To follow up on my Orangina!! post, I thought I’d share an interesting counterpoint in terms of personal taste. By counterpoint, I mean “something that is weird to everyone else on earth”.

Presenting: ramen!

Photo by heyjoewhereyougoinwiththatguninyourhand

Like many poverty-stricken college students, I ate a bunch of this back in the day. However, I developed a taste for it that has transcended the trauma of reliving cash flow problems. Even more weirdly, I don’t even eat it soup-style. For me, it’s just the noodly goodness without seasoning.

Therefore, here are my options for dinner:

1. Cook something
2. Get takeout from the reallyreally good Thai place around the corner (open till 3 AM!)
3. Get takeout from one of the 10 gazillion Indian places within a block of my place (1 of which is open 24 hours!)
4. Get takeout from one of the 47 thousand gazillion other restaurants within walking distance of my place
5. Eat ramen noodles with no seasoning

Guess what’s winning out lately? Mmm, Orangina and ramen. A winning combination.

Orangina!

Photo by hexodus

It’s way classier than Diet Coke.

Welcome to the remix. If anyone still reads my woefully neglected blog, please let me know so I’ll be motivated to post again. Until then, get your fix on the spiffed up About page.

A redesign struck me as a fitting way to celebrate the first anniversary of my wee blog. Enjoy the infusion of color; however, I can only vouch for its prettiness in Safari.

and tired of being sick:

But at last I can drink my cough syrup out of my I (heart) Baseball shot glass. I scored the glass when I was three by screaming “I WANT THE BABY GLASS!!!” in a Cooperstown gift shop until my parents stopped trying to explain that it was, in fact, for grown-ups and simply bought it. I then made them serve my cranberry juice to me one shot at a time.

I need a job. At the moment, I’m working temp and contractual positions. This is fine, except for the fact that there is no job security and no health insurance. Being “in transition” has been interesting thus far, but it’s time to move on.

Here are my categories of potential employment:

• Boring, decent-paying work with good benefits that will eventually cause me to contemplate throwing myself off a bridge. This is bad, as there are many conveniently located bridges in the Bay Area. This category includes admin support work. I am well-qualified for these jobs.

• Stressful, mid-to-low paying work with decent benefits that will rapidly cause me to contemplate throwing myself off a bridge. Note to self: choose a bridge plastered with an obnoxious logo (this personal crisis brought to you by Cingular!). This category includes social service and social justice work. My résumé is chock full of these jobs.

• Variably paid yet awesome work, with benefits enjoyed only by a lucky few. These jobs include writing gigs and graphic design work. I am moderately qualified for this sort of thing, but the competition is fierce.

• Impressively compensated work that might be fun, but for which I have no frame of reference, let alone applicable skills. This category is brought to you by my friend Colin, who likes to tell me that I should learn perl. He also likes to tell me that there are jobs out there for people who know perl. I am guessing one would be called a “Programmer” if one’s job centered around the use of perl, but I’m not really sure.

Of course, I am most drawn to the jobs I am least qualified for. I guess this is predictable, considering that the others have morbid consequences. However, for now, I’ll take what I can get. A guaranteed paycheck will go far toward keeping those bridges at bay. At least until I learn perl.

My new obsession is not in vain. Flickr chose the photo above as “interesting,” which means that it was one of 500 photos uploaded on October 19 that caught someone’s eye. Yeah, that’s a lot to sift through, and not many people will, but given that about 900,000 photos are uploaded to Flickr daily, I’m thrilled. Now only that, it qualifies for the Fav/View >= 5% group, meaning that at least 5% of the people who viewed it marked it as a favorite. So far, it’s batting 15 faves for 111 views and counting. Yay!

To check out the rest of my Flickr photos, click on the image in the sidebar.