My 2nd year as a pure spectator of Lunar Gala, and I must say the show really has come a long way. I wasn't particularly impressed with the last year's show, but this year they had some rather cool clothing designs and a few models with some real character to them. Yes, the audio quality sucked royal ass, but they had some hot sistas struttin' they thang!!! Maybe I should ask Jim to hook me up with a sista? pu heh heh. Got to meet the iFS crew and had fun cheering my ass off for'em. Everybody seems to have improved and seemed extra confident this year, so I believe they'll only get better. Most importantly Sam "formula chemist" Byun, Caro "line" Choe, and Seung Chan "up yours and down mine" Lim reunited after what seemed like an eternity and spend some good quality time over dinner talking about this and that. I don't really "miss" people when they're not around, but it's funny how I realize that I had missed them all along when they return... does that make any sense? ^^; It was really good to see you two! Oh, and I fucking hate my hair... dammit!

I've been meaning to have dinner with Jane and David for some time, and little did I know that Jane was dropping by at the office tonight to go out with David for dinner. I had reached a good stopping point at work, so being the opportunistic and romantic-dinner-mood-breaking bastard that I am, I tagged along. ;)

We ended up at the Casbah which is a very nice restaurant, and most often the destination of choice when we have clients in town that we're taking out for dinner. On the dinner table were good food and lots of different topics, a large chunk of which was driven by my incessant enquiry into the whole "growing up, getting married, and having kids" paradigm that I have yet to fully come to grips with.

More than anything, it's just really great to be able to spend quality time with other MAYAns in a quiet setting like this. I don't know how other MAYAns feel, but for a kid who's a gazillion miles away from home and his family, his only real family members are... well, MAYAns. It is a bit of a shame that we can no longer have small parties at Pete's house like we used to instead of getting shoved into a big warehouse where we're all scattered around looking for the circular table that you feel most comfortable sitting in.

Would I be too greedy to wish that MAYAns would be able to have more of these nice quality outings? Uh, what did you say? Oh, no... sitting around in a noisy bar drinking beer doesn't count as a quality outing in my book. *HMPH* =P

For the non-Corean speakers who may have been curious as to what my previous entry was all about... That was just a short poem I had written in the heat of the moment while angsting over one of those late-night reflections. What was I angsting over you may ask? Well... It's just that from time to time I get very frustrated when I sit down to look back at myself in the hopes that I'd find something reassuring or satisfying, only to get blown away by the realization of how immature I am. People don't believe me when I tell them that I don't believe I'm mature enough for all the responsibilities that I carry; they think I'm being humble, but I happen to be telling the absolute and genuine truth that I gather from the feelings I have! -.-;

There are many times when I feel like that Sisyphus character from the Greek mythology: condemned to roll a big ass rock, not on a concrete paved road, mind you, but up a friggin mountain for god's sake!! Man, day jobs really don't get much worse than that, and the dude runs night shifts, too! I mean... Even after I had fully embraced the idea that without empathy there cannot be true communication, there are still so many times when I fail to fully empathize with the other person and simply let my desire to be empathized take over. It's not just that, but there are also times when I know that I'm selfishly looking after my own happiness at the expense of my loved ones. Just look at the fact that although I am well aware of how much my parents miss their only child, I still torture their feelings by taunting them about how I can only see them once a year because that's the most optimal arrangement given my lifestyle. I mean... Is that really something an only son can say to his parents? They were the ones that let me take this life for a spin! Talk about mutiny!!!

I don't know... You may think I'm being too harsh on myself, but with the series of events that have occurred recently I think I'm in serious need to spend some time really assessing my maturity, or the lack thereof...