You may or may not have seen the above banner floating around recently.  @Cakalusa made this initially as an inside joke.  Why the name ASSCAT, you may ask?  No, we didn’t pick it because of its Urban Dictionary meaning (which could be fitting in regard to certain past experiences, but I’ll digress).  The name was actually chosen because we discovered our first name initials spelled out that word!  See?

Alex/Flip @FlipGuy310

The reason why I’m bringing up Team ASSCAT now is because you will be seeing me referencing it a lot this coming month due to a big contest we’re all hosting.  In case you aren’t familiar with these great fellas, let me tell you a little bit about each of them first.  Starting with…

@FlipGuy310

Constantly witty and entertaining, Flip is a good person to have around to laugh the night away.  Besides his awesome sense of humor, he is also a very talented and effective story teller, able to keep you hanging on to each word as you eagerly wait to hear what happens next.  There’s a reason why I have met up with him so many times, even though we are on opposite coasts!

@SonyChak

Hailing from the Bay Area is Sonlay.  He’s an extremely proficient vlogger that has created almost 100 vlogs already.  I’m still amazed at his quality editing.  Whenever I want to hear an honest opinion, I would go to him as he always calls it as it is.  I never expect him to sugarcoat his words, but I do expect his words to be genuine.  What more could you ask?

@Junbelievable08

One of the biggest foodies I know, Shawn is your man if you ever need suggestions for what/where to eat.  He’s also incredibly street smart and is hardly ever wrong about things, which shows how experienced he is.  He somehow just knows what’s the best course of action is in any given scenario.  This is someone you definitely want with you if you’re ever traveling somewhere!

@Cakalusa

Ah, the elusive Cakalusa!  One of the Xanga OGs, he has been an active and popular user for a while now.  Besides blogging here, he’s doing big things over at YouTube and MYX TV that I’m sure people will take notice soon if they haven’t already.  Despite what some of his entries may imply, he’s really quite the humble gentleman in person.  Watch out ladies!

@Timmmmmmy

Timmy and I have known each other all of our lives, ever since we were still in the womb.  Lately, he has accompanied me to so many Xanga meet ups that I finally made a Xanga for him as a novelty.  To my surprise, he has been actively blogging on the account, and blogging well!  Although new around here, I have no doubt he will make a great addition to the community. 

There you have it!  As I said earlier, Team ASSCAT will be debuting an excellent contest that we hope many of you will participate in.  You don’t want to miss out, trust me.

I have to thank @nimbusthedragon for inspiring me to do this.  Earlier this month, she made a post about a letter she wrote to her inconsiderate roommates.  In her letter, she mentioned she kept a log on her computer of all the times she had to clean up her roommates’ messes to show she wasn’t being unfair in her assessment.

What a great idea Liz!  You see, I live in a big house that resembles a dorm hall.  Basically, 12 people live here and while we each have our own room, we all share one big kitchen.  Not surprisingly, there are a few housemates that tend to leave their crap out no matter how many reminders we give them to be considerate of others.

That is why a couple of my cleaner housemates and I started this Tumblr page:  MyMessyHousemates.  Don’t worry!  Xanga is still my blogging home, but I have to admit that Tumblr is great for microblogging pictures.  Since July 12th, we have been keeping track of our housemates’ messes and posting it to this blog for future reference.

Let’s start with the first picture I posted on the blog:

One housemates left all of these dirty dishes in the sink for four days.  Remember, we share the kitchen so this was definitely getting in everyone’s way when we try to watch our own dishes.  Why didn’t he just put them in the dishwasher?  At least we have the other sink to use without any obstacles, right?

Oh come on!  Seriously, if you have time to make cereal in the morning you have time to clean it up before you leave!  It’s not hard at all, really.  Must you take up both available sinks too?!  Ahhh!

Soon after taking this picture, an email was sent out to the house reminding (for the 3294 time) that dishes are to be dealt with immediately, not when it was convenient for them.  Things were fine for a few days, but then it reverted back to business as usual:

*Shake my head*

Besides the dishes, other tiny but annoying issues popped up here and there.  For example…

Why. Are. Random. Caps. Everywhere?!

So yes, this could be worse…but it’s still annoying.  Recording all of our inconsiderate housemates’ messes in this blog has been, if nothing else, a great way to channel our frustrations at this persistent, ongoing issue.  We plan on eventually sending the link to the offending housemates and/or our landlord so they can see what some of us have to deal with all the time when we use the kitchen.  Plus, now whenever a housemate denies that they’re at fault or says, “I’ve only left dirty dishes once/twice/etc.!” we have this growing body of evidence to present to them to show otherwise.  Lawyered!

How do you deal with living with a messy person?

Recently, some people reminded me that I haven’t made a video with my brother in a long time.  Upon inspection, I confirmed that we haven’t shot one in over a year (here’s the last one)!  Whoa, time sure went by fast.

Since the last video, I had moved away which is why I haven’t had much opportunities to do one with him.  I happened to be home this weekend, so we decided to create one just for fun.  The premise of the video is to show how my brother really interacts with me whenever I’m just chilling at home.  I set up the video camera on the side and told him to just come in behaving the way he normally does (which is, to say, the annoying little brother role he perfected oh so well).  We pretty much improvised the entire time, so all of the reactions were real.  Check it out:

Here’s a bonus clip of a lovely, tender moment between my brother and my mom.  Why did I ever leave home, right?

P.S.  July is still keeping me busy!  I will hopefully be able to update regularly after this month.  BTW, if you happen to be in the Northern VA area this weekend, feel free to check out this big Asian Festival I’ll be at working.  Come say hello!

This really happened to me not too long ago.

A female friend and I were heading somewhere when she asked me if we could stop by a convenience store to get something.  Now, I’m not going to say exactly what we bought in case my friend wants to keep that detail private, but let’s just say it was an item someone might feel embarrassed about buying with people watching (hint: it was mentioned by at least one person in my recent pulse).  Yeah, feel free to use your imagination for now.

Anyway, we went into a small convenience store in the subway.  It was empty except for the clerk and one other customer.  My friend (let’s use Mila Kunis to represent her) and I walk up to the counter and I casually asked the clerk for said embarrassing item.

“Hi, can I buy one of those ______ over there?”

So far so good.  While the clerk was grabbing the item for me, I noticed from the corner of my eye my friend opening her purse to get some money.  Since it wasn’t terribly expensive, I reached over to pat her on her shoulder and said, “Don’t worry, I got this.”

Almost immediately, I felt something wasn’t right.  I turned my head to discover that the person I just touched and talked to was NOT my friend!

Apparently, my friend decided to step back behind me because she was too embarrassed of what we were buying.  The customer that was already in the store then stepped up to the counter next to me and was getting ready to buy her stuff when I touched and spoke to her.  It didn’t help that this customer looked a lot like my friend from the side (hence why I chose a picture of Sarah Hyland from Modern Family to represent the customer.  Don’t they look like they could be related?).

Within the next few seconds, the following took place:  I did a double take on the customer.  I looked back at my friend.  My friend looked at me like .  I looked at the customer again like .  The customer looked at me like .  The customer then saw the “special” item I was buying before looking back at me like !  In response, I looked back at her like !!!  After another second or two of silence passed, I managed to exclaim, “Well, THIS is awkward.”

Thankfully, the customer understood what happened and just smiled, telling me that it’s okay.  Now red faced, I quickly bought that item and left the store promptly with my laughing friend.  Whoops!

I still can’t believe something like this actually happened.  Have you ever experienced a similar scenario where you mistaken a stranger for someone else?  How did that go?