mom
i told my mom i wanted to move to australia or new zealand. she replies, in typical fashion, that i should just go vacation there for a month instead of moving there because it's so far away and she'll miss me. (all together now: aww!) and i said, well, i'd want to do it for like six months and she sort of raised her eyebrows. shortly afterwards, in a moment of weakness and completely unrelated to my previous statement (i swear), i said i wanted to marry someone from new zealand. she then immediately said, oh, well if you're going to go look for a husband then you can go for six months. and she essentially offered to set me up. note: this is not what i was saying i wanted or asking for; the two ideas were unrelated.

oh the ways of the old-world asian parents. i'm nothing to them but a degree-earning, baby-popping machine.

confession of the day
i've been a registered girl scout since i was in 4th grade, minus two years when my parents prohibited me from going to girl scout summer camp, thus negating the need to register as a girl scout. that means i've been a scout for about 13 years. oy.

i love my girl scout camp. i love it so much i gave up my summer chance to get a real high-powered internship in the media capital of the world (uhh, that's new york city for you uninitiated folk) to work for free at the gsusa and take off a month for camp. one of the greatest things to come out of my camp is the song "on the loose" written by a counselor, lefty, in the 60s or 70s. it's now gotten all over the world. do a google search for the first line of the song, on the loose to climb a mountain, and see.

paradigm shift
the movie "the siege" (1998) has taken on a whole new meaning. which might be why the usa network is showing it. they certainly wouldn't have shown it in at least the first few months after 9/11 because emotions are too raw. but maybe now that we are a bit removed, we can watch the movie and assess a lot of things. eerie.

geek confessions
it's wesley crusher day on tnn so all the star trek: tng episodes feature wesley in a significant way. ever wonder what he's up to now? well, me neither, but check him out here.

more random oceania facts
some things i don't think i've mentioned:
the money down under is made of plastic. really.
they have half-flush toilets for "light loads". heh.
sydney has the highest per capita number of mcdonald's in the world. according to one of our tour guides.
they have this thing called mccafe which is run by mcdonald's but serves coffee and espresso and desserts. hmm.