I received a bill the other day from Cedar’s Sinai Medical Center. I thought, “hmm, this is weird.” The last time I was at that hospital, was years ago. I don’t live in L.A., and I’m sure I was here on the date in question. In fact, I have plenty of witnesses to prove that. So, what the heck is this all about? Apparently, some person named, “Nancy Cho,” went to Cedar’s Sinai and the bill came to me. At first, I was angry that they were billing me twice for something that happened years ago. Then, I looked at my records and found that this wasn’t the same incident. The doctor’s don’t even match up. Nothing matches up except for my name and address. (FYI, there are a million Nancy Cho’s around. A very fobbie name.) Either the billing department made a mistake, or someone posed as me. I just got off the phone with the hospital and they told me that they opened up an investigation. An investigation? I don’t care about your stupid investigation. Get this straight, I am not responsible for this so leave me out of it! The hospital guy told me that this happens all the time, and that I can check in later to see the status. WTF? Why do I have to check in? I am not responsible, asshole. Aw fuck. It seems to me, that I have been clo(w)ned.

People can be so mean.

I had a lunch date with this girl yesterday. I haven’t seen in her a couple weeks, and I could not help but to say, “man, you gained some weight!” I don’t think I hurt her feelings though because then we went on to the new subject matter of pooping. Apparently, she has pretty good bowel movements, and she’s got the leg muscle to prove it. There were some emotional tears over spilt milk, but I think she got over it quickly after bouncing her around.

She’s my little second cousin, who I think of as ‘Izzy’. Although I am not very fond of children, I made my decision to like her the first time I held her and she farted in my arms. I thought to myself, “as long as you don’t scream your head off, farting is cool with me.” And she was cool with me…… which I thought was interesting since kids like me just as much as I like them.

Some say that I am developing some sort of maternal instinct now. Well, gee, I’m not a freakin’ machine. Still doesn’t mean that I am ready yet though. In the meantime, I’ll just hang with Izzy.

Actually, I must back up a couple days. On Friday, our friend Nada came over after work and we decided to do an impromptu jam session. I can’t play guitar, so I picked up my accordian to join in. It took us several beers to start this, so we probably thought it was cool. I’m sure our neighbors did not. Anyway, we stopped playing and started listening to music. Oh gawd, how much more nerdier can it get? Nada brought over his Ipod, and we listened mostly to Deerhoof. Choo choo choo… listen to them and let me know what you think.

Now, let’s get on to something recent. I went to a Composer’s Inc. concert last night. I brought B with me and he was such a great sport. I enjoyed the second half more than the first. Although, I thought the trio in the first half was good. It caught my attention because I was planning on incorporating some Korean Folk into my second movement of the trio I’m working on. BUT, I want to make sure that I do not make it sound too cliche. How can one pull that off? Well, she pulled it off pretty well. Most ironic though, was in the second half, the first quartet played an amusing movement called “Nihonglish,” and it was pretty much exploiting the, um, “oriental,” cliche’s in music. It kinda reminded me of my childhood when the kids teased me for being Chinese, and when I said that I was Korean, they replied, “There’s no such thing as Korean.”

The bass piece was entertaining. The bassist had to play and speak at the same time. I can’t even rub my tummy and pat my head at the same time. He was super good, and definitely had the personality to pull it off well. I liked the quartet at the end the most. I need to digest that one a bit and give it a little more time.

I must say though, isn’t it unfortunate sometimes when something you do not like so much is the thing that sticks out the most in your mind? For instance, there was a electronic/viola piece that was performed in the first half of the program. When I read it, I though, “oh, this might be interesting.” Well, that thought had left after the first five seconds of the piece. BECAUSE, it repeated the first three measures for about 10 minutes. WTF? I don’t get it. Can someone please explain this to me? It’s like saying, “duh, duh, duh,…duh-duh, duh! duh? duh… duh, du-h-d-u-h, duh!” for ten minutes. Was it ten minutes? Aya, it was forever! That was a little harsh, wasn’t it? Well, the violist was really good. poor guy.

Anyway, after all of that last night, I woke up this morning needing to blast the ‘Eagles of Death Metal’. A good contrast to shake that piece out of my head.

I worked out for an hour today with my trainer. After she put me through a hard workout, my stomach was growling. Since it is all rainy and grey today, I found it to be a perfect excuse to get me a nice bowl of wonton soup. I went over to my favorite place, ‘Chef’s’, in El Cerrito, and waited in line to pick up my hot, yummy, dumpling soup. The women behind the counter were Chinese, and had a very friendly attitude. They did however, have a thick accent. So, the gentleman before me had to have her repeat a couple things several times. There was a lady before him that was waiting for her food at the front of the line. When I finally got to the register to pay for my yummy soup, the Chinese woman went to put my food together in a bag. While she was doing that, the lady that was waiting next to me asked the Chinese woman, “Excuse me, we’re going to eat the food here.” The Chinese woman responded, “I’m sorry, but this line is for Take-Out only. You can sit at the outside tables.” The lady did not understand her, and she asked, “What?” The Chinese woman repeated what she said. She still did not understand her. She then grew frustrated, huffed and puffed, looked annoyed, and asked me, “What did she say?” Actually, this wouldn’t have bothered me as much if she had just asked me politely.

Now, I understand that I can be a tad sensitive to situations like this. But, since this has happened to me so many times, I automatically feel my two eyeballs start to roll up and around to the back of my head. So, I responded to her, “She said that this is the Take-Out line only. The dining room is probably reserved for sit-down guests.” The lady replied, “oh, okay.” You see, because I must look Chinejapaviethaikorino, I automatically can translate FOB. Even though I was born here, and even though there were big signs where we were standing that read, “Take-Out Only,” I have the mystical power of translating English, and reading it as well.

Today I got to thinking….. if that FOB-ie lady had a thick-ass English, French, or Australian accent, would the customer be less annoyed? Probably. (And yes, sometimes it is difficult to understand people with these accents. When I went to Australia, I nodded and smiled most of the time.) We love to glorify “white” people accents. We hate all the others. So all you FOB’s with Indian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean accents, learn to speak, will ya?

What I should have done when the lady asked me to translate English, was to have replied, “She say sol-ly. Dis-u la-ine pour Take-u-Out ohn-nie. Dineeng loom pour sitting-down custo-mahs.”

I am taking a Analysis of Musical Styles course in the evening, and we are going through Schubert’s Winterweisse. Man, I love this stuff. If I could, I would just take theory courses like these for the next hundred quarters (see last paragraph of blog entry below). I took the classical one last year, and although it was sometimes painful, it was gratifying at the end. In this course, Dr. L. wants us to dig deep into the songs to find musical/poetic meanings. We are supposed to start big, and then peel the layers of the onion to get to the middle. I can’t help but to say that every time he mentions “peel the layers of the onion,” I think of the ‘bloomin’ onion’ at Outback Steakhouse. So, whenever he mentions the onion thing, I just get a huge craving for the ‘bloomin’ onion’ and a nice, ice, cold, beer. soooo goood. When I mentioned that his whole “layers of the onion” thing reminded me of that last night, he just smiled, didn’t say anything, and gave me a look like, “man, she really is crazy.” (Either crazy or stupid.) Then again, I don’t expect that he would ever go to Outback Steakhouse, so he wouldn’t even know what a ‘bloomin’ onion’ is.

I decided that after the quarter ends, the class should go to get some of this scrum-ditt-ily-umptious, white trash, chain food, and throw back a couple beers. So, cheers to Schubert and the ‘bloomin’ onion’! Maybe we can even listen to the whole song cycle while we drink… although, we would all have to try and refrain from going mad and having thoughts of killing ourselves.

I actually had a breakthrough in my piece last week. It felt incredible and a sense of relief also came over me. In order to be a good writer, I feel that it is crucial to be an excellent listener. I am a slow-pokey listener. When I hear something and it finally clicks in my head waaaaay later, I hit myself on the forehead with the palm of my right hand exclaiming, “duh, duh, duh.” These days, I have had to rely heavily on my teacher to help me to listen more carefully. I’ll just have to learn and get better. So, after the breakthrough, the words, “Here’s the thing…” came out of my teacher’s mouth. “Aw, shit,” was the first two words that came to mind. He continues, “I do not think that you will be able to finish your thesis in time for Spring 2007.” (Of course, he led up to it more nicely so that I would refrain from vomitting.)

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” man that stinks. I am a slow-pokey writer as well. So, instead of rushing to have it finished for Spring 2007, it will have to be done in Fall of 2007. I am a “lifetime” student. I will never leave. It is the destiny that rests upon me. My only hope is that I either hit the jackpot or that B will make lots of money so that we don’t have to eat ramen anymore. Oh well, at least I can take the computer/audio music class that I wanted to take. I’ll just stick it out for one or one hundred more quarters.

Last week, Nigel had a birthday. We really celebrated this time by going out with the little guy, and we invited his pal Pixel to come along. As a present, Pixel gave Nigel a birthday hump. As both dogs had their tongues sticking out, I could tell that they had a jolly time. Since they were a little hungry afterwards, we went and got them a doggie cupcake at Redhound on College Avenue. It was devoured, to say the least. We all tried a little piece of the cupcake, and it wasn’t all that bad. In fact, it tasted like a vegan cookie. I have had one of the those before…. next time, I’ll just give it to my dog.

Last night, I made Kimchee Jii-gae for some friends of ours. As much as I like the stuff, in my almost 30 years of eating it, I still cannot get used to the stink it leaves in my refrigerator. At times, it can smell like a bad fart mixed with rotting food. (Well, pretty much like a fart that smells like something has been rotting *up there*.) That’s why I really prefer the fresh kimchee over the older/fermented kind. I am super lucky that my husband likes the stuff. I have had roommates complain about it many a times. You also know when it *leaves* you because the smell just so, um, original. AAHHHH, for the love of fermented, pickled, spicy, cabbage. mmmmm…….