MMM..mmmm....

Man did God Bless me last night.

We closed up at 8 and went to this $12 Asian Buffet.

1 Entire California Roll
1 Entire Philidelphia Roll
1 Entire plate of Random Sushi
Smoke Salmon the size of my hand and twice as thick
3 Stuffed Mishrooms
4 Dumplings
Teriyaki Chicken
Fried Rice
Crab Ragoon
Crispy Chicken
+ No Tummyache= Happy Peter

WHAT HAPPENED TO ME?

People say that I am CRUEL, MERCILESS, GREEDY, STUBBORN, AND MEAN.

I have to ask myself "How did I get this way?"

Maybe it's all of the broken promises that I had to endure.

Maybe it's all of those sacrifices that I made for others, expecting something back that never came back to me.

The fact that after everything that I did, all I got was the feeling of abandonment, which I know for a fact will never be consoled.

It could be the fact that I had to grow up so fast.

I thought that growing up fast meant that I would get ahead in life, but I guess not.

Not if you're tied down to something.

Not if by growing up fast and taking responsibilities automatically make you the person to depend on.

Especially not if those that depend on you make it so that your personal responsibilities come ahead of their own.

It's not fair.

No one said life was fair.

I've come to realize one thing.

You know those independent people who have their own careers that aren't disrupted by their families? Those people who have families that are completely independent and okay without them, but they are still close? Those families that recognize that they have their own lives to live and careers to fulfill?

That will never be me. I will always to the one who has to drop what I am doing for the family. The one who will be heavily criticized if I don't. The one who will always have to consider my family before me. Going out of state or even an hour away from the city will be a big issue. No matter what, I will never be free.

Sometimes I wonder why I wasn't born into a family where I felt stable, instead of feeling insecure and unsure about what could possibly happen next.

A family that thought ahead and prepared and kept their feet on the ground instead of living in dreamland.

GRE Studying

Darn Verbal GRE score! Why won't you go up?

Why can't I memorize your vocab words like I did when I was a Junior in High School? It's only been 4 years!

What's going to happen when I take the real test? Are practice tests supposed to be harder than the real ones?

Oh well, at least my math in in the 700 range...

Sniff sniff cough cough

I'm getting over a cold.

My head feels stuffy

my throat won't unclog

I feel tired

and I still have to work.

however, these are one of the times that I am happy that I am an adult.

I remember elementary school, middle school, and high school felt like PURE H#LL when I had to go when I was sick.

omg, as if being sick wasn't bad enough, having to sit in a confining desk all day and do work and take quizzes!

I'm thankful at least that I can move around freely here...

My Dear Mom

I feel so bad for my mom right now.

Just because he had to buy this place so abruptly without thinking about it all the way through.

When he was getting ready to buy this place my mom and I both told him from the start that we had no intention of leaving California with him. He told us that he didn't need our help and went along with his plans. When he realized that his new store was just too much to handle by himself, he called my mom and asked for her help. He called me too and asked me to help during summer, but I declined because I couldn't just leave my job and summer school.

Mom however decided to support him and sold her store which gave her the luxury of leaving home after 9:30 am in the morning and come home before 6pm at night and still gave her the convenience of a 10 minute drive from home. She didn't have much choice on her part.

Now she's stuck in a business that runs 17 hrs a day 365 days a year!

Her store in California was situated in a upper middle class neighborhood so she usually dealt with nice people who were educated, professional, or retired but now she has to do business in a ghetto neighborhood.

I feel so frustrated. I know that when I go back to school next year things will be good for me, but how will I be able to sleep at night and enjoy life when I know that she's in this wasteland?

We were discussing my future today and she said to me "you have your own life to live. you have your own education to finish, your own friends to meet, and your own career to pursue. I can't keep you here and let you hold off on your life."

That broke my heart because I knew that she was talking about herself too. I understood how she must feel. Becoming newly widowed in a strange new town away from her home, friends, family and church. She only had less than two days to meet with her friends after it happened to vent and cry with them or be comforted by them before she had to go back. Mom never wanted to come here in the first place.

I guess I've learned from example that the role of a husband is to protect your wife and create stability for her and to never put your family in a vulnerable position.

YAY for FOOD

Okay, so being stuck in a gas station with no kitchen has its disadvantages.
Unless you like to eat convenience store food ALL day.
Little Debbie Snacks and candy bars.
so yesterday,
I went shopping for Food at Sam's Club.
I picked up the essentials:
1. Cranberry Juice
2. Blueberry Muffins
3. Keebler Club Crackers
4. Pepperoni Pizza Hot Pockets

Now that I finally have food, I don't know what to do with it all...

A NON- BLOOD SUCKING VAMPIRE

I've come to realize that I am truly living the existance of a VAMPIRE.
---- Minus sucking the blood of course,
----or maybe an owl, on a less-disgusting note.

anyway,
my schedule:
6:15am-get up and shower
6:30am-open the store when it is still dark out and stay at the store until closing time (All meals, phone calls, and naps are taken inside of the store)
11:30pm- go home when it is dark.

I haven't experienced the sun in months, and when I do, it hurts my eyes...
in fact, just looking out the window for longer than five seconds hurts my eyes...

guess how white I've gotten!
---------
on another note, I'm scared....
Circuit City is closing 20% of their stores...
IHOP purchases APPLEBEES in an all-cash buyout...
more news like this on the way I suppose...

What's California going to be like when I go back?

I'm SCARED

has anyone ever had that

"OMG I'm getting freakin' old! I'm on my own after graduation! my parents were 10 times more self-reliant than I am when they were my age! how will I live for the rest of my life?" kind of thoughts?

-sigh-

I do...

I guess that's life... we all have to make small sacrifices here and there....

-pause-

I had french fries and jalopeno poppers for dinner last night....

A Nice Cappuccino

There is nothing quite like a nice warm cappuccino in the morning to help you start your day of right, especially if it is like 50°F outside and it's 67ºF inside. I feel so warm and fuzzy...

It would be nice if I had an avocado cucumber sandwich to go with this...



too metro?....

I'll make up for it later.....

Three things I need to do in the morning:

1. Daily Bible Verse

2. Breakfast

3. Daily GARFIELD, PEANUTS, ONE BIG HAPPY, ZIGGY, and HEATHCLIFF on YAHOO!

I've found out the googlemaps is awesome!

I found the house that I lived in when I was three years old (it was red then, but now they painted it blue)

I saw the old store that my parents owned in the French Market (the store is still the same, INCLUDING the sign that my dad put up over 10 years ago). The area used to be FULL of tourists and vendors, but it's ghetto now...

HMM........... I have an inkling that my cappuccino is really just a cup of hot chocolate with a few squirts of hazalnut sweetner mixed in.... but it's okay, I like hot chocolate....

In a Strange Sense of Productivity

I remember there is this really nice grandpa who always comes into the store and he asked me one day "what is something constructive you did today?"




I don't exactly remember what I said, but it must have been funny because just he laughed and left in a good mood.

Things are progressing in more ways than one.

With so much time in one place, I've been reading a lot more lately, mostly Yahoo news and also, my career objectives have changed quite a bit.



Before, I was dead set on getting my MBA and doing business, but I've realized after practically running a business day after day, day after day, it's not for me.

So that is why, I've put down my GMAT book and picked up my GRE book.

I've even gotten through about 250 pages of the Princeton Review's GRE Book. So many words to memorize, but like SAT's.... but at least math is a no brainer... (Geometry is the hardest it gets.)

Favorite article from Yesterday:


ESQUIRE released their best restaurants of 2008



They named a place called L20 in Chicago the "Restaurant of the Year".
It looks really elegant from the picture, but what really caught my eye was this picture of the Steak at MERCAT A LA PLANXA, also in Chicago.
















The presentation alone makes it so much more appealing....

DANG.....

I've realized how racist people here are...
SITUATIONs:

1. Two people asked me if I was Bobby Lee

2. There is an advertisment poster with an Asian guy on it and NO LIE I've had three different people on three different occasions ask "Is that you on there?"

3. This lady got angry b/c she Church's Chicken told her that she had to wait 5 minutes for her chicken. She tells them to F-off, buys a soda, throws it on my counter and says "I guess I'll just buy a soda from y'all. I guess Church's Chicken don't serve white folk"

4. This loud man hispanic guy (obviously raised in a female-dominated household seeing how he talks so much) keeps calling me "Chino" every time he comes into the store, whatever the hell that means...

5. While waiting in a short line of only African Americans customers, this one impatient Caucasian lady looks at everyone in the store and yells "good night YOU people!" and leaves. Needless to say, we all looked at each other with a WTF look on our faces.

*SIGH*

California, how I miss thee,

I would rather take your bearable weather and egotistical values you put into us

over

hot smelly weather and racist unlearned hillbilly mindsets any day...

NEW VENTURE?

I'M THINKING ABOUT WRITING A BOOK

Realizations

Some people will be difficult to deal with no matter what happens.

You could say the sky is clearly blue, but they could still say it's purple with polka dots and in their own little minds it would still be true.

moment of yesterday:
two Korean girls (obviously studying abroad) come into the store and look at a bag of cookies. One asks the other in Korean "How much is this?"
"Ask Him" the other says to her

"ahjusshi! ei guh ul mah ae yo?"

AHJUSSHI?

Eggshells

Do you ever feel like you're walking on eggshells?

I do.

Dang, I could eat like 10 Mcdonald's Hash Browns right now...

haha

Dear God

Dear God,

The world is truly an ugly place.

It is filled with addicts, decievers, and complainers.

I am one of them.

By nature, we are evil.

We think that good deeds outway bad ones

We are taught to be naive

We are taught that we deserve to be happy, no matter how we act or what we do.

We use authority to our advantage

We are taught that it's okay to look down on others, as long as we don't say anything about it

We hurt others purposefully

And still, we call ourselves decent people because we do "good things" and we don't "hurt anybody"

Dear God,

I'm just going to be thankful that didn't leave us.

Days Go By

I REALLY want to just sit down and watch "The Emperor's New Groove" and have a few good laughs, but I can't.

I miss sleeping in on Saturdays

End of Story. :(

--------
I really wish I had something good to write, I REALLY do, but I don't

ONCE IN A WHILE...

Things I hate here in Texas:

1.) People who complain about 5 cents as "expensive"

2.) people who say "let me get $__ on whatever pump that is..." (as if I'm supposed to know)

3.) people who throw credit cards, mass amounts of change and money on the counter and expect you to pick it up (if their parents didn't teach them to hand the money to the clerk, then their parents did a bad job teaching them manners)

4.) people who run to their car to get their wallet, AFTER getting everything rung up

5.) People who can't speak proper English w/o all of that slang SH*T

6.) HOT weather

7.) being stuck in a gas station 17 hrs a day 7 days a week. eat here, sleep here, work here..... this is my life....

Things I like:

1.) Being with mom

2.) learning how to fully operate a gas station

3.) working hard now so my kids will won't have to grow up in a place like this

Okay Then

I guess I will start a blogspot now...

Tales of My Life in Texas:

I've come to realize that when they teach in in Kindergarten to never call anyone "stupid", that that is just plain stupid.

We are taught to say "the action is stupid, not the person", but I've come to realize that, no, there are stupid people.

Stupid Lady from Wednesday:

Stupid Lady: Excuse me, I paid $10 Cash and I only got like 2.1 gallons
Me: Let me see your reciept maam
Stupid Lady: She holds it like 3 feet away
Me: can I see it?
Stupid Lady: I'm holdin' it up!
Me: Let me help you outside
---------
"we go outside and she calls some other girl next to her and says that we're cheating her

Stupid Lady: see 2.77 gallons and I paid $10. I should be getting a little over 3! 3.1 to be exact!
Me: I calculate it on a calculator in front of her. $10.00/$3.599= 2.77 GALLONS
Stupid Lady: No! you's pushin' some kinda weird buttons! If you calculate it it should be 3.1
Me: *this lady doesn't know simple math or even how to speak proper English, and I'm supposed to be nice to someTHING, not someone, someTHING like that?* "What do you mean maam? I did it on the calculator for you?!"
Stupid Lady: No you's pushin' sum buttons uh sumthin'
Other girl: yes maam, I think he's right because if you calculate....
Stupid Lady: nonononono! the sign says $3.59 per gallon!
Me: Per 9/10 of a gallon!
Stupid Lady: *stops for a second* uh, huh? well why don't it say so?
Me: it does? *I point to the sign*
Stupid Lady: Oh I see now, I always forget the 9/10!
Me: *rolls eyes*
Other girl: everything okay now maam?
Stupid Lady: I understand, but I'm not okay with it
Me: *I just leave and she leaves*

That Lady is an Idiot! A STUPID THING!, not a person