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“Where are you from?” asked the guard at the Getty Center.

Juliana, Newton, and I were at the Getty Center doing a scavenger hunt, and I was searching for a clock that was one of the clues.

“Um… Los Angeles,” I responded. I could see where this conversation was going and did not like it at all.

“Well, what nationality or ethnicity are you?”

“My nationality is American.”

He was getting to see that this was probably a bad idea.

“I mean, what ethnicity?”

I finally fessed up. “Chinese.”

“Ni hao!”

Seriously? “Hello….” I said back.

He then told me that he knew how to say hello in 60 languages so he could greet visitors in their native language. Maybe I was being unfair, but I said, “That’s great, but you can greet me in English because, you know, American!”

Hadn’t encountered something like that in a while, but situations like that tend to bring up the nasty Asian American activist side of me. Boils up to the surface. Maybe I should have responded in Swahili (the guard was of obvious African decent, so it’s completely reasonable to assume he speaks Swahili, right?).

You know, when something is such a staple part of your life, for better or worse, it’s always going to hurt at least just a little bit when it’s gone.

Tomorrow’s my last day at COPE. When I started working for COPE almost 4 years ago, it was a completely temporary thing. I was on the set of “Religiously Incorrect”, a film I ADed (Assistant Directed) in 2004, when I received a call from a temp agency asking if I was available to meet with a Manager at COPE Partners (COPE’s former name) on so and so date. I was actually offered another paid position ADing for a feature film about a bunch of wanna-be celebrities who end up dressed as Superman or other such movie characters on Hollywood Blvd in front of the Chinese Theatre. But I ended up driving around to different post-secondary educational institutions in Ventura County and the surrounding areas, recruiting students to participate in our hospital-based internship at St. John’s Regional Medical Center.

Since, I’ve made lots of friends at COPE, and a few enemies. I’ve overseen programs in hospitals spanning 90 miles, which sometimes required me to leave home at the crack of dawn to make it to my farthest hospital on time for an 8am meeting. I’ve laughed, cried, been sleep deprived, fed myself possibly the unhealthiest things known to humans. I’ve sat in traffic for 4 hours straight, with my bladder about to explode, and that’s a typical day. I’ve had my decisions praised, questioned, ignored, and told to be downright wrong. I’ve had periods of time where I’ve worked 16-hr days for an entire month straight (then was berated by my boss for not taking care of myself and told to take a 3-day vacation). I’ve sat in 3-hour meetings in the morning, then 3-hour meetings the same day in the evening. I’ve sat in meetings where I didn’t know what the point of the meeting was. I’ve learned a lot…usually from making huge mistakes.

I’m gonna miss it. I’m gonna miss the students I’ve worked with, the hospital executives and my COPE family who have been nothing but supportive to myself, and to the programs. Sure, I’m going to miss the paycheck too (after all, being a grad student doesn’t spell “affluence”), but that’s not really the point here is it?

I’m going to have to cut this short for now, because, in true COPE style, I have an 8am meeting tomorrow morning, which means I need to be up in about…oh…5 hours.

My mom’s an accountant for her company, and it’s month-end closing time, so the department has been doing a lot of expense audits. There was one that my mom ran across that just had to win the inefficiency award of the decade. (Note, you may need Google maps, or just know Southern CA geography to understand the absurdity of this)

An employee of the company, who lives in Ventura County, had a meeting in Orange County. Rather than simply driving there (which is all of, oh, 90 miles), he booked a flight from LAX to John Wayne…… with a layover in San Francisco. Think about what he had to do, though. He had to drive to LAX from Ventura County, check in, go through security, wait for his flight, hop on a plane, taxi around, take off, fly to San Fran-freakin’-cisco, wait around for the next flight, hop on the next flight, taxi, take off, etc etc, fly BACK down to John Wayne, and rent a car for the duration of his flight.

His journey back is even better. His flight back to LAX mirrored his flight to John Wayne (with the oh-so-convenient layover in San Francisco). However, his flight out of John Wayne got CANCELED.

So. He returned his rental car, rented ANOTHER car, drove it to LAX, returned that car, picked up HIS car, and drove all the way back to Ventura County.

I don’t know about you, but I’m impressed.

This was an ad I found on facebook:

Join Ozmosis – the exclusive physician only network that allows you to share knowledge with the people you trust – your peers.

Because the rest of us are just schmucks. And physicians are ALWAYS right, and no other health care professional knows what the hell they’re doing. This elitist attitude certainly doesn’t drive a rift in a patient health care team.

The iPhone is really dangerous. It’s the perfect form of distraction so I don’t get any work done… and I just spent the last two hours pimping it out so it’s now chock full of games, Facebook, Twitter, and other things that just suck up time. Yeesh.

In other news, this dog could be Sabi’s brother:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AoNDp03udhg

But even this fact, and the Machu Pichu cameo at the beginning, and Piper Perabo, can’t even begin to redeem how bad the movie looks.

Testing to see if blog will post from here!

*******************
Cynthia Wang
cynthiawang@nyu.edu

I stopped by Guitar Center today after work (mostly to see if the new issue of The Sounding Board – a Martin guitar newsletter – was out yet. It is, but GC didn’t have a copy), and naturally ended up in the acoustic corral playing guitars. My happiest discovery today was the Taylor GC8 – a sweet little easy-to-play guitar by Taylor. One of the most distinctive features, other than the concert-sized body, was the slotted headstock. I hadn’t played a Taylor with a slotted headstock before. I must have spent a good 10-15 minutes or so playing the GC8.

Then, not wanting to neglect the myriad of other guitars in the corral, I picked up a long-time favorite of mine, the Martin OMC Aura.

There is such a distinct difference between Taylors and Martins. Martins are warm and resonant. Taylors are bold. Andrew and I have a long-standing debate on which are better guitars. Though I would be the first to say that Taylors have concentrated on making their electronics top-notch (which they are – and cosmetic too! There’s none of this huge black box on the side deal that you see in most Martins), Martins are truly acoustic-centric and concentrate on the sound. But when you get down to it, it’s a different sound, and everyone has different preferences. I, for the life of me, will never understand why anyone would get a Gibson. They just sound tinny to me. Tinny and loud. And these are the ones in the $3,000 range.

The OMC Aura I picked up has an intimacy that lacks in the Taylor. Even my 312CE which I love. I recently started playing Cricket again (he’s a Martin 00-16DBM – solid mahogany, smaller, but deep body) after shelving him for the last few months to concentrate on breaking in the Taylor 312CE. It felt a lot like coming home – and made me wonder why I ever stopped playing Cricket. However, I picked up an 000-18 today at GC too. Warm, warm, warm, but no sustain or resonance. I was actually very disappointed (it’s not the first time I’ve played the 000-18, and never really fell in love with it…thank god. The pricetag is $3,000+), since the 000-18 is one of Martin’s classic models. Likewise, I have never been overly impressed with the D28 (and HD28) or the D18, which everyone swears by. Maybe I just don’t like dreadnoughts.

Ultimately, it’s the individual guitar that speaks to a person, and fits a person. Though I love my Taylor, I think I will always prefer playing Cricket.

Near the end of my GC excursion, one of the GC fellows came in and told me to check out the Rainsong graphite guitar. I was rather non-plussed. It’s a guitar made all of graphite, so it’s lighter, and doesn’t warp in extreme weather. Handy for people who live in the desert or very humid places. The price-tag on it was $2,300. The sound was not bad, but all I could think of was, for the same price, a Martin or a Taylor would give you 10 times the sound. Graphite will never be wood.

I’m done rambling. I should sleep.

Have you looked at your gmail spam box lately? I’m impressed by how well it filters out emails telling me how to enlarge my penis (among other things). I counted about 20 spam emails each day. Thank god for the spam-filter – those things drive me crazy. Another reason to love Google. 🙂

Just because you CAN talk with a sore throat doesn’t mean you SHOULD.

I’m learning this the hard way. I spent 2 hours on the phone with AT&T trying to logic with them yesterday why I should get a discounted iPhone (a word of advice for people already with AT&T – check your eligibility before you purchase the iPhone – chances are, you’re not “eligible” for an upgrade. Yes that’s right. Apple, with all its prior integrity, has very misleading advertising this year. It’s a bit depressing…and AT&T don’t seem to value loyal customers since they treat their new customers better than their old – when I argued this point, my mom points out that the world is unfair, and that she’ll get me an iPhone anyway – did I mention I have the greatest mom in the world?) – and then was given further false information by one of their customer representatives (his name is Cory Z – if you ever get him on the phone……ask for his supervisor and lodge a complaint against him on my behalf. I’ll bake you a cookie.)

AT&T did redeem itself today, when I spent about half an hour on the phone with a very nice representative named Kelly, who helped me fix my phone because for some reason, it wasn’t calling out or receiving calls.

That being said, I should mention that I’ve been running a fever the last two days, and think I might be developing laryngitis. My throat is less sore in the mornings, but starts killing me in the evenings – very probably from overuse during the day. Therefore, I’ve vowed to speak as little as possible over the next couple days to see if the soreness goes away.

Speaking of fever, isn’t it interesting what your brain comes up with when altered either by heat or chemicals? I’ve found that there are two things in life that guarantee weird dreams at night. One is fever (and the delirium that comes with it), and the other is pizza. I think it’s something about the mix of cheese and marinara sauce that infuses the brain and brings out really odd dreams. Am I the only one this happens to?

I might still be a bit delirious.

Remember how I lost my wallet in Germany a few months ago?

I received a letter from the American Citizen Services in Frankfurt, saying that “[my wallet] had been forwarded to [their] office by the German Authorities.”

Miracles do happen.

In other news, a couple months ago, I couldn’t find the charger to my Nokia phone. Now that I have the charger, I can’t find the phone.