Tag: The mundane

I Make a Good Cat Nest

~ bluepig83 ~ Leave a comment

It’s not Friday anymore…but I wanted to post this and didn’t remember until today. So at my Friday night home meeting at the Mendlers’, there’s this one cat. I’m not very good with cat classifications so I can’t really say what kind of cat it was, but it’s okay, because it’s not that relevant to the story.

So this past Friday, I’m sitting on one of the chairs before dinner begins, and the cat come’s in from outside with a group of arriving brothers and sisters. It’s hard to tell whether cats will ever respond to you or not at any given time, but I try anyways to signal for it to come over. And surprisingly, it does and even jumps onto my lap. As expected, the cat shifts around trying to make itself comfortable, but the next think I know, its head is pressed into my chest and I feel the pressure of the front paws alternately pushing against me.

It was a really interesting behavior, but I was pretty confused, “What is going on?!” Apparently it’s supposed to be a positive sign, meaning that the cat feels happy or comfortable around me, but I was also a little worried for my hoodie (okay, a lot worried), because I could feel the claws digging in each time. Though I was flattered that I somehow make good enough of a nest to trigger the kneading behavior, I didn’t want to risk my hoodie getting shredded, so I made it stop. Then after a while, it got bored and jumped off.

Yeah. It’s not that exciting a story, but I thought I’d share anyway.

Commuting and Winter Gourd Drink!

~ bluepig83 ~ Leave a comment

Today, I had an interview in Santa Clara, so I drove down to the South Bay. It’s interesting how my view of travel distance differs from SoCal to NorCal. I would always think driving from Anaheim to downtown LA is soo far that it’s somewhat prohibitive, whereas I have no qualms about taking a drive down to the South Bay, even though the two routes are pretty much the same distance. But as I was making the trip down and up the I-880, I was thinking about how much of a pain this commute would be if I ever got the offer and if I decided to accept.

The upside is that I would have pretty good access to the Milpitas area during lunch time. That’s where I stopped by today after my interview for lunch. Ate at this place called Taiwan Noodle House, even though from the Chinese it’s name actually should be translated to “Taiwan Pork Chop King.” And though I wasn’t in Taiwan, I might as well have been. It smelled like Taiwan, the chatter in the restaurant sounded like it does in Taiwan, and the TV channel probably was from Taiwan. It was a strange feeling to know in my head that I was actually still in Northern California.

What was super exciting was that when I sat down and took a sip of my “water,” it turns out that it was winter gourd/melon drink! How cool is that? I mean, it was a bit diluted, but still. They also sold a variety of Taiwanese eats, so that was also very cool. I ended up trying out their pork chop rice (I mean, it is called the Pork Chop King) and got a serving of the stinky tofu (which I love, btw). But after that, it was all disappointment. I really wanted to like the place b/c of the winter gourd drink, but when it comes down to it, I would have to say that I wouldn’t come back. The food wasn’t bad per say; it just didn’t really have the Taiwanese flavor I expected out of these two common Taiwanese dishes.

Bleh.

~ bluepig83 ~ Leave a comment

I had originally thought of posting something on January 1st, since there is something special about catching the first day of the year, but I never got around to it. But I guess putting up posts on the first week after months of absence is close enough to a new start. Except I don’t know how long this current streak will continue as there seems to be a direct correlation to the number of blog posts that go up and my holidays/vacations/semester or term breaks.

Today, I spent most of my afternoon sitting in a McDonald’s in Richmond, hammering out cover letters and sucking on a large caramel mocha. I was waiting for my car to get the standard 35,000 mi. maintenance service, so I figured I’d do something productive with the time. (I had originally ordered a small mocha, but it never appeared. So after 20 minutes of waiting, I decided to get the manager to help me out, who then upgraded me to a large. That was nice of him and suited me just well, because I was at McDonald’s for the next 4 hours.) I don’t know if it’s just me, but sitting in a fast food joint by myself fully caffeinated for hours on end just doesn’t make me feel that hot.

What else? I don’t think I have a uniting theme to this particular entry. Just wanted to throw some thoughts onto the web. Last night I dreamed about two rival retail empires (most likely in the clothing and/or general consumer goods industry, because the type of buildings in my dream were reminiscent of Saks 5th avenue), managed by a “good” and an “evil” faction respectively. And when I say evil, I mean like fantasy-type, mythical evil. Except there were some on the “good” side who are unscrupulous and generally have not-so-good traits, while on the “evil” side there are a few who have noble hearts and intentions. (Yeah, I know. This dream goes beyond the surface.) Not only was there the main story of war between the two factions (in the business sense, and maybe a little in the flavor of gang wars), but there were also subplots of intrigue, betrayal, and redemption within the factions themselves…Yeah, I think I managed to dream up an entire concept for a TV drama series.