Recently in life or something like it Category

I opened up my email this morning to a note from my roommate.  She is apparently getting married and her new husband-to-be will be moving into the apartment.  Which means, that I need to move out.

So now, its time to scour craigslist for a new place to live.  I'm going to try to find a place in the Hollywood, Los Feliz, Silverlake, or Downtown areas.  Mainly because that will keep my commute at a decent minimum.

Good times.

Looks like the laptop purchase is to be postponed for the moment.

Ahh, Labor Day weekend.  Also, my birthday weekend.  Yes, I am now Double Sweet Sixteen.  My birthday was pretty low key.  I ended up just walking over to Miss T's Barcade with a friend, playing some old school video games and having a couple beers.  Then we walked further down Western and got some Pho for dinner. 

Saturday, I went over to my friends place to watch the USC game (if you could call it a game).  I fell asleep before halftime and pretty much missed the second half of the game.  What I was looking forward to was the Oregon game later that night anyway.  For the fifth year in a row (a first for the series), Oregon beat Washington (the rival we dislike even more than Oregon St).  The defense looked really good and the offense looked good as well (especially for being so young).  Should be an interesting season.

Sunday after church, I met up with an old friend and his fiance, who recently moved down to Los Angeles from the Bay Area.  It was cool getting a chance to catch up on life and things.

It was kinda weird having Monday off for the holiday, I'm already used to being at work M-F now.  I went to a beach, and then just hung out with a friend later that night.

Work has been good this week.  My Asia boss has been in the office for a few days, so lots of work getting done while he's in LA.

Last night I went to an advance screening of the movie Towelhead.  The movie is directed and adapted by Alan Ball from the novel by Alicia Erian.  The story is about a young Arab-American girl, coming of age during the time of the first Gulf War, in Texas. 

The movie was pretty amazing.  It was uncomfortable, funny, hopeful and disturbing at various times.  I guess I shouldn't be that surprised coming from Alan Ball, who didn't shy away with uncomfortable topics in American Beauty or Six Feet Under.  I was actually kinda bummed that I wasn't able to stick around for the Q & A session after the screening (it was late).

Its going to be interesting when this film is actually released.  From looking at the official website for the movie, it looks like they are going to be doing a bunch of screenings around the country before its wider release.  Of course the title of the movie is going to be controversial.  The film makers (and original author) address this a bit on the website, which I quote beneath the cut.  I encourage ya'll to see this movie when you can, its the best movie I've seen all summer.

I received my first paycheck from the new job, which of course is pretty much already spent.  A large chunk of it went to the California Department of Motor Vehicles.  Yes, I finally officially own my car.  The fee was significantly more than what the DMV website said it would be.  It was the $165 usage tax that killed me.  Oh well, I get paid weekly for the time being, so its not like I have to wait long to get paid again.

On Saturday, I drove up to Santa Barbara for a friends birthday bbq.  It was nice to get out of LA, even just for the evening.  The bbq was pretty low key but still a great time.  One of the food highlights was my first experience with Ceviche.  This particular ceviche was made by one of my friends Peruvian friends, with halibut.  There were also homemade potato chips and exquisitely bbq'd tri-tip and chicken.  Oh, and maybe a beer or two.

Work so far has been good.  I'm still not completely sure about everything I'm supposed to be doing, but I'm learning more everyday.

Well its week 2 of the new job.  Things seem to be going well so far, though I'm still not sure exactly all I'll be doing.  But that should get settled out over the next few weeks.

Other than working, not much else has gone on the past week.  It seems that most of my friends decided that last weekend was a good time to be out of town.  So the weekend was pretty low key.  I mainly just read and watched couple movies.

I think I'm going to Santa Barbara for a friends B-Day BBQ this weekend.  At least that's the plan at the moment.

I started my new job on Monday.  So far its good, but I'm of course still just settling in.  Mainly its a big relief just to have something.  I'm looking foward to Friday's paycheck from the two day temp assignment last week.

On Saturday, one of my friends invited me along to a wedding of one of her high school friends.  The wedding was pretty normal (well except for parts being in Korean) until the reception.  When the wedding party arrived, each couple was introduced along with music, which they danced their way into the hall to.  When no one was left except for the bride and groom, the video on the right is what happened.  It definitely made for a more interesting wedding reception.  Other highlights included the infomercial made by the groom selling "Jane's Top Musical Hits," including him (and friends) lip syncing along to songs from High School Musical, Dream Girls, Hairspray and maybe one or two others, I can't remember.  The wedding was great fun, but I was sure exhausted by the time I got home a little after midnight.

Sunday I ventured up to Thousand Oaks to hang out with my friend who lives up there.  I took the Red and Orange lines to Woodland Hills to meet him part way.  With the trips on Saturday and Sunday, I've now ridden all but a small section of the Green and Gold lines in the Metro "Rail" system (the Orange line is a dedicated bus line).  My friend bbq'd some ribs and we watched Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay.  The movie was funny, though not as funny as the first Harold & Kumar movie. It was a pretty laid back afternoon.

I got offered and accepted a temp-to-hire position as an Executive Assistant at Herbalife.  The job is in Century City (not far from where I go to church) and pays pretty well.

I'm pretty stoked.

Yay for regular employment.

Temp gig this afternoon and tomorrow.

Not much but every little bit helps

Well the job hunt drought continues.  I went into another branch of one of the temp agencies to see if maybe that would help.  My gut tells me that they don't have much going on either.

Last night I went over to a friends place for a dinner & movie party.  This was a few of the folks from our regular dinner group...plus a few other friends of the hosts.  It was a great time of food, wine and conversation.  Something I really needed for sure.  We watched a documentary about struggle for the South Central Farm (official site here) here in LA.  The movie was called The Garden.  The film was good, though definitely biased towards the farmers.  It's still crazy to see the aerial shots of the site when the farm was active compared to what it is now.  I actually remember passing by the site while on the light rail to Long Beach a few weeks ago, though I didn't know that's what it was at the time. Now its just a fenced off plot of dirt, seems pretty silly.

The biggest excitement of the week had to be the 5.4 magnitude earthquake this morning.  It happened at 11:42am.  I was sitting at my desk and all of a sudden the room started shaking.  It took a few seconds to comprehend that it was an earthquake and by then it was pretty much over.  Nothing fell over, not even the books i have stacked on the floor against one of the walls of my room.  It definitely got the blood pumping though, and was the talk of the news for the rest of the day.  They've been saying that this is a wake-up call for Southern California, which hadn't experienced a earthquake of this size pretty much since the devastating Northridge quake in 94.  The "big-one" is still coming geologists stressed.

It was a pretty crappy week in the job search department.  I applied to a bunch of positions, but didn't hear a peep from anyone.  Most disappointing was the wine store position that I applied for.  Oh well.

I tried to get into a free screening of The Dark Knight at USC on Thursday, however not much of the wait list made it in for that one.  So I ended up riding my bike over to the Arclight Hollywood and to see a show Friday afternoon.  The build-up to the movie was completely over the top, and therefore expectations were quite high.  The movie didn't disappoint.  I think pretty much every one of the main actors did a fabulous job in their roles.  Sure, Heath Ledger is getting the bulk of the press in light of his passing, but he also did a pretty fabulous job reinventing a character played brilliantly by Jack Nicholson in the first Batman movie.  Both Christian Bale and Aaron Eckhardt were great as Batman and Harvey Dent as well.  One of my friends thought it might have been a little long, and I can see that position, but I didn't mind the length either.

Sunday I went and saw the Independent Shakespeare Companies performance of Twelfth Night at the Barnsdall Arts Park in Hollywood.  Basically, its free Shakespeare in the park, Th-Su, during the months of July and August.  It was fun, and I think I'll go again, though with a picnic dinner this time.

After spending the morning job searching on Monday, I decided to take a little diversion and do some more exploring of LA.  So I got a Metro Day Pass and hit the rails.  This time I took the train to Universal City and went up to Universal City Walk.  Basically its just a collection of stores and restaurants just outside of Universal Studios.  Touristy for sure.  After walking around the City Walk, I decided to head back into Hollywood to catch a movie.  I was initially thinking about seeing Wall-E at the El Capitan Theater (owned by Disney), however the movie had already started by the time I got there.  Luckily, Hell Boy II was playing across the street at the Chinese Theater.  Check one more touristy thing off the list...See a movie at the Chinese Theater.  Like the first Hell Boy, it was directed by Guillermo del Toro.  A great movie as well, and not as dark and sinister as The Dark Knight.