some quotes for today

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randoms

flying back to nice tonight for the holidays. am looking forward to it because now i feel like i truly deserve a break. i hit my three-month mark here in france, and now that i know that i can stay in the eu, a little celebrating is in order. i miss ma famiglia though. and i miss l.a. since i've been in paris, it seems like all people ever talk to me about is how great california is, etc. etc. when they find out i'm from socal. and it makes me miss home that much more, damnit! it's all good. eu is good. oh yeah, so back to the holidays in nice. we were supposed to be back in paris for new year's, but yesterday mack extended our vacation until january 2 so it will be a proper break for sure.

last week i found out that i'm on myspace. funny, i don't remember joining... but apparently i've been a member since april? huh. i must've been pretty stoned when i registered or something. anyway, i looked at my page today, and i was invited by a band to be their friend. why were all their female friends asian? coincidence? who knows. argh! i've got to stop with this whole asian/being asian complex i've developed since i've been here! i'm annoying myself. i mean, there are asians in france, but - i don't know. it's not that i'm discriminated against or anything. i just get this weird vibe about, well, not being white all of a sudden. why? no clue. but it's kind of a pseudo-alien-affirmative-action type of insecurity. jesus christ. shut up, jane!

moving on... it's pretty much christmas. time flies.

melissa's baby's due this weekend. hooray, a new addition to the fam!

cheers

fellow capricorn, originally uploaded by mjane.

buy this man a drink if you see him today.

snow!

it was snowing for about an hour this morning. the first snow of the season. definitely adds to the holiday ambience.
. . .
the other night i met up with sarah's design assistant at juicy couture who's in paris for a couple of weeks. it was kind of funny meeting up with her because we had no idea what each other looked like. when she called me to make plans, she had a spanish accent, and when ignorant jane went to find her at our meeting spot, the last person i thought to approach was a korean girl with a green scarf (what the girl over the phone said she would be wearing). after that was cleared up (mackenzie pointed out, "she's the only one here wearing a green scarf"), it turns out that she grew up in argentina and spanish is her first language. okay, i guess i wasn't that off, but the awkward-meeting-experience definitely taught me a lesson. anyway, she's super cool and it was nice exchanging backgrounds and ideas with her. maybe we'll meet up again before we both leave paris for the holidays.
. . .
i started a tradition a couple years ago to make my dad a CD entitled dad and the drums once a year with songs, in my opinion, that have amazing drum sequences he can play along to whenever he practices. this year i had a hard time finding music to put on the CD so i did some research online and found this website that lists the 100 Greatest Rock Drummers. this site is so funny because when you scroll down there's bulletin where you can post your opinion on how accurate the list is. and after reading some of the comments, i laughed imagining how cute it would be if my dad went online - he's never been - and chatted with other drummers. i thought of my bro as well because the list seems to agree with his favorites.

happy holidays

holiday greetings, a la night vision, originally uploaded by mjane.

i'm finally getting into the holiday spirit. it's cold and crispy out, lights and decorations are all over the city, and sometimes i'll hear an american christmas song playing here and there.
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mackenzie and i caught a tele-drama this weekend called, la liberte de marie (marie's freedom). it was so danielle steele, i loved it! it was about this girl, marie, she got married at 15 to an older guy who works at a newspaper. they live with his mother whose home is situated above an antique jewelry shop she owns. and like all juicy, non-sensical romance dramas, marie works in her mother-in-law's shop; mother-in-law is mean and bossy to marie; marie's husband is a total mama's boy who won't defend marie when mother-in-law slaps her around; marie has an ongoing affair with mama's-boy-husband's co-worker, a photographer at the newspaper; photographer drowns mama's boy in a lake; marie's totally freaked out by the fact that he murdered homie to solve their dilemma; they're both haunted by past husband's spirit; mother-in-law convinces marie to marry photographer; marie's not feeling photographer any more and leaves him; photographer goes crazy, gets a gun, and shoots himself in the heart.

in moderation

okay, so i really have to get used to certain things. first of all, a lot of habits that are frowned upon in the states are considered normal here. for example, drinking a 25cl bottle of red wine or a half-pint of beer at lunch is completely nothing out of the ordinary. but for someone who's so used to it being a no-no to do during work hours, it's definitely something new. plus, today these two men were serving free vin chaud (hot wine) in one of the courtyards of the office building in celebration of the holidays...

shit, i forgot my point to this entry. i'm a bit tipsy right now.

coincidences

i've started to train myself to be conscious of all these coincidences that i've encountered the past six months (due to reading the celestine prophecy), and it's a trip how all these tiny details make up what are now important issues to me.

i just read an email from a really amazing friend of mine, and coincidentally what she wrote is helping me ask the right questions about a situation i'm in right now.

i've reached a fork in the road.
goddamn forks!

it is what it is

so i'm unable to visit los angeles for the holidays this year... my first year of christmas away from home. boo! just thinking of christmas day without my family is making me more homesick than ever! mommy and daddy, ate and mark, little q, the cousins, their new babies, and all my favorite pilipino food. damn, now my mouth's watering imagining all of the home-cooked pleasures that i'll miss: dinuguan, lechon, lumpia, pancit, bbq, honey-baked ham, lots of rice, and the list goes on!!! oh man... and then there's dessert... jesus christ. i'm not even going to go into that. okay, i will: leche flan, lychees with almond jello, auntie carol's chocolate chip cookies, and mark's famous banana cake...

*sigh*

beaucoup de " " 's

i just read my horoscope. and i'm glad i did because it actually had some very nice things to say about capricorns and getting ahead "professionally". as opposed to, what, getting ahead personally? romantically? i'm not sure. i mean, who really knows what being "professional" really means? maybe it's one's ability to sell themselves, how they are able to communicate the idea that they're "different". as in, maybe if i were more "professional," i'd be getting paid to maintain this blog. who knows! nonetheless, i'm supposedly "on the right track." nice.

. . .

i've been really out of the loop as far as "pop" culture goes. but i did some catching up today while watching some t.v. and flipping through some magazines. conclusion: i haven't really missed much. all the hype is the same old shit! everything is so commercial that i feel like the world is back in the 80s. just hike up the price tags on all the old ideas, sell it as "retro", "vintage" or "throwback"... switch up the "commies" to "terrorists"... dynasty for reality tv shows; et voila, welcome to the new millenium.

there is hope, though. turn off the t.v.

happy birthday, mackdog!

photo:s.kovatch, originally uploaded by mjane.

today is mackenzie's birthday. and i figure that when one turns 28 years old, they're too adult now to get embarrassed. thus, the photo. live it up, baby. life only gets better from here.

butter

i stayed up to watch la derniere tango a paris (the last tango in paris) last night. i was surprised to hear marlon brando speaking french, but jesus christ, it's beyond words seeing the late mr. brando acting out getting fingered up the cul. besides his character's assumed fetish with butt holes, the wardrobe was great, and the leading actress played my idea of the model parisienne: equally cute, sexy, trendy, confident and vulnerable. altogether, i enjoyed the movie: artsy, with a narrative that's entertaining to follow.

i also watched miss france 2005. there was a miss tahiti. huh. i'm not sure how that works out since tahiti is no longer a french colony. interesting too that the program revolved around american music and ideas. come to think of it, a lot of french tv tries to be american. and when i say american, i mean that on one french show that had a top ten countdown of the sexiest women in the world, britney spears was #1. oh, really?

another thing that was the hype of tv this weekend was the france telethon. it raised 98,373,842 € towards health care, medical research and such. 98 million+ euros? needless to say, that is fucking impressive.

the first of sorts

it's december. christmas lights and decorations are all over the city. i feel like it was just yesterday that i was chilling at my old place on olympic and la brea playing with chris's new cat he named "cutie", feeling cold, and brainstorming gift ideas. little did i know that exactly one month later mackenzie and i would decide to move to france.

what a way to start the last month of 2004 - refreshed and full of new energy. mia just left for barcelona last night. she came on sunday, and since we met up at sacre-coeur that afternoon, i've been looking at paris in a new light. thank you mia for blessing the apartment with your energy and the colombian sage. needless to say, both have made instantaneous effects on me. powerful stuff.

speaking of which, i just finished reading the celestine prophecy. that book is a trip. its ideas are the most beautiful and awesome about the evolution of humankind that i have ever read in my life. that's what i'm claiming. read this book. there are few things in life that i described as "beautiful" before i finished this book. now, i can't look at anything or anyone i pass without finding beauty in them. everything is so lovely... and i'm full of love. what an amazing new fix to develop!