You see random things sometimes when you go out for a walk.

You see random things oftentimes when you go out for a walk in Vegas. Here are a few from today:

- Douchey looking asian guy lounging on one of the Bellagio lobby couches, texting and using his baby’s stroller as a footrest.
- The Bellagio fountain show playing to Aaron Copland (the song in those “Beef, it’s what for dinner” commercials)
- A beggar’s sign reading “Why Lie, Need Weed” (with a little pot leaf drawn on the side)
- Another beggar’s sign reading “Why Lie I need a whore”. As I passed by, the guy yells out “It’s a worthy cause! Help me out!”
- Two jock/alpha-male types walking down the strip holding those cartoonishly large drinks and singing “If you’re a hooker and you know it clap your hands..”
- A bunch of those hooker cards piled up on the ground at the top of an escalator. They would all bump every time a new step slid beneath them. It reminded me of those ledge-pushing coin games they had at Fun Factory where you’d insert a token to try to get more tokens pushed off the ledges (does anyone know what I’m talking about here?)
- Two guys pulling their rolling suitcases down about two blocks right on the strip. Welcome to Vegas, guys!

Relatively tame compared to a couple of other of my walks here, but still good times.

The ‘past’ does not truly exist. Neither does the ‘future’. They are only memories and expectations. The only real thing is the fleeting present.

What was once “Friday night” is now a blur of random memories. Here are some of them.

• The plan is to meet up downtown around 7. I get there at 6 so I could go look at some art. Turns out all the galleries are closed except for one.
• I wander around a bit trying to figure out how to kill an entire hour. I make my way down to Indigo for a few beers.
• I’m at Indigo sitting at the bar. Barback tells me that they may have moved “First Friday” to the month’s second Friday, but wasn’t sure. Bartender chimes in and tells me that tonight is the first time in 16 years they are open on Jan1 because of First Friday. Everyone seems confused, and pissed to have to work on New Years.
• Big white lady comes to the bar right next to me and leans in to ask the bartender for a drink suggestions for her friend. She wants something sweet and creamy or light.
• I suggest the Colorado Bulldog to big white lady. She’s never heard of the drink before but likes the suggestion as her friend is originally from Colorado. I never did find out what her friend thought.
• An asshole Euro guy (or maybe Australian I’m not sure) comes up and asks if they use “fresh cream in their chi chi’s”. He is unhappy with the drinks they got and says the cream tasted like it was curdling (does coconut cream even curdle?).
• Bartender is pissed at Euro guy’s attitude (she and I exchanged the “is this guy for real?” look as he complained). Bartender offers to re-make the drink, or suggests margaritas. Euro guy says it’s for his kids, orders fruit punch as replacement, and returns to his table.
• Bartender is even more pissed now at whatever waiter took the order because the original ticket wasn’t for virgin drinks.
• I leave Indigo shortly after, thank the bartender and barback, and say “Hey. Your year will get better.”
• I make my way to Bar 35.
• I get a text from my friend. They are running late. My 1 hour to kill becomes 3.
• Sitting at the bar of Bar35, I order a PBR. My first bottlecap is the Ace of Hearts. “A good way to start off the night” says the bartender.
• A couple sitting next to me is trying new beers. They get red seal ale per the bartender’s suggestion. I just drank that for the first time a few days prior. I ask them if they like it. They do.
• Two white girls come to order drinks. A few minutes of conversation later I’m asking them “How do you not know what PBR is?” Turns out they were born and raised in Hawaii (Kailua). I totally forgot there are white people born on this island, too.
• White girls (actually I found out one was hapa) and I are trying to decide who’s older. They say “We’re pretty old” and I look at them and reply “I’m probably older”. Turns out I was right (yay me!) They invite me to meet their friends who are all in the back but I’m still waiting for mine so I tell them maybe later.
• My friends come. I’ve had about six or seven drinks by then.
• The rest is a little more blurry.
• At some point, white girls from a few lines up leave the club with their friends (who are more white girls). One of them sees me on the way out and gives a friendly wave. I wave back but don’t talk to them again. They are the first people I met in 2010.
• There’s some dancing, and a lot of bad music.
• Cool Haole girl comes up dancing to one of the girls in our group.
• Uncool Haole girl starts saying stupid shit. A fight nearly happens.
• Very uncool Haole girl and her boyfriend are kicked out by security.
• More bad music. Less dancing on my part.
• More bad music, now combined with bad DJ’ing. We leave.
• We all cram in and take a cab over to Bar7. Cab driver is a pervy old dude who uses too much cologne.
• At Bar7 I am standing around surrounded by little kids and feeling really old.
• At Bar7 I run out of steam and bail out on my friends early (to my credit, it should be noted again that I DID start my night about three hours earlier than everyone else did). But sorry friends!
• I walk about two blocks before finding a cab to hail on Keamoku Street.
• Cab driver is looking like a total terrorist, with the cheap long sleeved shirt and all. Nice guy though. He tells me he’s originally from Bangladesh.
• Cab driver begins rants about how he’s got no customers all night and a family to support, which is why he has to work on the night of New Years. “First Friday?! Is bullshit this month!” he says. “Downtown! What a joke!” I tell him I agree. (Cab driver giving off a little more terrorist vibe now).
• As taxi enters freeway, driver puts on a cassette of Islamic Prayer.
• Cab driver asks me if I know what this is. “The Holy Quaran” he says and goes on about how it’s a beautiful history. Not sure if he’s trying to freak me out. (terrorist vibe goes up a notch)

• I tell cab driver that my parents are originally from Malaysia and I’m vaguely familiar with Muslim prayer ritual. “Five times a day, right?” I ask.
• Cab driver is now significantly nicer to me. Terrorist vibe goes back down and now we’re just two dudes talking about life. I realize that cab driver may have been inadvertently been giving me the terrorist vibe in response to me inadvertently giving him the gelled-hair drunk douchebag vibe earlier on. The rest of the trip is pleasant.
• Fare is $15.60. I give cab driver a 20 and tell him to keep the change.
• It is 3am and my night is now over. Before hitting the sack, I have enough energy to change clothes and brush my teeth, which is a lot better than some nights.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and my only excuses are my own laziness and the near simultaneous releases of Modern Warfare 2 and the second Assassin’s Creed game. It’s ridiculous! In a good way.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. I always thought it was weird about how it kind of celebrates the first time a bunch of immigrants came to America and took it over from the people already living here. Kerri went back to Hawaii for the weekend and I’ve been up here alone.

On Thanksgiving night, I went over to Reid’s for dinner, drank lots of beer, passed out on his couch, and woke up a few hours later. I think Reid passed out around the same time too, and woke up about 20 minutes after me.

He actually had to work that night, though. I asked him if I could head down to the club because I was curious to see what kind of degenerates go clubbing on Thanksgiving night (then again, there was that time that me, Yen and David met up with a bunch of the other guys at Oceans on Thanksgiving night a couple of years ago).

The club was about half full, and most of the staff looked pretty bored. I met these old broads who were in town from Arizona - one of them turned 40 that night and she was there with her sister and her sister’s daughter.

I also met 2 girls and a guy who didn’t look like they were American. From the way they were dancing, I assumed that the cuter girl and the guy were a couple, so I asked the other girl who was dancing alone where they were from. She said they were from Columbia and Bolivia or something like that.

Later on, I saw the cuter girl sitting by herself. I went up to her and asked where her boyfriend went.

And she goes: “Oh that’s not my boyfriend! That’s my cousin!”

Damn South Americans.

Good times all in all. Other than that, I’m glad I’m feeling better again after nearly a month being sick. Just in time to..uh..stay home and play video games, I guess. MODERN WARFARE 2 FTW!

I had to try one because of those stupid commercials on TV.

It wasn’t too bad, but just tasted like a regular taco, but with a different kind of cheese inside. The black shell seems thicker, but not that different/special.

I also thought the commercial said it was only 59 cents or something, but it was listed on the 89-cent menu when I bought it tonight. Oh well, at least now I know!

It’s going to get cold on Wednesday. Something about winds blowing in from the north. I’m not sure whether to look forward to it or be kind of scared.

I got carded twice yesterday morning in Downtown. Once at the Main Street cage, and then again at the craps table at the California. Then at the Hoover Dam later in the afternoon, four different people asked me if I could take photos for them. What do I look like, Long Duc Dong?

Last night one of the cocktail waitresses at Reid’s club was celebrating her birthday, and I tagged along. En route, we stopped by the house of one of the bartenders. He’s this huge white guy named Chuck. We had a few Millers over at his place with his two roomates.

About 20 minutes later, I found out his last name is Norris.

“Dude that is cool,” I said. “And that’s all I’ll say, because you would have already heard anything else” (and yes, I did want to ask if they’re called earth-downs instead of push-ups when he does them).

So we head out to this Russian restaurant called Matryoshka, which turns into a club at night. We hung out for a bit.

Later in the night, Chuck Norris says that we should go to a country bar.

“You ever been to a Country bar, Eric?” He says.

“What? What the hell is that?” I ask. I mean, I’m assuming it’s a bar that played country music, but I’ve never heard of it before.

Reid tells me that he’s gone once before. “It’s the craziest thing,” he says, “there’s times where everybody lines up and dances the exact same two-step!”

I need to see this for myself. So 15 minutes later, we’re pulling up to a place called Stoney’s, that’s in a place called “The Antique Mall of America”. Neither of which I knew even existed. The sign for Stoney’s was in neon, with the name framed in a huge shape of Texas state.

We walk in. The place is huge. Again, the place is huge. If I had to draw some sort of comparison, I’d say the place is about the size of a hollowed out Long’s drug store back in Hawaii. There are two bars on either side of the place, the dance floor and mechanical bull are on one end, and on the other end are beer pong, video games, three or four small bowling lanes, and the bathrooms. The waitresses and dancers all wear black leather bikinis and chaps, and there are about three huge metal tubs full of ice and beer so you can still buy a drink if you’re too far away from either of the bars.

Okay so, I mentioned the place was huge, right? The place was also packed. Full of white people, and a few black people. And me and Reid, who were the only two asians there.

My mouth was wide open. I was still trying to get a grip when the first country song started playing.

It was like everyone was paid to do this, but in front of my eyes, the entire dance floor (which itself was the size of the entire area of some clubs) rearranged, you know like those huge people-formations they did in the Beijing Olympics? And everybody did the same dance. They took the same number of steps in the same direction, they all jumped at the same time, clapped at the same time, and turned to face the same direction at the same time.

Needless to say, I was overwhelmed. I felt like I was in another dimension! The next few hours were basically me staring at the dance floor with my mouth open, with Reid, who was also having a blast and could not stop laughing the entire night, and Chuck Norris, who towered over us and seemed pretty entertained about how amazed we were.

Get this - different songs have their own different dances, too. Some look like the electric slide, but there’s another one where people start going around in a huge circle.

I couldn’t take it any more and asked these two fat chicks how the hell everybody knows what to do.

“I’m not sure if you can tell, but I’m Asian.” I said. “This is my first time here, I’m still blown away and feel like the time I went with my ex girlfriend to Catholic mass, everybody started speaking in unison, and I didn’t know what the hell was going on. Where does everybody learn all of this?”.

They told me that if you actually come earlier, like around 7:30, they have lessons, and with some songs, the DJ actually calls out the steps. Apparently, there’s also another Stoney’s up in North Las Vegas.

We got out of there a few hours later, when things started to die down. I told Chuck that my mind was blown open and I was exposed to new worlds, like I just watched an entire day’s worth of Discovery Channel.

At 4am, we were back at Reid’s place, watching TV in his living room. I was eating soft taco’s from Del Taco and Reid found “Pound Puppies” on TV and blasted the volume up to 80 (max is 100). Lori woke up and was not amused. Or maybe she was a little. I don’t know.

I crashed again on their aero bed, and got home around noon. Lucky for me, Reid doesn’t start work until about noon so he can just drop me off on the way over. I just finished eating oats again for lunch, and as I predicted last night, I’m now sitting here today, questioning everything I saw and wondering if it was all just a loud, crazy, awesome nightmare.

The end.
(ps: after Wednesday night’s hijinks, I realized that I needed to take it easy and drank a lot less this time around, which is why I was able to remember last night’s events in greater detail).

Badasia time: Wed 6/17. 9:49am

After about four days in Singapore, we got back to Malaysia on Sunday night. We’re staying at another uncle’s place in Kuala Lumpur now (Oh yeah, I have a whole lot of uncles and aunts here; my mom’s from a family of 13 kids who all took different paths in life, and most are still here in Malaysia).

My uncle here is really cool guy. The dude went to college in Arizona and grew his hair really long and probably partied every single night. He has some crazy stories. When he came back to Malaysia, he grew up, got responsible, got married, and has a great family with three kids and a maid who can cook awesome curry.

He also has an internet connection.

Anyway, Singapore was interesting. We stayed with our mom most of the time helping her get stuff done, but there was one night when Evan and I went out to somewhere called Boat Quay, where my cousin told us there were a bunch of pubs. There, we wandered around and drank at random places until we winded up at this pub full of local Singaporeans and Karaoke.

Their english song selection was pretty limited. They didn’t have Eve6 or Poison, but we managed to find some Journey and Bon Jovi (good songs, but way too hard to sing, so I usually never do). Evan and I sang and made complete [American] assholes of ourselves. It was good times.

I think I like going out at night in Asia more - somehow it just seems different. I had the same feeling when we went out in Hong Kong and Taiwan. I think it’s because people get less rowdy, and seem a lot nicer (I guess it helps that we look just like them here though). While we were at that Karaoke place, some random drunk girl ran up to me and made me switch drinks with her (give me back my beer, bitch!). Later on, the manager of the place also came to talk with us. When we told him we were heading to KL next, he told us was from there and wrote down a bunch of things for us to check out.

Oh yeah, and later in the night he gave us free drinks. (then again he probably overcharged us for our first few rounds when he heard me speaking American).

Oh yeah part 2, he also gave me his phone number. Hey guys! I got a phone number!

Anyway, Singapore was fun. On our last night there, we went with our mom to the Night Safari, which cost upwards of $20US, but was really cool because you could sit on a tram and watch nocturnal animals out and about.

But anyway. Like I said, we’re back in Malaysia now, in Kuala Lumpur. My uncle took us to this Japanese buffet for dinner last night and I ate a bunch of a sashimi and about 15 oysters. In typical ‘the-fongs-have-no-luck’ fashion, I took a gamble and lost. I started paying for those oysters about an hour after we got home. I hit the crapper about four times last night and the only reason I haven’t gone today is because my stomach’s got nothing left to give. It was worth it, though! (okay maybe it wasn’t worth it).

IN THE BOOK: (Warning, spoilers ahead) Washington State. Girl falls for young looking dude who’s actually an old-dude vampire. They become more and more drawn to each other. Girl meet vampire dude’s vampire family who accept her into their lives. vampire-hunter (ie: vampire that’s a hunter) comes after girl. Girl rescued. Hilarity ensues.

IN REAL LIFE: New Jersey. Girl falls for old looking vampire dude who’s actually not really a vampire, but just an old-dude. Girl decides ‘I’m-just-not-that-into-you’. Girl’s family also disapproves. Old not-vampire dude goes apeshit and in effort to get rid of him, girl claims to be a vampire hunter (ie: hunter of vampires). Not-vampire dude comes after girl. Girl rescued. Jailarity ensues:

Yep, that’s the nonfiction version, anyway. Check it out: ‘Vampyre’ jailed after allegedly harassing teen. And here’s an extra bonus pic for the fans from nj.com:

Life Imitating Art - FAIL!!

(PS: Kenny, you don’t know how relieved I am to know I’m not the only dude who’s read that book. Thanks!)

Another image that made me stop J-keying through google reader in my usual information-overloaded zombified state. This one from Gizmodo.

The Rocketshield was designed by a guy named David who wanted to be able to use his bike in the rain (I guess). I’m not quite sure what to make of it, but it’s pretty cool that these things use stock mounting brackets: the one on this Ninja mounts at the two mirror mounts in front, and mounts to the stock passenger seat bracket.

I still don’t know what to make of this … if I saw one while on the road, I’d probably get so confused that I’d fall down.