Comments Posted By Kevin Kim
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“I’ve heard dogs want to be alone when they die.”
An understandable and relatable sentiment. Condolences. I know she was special to you. Don’t be too hard on yourself. As you said, she was another owner’s dog. Nothing to be done.
Maybe hoist a glass and dedicate your darts victory (congrats!) to Buday.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 17/April/2021 @ 5:17 pm
The ribs look good, glaze or not!
I could learn a thing or two from your disciplined schedule. Part of my problem is that I’m juggling several projects but not accomplishing much with any one of them precisely because I’m not scheduling my time in a disciplined manner. While I can’t follow the monk’s schedule of sleeping at 9 and waking before dawn (Korean monks sleep at 9 and wake up around 3:30 a.m.), I can probably come up with a better schedule than the chaos currently ruling my life. Thanks for the wisdom.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 16/April/2021 @ 10:02 pm
Inquiring minds wanna know: homemade quesadilla???
They’re not that hard to make. The easier “cheat” method is to use a large tortilla that you then fold in half. German chef Wolfgang Puck, who’s about as Mexican as I am, offers a further trick: paint the outer sides of each tortilla with mayonnaise. This sounds weird at first, but mayo is mostly oil and a bit of egg (with a splash of vinegar), which means it’s great for frying and browning your tortilla nicely. The “cheat” method also makes it much easier to flip your quesadilla when the time comes. If you follow the harder “two tortillas” method of quesadilla-making, it’s a bit of an acrobatic stunt to try and flip the damn thing without having it fly apart.
I see that the house-hunting continues. Well, you know what qualities you want in a domicile, and you have a better idea of what’s fair, rent-wise, so I assume you’re a much wiser shopper now. As for feeling cheated… it occurs to me that there’s a bit of a conundrum: once you discovered you’d been paying a high rent for three years, did that upset you more or less than your landlord/landlady’s current bid to raise your rent? To me, it seems that the real reason to move out isn’t the current bid to jack up the rent—it’s the fact that you’ve been grifted for three years already. So this becomes a value judgment: you’ve tolerated being pissed on for a long time, so what’s a little more piss?
I saw that other commenters suggested being a hardass when renegotiating your new rental contract. I agree. Maybe go for a five-year contract with a written guarantee that rent WILL NOT be raised during the contract period. Whether you begin that period at a higher rent is up to you. What’s your piss tolerance level? Anyway, good luck as you continue searching. I have a feeling, though, that a “foreigner’s tax,” as you put it, is unavoidable if you’re looking for a home that matches your standards.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 15/April/2021 @ 8:17 pm
Love the Hunter pic. Also had a chuckle at the cartoon about mask-wearing: half the people pictured in the cartoon are wearing their masks with exposed noses, thereby heightening their hypocrisy. A subtle touch, but noticeable.
“Nancy would have to beat me twice (win two best-of-three matches) to take first. I offered her a deal where we call it a tie and split the money (300 pesos each). She accepted my offer. That’s a win-win for everyone, right?”
Are you saying that you guys didn’t play each other and simply settled for declaring a tie, thereby splitting the cash? Is that what happened? I bet the sparse audience was disappointed if that’s the case. Imagine two high-profile boxers doing that in the ring. “Nah, man. We don’ need ta prove nuthin’. We good. Later.” It’d be chaos! Then again, people don’t pay for expensive tickets to local dart matches, so there might not be an uproar.
As for the $400/mo. place… it looks like quite a grungy step down from where you are now, and you definitely get what you pay for. Having potentially contentious neighbors living one floor up would be a deal-breaker for me; I’m pretty much done with apartment living. If I ever go back to the States, I’m getting a free-standing house with plenty of yard/lawn/wilderness space so that I don’t hear my neighbors, and they don’t hear me. There’ll be space enough for my dogs to roam around freely all day, and for me to practice shooting, slingshot-ing, and axe-throwing in the backyard, not to mention a spot for me outside to hang a canvas Everlast 70-pound kicking/punching bag so I can work out my frustrations on the bodyweight equivalent of a fifth-grader. Leather bags are for pussies; canvas is rough and makes your knuckles bleed. Toughens the skin.
I sympathize with your desire not to get cornholed by your landlord (I thought it was a she… did someone get surgery?), but I think you need to keep looking until you find a much better deal.
As for $900/mo. being expensive… I have no standard of comparison. I haven’t lived in the States since 2013, and back then, the price for an average, 850-square-foot apartment in northern Virginia (2 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms, kitchenette) was anywhere from $800 to $1300/month, depending on how close you were to DC. Is $900/mo. expensive for the Philippines for the size house you’re in now? I have no idea.
Anyway, good luck with your search. Maybe narrow your search by thinking about what counts as a deal-breaker for you. Do the neighbors matter? How about the neighborhood as a whole? Access to shops, bars, etc.? What about the roaming-animal situation? And crime? The degree to which the new place is a fixer-upper? Etc.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 14/April/2021 @ 8:40 pm
A good day, a good Hash. What more could a man want?
(Don’t answer that.)
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 14/April/2021 @ 12:10 am
The Korean on that spice-rating chart isn’t an exact translation of the English, but it conveys roughly the same idea, albeit in a jokey, Korean-style way. I just checked with my Korean coworker, and here’s roughly what the Korean says:
하수 (hasu) = inferior person, untouchable caste
평민 (pyeongmin) = close to a regular person
중수 (joongsu) = regular person
고수 (gosu) = expert, master
지존 (jijon) = lofty, respectable person
초인 (cho-in) = some kind of superman
겁 (geop) = fear, terrorSo the English is conveying a person’s reaction to the spiciness, but the Korean is talking about what kind of person can endure each level of spiciness (except for Level 7, which appears to be a reaction, like in the English rendering).
As for whether your life has meaning or purpose… it can be perfectly meaningful to enjoy every moment deeply. No Zennist would contradict you. If you’re ever in doubt as to whether life, as you live it, is worth living, just ask yourself whether you’d be better off killing yourself right at this moment. The contemplation of suicide has its uses, and not just for the suicidal.
I recall doing a thought experiment about suicide once, and then I saw the same thoughts expressed online by someone else. My thought was that, when someone claims that life is empty and he wants to kill himself, just grab him and thrust his head into a bucket of water, holding him down for as long as you can. It’s almost inevitable that the supposedly suicidal person will thrash and struggle to escape your grip because, at the cellular level, our most basic instinct is to live. Now, the person might escape your grip and claim he still wants to die, but on his own terms. That doesn’t invalidate the insight that he struggled and resisted when confronted with death. Just as any animal will.
None of this is to imply that I think you’re suicidal. If anything, your post argues or implies that you, at least, see yourself as leading a fairly fulfilling life right now. My point, though, is that there’s an easily available thought experiment you can perform any moment you think your life is meaningless or purposeless, i.e., that there’s little reason to go on living, or that there’s little difference between life and death. Just think about what value there might be in suicide, and you’ll have your answer as to whether your life has meaning, value, and all the rest.
Sorry if all that sounds morbid, but I mean it in a life-affirming way.
Of course, if you really do want to kill yourself, just order something from that Korean place at Level 7 spiciness.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 12/April/2021 @ 4:20 pm
My mother hated carrot cake. I never understood why; when it’s done right—moist, with a good layer of cream-cheese icing—it’s almost good enough to make me forget how much I love chocolate.
Good luck as you try to surmount Cristy’s insurmountable lead. Meanwhile, have fun getting your steps in.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 11/April/2021 @ 7:52 pm
That’s a good-looking, happily messy cheesesteak. I might have to make one now.
Congrats on the sweeping victory! And congrats on being out and about, hiking as you normally would!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 10/April/2021 @ 11:01 pm
Congrats on the hard-earned victory! Maybe a “Dart Stud” tee is in order.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 09/April/2021 @ 7:56 pm
Well, good luck to Dennis. “Solitary nomad,” eh? Where does he get the money to travel?
The pic of the Monte Cristo shows a proper Monte Cristo—battered and deep-fried, with a fruit-jam dipping sauce on the side. Perfect. I’ve seen some people try to get away with an egg-dipped and pan-fried sandwich that is little more than French toast. A proper Monte Cristo is always batter-fried to crispness, and there’s always a dipping sauce—usually raspberry jam/preserves—on the side.
Ha—just looked at the Wikipedia entry, which says the egg-dipped version is more traditional. I call bullshit on that. If you want French toast, then for fuck’s sake, just order French toast.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 08/April/2021 @ 6:42 pm
Sandpapering apparently is a thing.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 09/April/2021 @ 1:30 pm
Congrats on the win! You’ve beaten Cristy a few times since labeling her “the best.” Is she still the best, or did you steal her crown?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 07/April/2021 @ 8:53 pm
Mary’s looking to put a little tempest in that teapot, I see.
So—does this mean your record is still unbroken, even if you’re doing a route that’s different from the official Hash route? Do the Hash bigwigs formally count your “alternate” routes as completed Hashes, such that your record is officially unbroken?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 06/April/2021 @ 7:59 pm
Every once in a while, it’s good to be spendy. Glad you’re back.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/April/2021 @ 5:09 pm
And then there’s the matter of not closing one’s HTML tags, thus making the rest of one’s comment boldface for no good reason. What’s that thing you like to say… you can “serve as a warning to others”? Yeah. Me, too. Well, if you can’t laugh at yourself, the world will oblige by laughing at you.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/April/2021 @ 3:11 am
Also:
“And so beings the task.”
I clicked the link… and you typed “begins” correctly back in 2005! You could’ve just done a cut-and-paste!
Not that I have a leg to stand on. The passage of mine that you quoted contains… comma errors. On the bright side, my ability to detect such errors in my earlier writing probably means I’ve improved as a writer. I often learn by making mistakes. I doubt I’m alone in that. It’s the people who never learn from their mistakes who deserve pity. And maybe a cookie.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/April/2021 @ 3:08 am
The Biden tee is hilarious.
Good to see you’re out walking again. It might take some time to beat back your fatigue, but you seem to be on an upward trend.
“Happy Beaster,” as one of my friends says. He also call Christmas “Cursemas.” He’s a witty one, he is.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 05/April/2021 @ 12:45 am
I joke a lot with my friends and coworkers about my vampiric schedule. Then I hiss at the sun, transform into a giant bat, fly off to a nearby cave, and bide my time.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 04/April/2021 @ 2:49 pm
Sounds like a typical Saturday for me. I normally use my weekends to catch up on sleep and just laze about… unless my buddy JW insists we go walking somewhere. I’ll occasionally do long walks on my own, but I’m more likely to do those at night during the work week.
Anyway, I hope the rest has done you some good. For what it’s worth, Happy Easter. Maybe you’ll leap out of bed Sunday morning like a man resurrected, all while shouting “I AM RISEN!” as you stare down at your morning wood.
(Is this the wrong time to say “Joy to the world”?)
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 04/April/2021 @ 3:45 am
What Mark said.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 02/April/2021 @ 9:14 pm
For inveterate walkers, there can be a bit of depression and frustration at being unable to do one’s usual thing. This is a normal reaction to being deprived of a favorite activity; it can be endured, and it’ll pass, and when you get back to walking, you can enjoy the challenge of catching your health back up, so to speak.
For the past few weekends, I’ve been wanting to go distance walking, but it has rained, like clockwork, only during the weekends. So I walk at night when I can—just short strolls that come in at barely 10K steps. I’m hoping to do a long walk the weekend of April 10, but the forecast for that weekend has gone from “clear” to “rainy on Sunday.” If Saturday also changes to “rainy,” I’m screwed.
If your fever has broken, that’s good news. It could be that the lethargy is a sign of something else, unconnected to COVID. If it continues over the two-week period we talked about, you should definitely see a professional. It’s forcing a radical departure from your normal routine, so it ought to be looked into.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 02/April/2021 @ 3:25 pm
Good to know you’re taking precautions. At some point, if symptoms worsen, do consider hitting a decent hospital. Fever is indeed a COVID symptom, but so is a dry cough, and as you pointed out in a different post, loss of the sense of taste is a symptom reported by many as well. If you sense an encroachment of different symptoms, go see the pros.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 02/April/2021 @ 8:53 am
Keep on self-checking. During the same two-week period that you’re checking yourself for COVID symptoms, also keep checking on your lethargy levels. Documenting the lethargy on your blog is actually a good strategy, both as a way to keep notes for yourself and as a way for us readers to engage in our unprofessional “village” diagnoses of your condition. “Wisdom of crowds” and all that.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 01/April/2021 @ 11:11 pm
Well, as long as you and Joy have an understanding, and that understanding involves cash flow to/for her, I guess y’all’re good to go. And who knows? If things get comfortable enough, maybe a friendship will form.
This might sound like a non sequitur, but bear with me. I’ve seen some documentaries about how things are in the porn community. The actors and actresses all know each other, and given the sexually frank nature of the business, there’s thankfully very little bullshit. You can’t get much more intimate than sexual interaction, after all, so what’s left to hide behind? In other words, when sex is front and center, and when it’s also tied to business, it’s actually possible to be more sincere with a sex partner. This doesn’t guarantee the blossoming of a loving relationship, but with everyone so up-front, there’s a certain comfort that comes with knowing there’s no room to hide anything. I almost envied the porn actors I saw in those documentaries; they seemed so relaxed and frank—laughing and joking and lazing around with each other. I can’t imagine myself ever living such a life, but it must be nice to have things out in the open, so to speak, and not have to worry about being stabbed in the back (unless the director needs you to do an ass-fucking scene, I guess).
So maybe you can carve out a friendship with Joy that’s somewhere along those lines. Much depends, of course, on whether you and she can be honest about what you want without getting greedy and suddenly wanting/demanding more. Personally, I’m still cautious about what Joy represents, and I can’t shake a familiar sense of foreboding, but part of me remains hopeful—like Charlie Brown running at that football—that this time, things might be different.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 31/March/2021 @ 7:14 pm
Hey, I recognize that basketball pic! I know whose it is because the caption contains a “don’t,” whereas the original version of the meme contained an ungrammatical “can’t.” (original version)
So what did your unmet FB friend say after she saw all three pics of you? (I assume you sent her the third pic as well, ja?)
Happy Hashing!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 29/March/2021 @ 5:07 pm
Sounds as if you’re navigating this lethargy. As you imply, it’s necessary to strike a balance between listening to your body and prompting your body to do something beneficial even when the will isn’t there. Continued good luck!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 28/March/2021 @ 9:29 pm
Get well soon! Sucks to feel lethargic.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 27/March/2021 @ 3:35 pm
Sorry to hear about the continued landlady dilemma. It would suck to have to move; your place is in a fairly scenic location, and it’s a bit higher up, so you don’t have as much to worry about re: flooding. Would you use some sort of moving service if you did have to move? How does it (moving) work in the PI?
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 26/March/2021 @ 5:22 pm
Nice walk—very much in the style of the Four Rivers walk here, albeit with a bit more road and a bit less paved trail. Enjoy the party!
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 25/March/2021 @ 6:16 pm
«« Back To Stats PageWe need to overlay your singing with the sound of an old Basset hound howling mournfully.
As for sharing and caring… ain’t no caring as long as it’s a transaction, but there might be some sharing. Of bodily fluids. And maybe diseases. (And what’s with the “I wanted her to care about me and want to be with me because she cared.”? I thought you were done with the love/care thing. It’s hard to get a read on what you really want, and I suspect you yourself don’t know what you want. Buy yourself a Fleshlight, man. It’ll never disappoint you.)
Which is worse—that pic of Biden falling up the stairs to Air Force One, or the pic of Hillary with a diarrhea spot on her skirt as she’s just entering Air Force One?
Those pics of the trail look harsh. My brain saw those and said, “No, thanks.” A big, heavy guy like me would have a hard time gaining traction on that hillside, especially if the soil is as loose as it appears.
Too bad about the third-place finish, but I’m sure you’ll fight your way to the top again soon.
» Posted By Kevin Kim On 24/March/2021 @ 6:34 pm
