having observed my buddy wally diligently update his blog at least three times a day, i feel like it’s about time i start changing my attitude about blogging and increase the updates on this site. it’s a pitiful site to see that i only wrote one entry for the entire month of june, although my average of four entries per month is fairly low as well. as i wrote once somewhere on this blog about a year ago, i’m not looking to attract a wide audience or to make this a traffic-generating site (although attention is always good for a writer), but i’m rather more interested in being able to look back on this site in the future and see what was going through my head at certain points of my life. so, if that is still the intended purpose – although i would love to entertain my readers (the few that i still have) – i will need to post more frequent entries.

i returned tonight after three wonderful days in Atlantic City with melanie, wally, and annabel. we stayed at ocean club condominium where melanie’s parents own a nice unit on the fourteenth floor. it was a very relaxing time as we did summery things like board games (girls beat boys badly in Taboo), tennis (i destroyed melanie, but she promises to beat me some day), and the occasional gambling in the Tropicana. i witnessed melanie’s poker face and saw her win a hand as she came out with 30% gain on her investment. wally acted prematurely as he went all in with a king and an ace and lost to a girl who had a pair of aces. he joined me and annabel at the roulette table where i had transformed by $90 investment into a formidable stack of chips. my strategy was to put down at least $30 – $15 on black and $15 on numbers (some of them red) – on each turn (the minimum was only $15). the strategy paid off and i was able to extract $125 to more than cover the initial investment and still have around $200 to play. i let wally try his luck in choosing some roulette numbers and left him and annabel with my stack of dough. when i saw him about 15 minutes later, he gave me $35 and told me he had lost the rest. as we were about to leave the casino, i held in my hand $160 worth of chips. as we approached a roulette table on our way to cash out our earnings, i told everyone that i would put all my chips on a color in hopes of doubling up. melanie told me that it was poor decision-making and wally told me to do the opposite of whatever he thought the winning color would be, which was black. annabel, who had made some good calls when we played before wally’s cooling effect, said black was the way to go. i decided on black and put the entire stack of chips down. i was unafraid after having been empowered by the fortune i had received from my cookie at P.F. Chang’s for dinner: “those who take risks are truly free.” when the number on the electronic board flashed 2 (a black number), a nice warm feeling overcame me. “that’s right, told you i should have put it down,” i told melanie. she replied, “you could’ve just as easily regretted it if you didn’t win.” of course, winners don’t speculate what a loss would’ve felt like. i cashed out and went back to the condo, beaming.

i’m back in my manhattan apartment – 420 West 42nd Street – and it’s still an incredible feeling to be living in such a nice place right out of graduation. the view through our floor-to-ceiling windows is absolutely beautiful, especially at night right before the empire state building lights go off. rent is due tomorrow – a pro-rated half-month fee of $720.05 for my portion – and although future payments will definitely pinch the pocket, i absolutely love our living conditions. a few days ago, our 42″ panasonic lcd hdtv came from P.C. Richard and it now sits pretty atop a black, wooden crate&barrel tv stand. you can walk into our living room and sit on our brown leather couch (from ikea) and enjoy yourself as you watch a dvd or one of the hdtv channels provided by RCN. too bad i don’t really watch television, but it’s a cool thing to brag to people about, and it’ll come in handy for large sporting events. i must give seiwook much credit for helping to shape our apartment, especially my room and rich’s room, which he both personally planned and executed in setting up and furnishing. my baby blue walls (didn’t realize it’d be that bright) do strike a contrast with rich’s more mature grayish beige walls, but visitors to our apartment have complimented both rooms for their respective decor. next order of business is getting a wall up in the living room so that warren will finally have his own private space. the lifestyle of our apartment does seem like a mix of MIT fraternity and new york pretentiousness (that would be the Columbia element); for example, you can find rich drinking Pepsi from a crate&barrel wine glass or wook (normally always in khaki, courduroy, or jeans) trying to fit (albeit unsuccessfully) by wearing tennis shorts or his orange windbreaker pants. rich can’t seem to get over the fact that i would actually rent a dvd called My Architect and voluntarily sit through two hours of a documentary. once work gets into fullmode, it’ll be interesting to see how the apartment functions on a daily basis.

when wally stayed over our apartment last weekend, he and i decided to create a fansite for Louis Menand – an author so frequently mentioned on my blog that perhaps this site could have served as a fansite of its own. we decided to call it The Essential Menand and included his biography, links to his New Yorker articles, and any other related online materials. we’ve been trying to get the word out about this site because we both feel that menand is an excellent writer whose style and sharpness is unique and inspirational. wally and i both have testimonials about why we like his work – sort of cheesy and kiss-ass, but what else are real fans supposed to do? i encourage people to just try reading a few of his New Yorker article for starters. melanie, on our car ride back from AC, asked if a Chang-Rae Lee site was a possibility, and since I’ve read all three of his books as well as a New Yorker short about sea urchins that he wrote a few years ago, i realized that a site for my favorite Korean American author should definitely be considered. but then again, once you look beyond the things you already know about a certain author, you soon realize that he/she has a ton of other work that you never knew about before and oftentimes, these works are hard to obtain. if any of you adore Chang-Rae Lee’s work and would like to join me in making a site that consolidates his online materials (as well as giving background info and links to book reviews and profiles), please let me know! has my personal scholarship been reduced to making fansites for the people whose works i appreciate?

not to keep plugging links for myself in this entry, but i did make some changes to www.peterkang.com (yes, it’s more than just a vanity domain!). i’ve added a section under my personal work called “screenplays, short stories, and more” – the selection is pretty thin at the moment, but i promise it’ll continue to grow as the summer goes on. it’s always nice to see that i haven’t completely wasted my time in the past and that these written pieces, no matter how crappy or unrefined, leave me feeling pleased that i once experienced moments of intense focus and real writing. i’m also in the process of editing my theses and some school papers to post for anyone to read – hopefully some lazy college kid looking online to see how another lazy dude wrote his paper during his years of higher education.

it’s almost five a.m. and i should’ve been asleep long before. when i wake up later today, i’ll hopefully be able to finish some of my online modules for lehman’s pre-training program and take care of necessary errands. it’s been a good summer break, although a bit too fast for my taste (how many times will i note this phenomenon of time moving fast?), and i promise – if not to any particular reader, then at least to myself – that frequent updates will be forthcoming. goodnite, good morning.