#my problem is until Tuesday I can basically only eat with a straw because my mouth doesn’t open enough to let a fork through lmao

[kaibacorpintern]

the only worthwhile bit of an otherwise discarded freewrite

++++

Yuugi, wedged in between Atem and Anzu, took a long pull of his soda, his cheek propped against his hand. At this hour, Burger World was bright and loud, the colors of their plastic fry baskets and vinyl booth saturated with shadowless white light and slippery from years of apathetic teenage cleaning. On Anzu's other side, the window was pitch-black, throwing their reflections back at them. Like the inversion of a shadow: not dark but glowing, not distinct but blurred. And yet, silent. 

"Atem," Kaiba said, pulling the straw out of his drink and delicately flicking water off it. "I have a puzzle for you - "

"Not this again," Jou groaned, with Honda safely buffering them. "Every time you come out with us, you pull the same damn Bill Nye Science Guy bullshit."

Every time like it'd been a lot of times, when really it had only been a dozen or so, and half of them with Mokuba tagging along, until he seemed satisfied that no one's throat would break open under Kaiba’s teeth if he wasn't there to stop him. And every time because, despite what Kaiba said, it was what he did that mattered, and he kept swinging around Atem the way a comet swung around a star, hurtling in cold and blazing, and hurtling away again. It took a lot of force to stop a comet, and to make it sit in a sticky booth on the border between Tuesday and Wednesday, eating greasy food with people it claimed not to like. 

That, or the comet had stopped itself. Atem shifted restlessly next to Yuugi, who took another sip of his drink, smiling, soda crackling in the straw.

"It's not my problem you have the full brainpower of a chewed-up tennis ball," Kaiba said mulishly, leaning back, resting both forearms on the table and slowly turning the straw between his fingertips. 

"I'll make it your problem," Jou announced. "You say one plus one equals two, I'll say prove it, you fuckin' stuck-up nerd - "

"I can prove that, but I have to say I’m not surprised you struggle with basic math - "

Between them, Honda rolled his eyes, almost explosive in its dismissive power.

"You guys are so annoying," he said. "If you're gonna do your usual dumb slap fight routine, go do it outside."

"No, I want to hear the puzzle," Atem said seriously, leaning forward, folding his arms on the table beside the half-eaten burger deflating in the basket. "What is it?"

"How many holes does this have?" Kaiba said, holding up the straw.

"Two," Jounouchi said. "The in hole and the out hole."

"Nah, that's too simple," Anzu said. "Unless it's a trick question, and we're supposed to think it's something else, but it actually really is just two." 

She lifted her eyebrow at Kaiba, an accusatory smirk that he returned with impassive cool. Classic, Yuugi thought. Not trying to solve the puzzle, but rather the person asking it. 

Atem frowned, his wine-red eyes fixed on the straw.

"But first you have to say what a hole is. You can't count nothing," he said, and Yuugi grinned. 

"It’s whatever’s between Rich-boy's ears," Jounouchi said instantly, but Kaiba took no notice, beaming at Atem, in the same way the moon beamed, brightened by the light from someone else.

[adventureswithrosemary]

Buenos Aires - Argentina

Day 1 - Sunday: Landed at Ezeiza Airport, got scammed into buying a taxi for double the price outside the gate. Checked into our home away from homes and grabbed some Parilla (BBQ): Tough beef, blood sausage, kidney, and intestines. Tried to explore but the place was deserted on a Sunday afternoon. Airbnb seemed strange, run down and cold. After lunch I went back to Airbnb to take a nap and prep to tomorrows work day.

Day 2 - Monday: First work day in Buenos Aires. We met a whole bunch of folks that work on the Clover integration project. Got a rough breakdown of how taxes work here and how Clover is going to need to solve some very Argentina specific problems. Went out to lunch with the guys. Everyone seems to be operating at a slower pace here. Lunch ended up being 3 hours because service was so slow. Worked past 7PM and went to grab dinner with Mark at Cabana Las Lilas. Shared a bottle of wine, and enjoyed a filet steak. Appetizers were delicious. Steak was not bad. Walked off the wine and saw the Women’s Bridge. Go home to do it all over again. Day 3 - Tuesday: Internet is so god damn slow here. The wifi drops sometimes, the VPN is slow so testing on Dev7 is impossible. Went to lunch with the guys, everyone is so hospitable and nice. We went to a sandwich place next door. The language barrier is hard. Mark is having a better time including himself in conversation and getting around than I am. I feel handicapped to have to rely on him to translate things. Data is slow so I can barely translate things for myself and service is spotty. Went to checkout China Town for dinner. Beef noodle soup was bomb but Mark got his debit card eaten by an ATM machine. Went to a Cafe to chill. Go home and do it all over again.

Day 4 - Wednesday:

Push a few diffs, do some code reviews. Code reviews are awful to read. Fernando, our only web guy working from Mexico has horrible coding practices, and doesn’t seem to care much about what he produces. Unit tests barely test anything. Met up with my baby at Sheraton, and walked her to the Airbnb. Grabbed lunch with the guys again, at a buffet style place across the street. Time flies by and it’s 6PM. We headed to The Kilkenny bar with the guys to try out Fernet. Fernet tastes a little but like Jager with coke. Lucy joined us at the bar, she thought everyone was chill and surprisingly good looking. For dinner we went to Vico, a bar where the wine is on tap. The food was amazing, the wine on tab was fun, and the company the best. Exploring is always funner when Baby is around. Go home and do it all over again.

Day 5 - Thursday: I am so tired, sleeping 6 hours a day is finally starting to catch up to my body. I also learned that Mark is also very agreeable. Although he’s agreeable, he doesn’t mean it. He doesn’t always say what he means. Today is our Airbnb cooking experience. It was so nice to be welcomed into someone’s home where we eat food and drink wine and speak English! I didn’t realize how much of a difference it made until now. The empanadas turned out really delicious and it was simple to make. The folks were all really friendly and also spoke english. We all gathered around chatted about South American culture over wine and a large charcuterie plate. To top the night off, we had homemade flan.

Day 6 - Friday: Grabbed lunch with Lucy at another buffet style place. Apparently there is a line to get your food wrapped, and another to pay. The line to pay also splits up into pay with cash and pay with card. Folks here aren’t very patient with foreigners that don’t speak Spanish. If you don’t understand, they’ll just repeat what they said a little more aggressively. For lunch we wanted to checkout the nature reserve. We walked to the edge of the park and it was time to head back. For dinner we had iLatina, our first fine dining experience here in Buenos Aires. We got the food and wine pairing meal. I like all the plates and the wine pairings. The food wasn’t very complex, but the experience was fun. After dinner, we met up with Mark’s friend Jeremy. He showed us what it’s like to live like a bachelor in this City and all the bars to hit up in Palermo. We stayed out til 3am.

Day 7 - Saturday:

Today we went to La Boca. It was a very touristy area with lots of colorful buildings and souvenir shops but it was still fun to look at. We tried Havanna for the first time and they have this one drink where they put dulce de leche in it. Super sweet but not bad. After exploring La Boca, it took us half an hour for our Uber to take us out of the city to Tigre. He didn’t have enough gas for the trip and apparently La Boca doesn’t have a lot of gas stations so they were all packed. At Tigre we had a mediocre lunch at a random place. Tigre was wonderful. It’s like an arts and crafts farmers market. Here we each picked out our Mate cups and straws. When it started to rain, we went home. He had a late lunch so we didn’t bother with dinner when we got back to from our Uber. We did explore a near by grocery store though to stock up on water and snacks if we got hungry. Later in the night, we got hungry. We thought we could find food but ended up finding a speakeasy bar instead. Mark was wearing gym shorts. Going to a bar was the last thing on our minds. We came back from the bar around 3AM again still hungry and just a little bit tipsy. 

Day 8 - Sunday:

Self exploration day. Lucy and I got into an argument this morning because should wouldn’t wake up when I tried to wake her. We left the house still upset and went to get pizza in Recoleta. Lunch was so awkward because I was crying and neither of us were speaking and the waitress knew something was wrong but didn’t want to butt in. Our waitress was super nice. We left and walked to the cemetery. The cemetery was interesting to walk through. It’s a little bit unsettling to see the coffins just chilling in the tombs like that. I still think it’s worth it to check it out. Outside the cemetery there were a lot of kiosks opened up for tourists to buy craft goods. We browsed around headed our way to a fairground festival little did we know that the festival was closed today due to weather. Lucy later found out by going to their Facebook page after we’d already Uber’ed there. No tourists in sight, we were the only ones. On top of that we were pale and Chinese so we stuck out like a sore thumb. Everyone stared and it made me feel uncomfortable so we Uber’ed back. We ended up walking around the neighborhood where we lived instead. It’s so different during the day, the streets were really bustling. We picked up 5 more Mate cups on the way home for our friends and family. Later than night we met up with Mark at El Mirasol, the steak house that he went to the first night. It wasn’t good. It was dry and bland. Sorry Mark, but we don’t love the steak as much as you do.

Day 9 - Monday:

Yesterday we went to visit our first Clover merchant: Abuela Goye, a chocolate and gelato shop. The little shop was super busy so we didn’t really get a chance to talk to the merchant very much. Their gelato was insanely sweet. For lunch we hopped over to the shop next to Abuela Goye and grabbed some arepas. It’s basically this toasty sandwich thing thats super crunchy on the outside. The filling itself was too try but the sauce was really good. Both Lucy and I didn’t finish ours. Mark didn’t want to join us for dinner because he didn’t want Asian food so we wont to Bao’s Kitchen. The lady that served us spoke three different languages. My guess is that she was fluent in all three but anyways, we took the opportunity and ordered a shit ton of food. 5 different dishes between the two of us and a glass of wine. Bao’s Kitchen was just okay but Lucy enjoyed the comfort of Asian food.

Day 10 - Tuesday:

We finally went to Dada Bistro. It was only supposed to be me, Mark, and Lucy because it was going to be Lucy’s last meal with us but the guys seemed to really want to join us for lunch. Dada Bistro has met my expectations. I really enjoyed Dada Bistro. At the end of the meal, we got a complimentary shot of vodka made with flower and ginger. It was surprisingly sweet and not strong at all. In the evening I left Mark at the office and went to send Lucy off. I was sad to see her go because is was my home. When she left, I sat alone in the kitchen, commenting on code reviews and eating soggy pizza.

I feel like my short term memory is starting to get worse and worse. Sometimes I wonder how I even function day to day.

[taiteenguyen]

Untitled 10

Long semester, even longer nights. Staying up till 2AM is the new norm for me, and it's so weird since usually I crash around 12 or 1. I think that the amount of new relationships was a lot to balance altogether. I liked they way they started out at first and developed for awhile.

Let's start at Spring break. I was planning on a trip on my own to go pretty far for the first time in my life. There's always a first for everything. The place I wanted to go for the longest time? Seattle. Obviously if I'm going all the way to Seattle, I'll definitely check out all of Washington too! I didn't have many friends who could spend that much time away from home Tuesday - Friday was the plan. Mega road trip. I asked my friend Leslie and she was totally down to go. I thought she would be like, nahh I've already been there and done that considerring how much she's travelled on her own and with her friends. I don't know, ever since my parents have let up on surveilance of me, I've been able to get away with doing a lot more things. Sleeping over at a friends without telling anyone being the biggest risk I've taken in a long time. I thought I could also pull off this trip and so she tells me that she'll take care of housing and what not, but the days leading up to the date were going by quickly and before I knew it, we only had 1 week left to plan and reserve, so I ask her what's going on. She ends up telling me, "hey, do you want to go to Utah instead? I have a friend who's willing to drive." Granted I never have any expectations at all because they usually all lead me into getting disappointed and so I've learned it's better to just not have any at all. Life Hack :D Number 1 thing wrong with her response was that she already assumed it was just going to be me and her going to Seattle so that would be bad if I had other friends I also invited. But luckily I didn't spread the word yet and so I was like yeah, I'm still down. It wasn't Washington but at least it's somewhere that wasn't home. And that's all I wanted, a getaway with my friends that weren't from school. Then like 2 days before, I find out her friend hurts his ankle and that ruins the plans of hiking in Utah which is basically all you can really do there. So the plans change to Vegas and it gets better. We'd be sleeping out of his car. HA nah. Not for 4 days like that, not me. What the last straw really was, was the fact that I asked him what the itinerary was and he just linked me "20 things to do in Las Vegas if you are Under Age" and said,"Here's something for you underage putos LOL" and that's where I drew the line, holy shit. He didn't have to be so condescending and a dick about it. Vegas wasn't the original plan anyways and neither was he. I thought this guy was chill but holy shit, I was triggered so I was like, nope I'm pulling out, this is shit. Sorry Leslie, I can't hang with that.

So I ended up working on hw and projects on Monday and then I hit up my friend Allen and I ask him to see when he's available to go and chill because I hadn't seen that chigga since Winter Break. He said, he was down for good laughs with me and he asked me to pick the place as long as it was near. I asked him, How about SGV? We didn't really have a plan at all and when we were inviting people to come with us, they'd ask, "What are we doing over there?" and I just said,"Whatever we want." That alone was chill enough to say yes and the group of 2 evolved into a group of 7. Planning was difficult, now with that large of a crowd we were like, dang where we going to eat? Where we going to meet up and sight see. There were a lot of things to go do but most of the stuff would be closed after we finish eating and such. We went to go eat at Phoenix Cafe. I brought my friend Jenny along and I hope she had a good time with my friends. It would've been her first time hanging out with my friends that I've hyped up through my stories. We went to parks and plazas, and had photoshoots, Opticoon style. It was pretty fun, had a lot of decent conversations but I think I could've planned a little better. I didn't know the group was going to be so large.

After that day, I chill on Thursday and I ended up saying yes to go on a retreat with my school Organization: IEEE. I didn't know what to expect. Everything was so last minute for me, but I was just a little angry still at how my plans got cancelled. So anything spontaneous was good enough for me. I agreed to go and packed and we headed out Friday and reached there roughly 2pm. The people in the car couldn't have been better: my best friend James and Steven and Brandon. That night, we ate noodles and eggs. It was still a Friday during lent so I couldn't/didn't want to eat meat that day. That night I'm not sure why but something about what Tiffany said to James. "It's okay James, you can do whatever you want, you're safe here." And that just rubbed me the wrong way. In my opinion, that reassurance wasn't necessary and when someone has to tell you it's a safe place, it probably isn't as what they make it seem. So that night, I wasn't drinking at all. I went to my bed underneath the stairs and chilled on my laptop while everyone was doing their own thing upstairs. I was having a blast too, talking to myself and my friends online, letting them know I was okay. I wasn't sure of what we were going to do the next day but after like 30 mins of solitude, James and more people started migrating looking for me and seeing what I was up to. I obviously wasn't drinking and that made me happy. I loved spending evenings with my friends and just straight up chilling, looking at memes or having chats about life. It was special to me and I enjoyed every second of it.

The next day, James and I woke up at the same time and we went to go cook breakfast together for everyone. Pancakes, eggs and bacon. One Punch Man playing on the radio and then I went on a hike to the Pinnacles with a lot of people and it was going to be my first hike in awhile. I was excited because my friend James was going to "lead" the hike and we travelled pretty deep into the mountains and just the novelty of the adventure was what kept me going the entire time and just being surrounded by great company. After we returned I was TIRED. I was sitting in the living room square and tried talking to Kayla who was also there. It was really hard to find a topic to talk about without her just teasing me or offending her. I would hate to be on her bad side and so after a little bit of superficial talking, I gave up and knocked out. I awoke to James waking me up because we were going to set out for another hike to the hotsprings we talked about earlier that day. I was kind of excited and since it was only "2 miles" I was like sure. We set out and parked our cars near the entrance. the path was narrow, like 1 1/2 feet wide. I was like wow, this is really hard, harder than I thought it would be. After a long hour of up hills and slippery downhills, we did a rest and checked to see how far we traversed. We were barely half way there. Turns out the 2 miles was only if we travelled straight from point A to point B but it wasn't like that at all. We travelled up a mountain, down a hill and around another and then finally after another hour. We finally made it. We found a hot spring for ourselves too and it was bliss. After a relatively scary hike with blistering feet and worn out shoes, I was just relaxing peacefully in the spring and I just didn't want to leave but the thought of having to hike all the way back up and around to our original starting point, was looming in the back of my head. After like 20 minutes, we had to set out again because it was getting dark and lack of water was a real problem. Not a lot of us were experienced hikers and so the incline back up was tiring and exhausting. I was taking care of the people in the back that had trouble keeping up and made sure the group in the front weren't taking off without us. Luckily we had flashlights and a little bit of the moonlight to see the ledges to climb back up the slopes. 8pm, after 5 hours, I was so glad to see flat road and land. We got home to find dinner was already ready and we all took showers and went out to eat some good KBBQ with rice. This night I was feeling different and a lot closer to a majority of the people there and so, Let the drinking begin. After some hour later of chugging shots and alcohol, I started to feel dizzy. I wanted to prove a point. Early on in the trip, some of them underestimated me and only thought of me as a little bitch ass nigga. I wasn't about to let them think that tonight, nothing was stopping me. Until I started texting and messaging my friends, and then showing my friends the responses. I'm not sure why I didn't keep track of my phone more but when I got up to get another drink, I couldn't find it. I was for sure they were hiding it from me, and they straight up lied to my face about it. So I went ballistic. My phone was the most important thing to me and I didn't want to lose it. After awhile, I gave up and just took out my laptop and continued doing just the same thing. They thought they were protecting me, but instead they just made me even more insecure. By this time, I wasn't feeling all too well. My head started spinning and hurting everytime I moved or changed direction. I went around the house and then decided that maybe I did need to throw up. I didn't want anyone to see me in that state, so I sat in the dark in the restroom next to the toilet. They eventually found me and tried to keep me company and be my friend. I was completely cognizant of what was going on and I just didn't want to be around the same people who thought less of me. So I said a shit ton of mean things to them, hoping that it would drive them away and leave me alone. It didn't work and they just attributed my behavior to being an angry drunk. I was obviously angry and triggered but I didn't have the strength to keep going and after vommitting, I felt a ton better (my throat didn't though). I fell asleep at 2:04 AM, the youge.

I woke up at 7:30 and right again, James sat up in his sleeping bag, the same time as me and he told me stories of what happened last night even though I already remember every detail. It was nice to hear the exaggerations of the stories about me and what I did. I was glad I had friends I could trust, but last night was still not enough for their standards. I needed to do something more. I told myself, if I get a girlfriend and start dating, they definitely cannot make fun of me then. That was it. THey can't call me creepy and belittle me for being my weird and dorky self. If I found someone who liked me for who I was, that would shut them up and then I'd have a relationship with someone I care about. It's a win-win. That Sunday I was exhausted and we cleaned up and went home where I slept practically the whole ride home and then some. Definitely an eventful weekend with some interesting people. It was definitely a wild Spring Break.