..:. Cracking My Vainpot .:..

One day, a kiss is a kiss. It won't feel like a French revolution.

One day, a hug is just a hug. I won't have to look over my shoulder.

One day, I'll hold your hand and won't have to worry about being kicked out of the park.

One day.



[ceramics by Kina Crow]

San Francisco beware! [evil smiley face]



My provisional license has collected 15 years-worth of dust, but the time has come for me to grow up, finally!

The written test was easy. Can't believe I was so anal about getting a perfect score. No touch screen in sight. California DMV is still marking our tests by hand - shocking! So I just picked the most expensive driving school in my area, told them I need to get going in 2 weeks, and things got interesting.

Having been driven around all my life, it showed. On the first day, I made my first critical error within the first second - I got into the *passenger* seat! By the second lesson, my wacky instructor got me onto the highway along the Pacific Ocean doing 65mph. Crazy. Then we ran over some Mexicans aliens in Mission, drove away all the hippies on Haight Street and gave some grannies heart attacks in Chinatown. 10 hours later, we went past Nancy Pelosi's house after going up a 45 degree slope.

Although I still have a tendency of mixing up the pedals, still can't do parallel parking and would still very likely fail my driving test on my last day in San Francisco, I can still feel good. I did Lombard - the crookedest street, according to any SF postcards, without a license!

My brain hurts.

Would this world be a better place without God?

Yes, said Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins. A lot of attrocities have been committed in the name of religions.

No, said others. Stalin, Hitler (or was he really still Catholic?), Saddam, Mao and Pol Pot did not need God to justify their madness.

Even South Park pitched the Unified Atheist League vs the United Athelist Alliance vs the SeaOtters in Dawkins' Godless future.

So there. Human beings can use anything as an excuse to do nasty things to another human beings. Be it religion, race, greed, whatever.

But just like this world being plagued by AIDS and TB, wouldn't there already be less suffering if we can rid of AIDS and only have to deal with TB?

Would our world be more peaceful, if we can only wage wars for non-religious reasons?

Is that too naive a question?

Imagine no India vs Pakistan.

Imagine no Shia vs Sunni.

Mary Midgley is more pragmatic. "Just focus on fighting against fundamentalism, whatever form they take." But where's the boundary? Isn't religion a sliding scale?

It was way past midnight.

Everybody has gone home except me, still hampering away in the lab.

The last thing I had to do, was to develop some films in the dark room.

Bathing in dim red light, I realised that effectively, I was holding some mashed up bits of a brain from a dead person.

With a chill running down my spine, I had to convince myself that there's absolutely nothing to worry about. The light was not flickering, no moving shades lurking at dark corners.

"I am an atheist, I am an atheist, I am an atheist. No God, no ghost. Not until Halloween."

"I am a rational scientist. Which is scarier? A friendly ghost or the fact that everything I've learnt so far and believe in is wrong?"

But none of these reasoning stamped out my wimpiness in the dark (as well as my embarrassment towards this inherent, genetically encoded, Darwinianly evolved primal fear). Until, my little voice finally said...

"For [God's] sake just get on with it! Such a girl!"

I want to be respectful of your feelings .......... (slang) I just want sex

I want you to be comfortable about us spending time together .......... (slang) I just want sex

When we were going out, I totally enjoyed spending time together .......... (slang) Thank you for making me come

Seeing you this time again, I was having a good time and I was very attracted .......... (slang) but I just won't love you

Bottom line for me, tho, is having a positive relationship with you is the most important thing, whatever form that takes .......... (slang) just don't ask if it's love

I do like you .......... (polite) I don't love you, but let's fuck

I'm fundamentally the same person .......... (polite) I still don't love you, but I still want to string you along

All that said, I'm not sure how "available" I am so you should take appropriate precautions .......... (polite) Please don't to go to Castro on a Tuesday night, or you'll bump into me with some other boyz.

SF_cuteboi .......... (entry erased)

I'm sick of people telling me that "Asians can't drink" because we "don't have alcohol dehydrogenase to break down ethanol".

(Yes, I'm even acknowledging that I'm now an "Asian".)

What pisses me off, is that when people trying to be "scientific/as-a-matter-of-fact" about why I flush precisely 2 minutes into my second beer, they're usually WRONG.

#1. There're >1 families of alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), with >5 genes encoding for the "main" ADH, that function as homo/hetero-dimers.

So which one is missing in Asian again?

#2. It's the accumulation of acetaldehyde in blood that makes people flush & hang you over.

So if I'm getting red, it's my acetaldehyde dehydrogenase 2 not my alcochol dehydrogenase 2 that's lazy!

#3. Only 50% of all "Asians" have this ALDH2.2 allele, which seem to protect against alcoholism.

So next time you want to knock "Asians", remember to say this instead:-

"Yeah what a shame, half of them can't become alcoholics, coz they don't have an enzymatically active aldehyde dehydrogenase 2 that breaks down acetaldehyde."

Quite a mouthful isn't it? I suggest you concentrate on lactose intolerance. But that case, revenge might just be too sweet :)

My Uncle 5 was one of the most successful but most apathetic person. One day, he said this to me.

"It's very difficult to be a good person. Sometimes we can only strive not to be a bad one."

15 years on, I realised with reluctance that he might actually be right.

Yes, spectacular.

Today, we find out if our 2 million dollar blood test is going to work.

After two whole days of tedious pipetting, both me and my helper angel have sore thumbs than turned numb.

Eventually, we shoved that 96 well plate into the DELFIA lazer reader, held our breath, and watched intently as the duplicate data set came on screen, one by one.

62345..

74040..

1145386..

1053409..

Shoot! What's that?

>10-fold difference!!?

I did my best to restrain myself from jumping up and down, frantically trying to figure out if our patient samples really appeared infected compared to the healthy donors.

Then, "Ding", a light bulb lite up above my head.

Shit. Those are the positive controls!

We're reading the plate up-side down!!

AkKKKKKK!

So that was it. The rest of the data were totally+completely negative.

Our blood test has failed, in style.

A spectacular collapse of yet another of my dreams.

What am I waiting for? Against the ever deafening torrential rainfall in the background, I tried to reason.

The Last Friday Night Ever of My 20's!!

Sigh. After that I'd have to 'apologise' whenever people ask how old I am. Can't just stay home and watch Discovery Channel!!!

But even the most hardcore of my clubbing buddies decided to, well, stay dry.

Plus, I have food poisoning. Sigh.

Then I can hear mini me saying "Nothing to lose!", "You're not getting any younger each day" and that was it. I know the clubs would be empty, but I want to see it for myself, afterall, I HAVE already paid $15 online for Underworld.

So I did a hundred push ups, put on my brand new cK brief, covered myself in Vaseline, popped an Imodium, and braved the Tsunami all by my 20-something self.

By the time I got onto the muni train, I was positively soaked. Seeing that there were only 3 people on it: the driver, plus homeless #1 and #2, I know I'm 100% delirious. These poor souls were there because they HAVE to be. Me? Me trying to partied out as much as possible before it's too late.

Downtown San Francisco. The streets were empty. Eerily empty. On a Friday night!

Eventually, my insane self arrived at the club, and guess what, it's jam packed FULLLLLLLLLLLL.

Crazy shit.

It seems that nothing, absolutely nothing, would stop gay boys from dancing in their underwear.

Nothing.

Not even fading youth!

"he was like, and I was like... and it was like, it was like..."

"like, he was like, he was like... like, he was like..."

"she was like, like, ... it was like... it was like..."

"I was like, I was like, like ... he was like..."

"like, she was like... like, like... like, like, it was like, like, like, it was like, like..."

(Once, I got sooooooooo annoyed by this very loud girl on the muni train I actually counted the number of times she said the word "LIKE" in a minute === 15, that's 1 per 4 seconds! Wish I had the gut to tell her that.)