this morning i wake up to two text messages from my pops. 1) are you awake, 2) my heart is broken again

my sister left for aussieland two nights ago and my dad is very sad. i called him and he said "the house is so empty and quiet now- everyone is leaving". and i could just see the :( . wish i could be there to give him a hug and spend time with him. so there again is the dilemma of how much of my own life is mine alone since it is meaningless with no love and family.

anyhow i have been itching for a couple of weeks to buy a new couch. so today i bought one from urban at quite a steal i think. andres fell in love with it and is getting the exact same one for their new apt too. he calls it the karma sutra couch because it unfolds into a bed and you can fold it width-wise and it becomes a chaise-type lounge for two. the only problem now is trying to have it fit in this tiny apt and how i'm going to get rid of my existing futon.

so last night from chinatown lynette and i shared a cab back. this time my excuse was it's too cold and my feet hurt and since lynette is sharing it...

after lynette dropped off i chatted with the cab driver who is a jordanian guy who moved his way from jordan to cali to new york and is a freelance diamond grader. it was a short but good chat and when i paid him later he said no no it's on me- i like talking to you. he then proceeded to write his number and email on the back of a receipt and told me to contact him. strange, but free cab ride.

then i walk into the deli to pick up fresca because i need the aspartame/malitol/sorbitol. i'm looking for it in the back and this older guy comes up to me and said, sorry to disturb you miss but i just had to come over and tell you you're the most beautiful woman i have seen. erm, oh thanks i try to be very gracious but in my sick state i really did not feel most beautiful (maybe as jeremy suggested it's my spanking new haircut- SWEEEET!). can i buy you anything- a drink, what you need from the store... we spend about five mins in front of the cooler with him telling me how beautiful i am and apologizing for being stalkerish (yeah no kidding dood). i cannot remember when i've said more thank yous and it's oks. i finally pull away and get up to the cashier when whaddya know, tito (his name) "bumps" into me again and offers to pay for my fresca and snapple. i politely declined but he insisted so oh well another freebie for the night.

now just gotta watch out for stalkers coz he knows i live at stuyvesant town. yikes. he too gave me his name and number. talk about HOT. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHA. oh yeah baby i'm definitely on top of my game now. ;)

this week will be one of those weeks i will remember as a new york experience.

monday was a holiday which was nice and so lynette justin and i went for a session of qi gong tui na (chinese massage), which for me was a good relief after yoga the day before. all was good until night when i didn't sleep well and felt cold all night. went to work the next day feeling like crap and ended up leaving at lunch coz once again i was shivering out of my skin. got home after popping a tablet of motrin and crashed for the next 6 hours only to wake up again with the freakin shivers. i'm thinkin wtf is wrong with me and put on another sweatshirt and a scarf. after a few email correspondences with jeremy he convinces me to not be stupid and see a doc. so i put on a pair of jeans, a jacket on top of my two sweatshirts and brave the cold in a yellow cab and make my way to bellevue's ER. when i get there they point me to pediatric emergency because i'm only 24 (25 is considered adult). i wait two hours.

shiver my way to sleep again that night and the night after because of fever i think. but i have figured out the trick. motrin (fever reducer) lasts only six hours so i have to pop the tablets every 5.5hours to avoid the ridiculous shivers. past 6 hours and the fever comes on and it takes about 15 mins for the motrin to work and in the meantime i am cold and shivering like a mofo.

but oh well all is good now and the weekend is here so i can rest up. feel like going for yoga but that might just squeeze my insides the wrong way and i don't want to offend my body again.

i have been cabbing it around like a freaking madwoman. i come up with every excuse to take a cab- oh it's freezing, oh my feet hurt so much in these shoes i think my body would thank me for it, oh i am not feeling too well i should torture myself and catch a cold, oh if i take the subway i will get locked out of yoga class again, oh i will be five minutes late for work if i take public transportation so i might as well pay 6 bucks more to be five mins early... and just tonight it was oh since i didn't pay for the concert tickets i can afford to take the cab there. but no!!! i need to stop i have spent hundreds on cabs this year alone and think about how much cheese that could've bought me! i need to stop this excuse-making and just freaking start leaving for my destination sooner.

behaviour like this makes me think about what an adult i am at 24 when i can never get to my appointments early. i used to think that punctuality was an adult thing... like getting fat and ugly are. things that just happened as one got older. i also used to think food cravings and greediness/no self-restraint would go away with adulthood but boy have i been misled. i wonder where that notion came from in the first place.

glad that i am in nyc this week coz i miss my un-food as some people call it. tempeh, smoked tofu, grilled veggies and lotsa cheese. i just miss the simple, somewhat less tasty meals, cooked with PAM (oil spray) rather than real oil, sprinkled with splenda rather than real sugar. a colleague of mine says i eat like a goat because i munch all day on this soy/organic/unfood food. he suggested buying me a shot of wheatgrass because i guess he thinks i'd be into that sort of thing.

lynette, shanmei, winnie and i are in a competition. we each put $30 into a pot and whoever loses the biggest percentage of our body weight will get to keep the whole pot. shanmei is already in the lead and i need to catch up but dining out in chicago every night really does not help. gotta make more sessions of yoga except it's expensive and tires me out so much the day after. like today i am hurting and exhausted i had to ditch my plans to go for a consecutive session.

my flight from chicago was delayed 3 hours and the whole time i kept thinking about the first thing i was going to do when i got home- open the LAST packet of crispy bak hu! so that's exactly what i do some 6 hours later and munch my way thru ALL the big chunks and now only the floss is left which just isn't the same. :(

hang's postponed her coming back another week and i wonder now if she is ever gonna come back. oh roommate if you read this please call me!

so apparently bikram yoga was not meant to be last weekend.
saturday i am up and about by 8am and so i'm like no sweat i'll make the 1230 class. at 12 i stupidly decide to call macy's and target to sort out the credit card my mum left behind and of course i don't have enough time so i have to catch a cab. i get to 23rd and 5th and i cannot for the life of me find the place. i call andres who doesn't pick up, i call nic and he says dude it's 1235 they won't let you in. so he says come have lunch with me and we'll go to the 2pm class.

i meet him back in the EV (short for East Village where else. haha) and he says he's gotta go back to the financial district to pick up his yoga clothes. we go there and leave with more than enough time to get there on the express subway. we got on the 4,5 and with a stroke of bad luck the express train is making F-ing local stops! gotta be kidding. we count down the minutes and contemplate getting off to just go eat since we will probably not make the class anyway. but nic stuck to his guns and when we got off it was 1.58pm- 2 mins before they close the room. we ran like there was no tomorrow and got there at 2pm exactly. as i signed in the receptionist asked me if it was my first time i said no, been here once before. oh- this class is only for first timers m'aam. what??!! but can we go anyway? i asked. no, and anyway it is too slow to be a good workout for someone who's done it before. shits so i went to 23rd and 5th twice that day in vain! is this what i get for wanting to be committed to a fit and healthy lifestyle???

so this week i am going to try once again. 5pm class and i plan on being there by 430. i've even postponed getting my haircut because of this.

been stuffing myself with too much free food lately i need to detox next week except that i'll be in chicago for three nights and of course the food will be free again so it's gonna be hard to restrain myself. i'll just have to try and make it up with more visits to the gym.

v'day night will be by myself in chicago maybe this time brad pitt will be on tv.

bikram yoga is on the agenda this afternoon as i am hoping the toxins i have ingested the past week will be excreted through my skin.

the windy city and bikram yoga

in chicago now chilling out at the W lakeshore. have two double beds and tom cruise as the last samurai for company. the perks of working are getting to have a $50 meal which in chicago is actually pretty decent. can't wait for the day i get enough points to fly to hawaii for free. or miami would be good too why not?

watched hostel with justin and it was terribly gruesome. quentin has a sick sick mind.

am the only female in my team and i anticipate having to fraternize with the guys at bars over beers- not good for the diet/health. the upside is that all the starwood hotels have free gyms so dolphin fitness can go bust for all i care since i'll be here a couple of days almost every week.

the days i am not here in chicago i will be doing bikram yoga. andres and nic are obsessed about it and told me to try so i went this past weekend with andres. you go into this heated-like-a-bloody-sauna room and do yoga positions for an hour and a half. i think i sweated out at least a bottleful of water from my pores which was good because i love to sweat during a workout but it's almost impossible during the winter unless you run like a maniac.