Revenge / Austin — Lostinthewoodz

Busy busy busy week.

Don’t remember much of the week. Just remember feeling a little lonely after Andrew left. I had gotten so used to living alone and his visit reminded of how alone I’ve been lately 😭. It was nice having a roommate for a short while. May get a roommate later this year.

Also video chatted with Sherry. Amongst other things we talked about the “evil” side to our personalities. E.g. if you could take revenge with zero repercussions—absolutely destroy your enemy’s life with no blowback or target on your back—would you do it?

I think I would. I think most people would.

Not sure why I’ve been thinking about this topic so much. Also talked about it with Andrew for a while.

It’s been more of a thought with the Asian hate crimes happening recently. Revenge fantasies or something like that.

Here’s another revenge fantasy I have these days. You could call it race honeypotting (racepotting).

Dress up a smaller fighter (Manny Pacquiao?) in old man clothing and makeup. He would roam around by himself in an area with more attacks against Asians (Flushing, Oakland, SF, Manhattan Chinatown—take your pick) and pretend to be vulnerable. Wait for a scumbag to attack and he would beat the shit out of them.

That would be nice.

A very stupid idea for a very stupid scenario we find ourselves in. Who’d have thought that assaulting old Asian people would ever become a trend.

Crazy times call for crazy measures.

Anyways, I’m in Austin! Andrew, Tony and Annie are all in Austin this week. Harry agreed to tag along as well.

After landing I went over to Andrew’s Airbnb. Saw some friends I hadn’t seen in a loooong time (Raymond, Eric from the old SF frisbee crew that I was a light member of).

My arrival timing was good and bad.

Good because Eric had chosen that day to secretly propose to his girlfriend.

Bad because I’m not that close to Eric and felt like I’d somewhat invited myself to his proposal…

With that in mind I did my best to be a productive member of the proposal prep party. Helped the crew untangle some lights to hang on the gazebo where Eric would eventually propose to Elaine. This task alone took roughly 90 minutes of untangling under the hot, humid, mosquito ridden Austin sun but I was happy to be doing something useful. Also bonded with Andrew’s new girlfriend Carol while we both untangled the lights.

Afterwards helped Alfonso (a native Spaniard who had made paella literally “hundreds” of times) cook his paella. It was my first time helping make paella so that was cool. His technique involved cooking each ingredient separately (green beans, peppers, chicken, tomato sauce) instead of throwing them all in at once). I was also surprised to learn that he relied on a paella spice packet but apparently that’s more for the beautiful golden color than for the taste. From my observation of this single session, paella doesn’t seem that difficult to make. But it does require constant attention/love/supervision for a long time (total cooking time took ~1.5 hours).

Once all the prep was done the proposal itself went well. The gazebo looked beautiful :’). Elaine said yes and we all celebrated afterwards.

While we were all seated at the dinner table eating I felt like I was looking into my near future. What a mature adult thing to do—organizing a dinner party after having proposed to your girlfriend.

Eric is a few years older than me and most of my friends (I’m currently 26 and he’s around 30) but in a couple years this sort of thing will be happening all the time. I’ll probably be going to party after party of proposals and engagements and weddings (given that I don’t lose all my friends in the near future). And one day I may even be the one throwing that party.

What a thought.

After the engagement party I slept in a bit.

Met up with ToAnnie the following morning at La Barbecue. Call me a barbecue noob but I thought Hometown BBQ was just as good. Tony seemed annoyed when I said so…

Full of barbecue we made our way into downtown Austin. The four of us (Harry, ToAnnie and me) formed a scooter squad and roamed across the city.

After some riding and some sick tricks in an empty bank parking lot we got some coffee at Halcyon.

ToAnnie bounced after that and Harry and I met up with Andrew + friends at Veracruz All Natural where I ate the best barbacoa taco I’ve ever had.

Also got some chicken from Gus’s World Famous Chicken which I thought was a little overrated.

This following week will be more Austin adventures. One note is that the people here are noticeably friendlier. At least the Uber drivers seem really eager to make conversation.

This week’s wydbot is a little inaccurate due to my Austin plans.