It's been a while since I've really cleaned my car. Yesterday the gardeners came to the apartment to cut down a tree. They were dropping twigs and leaves on it already and if I hadn't moved the car they would have dropped the entire branch on the car. Less than a minute after rushing to move it, the entire tree fell down over my parking space. Ridiculous! What I ended up with was dust and little shavings all over the front end. So I spent today giving it a good wash, clay baring the car, waxing it, polishing it, detailing the engine bay, detailing the interior, repainting the wheels, polishing the headlights and tail lights, and cleaning the windows. Took a while but it feels smooth now and has a good shine. The only disappointment is how sandblasted my front end is from driving on the 60 fwy so much.

The past two days my schedule has been filled with interviews and info sessions. Haven't heard back from then yet, but it's almost as expected at this point. It's been a dry couple of days lately with oven-baking heat waves the moment you step out of the car or open a door. Today I picked up my stranded carless-for-a-day friend and went for some slow service, no choices, loud noise, dim sum. I don't remember when the last time I went to New Capital in SG for dim sum was, but it sucked today. I got around to ordering 6 dishes in 1 1/2 hours! That's 2 dishes every 30 minutes. Then upon leaving we get charged a "tea setting fee". What the heck is a tea setting fee? We didn't even have tea brought out to us. Just cups of ice tap water.

Anyhow, I got the Android phone/T-mobile G1/gPhone/iPhone killer/google phone/HTC Dream yesterday. Technically I got it prior, but it was "lost in the mail" ... First impression is that it's a good phone. Nice alternative to the iPhone. Easy to learn and use but takes a while to get used to finding all the hidden menus. Everything is a press-n-hold and hope for the best situation. So far one thing that bugs me is that I can't access my SIM card messages. When I looked for my contacts list I realized it was missing. This would be another gripe that I'd have against the phone but I found the option to import SIM card contacts...AFTER manually inputting each contact into Gmail. At first I didn't like how the phone syncs, but I guess it's rather convenient when you're also typing in addresses to places and misc. info. The coolest feature yet has to be the Android Market where I've found a couple barcode scanning programs. These programs use the G1's camera to "scan" in barcodes of almost any item and it'll give item descriptions, reviews, and where to purchase the item for the lowest cost. Neato! Now the only thing I have to figure out is whether or not 400 txt msgs is enough on the plan because each email that gets sent over counts as a text.

It's been 15 days since my last entry. Since then, I have applied to 30 jobs, sent in 35 resumes, been nagged by my father about finding a job at least 10 times, played board games with my cousins on 8 separate occasions, ate a year's worth of McDonalds to collect Monopoly pieces, collected over 50 pieces (yeah, that much McD's ), and upgraded to a new camera.

So job searching is the same old same old. Went for 1 interview and had 1 phone interview. Everything else so far is just "application and resume on file." I have one more interview on Tuesday, which hopefully goes well.

During these two weeks my cousins and I have been meeting up quite a bit. It's nice to be able to catch up on things and reminisce about old times. The last time we've all gotten together under the same roof without any special circumstances has been at least 2 years or more. We've bought a dozen board games totalling $200ish which was split amongst us all, but it has kept us occupied for hours at a time without spending extra money doing other miscellaneous stuff. When you account per person per hour, I guess it isn't all that bad. Each time we've met up we've also tried some new food here and there. It seems like it's been the only times I have ate something other than McDonalds, ugh..

I got a T700 camera just shipped to me yesterday. A friend's friend that works at Sony hooked it up. Not that the T100 is ancient yet, but it is giving me some problems upon boot up and lag while focusing during a shot. The splash screen lags every once in a while so I lose that "perfect moment" shot by a few seconds. The T700 is blazing fast at what it does. Point and shoot in an instant sans lag. There's still some noise in low-light environments but it's a great improvement over T100. Not sure how it compares with T200 or T300 though as I have no prior experience with either camera. Asthetically, it's cleaner. Slimmer camera with sleeker lines and larger touch display. The aluminum frame feels sturdy in the hand and the front lens cover is solid. I had a camera case ready for it sitting on my desk since for a period of time I was considering the T300 as a replacement, but it's much slimmer than expected. It's like wearing clothes 2 times larger than your normal size. When I use the camera more, I can give a better review of it's performance.

Update on my last entry: Due to my impatience to get white paint, I test screened a shirt in yellow on a red shirt. It came out quite well so I did another one on a blue shirt. The second time around it came out production-perfect. Because I was on a roll, I decided to make another MusiCat shirt in red on grey which also came out flawless.

I went to Jurassic Restaurant for the first time yesterday. The atmosphere was very interesting. Themed after Jurassic Park, they have some wood log wall dividers, rocky walls and tables, dino bones, and even a mini T-rex skeletal frame. The food is decent but far from being the best when it's located in the Hacienda Hts/City of Industry area. I have pics of the food, but it'll have to wait in line to be uploaded. Soup was unlimited refills which is nice. Apparently yesterday was a "casual Friday" for the waitresses because there was a nurse, a cop, a girl in chi-pao, a cat-ears girl, and the standard cave woman. Eye candy, food, and drink all conveniently thrown together and located next to a strip club, haha. After dinner, my cousins and I returned to my place for a couple rounds of the old-school but revamped board game, Clue.

I processed my second screen print yesterday as well. Another cat shirt to follow up with the MusiCat. Came out great but I won't be able to tell how it'll look on the shirt yet since I'm missing white fabric paint.

One of the employment opportunities I was hoping to get has turned out to be a big upset for me today. I found out that the reason I didn't get hired was because I was not familiar with my own "family happenings" and because I "can't seem to manage my finances". So the automotive place I went to for the interview happens to know my "step-mother" and knows that she is getting married to my dad. But I had failed to mention either; that I knew her or that she was getting married during my interview. Go figure, I only found out last week while other people apparently have known for over a month! And moreso, I've only met her for a month and known her as his friend. So if a person can't even keep track of what's going on in their family then it'll be even harder for them to stay on top of it at work...?? Then they lectured me on how living at an apartment isn't as economical as living at home. And how living at home allows me to save money and my "father would be proud." I told them my father wanted me out of the house, without knowing he was planning on selling the house at the time. They said it was ridiculous as long as I told him my plans to save money he would want me at home. Yeah...doesn't work out that way. Nobody clarified anything prior to making their decision so they went ahead and hired someone else. For what it's worth, the place doesn't seem like the right fit anyhow. They also claimed I lack certainty for wanting the position because they train their employees for all skills required on the job and do not encourage getting their workers getting MBAs that'll only prove to be useless, yet when asked what my goals are I said I would go back to school given the opportunity. I don't think it's wrong to think of my own future instead of fully dedicating myself to a potential employer. What if one day I did work there and decided to leave? o_O!

Anyhow..I got my car back! It's as good as new except it needs a good polish. I was able to pick it up on Monday night around 8pm.