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kind of surreal, my friend andrew called me up tonight and tried to sell me a cellphone plan through excel communications. it was kind of weird, because as soon as i agreed to help him out (not knowing what i was getting myself into), he had me doing a threeway phone call with him and this sales rep from missouri named robin (she had a nice southern accent). i played along, because i was curious to see what kind of cellphone service they offered, since i've been thinking about getting one sometime soon (despite the fact that i hardly ever use the phone and that nobody really calls me anyway, not with sweet internet and my constant vigilance checking my e-mail 24/7). so here's the lowdown on the deal: $29 setup fee, i have to buy my own phone from a choice of 5 models (nokia, motorola, price range $100-250), and then sign a 1-year contract at $50/month for 525 everyday minutes and 2000 weekend minutes, with caller id, call waiting, threeway conference, and voicemail services included. i don't know how long i was on the phone, going over the details, visiting the website and checking out the phones, discussing the details once more. finally i asked for more time and andrew said he'd call me back wednesday. it's just so weird. i still can't make sense out of what just happened. what's andrew getting out of this? obviously some sort of commission, but how did he get involved with this organization? i already know my answer for wednesday night, it's going to be no. but who knows. maybe i can ask around, maybe it is a pretty good deal. even if that's the case, my answer is still no. i really don't need a cellphone right now. besides, invisible waves passing through my head scares me a little bit. i'm usually not technophobic, but recently i've been starting to think that all these invisible beams and rays and waves are doing something bad to us all. i'd probably live longer if i moved out somewhere, far away from these potentially harmful signals.

laurie and i made plans to have dim sum a long time ago and we set a date (july 15th, marked on my calendar) a few weeks ago. i got to chinatown sunday morning about half an hour early, so i spent some time wandering some of the residential streets of chinatown, taking photos of architecture and generally being pretty suspicious. at the designated time i hurried to the front of china pearl and found laurie waiting, crushing a cigarette with the toe of her shoe (note to laurie: quit again! smoking is a nasty addiction!). we went upstairs and received our special dim sum number. we waited for probably about 10 minutes before we got a shared table. when we sat down, i saw this young woman at this other table we looked awfully familiar. hey, it's jeanne! i waved frantically to catch her attention. it's weird, but laurie and jeanne had never met before, even though both have been working at the company for months. that's what's weird about this whole upstairs downstairs arrangement at work. you could be working downstairs and not realize there are new people upstairs, and vice versa, like parallel office dimensions. anyway, jeanne was there with her family, including her daughter lily and her mother.

laurie and i started eating. we had soumai (sushi-looking things with pork), tripe (i had), chicken feet (once again, solo dish for me), tsa-sah-bao (buns with red meats), hur-fin (long white thing with shrimps inside), and these dumplings that laurie claim were her favorite, a combination of meat, chestnuts, and peanuts. laurie was full soon afterwards, as i continued eating in my quest to establish myself as the alpha pig.

later we went to harvard square because laurie said there was some sort of bastille day celebration, but when we got there, there was no celebration to be had. we wandered around harvard square a little bit before visiting her friend lucy, who was repotting houseplants on her 2nd floor balcony. after a few of her other friends showed up (abigail, mervin, i felt like i was in an episode of seinfeld where friends just appear at the apartment as if on cue to add some witticism to the lazy afternoon), i decided to head out. before going home, i bought a copy of the dk travel guide to amsterdam, in preparation for my return trip from turkey where i will have 6 hours to kill in amsterdam before my connecting flight back to boston.

the day was marked by a strange series of coincidences, all having to do with spiders. first, at the harvard square museum store (the one next to au bon pain), we saw a lot of dead real spiders in glass cases (some of them looked really cool, i'm tempted to go back and buy one even if they do cost $80 per specimen). laurie revealed arachnids (and a lot of insects for that matter) are not her favorite, which is a euphemism for scared enough to run away from. then at lucy's, we see a jumping spider (black and white, with an X mark on it's back) wandering around the shingles of the house, and i pretend to throw it at her. i think she retaliated with some sort of double obscene gesture. later, we're listening to a herbie hancock cd, and we check the title of one of her favorite songs on the case and it turns out to be a tune called spider. still later, when i go home and take out the mc 900 ft jesus cd, i almost flip out when i see the title of the album is called one step ahead of the spider. kind of spooky, huh?

that night, after dinner, i went to bed about 8pm. for some reason i was unbelievably tired. maybe it has something to do with going to bed at 6am and waking up at noon on saturday (6 hours of sleep), then going to bed at 4am and waking up at 8am on sunday (4 hours of sleep). for some reason my body decided to shut down and send me into 11+ hours of beautiful sleep. thus concluded my sunday.