in response to Calvin's most recent entry, I agree that not having an SSN is a pain in the butt. Thank God that Washington Mutual not only didn't need my SSN right away, they also gave me a FREE checking account. That's right all you other banks who want some minimum deposit. I HAVE A STACK OF CHECKS! ( but unfortunately, have to wait for like two weeks before I can actually use an ATM). Anyway, despite everything being a hassle here, everything has been a blessing from finding a place to having a potential church and having friends around, I'm really thankful to God and I totally know that somehow, my coming to New York has its purpose. I think I'll be writing more about the deeper things in a new blog that I hope to publish sometime in the near future.

In the meantime, I spent my first (well, if you include my childhood summer of 87 in Minnesota) Independence day watching the Macy's fireworks w/ two canadian's and the rest of New York. Of course, I had to hum O Canada since most American's have no idea what it sounds like but i figure they might figure it out had I been singing "O canada, our home and native long" trying to make it choregraph with the Fireworks. I figured the melody would have to do. It's very different but I don't ever recall Canadian's cheering everytime a huge firework went off representing the EXPLOSIVENESS of Americanism and how in your face american's are. No offense to you americans but Americans are generally loud and obnoxious. But, I need to say, July 4th ended off with a kick when we hiked for about 45 minutes to chinatown in search of "HUi Lau SAHN" (The chinese fruit place only found in HK but now found in NY!!) for those of you who don't know, its the ubiquitous store that has the tacky red sign with gold letters on it found pretty much on every other corner (Much more ubiquitous than Starbucks in HK although they're catching up) in HK. That made my day mainly due to the fact I was with two girls who would not stop until they had found the place. One of them, whose name I will refrain from inputing but she's related to Amanda Li, literally skipped across the street not noticing the oncoming cars nor people and almost knocked a poor lady over (although this was recounted to me by the other friend). needless to say, I guess their excitement overshadowed mine as I was eagerly awaiting my Mango/cocount milk/aloe jelly drink to cool me off as I was at this point, leaving a puddle around me in sweat.

I'm so thankful I bought an A/C.