one long ass nine hour flight later and i'm in taipei, taiwan.

there was a cool chinese dude sitting next to me from hong kong. he was in new york working at a carry-out for a year to get money for his family back home. i think his name was jackie. i whipped out my macbook in the middle of the flight to try to pass the time and wound up helping him transfer all my songs to his iphone. he hadn't had any idea how to do it before, but now he's got a buttload of music to last him for a while. hope he likes it!

right now i'm sitting in taoyuan airport waiting for my flight to okinawa. it's 9 o clock in the morning over here...on thursday. that means i lost a whole day basically. when i was in alaska it was like wednesday around 2 am or something...damn time zones fuckin up my schedule. surprisingly i'm not jet lagged...maybe cuz i operate on a weird ass sleeping schedule as it is. bwahahaha i have mastery over shit! anyway, this will probably wind up being my last entry in this bitch. hmmmm...don't really have anything special to say like i did with my previous journal (y'all know the one). i guess i just have to learn and accept that my friends or anyone else can't be me. just because i'd walk in the snow 10 miles to bring you some mcdonalds or something doesn't mean i can expect you to do that. it kinda sucks, but that's how life is. you don't always get what you put in. but whatever. in a year or two when i come back then i probably won't hate my friends so much (most of them, not all). and in the meantime i've got a new life to live.

i'm going to be in a place where nobody knows my name...hopefully they'll be glad i came. well, nobody but maryann that is. i'm looking forward to finally being reunited with the woman who probably cares about me the most, and learning about a new culture, and eating new food, and being in a new place, and making new friends. and gettin a job and savin mad dough...all that shit. and traveling all around asia! maryann and i are sposed to be going to thailand over christmas break. may go see malaika while we're over there (she's living there teaching english now), but that fucker didn't come to my going away thing either despite being in the city at the time so maybe not. aaaaanyway, that's that. the new lj is being created and you'll hear about it within the next couple of days i'm sure. just remembered my internet access is going to be HELLA limited once i hit okinawa. yet another chapter in my life closes and a new one begins. it's been real kids.

the end.

i'm sitting here at the airport in anchorage, alaska waiting for my connecting flight to taipei. it's soooooo weird flying backwards in time. when we left new york it was around 11pm (took like an hour to board and take off from jfk for whatever reason...we were sposed to leave closer to 10), and now it's only 2:20am even tho the flight was like....7 hrs. alaska is four hours beind east coast time. wasn't aware of that! no sign of vladimir putin yet, but when he rears his head you can be sure sarah palin will be getting a call from me.

flying china airlines has been kind of amusing. it's a lot like the chinatown bus in plane form. of course, i'm the only black person in a sea of chinese people. and they served chinese food as the in flight meal. and played a movie with chinese subtitles. and when they announce things they do it in chinese first, then english. i had to pee for like 4 of the 7 hrs. we were flying, but eventually made it to the bathroom. didn't do a whole lot of continuous sleeping because my ass was mega uncomfortable (having to pee also contributed to that), but we made it here in one piece so all is well on that front. hopefully on the next flight (which is sposed to be 9 hrs. i believe) i'll sit in my sit and sleep like the fat baby i am. sure would be nice. cuz after that i've got a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooong wait til my flight to okinawa (10 hrs).

on an unrelated note (to this, but related to previous thoughts), sometimes i wonder if my expectations of my friends are too high. but then i'm like are they really?. i mean if two strangers would help me carry my bags around manhattan then is it wrong to think that two of your closest friends would do that for you as well? just a thought.

and yes, there WILL be another journal after this.

i'm in the apple store in soho writing this entry on a new macbook pro. it's definitely nice and shiny looking...the new mouse pad doesn't really annoy me that much, although sometimes it thinks i'm trying to shrink and enlarge shit when i'm not. anyway, i'm about to have dinner with jada over at spice in an hour after i get my bags from jose. i just got through spending some quality time with jen and isaac, my favorite young married couple. i got my international drivers permit, deposited maryann's cash, bought some of the shit she wanted (that they had in the duane reade near the aaa place i got my license at) and uh...i think there's only a few things left on the list that i need to accomplish.

only thing i'm concerned about now is carrying my damn bags...now it's time to blow this popsicle stand. i need to friggen pee damnit and maybe go to best buy one last time so i can jam out to some rock band, ya dig? ok, why is this dude in here jammin to music videos? he's like the soho store unofficial dj. i'll admit he's playing some decent shopping music tho. ok, i'm out for real like uh....baggy pants. tight pants are in you know.

i'll write some more about barack obama sooner or later, but this journal is supposed to be about me and my life damnit and that's definitely what i'm going to be focusing on right now.

it's always darkest before the dawn - mao zedong

i end my time in dc the same way i spent the vast majority of it: sad and alone.

things started out well enough. my last day of work was actually one of the more longer and hellacious i can remember in certain ways, but they did throw me the best going away party i could hope for. seriously, of all the people who've left mck during my time there, none of them even came close to getting the kind of going away that i got. they got me presents, japan related shit, cards up the wazoo with personal notes, champagne, and went around the table basically talking about how great i was. i was about to cry up in that joint, but thankfully i didn't. the whole thing was mad humbling, and it's always great to know that i'm making a difference in peoples lives for real. often i wonder if me being me (and if you know me then you know what i'm like already so no explanation needed...) is healthy, rational, or sane. then shit like this happens and validates everything.

however, being at work so damn long did make me miss dinner with my aunt keva, which blew ass. i was definitely looking forward to sitting and talking and eating with her...i did wind up getting food on her tab (crab cakes and fries that were good as hell) and she gave me some dough to take to japan as well. still, wasn't quite the same as a proper dinner...damn work.

now, as most of y'all should know by now, not only was it my last day at work but my last day in dc. so to celebrate the momentous occasion, i decided i'd have a shindig somewhere, the somewhere in this case being the space in dc. i figured if i failed at having a house party maybe i could succeed if the party was somewhere else. siikkeeeee i was wrong. silly me. it doesn't matter where or when i have a party...mofos won't show up regardless. well that's not entirely true cuz four mofos did show up...camille (who HAD to come being my roommate...i would have killed her otherwise), chloe, amsley, and andrea. kinda crazy how andrea, of all people, is the one who seems to genuinely care the most right now.

it's probably a good thing people didn't show up cuz something funky was going on with the space...like it being closed or something? it was odd. chloe and amsley were pissed...i'm pretty sure they didn't wanna be there in the first place and let it be known if we didn't do something quick they were bouncin. amsley had to be at a funeral or something and chloe had to be at work. so we went over to adams morgan as a last resort. while andrea and i found parking, chloe and amsley did not. so they went to chloe's house to park and catch a cab back over to adam's morgan (chloe lives pretty close), but for whatever reason they were having problems catching a cab. so i just said fuck it. camille showed up not too long after that and the three of us walked up and down u st. looking for a place that wasn't charging an outrageous cover. we settled on chi-cha lounge, a place camille frequented back in the day that was pretty cool beans. i finally had my first drink at like 2am (the festivities were sposed to start at 11pm) and all was temporarily well in my world.

we headed home not long after that. it was like 2:30 in the morning by that point, and the liquor was making me sleeepyyy. i took drea back to her place and she gave me a real nice i'mma miss you hug. actually she gave me two cuz she'd miss me that much. odd, but definitely appreciated. vernon was around to give me some goodbye love too. the people who see me the least are the ones giving me the most love while the people who saw me damn near all the time are giving me no love whatsoever? i must be living in a parallel universe. anyway, i managed to get myself home just fine and meant to get to talking to maryann and packing, but instead i went straight to sleep. twas good tho. i need some rest before i got to putting my entire life back in suitcases and plastic bags again.

i'm on a boltbus headed to new york. three days from now i'll be on my flight to japan (and two days from then i'll actually be in japan). i was nervous about going to japan for the longest time, but after the past couple of months i feel like this really is the best thing for me. only thing i had in dc was my job. my closest friends stopped hanging with me a while ago, and after last night it's very clear where i stand with them. so, despite the fact that i don't have a job and i'm going to a country where i don't speak the language, i don't even give a fuck cuz i'd rather have that uncertainty right now than what i already know here, which is that right now there's just no place for me.

say what you will about bush, but let's be thankful that his reign has been so horrendous that it paved the way for the first black man to become president.

and, while people may think we've come a long way, we haven't. proposition 8 banning gay marriage out in california looks like it passed. california of all places.

i'mma write more later but i'm tired as hell. only reason i'm up is cuz camille just came in like half an hour ago. i was sleeping on the couch...in fact, i slept through obama's victory! oh well, that's what youtube is for amirite?

(i wonder if asian americans, latino americans, or native american's wonder when the first president from their respective races will come around)

did you know there's a knife so sharp now you can cut a pineapple in mid air?

anyway, ever since hearing about my leaving for japan various factions of the simms' family have tried to throw me going away celebrations of some sort. none of them ever really panned out for whatever reason, so i decided to bring everyone together myself for a simple no frills dinner outing. so, my dad, cherie, uncle rob, uncle richard, allison, aunt priscilla, zann, and teresita (she's definitely like family to me) and lil ole me all went out to timbuktu, a restaurant near baltimore famous for its gigantic ass crabcakes (and also where richard and priscilla took me for my 21st birthday and the spot for my grandma's 85th birthday). surprisingly everything turned out super well. nobody got maimed. people loved maryann's mom. food was sexcellent as usual. and cherie wasn't even around most of the time because her ass was at the bar for whatever reason. i wasn't complaining. best part was neither i or maryann's mom had to pay. i was actually going to cover her since i invited her out, but my dad, uncle richard and uncle rob took care of everything. uncle richard even gave me some going away money. kind of funny how he gave me dough yet my dad still hasn't given me my full birthday money he said he would give me two months ago...but anyway.

only 6 days left til' im audi 5000.

so leah's get together i'd been midly anticipating turned out to be something else entirely: a trip to the once place in dc you want to avoid like the bubonic plague on halloween night, georgetown.

i had to improvise my costume at the last minute. best thing i could slap together was a very bootleg steve urkel type thing...even more bootleg than my steve urkel outfit from a couple of years ago.

sheena, renee, and i drove over to leah's place and met up with her and rocky, another richmond chick. we kicked it over there a minute before catching the train over to foggy bottom. as soon as we were about to get off the train i noticed there were a flood of motherfuckers waiting to get on that bitch. it kinda looked like a scene from resident evil with zombie hordes trying to overrun us living folk. things were worse when we got out of the station. we were supposed to meet up with mike (more on that later...), but his ass was trapped in georgetown traffic. so instead we hoofed it over there, making out way through throngs of drunk people.

we ran into mike eventually but he had had enough of the madness and was out faster than you can say "shit on my balls!". we probably should have made like him and bolted but no...we were on a mission. to do...something. drink! yes...that's what my goal was anyway. but it wasn't meant to be. as soon we made it near the bars, the cops told us to go back from whence we came because people were getting trampled. that wasn't my fault tho...damn! trampled people ruining it for everyone*. so we did what we were told and walked our ass back to the metro. booooourns!!!!!!!! but that was sorta ok. i didn't spend any extraneous money, which is good, but i didn't do jack shit which is...bad? maybe...at any rate we went back to leah's and spent an hour over there before sheena and i headed back to pg. now it's time to start packin shit.

oh halloween how i hate thee so. well not really...there are worse holidays after all. like thanksgiving. and valentine's day. halloween i just don't like because i never particularly had a good costume. i remember back in the day when haloween would roll around, and my parents wouldn't really shell out any dough so i could have something decent. and instead i'd walk around in some black jeans, a black turtle neck, and a dracula mask or something. meanwhile my neighbor down the street, michael would have the best costumes ever cuz his mom had mad sewing skillz and she would make all those shits. he would bust out all the video game characters that i wanted to be...mario, scorpion from mortal kombat, a ninja from some random game with ninjas. and the kids in middle school were sporting dope costumes too of course cuz them bastards were well off. last time i dressed up was two years ago for my uncle's party. i was steve urkel then...that wasn't so bad! this year i ain't gonna be jack shit tho. leah is supposed to be having a party but i dunno if its a costume party or not. if it is i think i'll go as Ba-ron Obama...just wear a suit with a blue tie, somehow enlarge my ears to will smith like proportions and that'll be that.

things that i need to do before i bounce out this mofo...updated

[01] get passport
[02] get international driver's license
[03] quit job
[04] pack
[05] buy plane ticket
[06] buy bus ticket to ny
[07] kick it with various homies
[08] shindig at space on 11/7. be there...or die.
[09] vote

i've been living with camille for about six months now (funny to think it was only supposed to be for three...) and for whatever reason my shower has always been cursed with never being hot. actually scratch that...it was only hot in the summer time. in the spring, when i first came, it would be cold as fuck in the morning weather wise and subsequently the shower water would be cold as fuck too. in the evening and night time it was a different story. that shit was crazy. i tried to change my shower schedule but sometimes showering at night wasn't convenient and then i wouldn't want to shower in the morning cuz the water would be freezing and who wants freezing water all up on their balls? not me, that's who. but finally, FIANLLY, that shit has been fixed. yeeeeeehaw!!! i took a shower yesterday morning and it was gloriously hot. so now i'll be enjoying morning showers a lot more often in this last week of me being here.

living with camille has definitely been an experience. i wonder what she thinks of me as a roomate. it's kind of amusing because we're soooooo different personality wise and living wise yet somehow we manage to make it work. the only thing we have in common really is our shyness...otherwise we're like a pseudo odd couple. she's mad anal; i'm mad laid back. she's mad conservative; i'm a bit more liberal. she's an add incessant channel flipper; i tend to watch shows in their entirety. still got mad love for the kid tho. she's fun to drink with from time to time and has taken good care of me when i needed her. she shall be missed when i bounce a whoooooooooole lot.

goddamn am i glad this week is about to be over.