Remember this furry guy:

Well, it looks like he either followed me back home or sent one of his friends over to harass me some more.  Lucky me, he decided to make his appearance while I was busy at work. 

The following events I’m about to describe took place within 15 minutes.  I am not making any of this up (don’t think I could).

 

To make things a little easier to visualize, I made a quick sketch of my workplace and the general path this little fella took during his 15 minutes of mayhem.
 

Note:  The dotted line represents the chipmunk

1) I’m helping a member at the front desk when I suddenly hear a yell coming from our downstairs fitness center.  Thinking it was just someone grunting loudly from lifting weights, I ignored it and kept on doing what I was doing.  Soon though, I hear shouting getting louder and louder, so I look over at the hallway to see what all the commotion was.  Behold, a tiny chipmunk comes racing up the stairway, followed by two fitness trainers trying to shoo it with some exercise equipment.  They attempted to direct it towards our exit, but as you can see the chipmunk went no where near it.  Instead, it decided to go visit the ladies’ bathroom.  Oh boy…

2) Shortly after this happens, I hear a bunch of women shrieking inside the bathroom.  I didn’t want to go in there (being a guy) so I waited outside.  Eventually, the chipmunk came out and attempted to go in the men’s bathroom, but this time I was fast enough to shut the door before it could menace the men in there.  Before I had any time to plan my next move, it raced between my legs and went into our kitchen.

3) It’s about this time where the trainers that were initially helping out left me because they had a class to teach, so now it was just me chasing this thing.  I decided to grab an empty drink case from our recycling bin in hopes of using it to capture that fella (hey, I thought it was a good plan at the time!).

My fancy chipmunk catching device

Alas, his agility level was much higher than mines so he easily evaded my every move.  He managed to escape the kitchen and it looked like he was going to head out the exit, but instead of making a right he made a left into the front desk area.

4) He found a nice, deep corner under our desk and hid there for a few minutes.  By now, I have stirred up a lot of attention from members in the club.  I asked one of them for any suggestions on what to do.  She responded by saying “I don’t know how to catch one, but I sure know how to grill one!” and proceeded to discuss that story with another member. 

 

Shaking my head, I went back to the matter at hand.  The chipmunk finally grew tired of staying under there and he bolted over to our lounge area.

 

 

Shifting over to this side of our lobby

5) There was an older man already there just watching television, oblivious to all the chaos that was going on.  I think he finally got a hint that something was going on when he saw me rushing over there with my box chipmunk capturing device in hand.  He tried to help by lifting the couches that the chipmunk kept running under.  Unfortunately, that made my job even harder because I had to stop the couches from dropping each time he lifted one.  I was SO not in the mood to clean up splatterred chipmunk today!

6) After a “brief” lap around the back office, the chipmunk decided to crawl up in the files at the membership desk where our membership director was in the middle of signing up a new member.  Mind you, I was sweating profusely at this point and frantically slamming my box all over the floor.  What a great first impression for that lucky member huh?

 

At least unlike the other women, the membership director and the new member didn’t freak out.  The director even tried to help by using her coffee cup to capture it.  I did mention this chipmunk was faster than the wind right?  Yeah, she wasn’t much help, but at least the chipmunk did take off soon after.  I was hoping it would make a left towards the exit, but you can probably guess that sadly didn’t happen.

7) In the daycare center it went!  It made a pit stop at the children’s bathroom, which days before had imploded and was currently in the process of being fixed.  I tried trapping it in this stinky room, but it once again sped past me, past screaming parents, and under the child-proof doorway (oh why couldn’t it have been furry animal-proof?!).

8) More screaming ensued, but funny enough it only came from all the daycare providers.  The children were having a grand old time watching this!  Some even cheered the chipmunk on and one little girl yelled at me “chipmunks are cool!  Leave him alone!”  Oh yeah, just the encouragement I needed.

 

In the end, I finally managed to guide it out the rear exit.  I went back into the lobby, where everyone proceeded to give me a standing ovation and popped open several champagne bottles.

 

Alright alright, perhaps that last part didn’t quite happen, but I think I deserved something like that after chasing the chipmunk around the building for 15 minutes!  I sure know this wasn’t under my job description.  Hopefully, it won’t be coming back anytime soon.

Epilogue 

…Or so I thought.  Later that day after I left work, I received a call from my co-worker saying that my “buddy” was back and setting camp in the back office.  I gave him some advice and wished him good luck with chasing down that speedy creature.  It’s my co-worker’s problem now =P

Finally, this is not meant to replace real life interaction.  The idea is that this type of app can help give that extra nudge and confidence to people so that they can make that first leap of faith.  Since we already have things such as online dating sites and dating ads I don’t see this being a big change to the status quo.  It’s probably not for everybody, but I’m sure some people would find this app a good supplement to the old fashion way of meeting people.
 
Perhaps one of these days a technology savvy person can make this application.  If so, feel free to give me a percent of that profit

That’s my pitch.  So, yay or nay to this idea?  Any suggestions on how to improve it?

P.S. I know I know, I put way more thought into this than I probably should have.

P.P.S. I’m also pretty sure there has to be something like this out there already, so let me know if you know of any.

So I’ve been trying to hide this for a while now, but I don’t think I can keep it a secret any longer.  Sooner or later it’s going to leak out, so I might as well be the one to put it out. 

Below is some never before seen, unedited, amateur video my baby brother manage to get of me when he first saw me use my ability.  I try not to use this ability for personal gain, but this was one of those moments where I had to.

Alright, here you go:

Just in case you couldn’t tell, the above video isn’t real .  Credits goes to my little brother for coming up with the idea and scripting it. Don’t know how he always convince me to take part in these ideas of his.

Enjoy your Memorial weekend!

The word “suicide” started popping up a lot today all of a sudden.  Earlier today, I read a post by a Xangan which seemed like it was a suicide letter (hopefully, the worse case scenario doesn’t happen).  Later, while reading through a mail about life insurance, the very last bullet point under the Information You Should Know section read “Death by suicide in the first two years is not covered (1 year for Missouri residents).”  Just now, I was hanging out with a friend when we started talking about the show House and how shocking it was when Kutner commited suicide on that show. 

You know what makes this even more weird?  I was actually in the process of writing about this topic for the past week or so, but held back because I wasn’t sure what to say.  I still really don’t, but seeing as it’s in my head today I’ll write all that I can for now.

While in San Diego, I found out from my old high school friend that a mutual friend of ours passed away in March, supposedly from suicide.  The thing that made this extremely shocking for me was that this friend was probably the last person I would ever think would do such a thing.  She was one of those cheerful people that always smiles when she greets you (kind of like how I am).  She was in the process of finishing up her masters and was at the time engaged as well, so those elements made this news even more boggling.

So what happened?  There seemed to be no warning, i.e. note or change of behavior.  What could have been so distraughtful to my friend that she chose this route, a route I would never have guessed?  It’s such a big difference from reading/studying suicide at school and actually experiencing the event in real life, that’s for sure.

I still find myself experiencing all five stages of grief.  I was in denial that such a thing could ever happen to my friend, one of the sweetest person I knew.  I was angry that I didn’t hear about this sooner, or else I would have loved to attend her funeral to pay my final respects.  I found myself trying to bargain with God in my head, asking him if he could just send me back in time for a brief moment so I could try to talk her out of it.  I felt sad of course that there was something in this world that can drive my friend down this unimaginable path. 

I’ve more or less accepted it happened, as much as I really don’t want to.  I’m not walking around constantly distressed or anything, but I’m definitely still thinking about it.  Whenever the topic of suicide comes up (as it has today), I find myself feeling just as shock and emotional as I was the first time I heard the news. 

I really don’t have any grand final thoughts on this topic yet.  Perhaps I will revisit this later when I have it more figured out in my head.  We’ll see.

I miss you Tejal.  Thank you for being a part of my life.

No not this, the other kind

I personally can never be the type of person to constantly flake out on others.  I know I would feel so guilty and irresponsible if I ever became like that.  Apparently though, other people that have wandered into my life do not seem to have such a hard time being so unreliable.  Let me tell you a little about three of the people that have most recently affected me with their flakiness.

Flake #1:  Co-Worker

I’ve recently became a manager at my workplace while the former manager has downgraded to just being a front desk staff.  One of my duties is to make the schedule and, for the most part, everyone has been reliable and flexible enough.  Everyone, that is, except for my former manager.

I don’t know what his deal is, but he’s suddenly have become progressively more unreliable and useless over the past weeks.  He’s only scheduled to work a measly 5 hours over the course of this past Monday and Tuesday, which is a far cry from how many hours he used to work.  So what happen?

On Monday, he calls to say he forgot he had to work and couldn’t come in because he wanted to “go get dinner with his mom that night”.  I was chaperoning my little brother’s field trip to Philadelphia at the time and couldn’t make it back, so I ended up having to get the person that opened up that morning (at 6am) to come back later that night to cover his shift.  Even though he said it was fine, I felt so guilty asking him to come back because I knew he was probably still tired from the morning, had been sick all week, and had final exams to study for. 

Later, I asked my ex-manager if he could cover a shift for someone who’s car had broken down 100 miles away.  He responded by saying he didn’t feel like it after being at a doctor’s office for two hours earlier that day.  He ended up doing it, but not until after he tried to get everyone else to cover for him.  It’s so ironic that he has become the biggest headache for me and everyone else at work.

Flake #2:  Teammate

I’m part of a tennis league team and we were scheduled to play a match the other night.  About a week ago, my captain told me they needed one more guy for that match, so I asked a friend if he could do it.  He said sure, so I explained to him how to sign up for team and everything.

Flash forward a week later and he still hasn’t sign up.  I had to call him up and walk him through the whole process of signing up the day before the match.  I figured no biggie, people sometimes don’t realize how fast time goes by.

The next day was our match and the whole team arrives at the site except for him.  Literally a minute before our official match start time, my captain received a text from him, saying that he can’t make it because he needed to “pick up his mom at the airport”.  (Huh, just noticed both flakes I’ve talked about so far mentioned their mom in their excuses.  Hmm…)

So what happened because of that?  We had to forfeit one of our singles matches, which meant his opponent came out for nothing.  To hammer the stake in even more, our team ended up tying 2 for 2 in the four remaining match that night, but because of that forfeit our team lost 2-3 overall.  Even though my partner and I played an unbelievable match to win against a strong team, it was all just bittersweet upon hearing the final results.  Great.

Flake #3:  “Friend”

This was the disappointment I was talking about before in my previous San Diego post.  I’m going to be honest; this person was part of the reason why I decided to visit San Diego again.  I met her the last time I went and felt like we clicked very well.  We continued to keep in touch over the past months, during which I admitted to having some feelings for her.  I actually even sent her a gift on Valentine’s Day because I was digging her that much, even though she was on the other side of the country.  It seemed like the feelings was at least somewhat mutual.

She became one of the people I consulted with before making final plans for the trip.  I wanted to make sure I see her for at least a couple of the days, so I picked last week’s dates because she said she wasn’t going to be that busy during that time.  She even took off work that weekend so she could spend some time with me while I was in San Diego.  I was very excited and looking forward to seeing her again.

Looking back at my old post, you may have noticed I don’t have any pictures with this person.  The reason why?  We ended up not seeing each other at all during the entire time I was there.

She couldn’t hang out Friday because she had a thing to go to for a few hours that evening.  “Hmm, wonder why she didn’t invite me to come or asked me to do something after that event”, I thought.  Whatever, there were still a few more days we could hang out so I thought it was no big deal.

She canceled on coming to Sea World that Saturday.  She said that after thinking about it, she couldn’t really afford to go and she doesn’t really enjoy going to Sea World.  Understandable I suppose.  However my other friend did point out that her reasons she gave shouldn’t have mattered since the main point should be spending time with me during the limited time I was there. 

I gave her one last chance anyway.  She had said previously she was free Sunday to hang out at the beach until 5pm.  I called her the night before to see if we were still on for that, hoping that she would make up for ditching me the last couple of days.  I should have followed my instincts; she told me that she can’t hang out because she had to go to church with her family, which is something she supposedly does every week.  Geez, thanks for letting me know that before I booked my trip -_- .

Needless to say, I haven’t tried to contact her ever since.  Lesson learned.

All these people have caused me so much problems, but that isn’t my main issue with flakes.  Whether they know it or not, their actions (or, in this case, inactions) do not just affect me but everyone else.  My co-workers had to suffer from my ex-manager not following through.  My team had to suffer an embarrassing lost due to my friend’s irresponsibility.  I put more burden on the person I stayed with on my trip, who ended up having to spend more time than she thought she would with me after my friend ditched out

In the end, it just makes me look like a complete jackass when I tell people one thing and it doesn’t happen due to someone else’s negligence.  I’m a man of my word, and when I can’t keep my words due to someone else I get really frustrated and upset.  I can understand why some people become so jaded as to just cut out these types of people out of their lives forever.

I haven’t quite reach that point just yet though, as I reasonably try to give people chances to redeem themselves if it’s possible.  Despite all the headaches I get from these type of people, I try to stay optimistic.  I hope, like some of my current friends have done for me, that they will eventually get their act together and make up for all their crap.  Unfortunately, I’m still waiting to see if that’s going to happen for the three people I’ve mentioned above.

Yeah, I hope you don’t fault me if I don’t hold my breathe for that.

I’m back from my week long San Diego trip, my second visit there in the past few months.  I saw even more areas of San Diego I didn’t get to see last time I went.  The weather was also a whole lot better this time around, with temperatures consistently in the 70s and sunny (unlike over here in MD -_- ).  Overall, it was a very fun time even though it didn’t go exactly as I had imagined (more details later).

Note:  Big post below.  Feel free to just skim through

Sea World

 

What a great time!  To be honest, I think I enjoyed going to Sea World more than the San Diego Zoo.  The shows were a lot of fun to watch, especially the Shamu, sea lions, and pets show.

Here’s a video with all the mini clips I took throughout the day:

Here’s another video of the Beyonce routine the sea lions did at the show:

Finally, some random pictures at Sea World (click to enlarge):

La Jolla Squirrels

The next couple of days were more laid back.  I originally thought I was going to hang out with this other person, but she completely flaked out on me.  Pretty disappointed, but I’ll digress on the details for now. 

So while at La Jolla, I found out that squirrels over here sure aren’t shy.  While reading, I look up to see the following:

OMG lil_squirrel4evers everywhere! 

They really weren’t afraid at all!  Look at them surrounding us, ready to pounce:

Xanga TV

Since strawberries_and_honey had a webcam on her laptop (which I currently don’t have), we decided to do an impromptu live stream while I was over here!  We were thinking about doing a collab vlog, but I didn’t feel like editing and planning something out haha. 

For my very first XTV it actually went pretty well.  Thanks to everyone that showed up!  You definitely made it more interesting and funny.

If you missed out, you can actually go watch the archived footage by going to the bottom of my main page and clicking on that option.  It’s an hour and a half long just to warn you, but you can skip through by changing the time (might have to fiddle around and change it to army time; let me know if you have any troubles).  Try to see if you can spot some of the following:  breadstick tennis, Cloverfield vision, nacho eating, and miscommunications up the wazoo (actually, this probably won’t be too hard to find).

P.S. Just to clear things up; she and I are not romantically together!  Haha, the chatters were having a lot of fun messing with her about that. 

Old High School Friend Reunion

 

On my very last day out here, I hung out with an old high school friend that I haven’t seen in over 5 years.  That was very much a last minute plan since my original plans fell through.  It’s all good because I ended up doing a lot more stuff with him.  Over the course of the day we visited Downtown San Diego, Balboa Park, Mission Beach, Belmont Park, PB Bar & Grill (grrreat fish tacos!), UCSD, and SDSU. 

Shots from throughout that day (click to enlarge):

 

Wee Man Sighting!

I didn’t realized it was him at first, but when I saw another girl secretly snapping a picture of him I decided to join along:

 

He ended up riding on my plane to Baltimore.  I wonder what he was doing over there?

There’s my (very rushed, sorry) recap of my trip to San Diego!  This will probably be my last time back there for a long time.  I found out my cousins are moving to San Fransisco this summer, so be on the look out for me over there in the future.

I’m planning on doing XTV tonight around 7pm PT (10pm ET).  This will be my first time doing one, so don’t expect too much.  I’ll probably be helping strawberries_and_honey make dinner while stopping by the webcam to chat or answer any questions you may have for me.  Feel free to come by the page to say hello!  Cya tonight.

-Alex