When the Going Gets Tough...

I get going!

Blogger, you have treated me well. With your easy-to-use format and simple maneuvers, I have had many a fun time updating on my latest antics and jaunts here.

But alas, I'm moving on. To something a little more complicated, a little more polished. I swear, it's not me, it's really Wordpress. With cool DIY customizing capabilities and users everywhere, from fashion designers to artists, photographers to tech geeks, how can I resist?

You understand, right?

Well, if you're ever in town, look me up. I'll be over here.

Don't cry. If it makes you feel better, my travel blog is still with you. I'm not completely disloyal.


For you readers awkwardly intruding upon this traumatic breakup, let me reiterate:

I've moved sites! I'm HERE now! New look, same attitude.

It has been a weird week. I can't seem to keep me head afloat all the chaos. One thing that stands out is that nothing is the same.

Nothing is the same.

Nothing is the same.

Nothing is the same.

Did I expect it to be? I usually welcome changes, but I notice it's only when I'm guiding the twists and turns or have already anticipated it. When the rug gets pulled out from under me, I stagger, I stumble, I fall.

So, it'll take a little while, a lot of prayers and some actual positive action on my part to accommodate these changes.

Conan O'Brien seems to know what I'm going through. Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. In case you haven't been following the late night talk show madness, Jay Leno has been the host of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno since 1992. Last TV season, Leno moved on from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to merely The Jay Leno Show (how come these Hollywood creatives can't come up with better late night show names?) O'Brien took over Leno's previous gig. Now, just seven month in, NBC was in talks with Leno to move him back half an hour and in result, moving O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon back as well.

O'Brien reacted to the changes by releasing a Conanially funny statement setting his foot down to being shuffled around by the network heads. Addressed, "People of Earth," O'Brien warns us to not feel sorry for him, a man who's worked 17 years at a job he loves in a world where people have real problems. He concedes that he feels he cannot carry on the legacy of The Tonight Show with such a time slot change and even apologizes for his hair.

I know that, without a doubt, wherever Conan goes, I will follow. I have the utmost confidence that he will find success (and humor) no matter where he goes.

I just hope I can say the same for myself.

Oh - and maybe this means he'll have time to speak at UCLA's commencement this year?

Happy '010? '10? Um..just Happy New Year

New Year is always overrated and/or disappointing for me. There's all these high hopes that everything will be different, that your life can start brand new, that you will become a completely different/slimmer/healthier/better/wiser person but that is NEVER the case.

Instead, all the problems that you ended the last year with is still hounding you at the back. The new year resolutions you made last night is already washed away by the 7 glasses of champagne you downed the night before. You just feel older.

So this year, I decided that enough is enough. I am not going to make a big deal out of the end of 2009.

2009 was, as they say, the best of times and the worst of times. On the one hand, good riddance with you, 2009, and your recession-filled economy and your graduating from college only to be jobless and living back home and facing creative unfulfillment. But on the other hand, aw, farewell 2009, with your discovery of God and faith and love and church and strengthening relationships with family and your blessed charmed living despite being utterly unworthy.

My new year resolutions are sparse but important.

*Work

*Be punctual

*Edit

*Read the bible more

*Blog more

*Be nice to my mother

*Communicate better

*Travel

*Take care of my body

*Truly love others

*Celebrate life everyday

I started the last resolution early, before the clock struck 12 at the Davidoff Lounge in Beijing's Ritz Carlton.

A couple of new friends, a few beloved family members, some fine bubbly...

And we were good to go!

I even got a kiss for the evening!

All in all, we're off to a good start. Welcome, 2010! I open my arms out to you and I hope you will return my embrace.

*On a sidenote, however will we be abbreviating 2010? You know how 2008 was '08 and 1985 was '85? What's 2010 going to be? Find out and let me know, k? Thanks.