting so bad that I'm starting to wonder if I don't have an iron or vitamin deficiency or something. I mean, seriously: I'm actually too lazy to get up from my desk? That's ridiculous.

I had promised myself that I would go somewhere different at least once a month, but I didn't take advantage of the Stockholm opportunity, basically 'cause, yeah, you guessed it, I just couldn't face lugging stuff to the airport and lugging it back. This next weekend is the last chance I have to go somewhere for June, and I was going to take a train down to the countryside and walk around, just for the day. But, really, at the moment, I just can't be arsed.

Hee.

I called my father up to say Happy Father's Day and he asked, as he has done every year since I left for college, when I'm coming home for summer. I think since I'm at a university, he assumes that it's just like school and that I get the summers off and would therefore come home for three months. Never mind that I actually haven't had summers free since 1999, and that, even before that, I never came home for more than two weeks, tops, during the summer. I always stayed in Portland and worked during the college summers. But it's cute that he ignores all previous experience and expects me to be at home, anyway.

It's actually very good for my mental and emotional stability, I think. It's a subtle reminder to me that, no matter what, I can always pack up and go home and he will happily feed and house me, for as long as I need it. Never mind that I'm nearing 30, never mind that I should, by all rights, be supporting him by now, never mind that I'm educated up to my eyeballs, he will always cheerfully take me in. I didn't appreciate this as a safety net until recently and it was further driven home (excuse the pun) when I was reading through the reader responses to the Class Matters special section in the NYTimes. A few people mentioned that they, and many others, had no safety nets, of any sort, familial or otherwise. If they lost their jobs or got ill, that would be it- they'd be out in the streets. And I, who has no savings to speak of, no pension or retirement account to draw on, no monetary wealth of any kind, would be in the same position if not for my family.

Now I feel guilty for not staying longer at home this August. Dang.

Speaking of movies...

There's apparently a movie out in the States (God only knows when/if it'll show up here) called Saving Face, which is about, get this, Asian-American lesbians! I know! Who'd a thunkit?! I've only read one review, which was mostly positive, but the accompanying picture had suspiciously media-friendly-looking lesbians. You know, really pretty femme ones. Anyway, might be one more thing to do while I'm home.

Yay! Home!

I finally bought tickets to go home. For once, I think it actually helped to wait until now. I'd been checking prices for months and was quoted $1000+ just for a round-trip ticket to SFO. An open jaw ticket to PDX/SEA and from SFO was costing $1400. Just absolutely ridiculous. But I found some flights, and although it costs more than I think it should, it's still cheaper than before, so I'll just count myself lucky.

I'm totally going for Chinese food as soon as I hit home soil. Although there are many Chinese here (more native Mandarin speakers in Dublin than native Irish speakers in the whole country, as they keep saying), there aren't any really good Chinese places yet. Another couple years, I think. And pho! Or any Vietnamese food!

I'm also going to buy more of those simple stretchy bras that I like from the Bon Marche. I've discovered that I'm slowly going back to my hippier years, vis-a-vis bra-wearing. I'm really disliking the nice, pretty, underwired things that I wore more frequently during the years in Seattle, and have been either going au naturel or wearing the aforementioned simple stretchy things, which are rapidly becoming worn out. (This is total oversharing, but hah! you're a captive audience.)

Let's see...what else to do while at home? Walk around like I belong there. I didn't notice this until I went over to the UK a few weeks ago for the literature festival, but I think in Dublin, I'm constantly aware that I'm non-native. Or, actually, I'm constantly aware that others are aware that I'm non-native. It's a little hitch that's always in the back of my mind. It doesn't make me feel uncomfortable or awkward; I can't describe how it changes my attitude, but it does, slightly. I didn't notice it was there until I walked out of the plane at Birmingham airport and it was gone. It was also conspicuously absent as I navigated around the airport and train and bus stations. (I was asked for directions.) I think I feel more natural; I don't get the feeling that, when I go up to ask about train tickets or whatever, that the person is bracing themselves for dealing with a foreigner. Not that I feel it happens in Dublin; people have been really nice here. I don't think this feeling is generated or re-inforced by the Irish. I think it's just this thing I have. I will have to think more about it now that I am aware of its existence.

Reading: A Suitable Boy, and Melvyn Bragg's The Adventure of English: The Biography of a Language, although, to be honest, I haven't really been doing much reading lately. Also, I notice that the guy who did Princess Mononoke and whatever the hell that other popular anime movie was (y'all know how I feel about anime) has just released Howl's Moving Castle, which is based on the Diana Wynne Jones novel and one of my favorite children's books. I'm very upset about this ('cause y'all know how I feel about anime, plus you know they never do a good enough job when turning books you love into films), because now it looks like I will actually have to voluntarily pay money to see an anime film. And no, it is impossible for me not to go see this adaptation. Feh.

Dammit

I was so looking forward to this weekend. It's the first in the last few weeks that I've had to myself and I had nothing particular to do. I was going to spend it shopping for random crap that I don't need (a good spring skirt comes to mind), reading, writing a news-filled letter to a friend, and maybe going to the modern art museum. But as it happens, I woke up on Saturday morning with a horrible cold. I should have seen it coming. Two of the lab guys had already come down with bronchitis and the last few days have been so gross and muggy in the office that I could feel the bacteria breeding in that warm, moist atmosphere.

I did manage some grocery shopping on Saturday (which is nowhere near as much fun as skirt-shopping), but went to bed early and spent all of today lying around on the couch, watching TV and alternating between cough drops and Lemsip. I couldn't even really concentrate enough to read one of the many many books I bought from the literature festival in Hay a couple weekends ago. Feh.

I was afraid this would happen

Okay, as you are no doubt aware, I haven't really been diligent about updating this blog lately. But I have excuses!

The first thing to bear in mind is that it takes me the better part of an hour to write what I think of as a decent entry. I can't just steal an hour from work, 'cause then I'm all stressed and feel rushed, which brings me to the second thing: I have to be in the appropriate mood to write about whatever topic it is I've chosen.

So now, the excuses. In the last month, I've had only a handful of evenings when I've had a few hours to myself, and those have mostly been spent sleeping or eating or doing laundry. There was the lovely German visitor, then one weekend to get errands done, then I went off to Wales to the Hay Literature Festival, then I had great friends from home visiting. So Thursdays to Tuesdays for the past few weeks have been shot. And then the few days I had left during the week, I felt guilty and thought I should work.

So there you go. There're my excuses.

However, the next few weekends look open, so far. Unless I decide to go to Stockholm.

Never mind

Just saw a group of 10- or 11-year olds being led across an intersection, against the light, by their teachers. In front of a garda van. So I'm just gonna stop worrying about that. ('Cause I was losing sleep over it, y'know.)

In other disturbing news, got an invitation on tribe.net from some dude I don't know asking me to join a tribe called "Asian women WHO love white men". (Yes, with the word "who" capitalized like that. Don't know why.) After I stopped shuddering in horror and could type again, I declined. Then I thought, Hey, maybe it's a joke, maybe it's a tribe devoted to abusing people who think they can mask their racism with sexism! Maybe this "Timothy" person is an Asian dude who thought the tribe was hilarious! After looking through his profile, though, I really really doubt it, and though it didn't have anything "worse" than what you'd find in the alternative ads in The Stranger, I still feel like I really need a shower after having been exposed to this guy. Even over ethernet lines. Yeech.

Individual vs. Collective Good

Should I feel guilty for crossing the street against the light right in front of a class of impressionable -aged schoolchildren, who were being herded and lined up by their guardians to patiently await the light change?

Reading: P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves in the Offing. I had to stop myself from staying up all night reading it. I'd messed with my sleep schedule enough this weekend.

Ah, Europe

Two important competitions were decided today. The first is the FA Cup, which Arsenal won, beating Man U by 1 penalty kick. I care nothing about this (other than a residual preference for Arsenal from when I lived in Manchester), except that I caught the last half of the match and it was so close even I got kind of caught up in it.

The second is the Eurovision 2005 contest. For those of you who don’t know, and I’ll bet money that that’s most of you, it’s an annual song contest, with one entry from each European country (and, uh, Israel; yeah, I don’t know either). It’s geared towards pop acts and the songs are absolute, total crap. So, naturally, it gets lots of people very excited. Ukraine hosted it this year, in Kiev, and they had to set up a tent city to house everyone who came to see it. Now, when I say absolute total crap, I mean it. This is the 50^th anniversary of the contest, and, as far as I can tell, the best song to have won in all fifty years was Sweden’s entry in ’74, Abba’s “Waterloo”. Which says a lot.

Now, I normally would care nothing about this competition, either, except that in recent years it switched from being judged by a panel of “experts” to being judged by people voting in from their phones, which means that all the acts suddenly got much more photogenic and there are more scantily-clad dancers on stage. The rules are that each country ranks their top 10 vote-getters and reports to Eurovison central, which doles out points. No matter how small your country is, you get the same number of points as anyone else to give out. (So, just for example, let’s say you’re a small island nation with a mere 4 million people; you get the same voting power as Germany’s 80 million people. Hey, it’s kinda like the EU! But I say too much.) However, and this is key, you can’t vote for your own country’s entry. This results in a pattern of voting that is, in essence, a reflection of what goes on in Brussels and gives a great picture of what Europeans think of each other. For instance, Turkey and Greece normally never vote for each other’s entries (except for this year, it turns out), and the UK always gives high points to Ireland’s entry because there are so damned many Irish living over there. For the same reason, Germany tonight gave 10 points to Turkey, even though their song sucked so much no one else was voting for it. The Baltic states always vote for each other, likewise the former Soviet states and Sweden, Norway and Denmark always vote for the other Scandinavian states. It’s just fascinating watching the results roll in and seeing who gives high points to an entry that everyone else had so far ignored, and who ignores an entry that everyone else has given high points for.

Another interesting thing about the Eurovision contest, which I think also says a lot about modern Europe, is that so many acts come from countries other than who they’re representing, and the same goes for the writers of the songs. The winner this year is Greece, with the singer Elena, who was born in Sweden. (And whose winning song includes the lyrics “you are the one, my number one” and “you’re my lover, undercover”. Hey, I warned you it was utter crap.) And I believe Ukraine’s entry was written by an Irish dude living in Sweden. What surprised me was that the vast majority of the songs were sung in English. Oh, a few acts stubbornly insisted on singing in their native languages (and of course, France would probably rather pull out of the contest than have a song in a language other than French, even though their lead singer this year was Israeli-born), but everyone else sang in English. The hosts spoke English. The different countries reported their rankings in English or French, with most opting for English. Jeez, no wonder English speakers never bother learning a second language.

All in all, a fascinating day of television.

Reading: Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, in preparation for seeing him speak at the Hay Literature Festival.

Two things

Two funny things that have happened to me at German passport control (keep in mind I've only been in Germany twice, so this is a high percentage):

1. Passport dude flips through my passport to find a place to stamp. He turns to his colleague and starts gesturing and talking in a high, excited manner. I don't know any German (except for how to say "white asparagus"), but it's clear to me what he is on about. He points to the "entry" column of the passport and then the "departure" column and is obviously ranting to his colleague about how clear the columns are and why the hell don't people stamp entry and departure stamps in their proper places. He goes on about this for a good couple of minutes, turning to different examples in my passport from when, in his opinion, less than competent people have put their stamps in the wrong places. He then carefully stamps my passport and gives it back to me. I turn to the page to see the Frankfurt stamp aligned and centered in its proper "entry" box. Way to go in dispelling stereotypes about Germans, passport dude.
[Edited to add: I've just checked my passport and all the German stamps are not only in the correct columns, but they're also positioned in the little rectangles. The other countries just randomly stamp wherever there happens to be room.]

2. Bored passport dude takes my passport and swipes it through the computer. Seeing something interesting, he sits up and squints closer at his screen, and then at my passport and then at me. Does this again a couple times. Says nothing to me. I am about to ask if something's wrong when the supervisor dude standing behind him catches sight of the monitor and comes over to peer over his shoulder at it. Reads the screen, scrutinizes my passport, looks at me. They do this for what seems like forever, but don't speak to each other or to me. Just before I break down and start screaming, "What?! What?!" he stamps my passport and waves me through, thoroughly bored again.

Rags to...uh, well, more rags

Reading: A fascinating series in the New York Times about class in America. The overview talks about the class structure and mobility in "classless" America. There's even an interactive graphic to see where you fall on the ladder! It says that I am about 69% of the way up this ladder. Only my wealth keeps me from being among the really elite. (Dammit! Once again, I am held back by not being rich.)
Apparently, class mobility has been falling for decades. If you're born to poor parents, you are now more likely to stay poor than someone from the '50s. Likewise if you're rich. Despite this, most Americans still feel that it is easy to move up the ladder (or down, which no one seems to take into account). And a healthy percentage of Americans really believe that they will succeed and get their part of the American dream, which explains why so many people oppose the inheritance tax, even though they believe that the playing field isn't even.

While I am smugly delighted in finding proof that the rich are indeed getting richer and the poor getting poorer, with a wider and wider gap between the haves and have nots, I am also enough of an American to resist the idea that even if you work hard you still may not be successful. As well, my own personal experience has very much been a pull yourself up by your bootstrap kind of thing, so it's a hard concept for me to wrap my head around. To some extent, it's because it’s always hard to understand why everyone else doesn't make the same choices you do. (Or is that just me?) But the second article in the series, on class and health, gives a good picture of how choices are limited by money, position, power, etc. I am waiting eagerly for the third article, on marriage.

Speaking of templates...

Two weird inter-related things. I was roaming the city this weekend with my (male) visitor. We saw Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, in which a guy says that men and women can't ever really be just friends (hmmmm...sound familiar?). Meanwhile, there was wild speculation on the part of my housemates about whether I and my visitor were lovahs. (I was all, No way! He has a girlfriend! And housemate was all, And that's stopped people when?) (I live with heathens.) You see? It's impossible to get away from this.

Hey, if you're bi, does it mean that you can't ever really be just friends with anyone? How terrible.

In a tourist town

I was a tourist this weekend. It actually felt really good, especially since it was in Dublin and I didn't have to be one of the stand-on-a-busy-street-corner-and-lengthily-consult-my-map kind of tourist.

But now I'm sick. And it sucks to be back at work.

Saw a hapa kid from the bus the other day. And its mother was carrying one of those re-usable Tesco shopping bags, so they probably live here. So that's a good sign.

Reading: Taking a break from A Suitable Boy with Margaret Mahy's The Catalogue of the Universe (YA sci-fi/fantasy- nothing exciting has happened yet, but I already dislike the main character 'cause she's all tall and pretty and smart and shit [Hey, I never said I wasn't shallow]) and Jennifer Crusie's Faking It (trashy romance- the female protagonist is an artist who fakes paintings and orgasms; truly a Renaissance woman).

Question

Let's say you are in the market for a diamond. For your budget, you can get a larger lab-made diamond or a smaller natural diamond. Assuming the same quality in terms of clarity and defects and what not, which do you buy? Why?

Now, keep in mind they're both diamonds, and as such are just tetrahedral carbon.

Reply to the blog or e-mail me with your answer. I'm polling everyone I know. I don't have a reason for doing so; I'm just curious.