People

I was meaning to do something about it earlier, but I never did. Then I started going back over old journal entries -- nothing quite so masturbatory as putting a journal online, unless it's reading your own journal online to see what happened to Yuhri that day -- and found that I'd started renaming characters. I thought, oh, this is a bad thing, and so we have this inventory.

Family

Mom - Yesterday, she stepped off the boat. She hasn't quite gotten a hang of the language yet.

Sister - "Fine, I'll send you money, but it's coming out of your bail-and-bribe fund." -- "That's okay. I'm not leaving the country until next spring."

Dad - "Are you sure he's dead?"

Heisenberg's Principle - The more one knows about the location of a cat, the less one knows about what the hell it's doing.

Friends - in chronological order

Jazz - ...is a friend from elementary school, and then high school. She did a five year BS in Computer Science at MIT (of all revoltingly good schools), and then changed her mind. Then she did a law degree at University of Washington. Having thus encumbered herself with a student loan in the size of Japan's Gross National Product, she does QA at start-ups in a desperate attempt to pay back her loans before the economy collapses and she ends up washing dishes at banks.

Tara - We went to middle school and high school together, and now -- in California -- we live a short twenty minutes apart. She introduced me to the Guy. She works as a software engineer for a German company, lives in a beautiful home in Mountain View that she's methodically recreating from scratch, and has a husband that worships the ground she walks on. She also cooks like a madwoman.

Binky - We went to college together, where we each took turns being a rock for the other one to limpet to. She completed a Masters of Music at Northwestern, (she plays bassoon), after which she did web work and production for a startup. Now, post-school, she roams the US trying to find her way, developing first-name friendships with national parks up and down the west coast. She and my sister, sharing as they do an offbeat view towards careers and how to live life, deal extremely well together. Despite the fact that she's caucasian, we once convinced my sister's ex that she was related to us. ("I'm drinking green tea to make myself look more Asian," she told him. "I can see it," quoth he.)

Flamingo - We met online, actually; I consider her a college friend nonetheless, because that's what she was: just different colleges, different states. She graduated from Duke, went to McGill, and then got her Masters (Cognitive Psychology) from University of Colorado. Now she lives there with two mildly homicidal Maine Coons named Marcus and Oz, and works for a company that (at last!) respects her talents as a technical writer. She keeps a blog, the offspring of her previous journal, "Bounded in a Nutshell."

The Guy - Husband. The first man I've ever been in love with. He rides a motorcycle. Collects anime. Breaks my computer and then fixes it again. Opinionated. Asian. British. Cooks. Eats in my living room and then leaves a mess. He used to work for HP; now he's not. His family, originally Chinese, comes from a mythical floating island somewhere in the Pacific (maybe) called Mauritius. Apparently, Creoles live there. The Guy thinks I'm a Sanrio doll.

Current Co-workers

The Purple Monkeys - The assorted other employees at...

The Island of the Purple Monkeys - ...the place where I work, which was ruled by...

The Smurfs - Don't ask why they're called that. At least smurfs aren't purple.

Past Co-workers (at other companies)

She Who Will Be Obeyed - At one time, she was known as 'Indian Woman'. Now she's our manager, with a wry, off-kilter sense of humor and a formidable technical know-how. She is, by the way, a very good manager.

Firecracker - A spitfire of a Chinese woman with a round-headed baby and a genius for redefining English; she sits on the other side of the cube wall, and occasionally crawls up onto her table to stare at me over the partition. Has a small son, born in December of 2000, and a husband who claims to be from Mauritius. Despite being only 4-foot 3, (and I exaggerate only slightly), she looms large.

Slushpuppy - 22 years old as of September 14th, 2001. He is half Korean, half something else, and dropped out of high school to work full-time at my company. Now, five years later, he has more skills than the entire team put together. He's wry, witty, and endlessly entertaining; he owns his own slushpuppy machine, which he can't find, and a house in Southern California. Plus, he reminds me eerily of my cousin; as a result, I constantly call him Brian without thinking. As of September, he no longer works at my company.

College Boy - A new college grad from Georgia Tech when he joined the company a month after I did, in September of 2000. Chinese, athletic, and very very smart.

Indian Mom - Sits next to me at work. Has one son, born around Thanksgiving of 2000. Calm, patient, and occasionally nuttier than a fruitcake.

Indian Woman (the Second) - Joined the company later than Indian Woman (now She Who Will Be Obeyed), and so gets 'the Second' put after her name.

The Intern - Not really an Intern, but we called her that in order to get her past Human Resources without too much yelling. We were experiencing a hiring freeze at the time. As of September, she no longer works at my company.