I was distraught and since it wasn’t smooshed to oblivion yet, I was afraid to think that it could get further smooshed. I called animal control so they would come remove the cat from the road.

After I dropped of NSG, I had the option of going straight to his house, but something stopped me. Instead, I went back to the intersection where I found the cat. [It was in the middle of the two left turn lanes] I wanted to wait until animal control came, but thought that it would be horrible for me to watch it to get run over, so I ran to find an orange cone. Once I found one (from the nearby car wash), I placed it in front of the cat so that cars would avoid the cone (and cat).

I sat and watched it for an hour, waiting for animal control, all the while thinking about how awful it was to die in the street like that. Whether or not the cat belonged to someone, I don’t know. I just know that as a cat lover, I couldn’t allow for this one to get run over and over again.

I called animal control again and they told me that because it’s deceased, the cat isn’t a priority for them. They said if I wanted to, then I could move it.

…

It was traumatizing. I’ve never really had to deal with/touch a dead animal/person and this… was quite unpleasant. I did the best I could, but the cat was stiff and hard to place in the plastic bag.

I cried. I cried because it was traumatizing. I cried because this poor cat should not have died such a horrible death. I cried because I couldn’t do more for this cat.

I always thought that good deeds were supposed to make someone feel better, but this one made me feel so much worse.

I later ran into him again and commented on his big win (he hit the jackpot on that revolving light game). He saw my big wad of tickets and asked how I ended up with them – I said by the coin games, then left. He later found me, sat next to me, and played on the adjacent machine. Again, to me, it seemed quite friendly. After that, we walked to the ticket deposit area. On the way, he showed me a ball game. He played first, then swiped for me to play. Still, in my naivety, I didn’t think much of it.

We turned in our tickets, and then started walking elsewhere. I wasn’t sure if he still wanted to converse with me, so I continued to walk with him. Then he made his move to leave; I turned another direction and played a new game. He returned and offered me his number so that we could meet up on Wednesdays at DnB’s.

Yeahhhh………….

I never have the heart to turn someone away. I suck at it, I really do. I wish he had a business card instead so I could have easily forgotten it, but he didn’t. So after some hesitation, I told him that I’d accept his number on the basis that we were friends because I didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. I put his number in my phone, saved it, then he left.

I ended up telling NSG about it and he ended up upset. I think that he believes that all men want to date a girl that they talk to. I believe different because I like to believe the best in people. However, he asked me how I would have felt if a girl had done that to him. And well – seeing how jealous I am, I wouldn’t have liked it at all. I mean, I understood where he was coming from, so I apologized and gave him my word that I wouldn’t call him.

I guess the reason I didn’t think about how I’d feel if the situation was turned around is because 1) I know that NSG wouldn’t be in my kind of situation and 2) I do believe the best in people – which I guess doesn’t always work out.

All of this somehow lead me to think about hypocrisy – people can be hypocrites because they often never take the time to think about how they’d feel if they were in the other shoes, how’d they look, etc. How many of us are hypocrites in our own lives? Do we know it and yet refuse to change ourselves?

Also, as advice for me – how do I politely turn down a guy’s number? Or do I accept it and never call?

This term also reminded me of the bystander effect, when those who witness an emergency fail to take action because they believe that either 1) it’s not an emergency or 2) someone else has already done it.

Both of these concepts are related to the diffusion of responsibility (yay wikipedia) – where people don’t believe that they are as responsible when in a group than when they are by themselves.

What brought me to think of these concepts was a lady I heard when I was walking back from the post office today. She was screaming out loud and most of her phrases were what you would consider to be responses that someone would give if they were being raped or sexually assaulted. Unsurprisingly, no one really did anything.

For starters, she was walking alone. Also, she was walking on a busy street in broad daylight. The bystander effect would have kicked in by now – suggesting that either 1) because it’s broad daylight, someone would have done something and 2) because it’s broad daylight and she’s still going on, that it’s not really an emergency.

I don’t know what the woman’s story is – whether she had been raped herself or something else – but her behavior sickens me. I don’t want people to fall prey to the bystander effect – I want people to feel empowered to take action, to call for help, to do something when it’s needed. Her walking down the street yelling phrases like that make me feel as if the residents will get accustomed to it, so when something does happen, no one really takes charge and helps the situation.

But then again – we all can’t be good Samaritans. We can’t stop for every broken down car on the highway or street, we can’t hop out of our cars to help the elderly across the street. At what point do we take action? When should we take full responsibility and live up to our potential? How do group leaders motivate their members to take more action, to put in more effort because the leaders know that the members are capable of it? How do we motivate ourselves to work harder, not for the group, but for ourselves, so we can be content with the work that we’ve done?

With that said, you know it’s very interesting to see how much information you can find out about someone. I recently came across a post that received a lot of attention because of the flame war that broke out in the comments. The short version is that one girl had an opinion about a practice and another woman differed, then called the girl out on it, calling her a “twat” and basically, an idiot (though to some extent, I may agree). I continued to follow the drama because, well, it’s entertaining for me, especially since my life currently has little drama.

Anyway, the girl finally received wind about the woman’s post and decided to write her own, in which she complains that the woman publicly listed the girl’s websites, twitter, etc. To that… I say… really?

Do people not understand the publicness of the internet? The information that the woman posted was information that anyone else could have found had they decided to spend the effort to do so. The internet is public. Once it’s online, it’s pretty much online and in many cases, forever. Somebody somewhere will have the information that was once up for public viewing.

It’s amazing how much you can easily find out about people just by using the internet and knowing a few tools and tricks – all of which are free, by the way. There’s nothing that says you can’t do a search about someone and publicly linking the information that was available anyway.

Did I tell you that I once found out the address of a friend’s ex-boyfriend simply by doing a few clicks? Apparently his phone number was listed too. Though after going through his blog, I realized that he pretty much gave everybody the keys to his apartment anyway when he posted up the Google Map to his apartment… (smart, right?)

Anyway, just food for thought. Be careful about what you post, what you create, and what’s listed about you. Be aware not just for yourself, but for future employers, future stalkers,

After going through some of the comments, one pointed out that the anti-feeding blogger is 16. A mere sixteen years old. Now, I know that there are a good set of teenagers who are quite mature for their age, but I’ve run into, seen a lot of, and feel an utter disgust for many who don’t know any better. Was I one of those teenagers? Who knows – I did my best but probably faltered somewhere due to my lack of wisdom.

What I don’t like about this new generation of teens is that everything is very “me, me, me.” Maybe it’s the way that society has raised them – we focus on their abilities and their strengths and what they inherently already know. We tell them to follow their dreams, their desires. If they aren’t happy, then they must change that for themselves. No longer are the days where many feel they have certain duties to uphold – we’re supposed to let them live and learn on their own.

In a way, yes, I’m saying that we’re breeding a bunch of selfish brats. How do we fix this? How will this effect us in the work force? How will this effect our own children? I do not want mine to grow up already feeling entitled – I want them to work for their privileges and understand that they are privileges, not rights.

Anyway – just my mini-rant I guess.

JL came up for the weekend. She drove her tiny overpriced Honda up and then met me after I went through my job interview, where I got sick because the AC was on too high and I caught a chill. We ate dinner at BJ’s as she caught the last end of the Lakers game. I guess she’s happy they won.

The plan was for us (JL, NSG) to go up to SF to club, but considering how sick I was and how quickly NSG picked up my sickness, we compromised and went to a sake lounge, followed by a hookah lounge instead. At the sake lounge, Koji, we saw a group of people with badges who were drawing comics. Yes, they were drawing comics at a sake lounge. But in their defense, it was Fanime weekend and their badges confirmed that.

Sunday was a lot of driving around. We had lunch at Nordstrom where we spotted NSG’s ex-gf with her mother. Thankfully we switched seats so that neither of us would see her. I did tell him that if he wanted to say hi, he could, but he probably knew that it would be too awkward to do so, especially since her mother didn’t like him anyway. If she saw us, then who knows. Hopefully she didn’t, but if she did, hopefully she saw that he is much better off now. Nyehhhhhh.

We walked around a little bit to kill time, though I sensed that JL wasn’t really feeling it. I did feel bad because it was supposed to be her weekend and I wanted to do stuff she wanted to do, but seeing as how we needed to get up to Berkeley for me to finish moving out, we couldn’t plan too much. We did however, land at a indoor gokarting place in Fremont. It’s expensive! $40 for one race!

So we got to the place, realized we needed closed toed shoes, so we stopped by Ross to buy some cheap ones. Upon returning, we realized that we’d have to race with a bunch of Japanese boys, who ended up kicking our asses. These go karts drive relatively quick and the track didn’t have a lot of straight-aways for me to feel safe enough about passing people. I ended up getting black flagged a few times and I ran into JL. She was going around the curve, but didn’t make it and by the time I realized it, I rammed into her. Some plastic part in her car fell off. After that, I played it safe and drove as safely as I could. I did 20 laps when the others did 30.

Got to Berkeley, finished up my apartment, then walked around the Rockridge area because they weren’t hungry yet. Since it was Sunday, a lot of stores were already closed by then, so we just decided to eat early. We drove back to the South Bay where I dumped my things, then headed back to NSG’s to crash.

Monday, JL left early in the morning and drove back to SoCal. I ended up with a manicure, ate sushi, then napped with NSG – it was a relatively uneventful day.

Throughout the whole weekend, NSG and I realized how easily we got annoyed at JL. I mean, they were little insignificant things, but they bugged us. Like when we were trying to explain how to parallel park, she sorta understood, but didn’t. JL also has a tendency to assume things – which didn’t work because she kept assuming the wrong things. I totally didn’t like her driving style. She believes almost everything people tell her – like when her brother tells her because her car is newer, she doesn’t need to let her car warm up in the morning as much as older cars. I think NSG’s biggest annoyance was her waking up so early because if she woke up and showered, he woke up too and wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep until she was done. I mean, sure we love her, but we did notice all these little things that irked us.

Anyway, I suppose I should be heading to sleep, but we’ll see what happens. There’s a lot on my mind.

How would the public react to something like that today? Would they only focus on the fact that yes, he does date and maybe it’s not an appropriate time to introduce her to the public? It’s kind of like how Tiger’s business got displayed everywhere – why did people stop focusing on the things that he was good at but instead focused on his personal life?

Today, I found out information about a leader that in a way, I sort of wish I hadn’t found out. For me, finding out information about her personal life made me look at her in a different light, as if she was less of a leader because of it. But is that what I should focus on?

Or perhaps it’s all the actions that the leader does that makes one a leader. Not only is one a leader in the public eye, but elsewhere too. Perhaps it’s like the Miss USA stuff – there are expectations and the photos that surfaced didn’t meet those expectations. But does that make her less of a winner?

Really, what qualities must a leader possess? Does that include being a leader in her personal life as well?

And it terrifies me.

I don’t want to do anything to screw this up and I don’t want to get hurt because where I am now, if I get hurt, I don’t know if I’ll be able to come back.

So am I implying that this is it? I don’t know but I don’t want to see the end for a very long time.

But I want to get back. I want to rebuild that connection. At the same time, I’m allowing myself to not attend the services. A Father once told me a long time ago that a person isn’t holier than another by what s/he does; it’s how s/he answers the call of God and as long as we all answer, then we’re “okay.”

I want to get back though and I’m hoping that once I move back home, I’ll get into the habit again. Hopefully.

I need to find a full-time job. I have tons of loan money I need to pay back. I have to move back with my parents. I need to wake up early for work. Car insurance, health insurance, etc. I mean, really? What is there to look forward to.

So every time someone asks me, “Are you excited?” I say, “No.”