SodomyClown                         VaneDave      

lil_squirrel4ever                       NimbustheDragon

npr32486                                  skylar_rose

   SonyChak                               Ordinary_gir1

RaquelHiggins005                            SeedSower        

ItIsAllGravy                         Coffee_Kaioken

Now, imagine you are walking down a dark alley when you suddenly encounter one of these groups.  Based on the images above, which group of supernatural creatures would you LEAST want to run into???

Demon?                Frankenstein?                    Ghoul?                    Vampire?

Werewolf?                   Witch?                      Zombies?

I think I almost fell asleep at the wheel this weekend.  I normally pride myself for being exceptionally good at staying awake and alert while driving, but it looked like the combination of playing tennis, lack of sleep, getting up at the crack of dawn, setting up and greeting people at a big conference, and the long drive there and back was too strong for me.  I tried to snap out of it by chanting “WAKE UP WAKE UP FOCUS FOCUS!!” over and over again to myself, but I continued to drift off.  Fortunately, I was able exit the highway and find a big parking lot where I was able to nap before proceeding on the rest of my journey.

That was probably the closest I have ever come to that happening and it made me think.  What if I had fallen asleep at the wheel and crash, injuring or even killing myself in the process?  That would not have been favorable, to say the least.

This reminded me that I have yet to write down what I would want to see happen after my death, in terms of a funeral or viewing.  I need to remind myself to write a proper will in the near future, but for now here are my wishes for how I want my funeral/viewing carried out if the unforeseeable were to happen. 

To my family:  A small private family funeral would be nice to have.  Nothing too fancy please!  I don’t need to be put in an expensive suit and casket, so just find a good deal somewhere (I heard Costco has some low priced caskets, so maybe get one there).  Besides that, do whatever you think is right to do.  I don’t need everyone to say something for me at the funeral.  I know how hard it is for certain people to express their feelings, so I won’t feel disrespected if you don’t say something.  Just thinking it would be enough. 

To all my friends and anyone else that cared for me:  A bigger, more public viewing would be awesome to have with you all.  The most important thing I want from this viewing is that you make sure it’s more like a celebration than a funeral.  I’m serious!  Make it like a toast or roast instead.  Talk about the good times, the funny times, the silly times, and other memorable moments you’ve had with me (do me a favor though and hold off on some of the uber embarrassing memories please).  Show some of my pictures and videos on a big screen while you’re at it so people have something visual to see.  My viewing better not be boring or else I’m coming back to haunt you all!  Just kidding.  Anyway, I’m sure some tears are inevitable, but I want to see much more smiles and laughter all around people!  It is how I would like you all to remember me.  I hope a lot of you can make it.  It would mean a lot to know I touched so many people during the time I was here.

Oh, one last thing.  Don’t you forget about me, alright? 

FYI:  Just want to remind you I’m still very much alive as of right now haha, so no worries (at least not yet!  Dun dun dun).  Hopefully we don’t have to plan for this event until the way, way distant future.

Sorry I haven’t been really posting lately.  I kind of procrastinated on a big grad paper this past week, so I was spending a lot of time working on that.  I’m finished though (woohoo!), but now I have to study for a mid term coming up next week.  In addition to school work, I have two major work-related events coming up.  One is a giant annual meeting where pretty much anyone that’s in charge of tennis programs in VA is going to and the other one is a weekend wheelchair tennis tournament I’ve been put in charged of organizing.  Busy busy!  I’ll see if I can update in between all that.  Knowing my procrastination tendencies I probably will.

Anyway, while I was working on my paper this past week I managed to distract myself A LOT.  One of the things I did was watched old videos I’ve taken that are on my FB account.  Unless you’ve stalked me you probably haven’t seen these, so I figured why not show you guys some of my favorites?  Here you go:

One of the first videos I’ve uploaded was of my friend practicing his cultural show routine…inside a Domo costume.  We just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to film this!  I love my other friend’s reaction in the background and how my friend accidentally kicked that tiny ironing board at the end.

As I was cleaning out my room during my last night as an undergraduate, I found a pie I bought that I totally forgot I had.  I ended up using it the same way anyone else would have; I slammed it in my friend’s face in the middle of the dorm quad!  Judging by the sound, I might have hit him a tad too hard haha.  Oh well, he volunteered to be the receiver!  Who would have thunk pieing someone in the face would be so satisfying?

I came home one day to find this random cat in my yard.  Unlike other wandering cats in the neighborhood, this one was not shy at all.  The cat would end up doing this weird but cute falling over routine around me.  I was very tempted to keep it for myself, but alas it had a collar and belong to a neighbor.

Just for fun, my friends and I decided to lip sing a My Chemical Romance song for a “willing” audience.  However, we did not know we were being recorded until at the very end, hence our reaction.

Spiders were coming out of a hole in my suitemate’s room.  His solution?  Spray it down and ducktape the hole afterward.  Solid plan, but boy was the build up to it entertaining!  I just love the commentary throughout this video.  I apologize for my loud laughing and I apologize to you, Kevin, for posting this

I’ll end this with one of my most recent videos that I took in CA of FlipGuy31O and shillykins pillow fighting.  Take a wild guess who wins.  I’m not quite sure what sumoneoverthere is doing in the background…

Okay, that’s all for now.  Gotta go do some studies and work!

I have a friend that I see once in a blue moon nowadays, but whenever we meet up he likes to bring up funny memories from our college years.  One of his favorite memories was a time I more or less lost my cool on the tennis courts.  As far as emotional explosions go, it wasn’t like one of those crazy, exaggerated blow ups you see on many reality shows.  However, the fact that I can count with just one hand the number of times I’ve lost it in public probably made this stick out in my friend’s head.

I generally try to let things slide and look on the bright side whenever I can.  If you’ve seen Ktown Cowboys (if you haven’t, you can watch it here) you could compare me to Rob in terms of demeanor.

Like Rob though, I can only take so much before my anger-o-meter fills up!

On that day, my friend and I were playing tennis against two other people.  I guess it was a really bad day for me because I wasn’t staying very calm or collected at all.  I felt like I was hitting way too many easy volleys into the net as well as turning into a double faulting machine.  It was very frustrating, but made more frustrating whenever I saw the other team celebrate my mistakes (sportsmanship dictates that as a no no).

As mistakes began piling up from me, I felt my anger-o-meter go up and up.  I went from just sighing, to slapping my leg, to whacking the net hard with my racket. 

I missed this one last easy volley that ultimately pushed me past the tipping point.  I let out a roar and almost smashed my racket into the ground.  Fortunately, I manage to hold back on that move and instead chose the next “best” thing: I punched the light post.  Several times.  I might as well have screamed “ALEX SMASH!” just to top it off.

After I was finished, I calmed down and got ready to play the next point.  However, when I looked up I saw everyone else was not getting ready to play but instead was staring at me in amazement.  Finally, my friend spoke up.

“Uhhh Alex, your hand is bleeding.”

I looked down and saw that he was correct.  At this instance, my frustrations dissipated as I started laughing at the ridiculousness of what I just did.  I ended up finishing up the match, wiping away the blood from my leaking knuckles between points.  Good times.

No wonder my friend won’t let me live this down XP

Hey, I’m going to look on the bright side!  At least I didn’t pull off a Mikhail Youzhny (skip to around :38):

Too bad he’s doing it wrong.  When I do the Youzhny the racket doesn’t break me…

*Faint sounds of people in the background and the ruffling of someone’s pants*

I heard two minutes of this on my voicemail today.  Yet again, another random person has butt dialed me.  I’m sure it happens to others, but it definitely feels like it happens to me at a higher than average rate because of my name.  How?  I’ll get to that very soon.

Don’t get me wrong.  Overall, I am quite satisfied with the name “Alex Chan” and wouldn’t want to change it if I could.  However, I have to admit there are some annoyances that comes about due to my name that I wouldn’t mind not dealing with or hearing about anymore.  The following examples are minor, but reoccurring gripes I have:

“Oops sorry, accidentally called you…but um, hi!”
As I mentioned before, I get a lot of accidental calls from people I’ve given my number to due to the fact my name is often one of the first names on people’s contacts.  When I don’t get those awesome voicemails, I sometime luck out and instead have awkward conversations with people I haven’t talked to in years!  Got to love that.

Me thinks more people should be friends with Aarons and Abes so my name gets pushed down the list.  Mhmm.

“Really, you don’t have a middle name?”
Is not having a middle name uncommon?  It sure seems like it whenever I would mention that fact about myself to someone and they would act surprised by that revelation. 

I eventually asked my parents why they didn’t give me a middle name and their answer was they didn’t know they could at the time.  I suppose it was a good thing they didn’t give me one after finding out the method they used to choose my little brother’s middle name.  His middle name is Sun, the abbreviated version of Sunday, which was the day he was born.  Had they done the same with me, my full name could have very well been “Alex Sat Chan”.  Eww.  I think I’ll go enjoy my non-existent middle name instead.

“Are you related to Jackie Chan?”
Ah, the most popular reference my last name causes people to mention.  If I wasn’t such a fan of Jackie Chan’s work I would probably hate him or something given all the times people bring him up in initial introductions.

Nowadays, I like to play along with people by telling them he is actually my dad.  I would lead them on for a little while until I eventually clarify my statement, explaining that while my dad’s English name is Jackie Chan, he is not THE Jackie Chan.  Fun stuff.

“Wait…aren’t you Alex K. Chan from California?
I just did a quick search on Facebook to see how many people have the same exact name as me.  I ended up getting over 4,500 hits.  There sure are a lot of Alex Chans running around!  I even saw girls with the same name as me.  Wouldn’t it be weird if I find myself dating one of them one day?  Hmm…

Anyway, having such a common name has caused me bad mix ups in the past.  Two years ago I wrote this entry about a horrible job interview I experienced.  Long story short, I waited 3-4 hours for an interviewer to meet me only to find out the organization had contacted the wrong Alex Chan to interview!  They said they would call me back to remedy that mistake, but they never did.  Those lying punks!

You know, after writing this down I’ve come to realize these annoyances don’t really bother me so much as they humor me now.  In the great scheme of things they aren’t so bad at all!  If those are the worse issues associated with my name, I think I can live with that.  Alex Chan is a fine name .

Where should I begin?

She contacted me last weekend, saying that she was going to be in town for a conference and wanted to see if I could meet up (in case you’re wondering yes, she is a Xangan).  I didn’t know her too well at the time, but after talking for a bit and also after finding out she’s friends in real life with someone I’ve met up with before I decided it wouldn’t hurt to see her.

Turned out to be a good decision.  We met up for the first time last Monday and it seemed like we really clicked.  Our sense of humor and conversations were really in sync, which made the evening fly by.  Before the end of the night, I already knew I had to see this girl again before she left.

I did end up seeing her again Thursday night and most of Friday.  Without giving away too much details, we became…quite fond of one another (lets leave it at that for now ).  Sadly, the bittersweetness of this experience finally caught up with us as she finally had to return home this past Saturday, with home being California (more evidence supporting my theory that California is where I belong).

What are we now, exactly?  To be honest, I’m not totally sure myself.  It’s definitely a bit complicated.  This could have very well ended up as just a nice vacation romance were it not for the fact that we’ve grown slightly attached to one another.  However, we also understand the sucky reality of our situation.  Now that distance is a big factor for us, what can we really do?

I guess if you had to label it, you could say we are pretty much in an open relationship.  I know I know, that has a lot of bad connotations and I’ve never really been in one, but after discussing with her this was the option that made the most sense to us.  If distance wasn’t such an issue we would most likely go out.  Unfortunately, due to this major obstacle, in addition to the fact we only known each other for a short time, we don’t want to hold each other back if we happen to meet someone in our respective areas. 

I’m sure in due time we will reevaluate our situation and decide if it’s better to just stay friends, become an exclusive relationship, or maybe become enemies haha.  Fortunately, the situation isn’t totally hopeless.  I am looking into visiting her area during Thanksgiving break and I have strongly entertained the idea of moving to CA eventually, which is something I’ve been thinking about way before I met her.  From her side, she has connections with the DC/MD area and might end up staying over here one day.  Who knows?  As you can see, the future is quite uncertain.

I don’t know what will happen next, but this I do know; she makes me happy.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how this will all plays out.  For now, I’m just enjoying the ride.

Excuse my yellowness. I know I’m Asian but I’m not normally THAT yellow haha

This past week, I met up with this Xangan above that turned out to be…quite delightful.  Perhaps I’ll write more about it some other time.  Anyway, she kind of got me thinking again about how many people I have met from this site thus far.  You know what that means? 

I went back and try to find all the pictures I’ve taken with those I’m met here.  I’m missing probably 5-10 people, but I think I got the good gist of them.  I’m not going to write down all the usernames, but if you’re curious you can ask me who’s who.

The first couple of Xangans I’ve met happened way back in the day (that is, in 2004):

These guys actually found me by searching for freshmen entering my undergraduate college.  The guy on the left and I eventually became co-vice presidents of the Chinese Student Association while the guy on the right initially helped me start the tennis club. 

It would be many years later before I met my next Xangan.  This probably had to do with the fact that before late 2008, I more or less only communicated with people I knew IRL on here.  Obviously, that changed and I found myself meeting up with people in CA, VA, DC, MD, and NY.

Since California was where I first started meeting people and where I’ve been back to the most times (I think 5 times this past 2 years?) I’ll begin with pictures from the Sunshine State, mainly taken in San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento, and the Bay Area:

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