It’s interesting what a vanity search on Google will do to a person.  In my case, I ended up stumbling across Steve and his chain-letter-like 7 Things You May (or May Not) Know About Me blog entry. Two caveats before you begin reading…
1. My entire blog is about my personal life / perceptions on things I see in life - I don’t write about work, I don’t really write about other specific people - so I’m not sure how much more interesting this entry would be.
2. I really, really, REALLY loath chain-letters and their rules, so being a total “my-pace” (Japanese colloquialism for the personality type that is a non-conformist who does things on their own schedule and in their own way to achieve their own goals) type of person, I’m going to break the rules I don’t feel like obeying.

So, without further ado…
1. Half my personality is that of a hoarder. The other half is that of a “tosser.” I tend to collect things - books, CDs, papers from grade school, them sparklies (e.g., jewelry, loose gemstones), fuurin (wind chimes), stickers, anime, manga, Japanese drama - you name it (if it’s something that I’m interested in), I collect it. I’ll spend an inordinate amount of time organizing (The Container Store has some great drawers that keep the dust off the collections), cataloging (.xls spreadsheets, dude!), and working on filling in any gaps in my collections. Then comes the fateful day when I run out of room in my room and the ax falls. It’s time to whittle down my collections. I go on this culling rampage while my inner hoarder screams in pain. Talk about conflicted.
2. I drink a lot of water. So much that my brother calls me a camel. But there is a reason… I’m prone to nosebleeds. So, if I let myself get dehydrated, the capillaries in my nose decide to punish me by splitting apart and making a mess.
3. If #2 above was too gross, I can be grosser. I tend to have a practical outlook on bodily functions and am not terribly shy about talking about them. Blame it on the “you’re going to be a doctor when you grow up” brainwashing I had since I was… umm… four? Five? Truly believing it, I did a lot of things to prepare myself for the profession. One was to be utterly pragmatic about bodily functions - especially those that little boys relish giggling about (e.g.,bloody noses and GI track functions) - and stamp out any squeamishness I might have had. I have no problem watching open heart surgeries on TV while eating dinner.
4. I can sleep anywhere. Actually, it’s more like, I can fall asleep anywhere, but I also wake up very easily. You know how I “trained” myself as a kid to deal with the personal functional aspects of being a doctor? Another one was to learn to fall asleep easily anywhere, to wake up quickly, and to function on little sleep. This was to “prepare” for the years I would spend as a sleep-deprived resident. College and E&M cured me of my pre-med plans, but my sleeping abilities stay with me to this day.
5. I don’t deal with alcohol very well. I refuse to drink liquors after my cousin’s Mai Tai made me giggly like an insipid little girl after two sips. I’m convinced that he put 98% rum and 2% juice in my cup and 2% rum and 98% juice in my mother’s cup. She drank her Mai Tai just fine. I used to be able to handle a glass of wine. But after the trip to Hawaii a couple weeks ago when I ordered a glass of wine, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t drink more than 75% of a glass of wine before I get dizzy. To add a little more color to what I have to do in order to drink 75% of a glass of wine and not go past the dizzy stage… I also had bread, a few pieces of sashimi from the appetizer, a plate of salad, part of the entree, and about four glasses of water to accompany the sips of wine. I finished the entree and the dessert with another two glasses of water. Then, the wine I had last Friday night totaled about five or six sips before I had to stop. Dude, talk about a waste of good wine.
6. I am a control freak but I’m also really laid-back. When it comes to me and my performance and my environment that I create for myself, I’m totally a Type-A, anal retentive, annoying brat. I hate losing control over my actions - so I’ve never gotten drunk to the point that I can’t tell myself to stop drinking, I will schedule my personal To-Do list and stick to it until the rotten thing is done, all my collections are organized and cataloged. However, when it comes to my perspective on what other people do, it pretty much boils down to “it’s their life, I don’t care what they do, unless they do something that impacts me.”
7. I call myself an incredibly lazy person. Though I suppose other people who see me working would call it hard-working. I hate untangling messes if I could have not created the mess in the first place with a bit of due diligence. I call it my “work down payment” theory. If one can afford a larger down payment in terms of work effort at the beginning of the project and if that increase in the down payment will result in a lower marginal cost of work in terms of maintenance and upgrades, then invest the time up front to save time later. For example, I am an incredibly stupid person who can’t remember what was said two minutes ago if it isn’t written down. So how can anyone expect me to remember the specifications of a product that was designed a year ago. However, to cope, I write everything down and organize all the relevant information so that if I have to recreate or edit something in the future, I know exactly how to do it. It saves me the time I would have had to spend trying to remember the specifications. The additional benefits being that if a new person needs to learn about the product, there now exists a step-by-step guide for the product, which saves me the time of trying to explain how to do things. They only need to use the guide and walk through the process. Also, if there are multiple people who have to learn the product, there is now a single source of information - a control document - that will cut down on misinformation. Untangling misinformed people because they heard it from someone who heard it from someone is really painful. I’m too lazy to deal with that. So, if I have the time, I’d rather input the work upfront to avoid future problems… see? Lazy.

And there you have it, seven things you may or may not have known about me. At this point, I’m supposed to list the rules:

* Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
* Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
* Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
* Let them know they’ve been tagged.

I’ve obeyed the first two rules, but I refuse to do the next two, sorry. The people I know fall into four camps: 1. The Already Did This Meme group; 2. The I Barely Know How to Turn On a Computer group; 3. The Attorney group; 4. The Co-Worker group.

For obvious reasons, it doesn’t make sense to tag those in group 1. For my own sanity, I refuse to tag (assuming that they’re tag-able) those in group 2. I’m not convinced my attorney friends have blogs so that kills those in group 3. And, I’m not feeling brave enough to face possible strangulation by my co-workers for passing this along (again, assuming that they have blogs).

Waikiki - the shopping jungle in which one gets lost in all the high price-tag stores that inhabit this bit of Honolulu land.  I am a girl.  I like shopping.  But shopping for girly-girl things (except them sparkly things) can get boring after a while.  After three days of seeing store after store filled with craziness - I mean, why would Macy’s sell tennis shoes but not cotton athletic socks to go with the tennis shoes - I was ready to cry uncle.

I’m not a beach person - acne + acne medication + SPF 85 sunblock + water + sun - is just not a happy mix.  So I stay away from the beach and water sports.  Actually, the only water sports I enjoy (e.g., me, physically, participating in it and not watching it on TV) are the ones where the water is frozen over.

So what is a person in Hawaii, stuck on an island, which by definition is surrounded by water, to do?  Go HIKING!

I signed up for two nature tours with Oahu Nature Tours - a 6:00 am hike up Diamond Head Crater and a 2:00 pm Rainforest and Waterfall hike in the Koolua mountains.

Being from California and traveling to Hawaii for a wedding, the only shoes I brought with me were dress shoes and flip flops.  The nature tours weren’t anticipated activities - more an allergic reaction to the commercialization of the area I was staying.  I went to Macy’s to buy some walking shoes.  Sure, Macy’s had tennis shoes / walking shoes… but they didn’t sell athletic socks.  I walked one block over to the Foot Locker and found athletic socks galore (kind of) - but the good kind, the kind that don’t give my feet blisters, were all MEN’S L.  Umm… yeah, I can wear kiddy-sized socks, so men’s L sized socks were not going to work.

Naturally, I did the Californian thing - go hiking in flip flops!  Diamond Head in flip flops wasn’t a problem.  Waterfall hike in flip flops wasn’t a problem.  But the  waterfall hike meant muddy trails.  Muddy trails means slippery trails.  Mud = slip = Esther walks gingerly and at times splays the legs apart to walk on the “drier” banks of what would be a stream bed had water been running through it and not mud.  The step is similar to the shuffle skiers do to hike uphill in snow.

I’m actually pretty glad I wore the flip flops.  I’m not exactly the most steady person on the feet - bumbling is how my loving brother describes me - so if there’s nothing to trip over or slip on, I’m guaranteed to trip over or slip on it.  Had I worn tennis shoes, I still would be walking slowly and ski-shuffling my way down the trail. At least in flip flops I could just walk in the water as opposed to rock hopping to avoid getting the feet wet. Rock hopping would have been more dangerous for me as I probably would have slipped and fallen into the water.

The waterfall hike was gorgeous.  I loved it and the residents of that bit of the Koolua mountains loved me.  In fact, they so loved me that to this evening, a bit over four days since my hike, I’m still itching and scratching their love bites - all seventeen of them.  Those mosquitoes braved even the bug repellent that I coated all over me prior to the hike and partook of my blood.  They must have left a little extra something in their love bite because I still itch, even after slathering on maximum strength cortisone cream.

Diamond Head is spectacular at the summit.  You can see the entire southern coast of Oahu from the look out spot.  Getting to the top was pretty nifty too.  There’s the trail part, the stairmaster part, the tunnel part, the stairmaster part 2, the winding stairmaster, the low clearance that even a shorty like me had to crawl through, all to get to the lookout point at the summit.

All in all, I recommend taking a break from Waikiki and going on a nature tour to see some of the nifier parts of Oahu.

I haven’t blogged in such a long time!  Since then, so much has happened.  But for now…

You know, Hawaii’s such an interesting place.  It’s bilingual -  English and Japanese.  A majority of the store signs have both English and Japanese text.  Store folks speak English and Japanese.  Even random people on the streets (non-Japanese) will speak Japanese.

Case in point, I was walking back from Ala Moana Shopping Center, minding my own business, trying not to get blown away by the high winds.  I walked past two dudes, one of whom smiled and said, “Konnichiwa” in this really horrible American accent.

Umm… “Hi,” was my response.

So, here’s the thing, I eat Japanese food, I get Japanese haircuts, I watch Japanese drama, I listen to Japanese pop, I read Japanese comics, I am superficially a Nihon-phile.  But I am not Japanese.  I don’t even look Japanese.  But I guess to Hawaiians, if she’s Asian, has dyed / permed hair, is carrying shopping bags, and is in Waikiki, chances are she’s Japanese.  So smile and say “Konnichiwa” to be nice and maybe she’ll pour more money into the local economy.

But really, folks here are very friendly.

Just came back from a quick jaunt to Boston to attend my brother’s white coat ceremony.  I’ll do a more in depth write-up over the next week or so.  Not right now though… I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since last week…
Sunday-Monday night - 5.5 hours
Monday-Tuesday night - 5 hours
Tuesday-Wednesday night - 5.5 hours
Wednesday-Thursday night - 2 hours
Thursday-Friday night - 4 hours
Friday-Saturday night - 6 hours of spotty sleep which is often worse than solid three hours of sleep

‘Course, me being me and being able to fall asleep nearly anywhere under any conditions, I tried to sleep on the ungodly 6:00 am plane flight to Boston. My head was nodding forward, eyes visibly closed and for all intents and purposes, I WAS ASLEEP.

My mother, however, was bored. SHE couldn’t sleep. And so she decided to ask me questions, thereby engaging me in conversation so that she wouldn’t be so bored. Every time I began to nod off another question would whisper in my right ear.

In Boston, even the iPod blaring soothing music that really was supposed to be played very quietly to lull me to sleep wasn’t enough to drown out the snores coming from the others with whom I was sharing a hotel room.

Then the flight back tonight, once the computer ran out of battery life and my mother decided that she wanted to play with my NDS (even though I was in the middle of a chapter of Ace Attorney) my attempts to snooze were foiled by her whispering in my right ear to help her figure out the puzzle before the time limit killed her game play.

Now, I’m enjoying this excellent vertigo that is making moving around with any degree of speed rather dangerous. Thankfully, typing on a laptop doesn’t require the head to physically move.

OK, off to sleep now.

Traditionally, Esther equals practical, unadventurous, and downright boring - amusing at times, yes, but all in all, quite dull. I may have the mannerisms of a stick-in-the-mud, be staid as an classics don, and drive like a granny, but honestly, there is something seriously wrong with my head lately.

So as of late (of late being the past two weeks), I’ve been looking at cars. My poor loyal Camry is reaching that point in time when goodness really must be passed on to the next soul. Beginning its fourteenth year and at 98,520 miles, my faithful aibo has seen me through the first driving years in high school, gone away to college and come back to law school with me, and finally has taken me to my first job.

As for the next car… umm… yeah, so I can’t seem to stop myself from looking at the most impractical cars. It’s really quite annoying . I’ve seemed to have aged thirty-five years, gotten a sex change, and am now suffering from a midlife crisis as a middle-aged man because I can’t stop thinking about getting a toy convertible.

What’s the problem?

1. Convertibles are meant to be driven with the top down when it is sunny outside. I, on the other hand, cannot be in full sunlight.

2. Convertibles are meant to be driven with the top down with the wind passing through the hair. Unfortunately, wind will also be passing by the ears as it passes through the hair. I get ear aches from the wind generated when I ski. I don’t ski fast, so imagine the hideous earaches from the wind generated from driving.

3. Convertibles are meant to be zippy, little cars. It would be a blatant lie to describe the way I drive as “zippy” - “creeping” is more like it.

If I got a little convertible - and I was looking at a Miata which is beyond little and more into the dinky category - I’d be poking along with the top up. The car would have a very sad existence.

The other type of car that I was considering also has left me doubting my sanity. Did I somehow lose fifteen years of my life, magically get a sex change, and am now a teenage boy with his eyes on a rice rocket?!

What’s the problem?

1. Rice rockets are meant for speeding. That is the definition of “rice rocket” - SPEEDING, little cars, typically driven by teenaged, Asian boys with little to no sense at all. I, on the other hand, am a GRANNY driver. I’ve never gotten a speeding ticket, nor do I plan on getting one. Which defeats the main purpose of getting a rice rocket.

2. Rice rockets are meant for performance driving. What need do I have for a performance car? Umm… none? I get carsick easily. Would I really want to go careening around for the pleasure of experiencing the car perform? NO. Not when the final result (and actually, the intermediate result, as well) would be me tossing my cookies.

3. Rice rockets are typically noisy - if not from the rumbling engine, then from the deafening bass vibrations radiating out of the entire car. Crotchety old granny that I am, I absolutely cannot abide noise pollution from teenybopper boys and their cars. I don’t care if they want to burst their own ear drums and have all their innards shake to the beat of their bass, I personally would rather retain what is left of my hearing and allow my innards to sit where they belong.

If I got a rice rocket - and I was looking at a variety of compact coupes, the sleeker, the better - I’d be inching down a suburban street as silently as possible. Which totally defeats the purpose of getting a rice rocket. The car’s image would forever be ruined.

Bottom line: I’ve no use for the functionalities of that defines both cars. I just like the aesthetics. Which is also totally unlike the usual me - who is usually big on functionality and uncaring about aesthetics.

I don’t suppose anyone reading this (not that I’m expecting anyone to read this) has any suggestions? So far my top three types/makes are and in no particular order:
1. Convertible (Miata, Solara)
2. Rice Rocket (Mustang, or any cheap and sleek coupe)
3. Mini Cooper

Other ideas:
1. Wagon (brother’s idea…)
2. Another Camry
3. Another 4-door sedan

Not to be considered:
1. Expensive cars
2. SUVs / trucks
3. Super cheap looking cars

That’s right.  My mother is a choco-klepto.  “A what?” you say?  You know… that type of existence that lives to steal the chocolate belonging to another.

Case in point, I had this sampler Joseph Schmidt truffle sitting on my dresser for the past month or so.  I was saving it for the day that I had the irresistible urge to eat chocolate.  I mean, why scarf it down when the calories that remain in the the truffle wrapper looks better in the truffle shape than as added luggage to my already wide-load hips.

One day, as I was taking out the trash, I noticed this Joseph Schmidt truffle wrapper in the master bathroom’s trashcan.  Puzzled, I didn’t immediately correlate the empty wrapper with the truffle that was supposedly sitting on my dresser.  I just stood there, wondering where someone - either my mom or my dad - got the truffle.

I thought back to the two truffles that I had previously put in the freezer.  But no, those two disappeared the very afternoon I brought them home and stuck them in the freezer.  They disappeared when one choco-klepto opened the freezer, saw the truffles, thought that they were available for consumption, took one out, unwrapped it, and popped it in her mouth.  All in front of her disbelieving daughter’s eyes (though why I was disbelieving, I don’t know).  The second one disappeared when her daughter said, “I can’t believe you ate my chocolate.”  To which the choco-klepto’s response was a cherubic beaming smile as she opened the freezer door again, reached in, removed the second truffle, unwrapped it, and popped it in her mouth.  Needless to say, I learned from the choco-klepto that both truffles lacked my name written on them and thus, no notice was given as to ownership.  And therefore, the truffles were treasure troves ready for claiming by any passer-by.

But I digress, the story of the two stolen truffles is about a month old.  The more recent story in the adventures (or misadventures) of a choco-klepto was how she dropped something off on my dresser, saw the last truffle, took it, ate it, threw the wrapper away in her trashcan, and never thought to mention the fact to me!

I mean, really, if her aim was to surreptitiously eat my chocolate, she should have at least hidden the truffle wrapper better!  I’m the person who takes out the trash in this house… OF COURSE I’m going to see a truffle wrapper when it is sitting at the top of the trash.  But no, when I asked her about her most recent choco-kleptomaniac escapade, she grinned and said, “Well, I saw that it was just sitting there…”

I give up.  Not that I’m upset or anything - more like I’m amusedly resigned - if anything, I suppose I should be grateful that she deigned to consume those calories on my behalf.

So, it’s been a long time since I did any tinkering with A Tinker’s Cart. I figured that given that the work I do is so internet-intensive, I really ought to learn about webpages in general. And what better way but to TINKER!

I mean, I’ve just never been a textbook kind of person. I just tinker. Ok, ok… more like I holler for help… then I tinker.

So after yesterday’s failed attempt to tinker, after which I hollered for help, I’m back again. I’ve got the pages option set up now but have no content.

Being an archive-fanatic, of course I went straight for the CD upon which I burned off the materials from the previous faces of A Tinker’s Cart.

‘Course, that’s when I realized that what I had was from 2003, before Moveable Type and Word Press, back when I was trying out the monkey-method of making a webpage copying-and-pasting HTML from other sites and replacing content.

Bottom-line, it’s now 2008, more than five years later, and A Tinker’s Cart hasn’t progressed very much from my own efforts. Any progress has been because Steve did it for me.

So now, I’m going to update old content, get it up under A Poet’s Corner, Writer’s Block, and see what I can do about tinkering with WordPress.

Just wait until you see the mess I make! *evil cackle*

So, it’s been a while since I blogged.  Guess I’ll start this up again.  Actually, I’d planned to spend part of tonight tinkering with WordPress and learning how to use it.

That’s right, use it beyond the basic blogging tool provided.  Use it beyond hollering for my buddy, the dude who fixes a hefty number of my computer problems, to “fix” it so that it does what I want it to do.  Use it in ways that I actually LEARN how to fiddle with webpage making by reading FAQs and instructions provided by WordPress.

I confess.  I’m a retard.  I got through to the part where the instructions said that I had to change the file permissions so that I could edit the file and then I broke down.

Yep.  I wrote a “help me!!” email to my buddy.

I can already see this entire learning process being a nicely bundled catastrophe, complete with migraine headaches for the dude who fixes my computer problems.

In the meantime, I ended up writing this blog post.

On a side note, I still haven’t seen those photos from my friend’s wedding back in June.  I need to go bum photos off people who had cameras.

This afternoon (actually, yesterday afternoon) my buddy, Jenny, got married.  The lucky guy who managed to snag her is Peter.  If I get my hands on any photos from today (err… yesterday) I’ll post them.  And believe me, I think Jenny’s used up her quota of once-a-year-esther-photos for her entire life.

I mean, I know weddings = photos.  And I love wedding photos.  BUT… not with me in them.  And definitely not in the copious quantities that were taken today.  Good grief, I close my eyes and still see the after-image burn of the flash of cameras.

In the meantime, I do have photos from Thursday’s bridal shower which I’ll post next while I wait for my hair to dry.

That’s another thing… I don’t think that I’ve ever had so many bobby pins simultaneously in my hair.  Once I finally pulled out all of them from my elaborate coiffure, I counted sixty.  SIXTY bobby pins.  No wonder the pile of hair on the top of my head seemed so poofy!  It wasn’t just my hair and what seemed like an entire can of hairspray and glitter glue.  Those sixty bobby pins went a long way in increasing the volume and weight on the top of my head.

And all that glitter sprayed into my hair…  My hair was really pretty - especially with that can of hair spray to prevent the hairdo from falling apart (as if sixty bobby pins couldn’t do the job).  Needless to say, I hate the crunchy feeling that hairspray leaves, so I washed my hair at quarter to 1 am and now I’m waiting for my hair to dry.

Ah, that reminds me.  Because I am cosmetics-retarded, I also had a make-up artist do my face.  Let’s just say, I must not have the right cleaning agent because I still have smears of whatever it is she used as an eyeliner… or maybe it’s the mascara that’s making me look like a dazed raccoon.

OK, I’m about ready to fall asleep, so I guess that’s my cue to go upload the bridal shower photos.

So, what was a BIG BONUS for baby brother turned into a WEE BONUS - err… I mean, a WII BONUS.  That’s right, the boy frittered away the bonus on a Wii.  Why?  To play Guitar Hero.  Hello!  Is dental school not keeping him busy enough?

Ahh well, he’s making good grades, or so he says, so I suppose I can’t complain.