OakMonster’s Den

Never give up. Never surrender.

Work stress is creeping up on my shoulders, and down to my finger tips. I do not feel motivated to write anything funny, witty, or just plain ol’ sharing of thoughts.

Just to keep the blog active in the meantime, please forgive the mundane posts as I cope with the inferno that is work.

Thank you for your understanding.

After 2 years and 8 months, Shane’s divorce was finalized yesterday. We all went out to celebrate his freedom in style, bar hopping down in Seal Beach.

Joke of the evening from James: Shane pulled off a freedom hatrick. His divorce is final. His beauty supply shop is sold. And next summer he’s marrying off his sister.

Yes. It must be awesome to be Shane right now. His shop will finally be turned over on Wednesday to new management, so he’s finally done with that and is now debt free. He gets his daughter Serena 3 days a week.

And yes, on his non-Serena days, he IS a free man, and he plans to keep it that way. Any ladies interested in non- to low-commitment hook ups with this superbly eligible bachelor, please let me know.

A French student in my apartment complex is going back to France in 2 weeks. He has a 5-month old boy orange kitty he needs to find a loving home for.

Anyone in LA/Long Beach or Orange County area who would love to adopt this adorable, playful kitty, please either email me or leave a post.

Thank you!

44 people got on the bus and left San Francisco in a Crosscountry road trip toward Washington D.C. for Oct. 11 rally for same sex marriage, stopping to educate the country along their route.

Just to be clear: I’m neither a republican or a democrat. I support whatever cause it is I believe is right. Besides, I can’t vote in this country yet. So my view doesn’t really counts…only if my view influences yours.

So I support the President’s decision for standing up to the terrorists and sending out troops to go kick some ass out. I don’t agree that our troops are left lingering around and getting picked off. I despise his mingling religious into state business, and of course, his view on gay marriage, abortion, and stem cell research.

There you go with Oak-politics.

The Talon Theater network is buzzing. I’m now in touch with Kris Kelly and Cathy Carey, the 2 who directed “The Curious Savage”. Those two New Yorkers are in touch with a few more people from TT.

Behold the power of the internet in connecting friends. Actually, I did write about that once. I submitted my article to my high school alumni newsletter, Wings, but I don’t think it was published.

Well. Here it is.

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The Internet Connection

There was a guy in my graduate class named Josh Mooney. I didn’t think about it too much at the time when he introduced himself in class. After all, there can be a lot of Mooneys out there. Half way through the semester, Josh and I got to talking. We found out that Josh also graduated from SMHS a couple of years before me, and we had some same teachers. It all added up when Josh told me he is Leah’s older brother. By a freak chance, I’ve established a connection with someone from my graduating high school class.

Sometimes friends who were separated found their ways back to each other—perhaps it was with the help of the higher powers, or it was fate. Then again, there are some people like me who appreciate what fate may hold, but don’t rely too much on it for such reunions. Instead, we put our hands on the optical mouse, lay our fingers on the ergonomic keyboard, and entrust the data stream of our internet connection to find the missing links to lost friendships.

When I started at USC in 1995, I transitioned smoothly into the wonderful World Wide Web with the aid of a friend from France. By the second semester, before everyone jumped on the Internet bandwagon, I was already familiar with using emails, and I had a website running.

One day there was a message in my email box from Don Calkins. He said that he was in the military (or something), and had some downtime so he was looking me up online. He found my website so he wanted to say hello. It was a total surprise, and put a smile on my face for weeks. Some people would go a little further just to get in touch with a friend. With that short time connection with Don as my motivation, I embarked on the search to connect myself with other friends—from those I grew up with in Thailand to those in my SMHS graduating class.

At the time, there was not much for me to go on on the Internet. Webcrawler wasn’t crawling much further, and no one had any information posted anywhere. Then came ICQ, equipped with nifty little directory search. I started inserting the names of my friends from Mater Dei School in Bangkok. The searches turned up ICQ numbers and email addresses, so I fired off messages out to my girls. After years of being away from home, I was suddenly in touch with my long-time friends! Since then, a handful of girls have grown into a group of one hundred internet-savvy young ladies, with me acting as the virtual glue holding them together via a website and email group. Being somewhat of a computer geek does have its advantages.

Several search engines later, I found the joy of Google. It took me quite sometime before I perfected my search skills, and for more websites start turning up on these searches. The first thing I did was to look up SMHS to see if the school has caught on with technologies. It did. Then the next person to look for was Mr. Don Osterlund, my senior year Economics teacher and a good friend. Mr. O. left SMHS to teach abroad sometime after our class graduated, and I lost touch with him. So I Googled his name, and turned up a website of an American high school in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Our beloved Mr. O is teaching Economics and coaching volleyball in the Middle East! I sent him an email, and we have been in touch ever since.

Against my better judgment—and Nora Jans’ calling me a stalker—I also Googled the Boy, who shall remain nameless, I had a mad crush on in high school. I found his name in an article in some local newspapers—a band review. So I found the band’s website, and so I emailed the guy. No reply. Gee. What a surprise. Some things just don’t change after high school.

The quest for lost friends still goes on today. Thus far it has given me a lot of joy, and put several smiles on my face. It makes sitting down to check my email more of an adventure than a chore. With the way things are nowadays, there is really no excuse for not keeping in touch with someone any more. An email address can be looked up. A name can be Googled, and information can be traced and found. From how I see it, life is just too short to not to make new friends or reaching out to lost old friends.

SpaceShipOne made it!

More power to the public sector!

If you know me well, you will appreciate the “Gas-E-Pop” cartoon on Ill Will Press.

Oh yes, and the newest Foamy’s Rant 6 is out. Stellar session, Foamy!

I got a surprise in my email box today: an email about the 15th anniversary of my high school theater department, Santa Margarita High School’s Talon Theater. I owed SMHS theater department a lot of who I am today.

It’s not to anyone surprise that I am a product of high school drama club. But what you didn’t know is that I didn’t want to get into it in the first place.

Remember how we discussed me being self conscious? Imagine being 16, transferring to a white bread OC private school for your junior year from another country, knowing no one in the school except for your host mom, the counselor. Imagine having your head filled with sterotypical images of mean, white kids on a FES (that’s Foreign Exchange Student) who would pick on you, make fun of you, and look down on you.

And what did your host mom/counselor do? She enrolled you in drama.

Boy, I could never ever thank Bonnie enough for having done that! She believed that drama would help me with my English a little bit, give me confidence, and hopefully get me involved in an activity that is pretty much open to anyone. And it did.

In drama class, everyone gets to be “silly”, and no one cares. I felt accepted for who I was no matter what I did or said in the class. That was what helped me with my adapting to American life the most. It’s okay to be silly and different. Eventually, I also found theater to be yet another outlet for my creativity and self expression.

I started off slowly. I sat toward the back, and didn’t participated much unless called on. I met with Mr. Nowlin before school started, so he knew to ease me into class. I joined the crew of their fall production, quietly going about building the sets, and observing the other drama kids.

Slowly but surely, theatre coax Oakley out of her shell, in class and in life.

Next thing you know, there I was on stage, not behind it. As Dr. Emmett in John Patrick’s “The Curious Savage”, my role was small but I got to deliver a line in the one of the most poignant moments of the play. Then I was running with 2 casts for a children’s musical, “The Great Ghost Chase” as Suzie the Thief in one cast, and a zombie and the title Ghost in the other. (Oh both Suzie the Theif and the Zombie were mental patient…figured.)

My last, and most memorable role–and my personal favorite–was Woodstock in Snoopy! the musical. I had no lines, and I was pretty much the only one who went in auditioning for the role. No lines. Just mime. It was a lot harder than roles with lines, I can tell you that. And the most fun! We also got to tour local catholic schools as this was our children’s musical production.

I had a blast, tagging along the drama group even though I wasn’t really accepted into the main gang. But hey, being a part of something is better than not at all! Without being a part of the dramatic experience of the Talon Theater, I don’t think I would ever came out of that quiet shell.

And you wouldn’t be reading this blog right now…

The Stork is visiting…

…my best friend Joy!!

Gotcha. Heh.

Joy and her hubby have waited a few years so they could get her family business up and running. Now that the new factory opens, and everything is running smoothly, like clockwork, the Stork makes a delivery!

I hopped onto IM. Joy grabbed the other one of our gang, Lily, who is now renting the couch from Joy’s other best friend, and a newly wed, Naam, who also joined in the chat, in New York City. We had a good hour of girl chat about Joy’s pregnancy and Naam’s and my future children, Lily and her job at the Mark, vintage furniture, vintage jeans, skin care regime, cosmetics, hair length, TV shows, etc.

It was a great hour of typing and falling out of the chair laughing.

A Stork almost made another delivery over here too last night.

A collar-less gray cat followed the next door neighbor girls home. They opened a can of tuna and left it on the front porch for the little guy, and I brought him a bowl of water. I sat outside my door petting him for a good 5 minutes before he went back to tuna.

We would have kept him if he doesn’t already have an owner. Healthy, clean, super friendly cat. Probably he just took a nice walk from which ever apartment he came from, and decided to follow some cute girls home.

Figured. Natural male behavior.
Anyway. He shall now be known to me as “Nimbus”, the furry rain cloud with lightning fast tail wags. I have never seen a cat wags its tail almost like a dog before.

Ahhh…yes. Some simple joy in life made last night a very good night. There is nothing like sharing good news with your best friend, “chatting” with the girls, hanging out with a friendly cat, topping off grilled cheddar brats with mustard and relish, wincing at the tingly sensation in your sinus cavity as Afrin nose spray works its magic, getting in a newly made bed with fresh bed sheets, and cuddling up with Brandon sans gas. Ahhhhhh….

*UPDATE* Apparently the girls next door are the temporary guardian of Nimbus the Stray Gray Kitty. They put a note up in the bulletin today asking if anyone is missing a gray cat.