been losing sleep more than ever for my own mental/emotional overload not related to sandy. knowing some people who also can't sleep since they don't have power/heat & won't get it for another 4-6 weeks in this frigid cold makes me tense. what a friggin mess these couple of weeks has been. oh come sleep, i just want to forget it for a little while.

it's so good to be around people who are so gung-ho about the same things you're obsessed with. you pine, you vent, you lash out, you laugh out loud, shake your head silly and generally feel good inside knowing here are your comrades who commiserate, even though you kinda just met them and will probably never see again. we can hope together, get discouraged, then regroup and hope again when we are permitted to meet. today was the third day of our leadership training & next month we meet for the last time. i realized i felt the void strongly after meeting these precious unfamiliar (yet strangely similar) few last month.

but it's so great to talk about our ideals when we do meet. who talks about how they feel about work, really? do we ever stop and say what we philosophize about our daily functions?

am i a workaholic? is this my new religion?

i can't say. most of the time i get jaded and discouraged. but then here's a break from the ordinary & we're able to verbalize that yes, we do care about our 9 to 5 even though it gets so frustrating most of the time. that we do wish the best for the people whose lives we touch & affect. and i love how it's so not cheesy to say that. we get so excited and passionate, sometimes even angry.

well, here's an interview question that was thrown at me last week: how do i see myself in 5 years? it'd be interesting to see what this group looks like in 5 years. i wonder if we'll hold on to the same values then. maybe so. but in 10 years? probably not..?
 

i've been climbing a mountain and didn't even know it until i stopped & looked around.
 

we had an emergency exit drill at the office today for those times when we may have to evacuate the building through otherwise inaccessible stairwell. non-fire related issues that new yorkers are capable of imagining without much creativity. i went down with one of the perky twenty-something girl at the office, joking that it'd be fun to have a halloween party there. but i think we were joking to lessen the tension we felt when we think back on the chaotic incident in.. 2003 i think? and no, we didn't even talk about 9-11, that's just too.. raw to think about even during a drill. thought i think we did a fine job at distracting ourselves.

so i found out someone was arrested today because he was plotting to blow up the federal reserve bank with 1000 lb bomb. the news kinda puts thoughts into perspective. wow, life is so fragile and danger is closer to home than we think.

but we haven't had a major crisis since the black out. well, there was the mta strike in 2005 but otherwise we made it through the recent years pretty well. new yorkers demand so much. just yesterday, when i took a late ride home, a mob of people shoved their way into an already packed and brimming train. this short middle aged lady on her way to old age kept pushing me and cursing me out for not moving in. i calmly looked at her, then pointed to the lady on the other side and said "do you see this lady next to me?" i got a grunt and no more eye contact as a response. we, not just the two of us, but everyone on the train inched home extremely uncomfortably. but that's nothing compared to the things we already experienced.

i'm just thankful that nothing happened today. and hopefully we'll continue on safely for a very very long time.
 

it's official. i'm losing it. more specifically, i lost my favorite hair clip few weeks ago. then i noticed last week i can't find one of my watches. i had both of them for years and i remember playing with them last at home but they've gone missing for some time enough for me to throw my hands up in the air & admit they're finally gone.

i also started losing sleep. even today, i slept last last night after 2am so why wake up at 8? i remember the days when i'd be lucky if i woke up before noon on a saturday.

but i guess this is a good opportunity to replenish. i was telling an older neighbor how my short term memory is shot few months back on the way home from work. he told me that i need to constantly make room for new memories. that's simple enough but why is it so hard to practice?

had first two days of the leadership challenge training at work last week. despite my initial skepticism, i walked away with new and improved insights that i can apply at work. i just hope i've retained most of them and can make use of them in the weeks to come before the next session.
 

i wish i can fit the world into a perfect box. organize it in its predictable ways. no surprises like a black patent leather bag clocking you in the face on a groggy morning, no sudden shoe stepping on your shoe. everything orderly, no inconvenience, no pain.

ok, i've complained enough today.
 

completely in love. already.
i trust tom (tykwer). come, october.

i just received blind willow, sleeping woman today in mail. i re-read hard-boiled wonderland and the end of the world, mostly re-read after the quake, and finally read after dark. i guess that leaves half of 1q84 vol 3 in korean. re-reading was fun. so fun that i think after i'm done reading blind willow, sleeping woman and jay rubin's haruki murakami and the music of words i plan on re-reading all 10 novels (counting 3 heavy volumes of 1q84 as 1) and 3 short story books i own in chronological order.

it'd be awesome to read 'em in autobiographical order. i don't think i'd be able to arrange it.. but what a thought.

maybe things are turning around. i thought we aren't getting anymore caracara oranges. stopping my a grocery store after a long delayed trip to the dmv to renew my driver's license, i picked up a bag of oranges (and a pack of rafaello in all its exquisite coconut goodness) on the first of the two mental health days off.

may is still not treating me nicely but i did something pretty good. i bought a nook. i was so against e-readers for a long while, adamant that books should be read off papers as organic experiences (i can picture my scientist brother shuddering at the mention of the word). what sold me out to the e-reader was that i'd be able to borrow library books for free sans germs. oh and the ease of newspaper reading without the piling them up for recycling.

after finish reading the brothers karamazov over a span of a year, i ironically renewed my interest in russian novels. i happily downloaded war and peace to my nook, knowing that i don't have to lug around over a thousand pages to enjoy it.

war and peace brings me back to one of my earliest memories. my parents took my brother & me out to a busy night scene in seoul in the early 80s. we had dinner then to my surprise we went to a movie theatre to watch, you guessed it, war and peace. i don't remember anything except a chubby man with glasses and the blithely dancing girl who may or may not have been audrey hepburn. i remember being bored and whining to my dad who kept repeating the movie will be over soon, it's almost done. and it was the first time in my life that i came home after midnight, which threw cold chills of excitement through my bones.

maybe i'll netflix war and peace. but then, i don't think netflix has old movies, i couldn't find the elephant man. oh may.
 

i'm not so crazy about may. no more ranunculus and caracara oranges. what does one look forward to in may?