Living Seoul

I’m in Houston trying so hard not to hate it. I could never live here for more than a few weeks.

My evening went like this…

Leave Mom’s house in NW Houston with my sister at about quarter till 6PM. We’re in separate cars but both driving to Oishii for sushi, trying to make it for happy hour which ends at 7PM. Traffic shouldn’t be bad because rush hour is pretty much over and we’re driving into town. It ends up taking more than 30 minutes to go a few miles on 290E. Some idiots had an accident a few exits past the place we entered the freeway. Stuck forever, not moving at all. Foot tiring on the clutch. News traffic ‘copters hovering ahead. I’m in my car inhaling vehicle fumes and air conditioning. I’m starting to fume. Get past the accident. My sister and I communicating via cell phone and realize we’re definitely going to miss happy hour. Fine.

Miss happy hour but sushi is wonderful and cheap. Also eat delicious mochi with sis and her friend. (SO CHEAP. Go to Oishii at Richmond/Timmons!)

After dinner visit my friend in the Galleria area. Waiting to make a left turn. Range Rover in front of me stops at red light for left turn then white brake lights come on. Expect them to turn off when car goes back into “drive.” The white lights stay on. The traffic lights are going through their phases at the intersection and I’m freaking out because this car is still in reverse. I’m shaking before the light turns green and we get the left turn arrow. Waiting for them to reverse full speed into my car not realizing they’re still in reverse. Light changes and they start reversing…honk at them before they can hit me. They correct and swerve through the intersection. Almost hit the curb driving down the street. No idea what that was about.

Visit my friend for a couple hours. Highlight of my day! :)

Leave her apartment around midnight. I need gas in my car badly. There are a couple of gas stations at the next intersection past her apartment.. All kids of foolishness takes place on/around Westheimer this time of evening it seems. Guys in stupid cars making tire burning U-turns over and over again. One of the gas stations has unsavory characters loitering around outside, the crazy car turns into the other gas station. I continue on my way searching for a better place to get gas. Can’t find anything, start to waste gas driving around looking. Reach the freeway again and enter hoping to not run out of gas. Make it through the huge stack of freeways and get back to 290W. Take the first exit for gas. More shady characters. Pass two more gas stations…more shady characters. Maybe I’m choosy but it’s late and I’m alone. Mostly I try to prevent bad situations before they can arise. Maybe I hear too many horrible stories. Finally I choose one and get $11.34 of gas in a panicked fashion. (This will be the last time I fill my tank so I don’t want to fill all the way.) Plus some cars drive up and I worry. Get back on the feeder road and almost HIT A PEDESTRIAN. Not my fault. Some man wearing all black is lurching across the street. I notice him in just enough time to swerve into the next lane, avoiding him all over my windshield. I had a green light.

These types of events make me boil inside. Also, it feel gross here. It’s either raining, flooding and humid or blazing hot and the seatbelt burns you. People are fat here. There are endless boring suburbs…shopping center after shopping center. But even being away from the suburbs you’re still stuck with this weather. It smells bad because of all the cars. It’s like living in the shadow of flatulence.

So, Houston sucks but I love my amazing family and I’d travel anywhere to see them. Don’t want to drive anymore. End of rant story.

***Related to my last post…I DID apparently get Chickenpox some time as a child. Even though I didn’t have any symptoms. I have more than a normal amount of antibodies floating around in my blood.

I feel wrong for not addressing the Haiti situation on this blog or my Twitter sooner. It’s sort of silly to be posting about hamburgers and crazy Tetris games when there’s a major crisis happening. Then again, I’m not in Haiti bringing you new information. The most I could do is repost news stories or tell you that I donated money and that you can, too. It’s not like there’s a shortage of news about it.

What am I curious about that I haven’t really seen addressed? Some sort of comparison to other natural disasters. I’ve heard all kinds of death toll estimates for HaitiQuake. Ranging from 30,000 to 500,000. I tried to remember how many people perished during Hurricane Katrina. Or the tsunami in Asia in 2004. How does this disaster compare?

*Katrina killed about 1,800 people. Another 700 went missing. That’s at least 2,500 people.
*The 2004 tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people. (5th deadliest natural disaster in history)

I didn’t realize so many people died as a result of the tsunami. Hurricane Katrina seems at least as tragic in my memory, but it’s probably because I live so close to where disaster struck. If the death toll from the earthquake is actually as high as 500,000 it would come much closer to being one of the deadliest natural disasters in the world’s history. Excluding things like disease and famine, floods have actually been one of the most deadly natural disasters in history, killing millions of people. The largest death toll from an earthquake was 850,000 in China in the 1500s. To me, it’s been interesting to look at these lists on Wikipedia.

Back to some numbers.

*The estimated damage from Katrina was about $91 billion as of 2009.
*Nations from all over the world donated an estimated $7 billion after the tsunami. That’s just what was donated though, not how much it would actually take to fix everything.

I can only imagine the amount of money it could take to practically rebuild Haiti. I suppose by doing a little research I wanted to gain some perspective on how bad this is compared to what’s happened in the past. Either way it’s a tragedy RIGHT NOW and Haiti needs serious help. I haven’t donated money for natural disaster relief in the past. I probably felt like I didn’t matter because I wasn’t an adult anyway and didn’t have enough money to make a difference. I was listening to NPR’s coverage yesterday and they were talking about how far $10 can go in Haiti. For some reason it made all the difference in my mind. For me, $10 will buy dinner. Once. That’s it. But this is different. The latest reports I’ve seen say people have donated more than $3 million via the Red Cross’ text message campaign. It’s an awesome idea and is obviously effective.

“The Boston Globe” often puts together photos for major events like this. I think they do an excellent job. Here’s their latest for the Haiti earthquake.

I’m watching Brian Williams reporting from Haiti right now. He says the latest death toll is 50,000. Such a tragedy.