I went to the Asian Art Museum to see the exhibit, Tibet: Treasures from the Roof of the World on Saturday. The artwork was beautiful but I started becoming upset because I had the feeling that I was reading a political retelling of history because practically every description mentioned China's relationship with Tibet. China took over Tibet on the pretense of the their historical relationship. They are trying to do the same with Taiwan.

In front of the musuem, people were protesting with signs that said "China stole my history." I think they are right. Tibet's culture was very distinct from China, and to emphasize China's closeness with Tibet was just very wrong and such bad karma. I wonder what his holiness the Dalai Lama thinks about this exhibit.

I loved seeing the art, but most of it was taken from monasteries so they are sacred objects. I don't know. The whole exhibit started bumming me out and I couldn't enjoy it as much as I probably should have.

I went to see "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", and it was a great movie. People at the end the movie clapped, and in San Francisco it's so rare when that happens. Johnny Depp was his beautiful self as usual, and despite the fact that it's a character role he brought such depth to the actor. I was reminded of his performance in the movie "Donnie Brasco", which was excellent. Or even "Ed Wood" and of course "Edward Scissorhands".

I missed the Ooompa Loompa songs though. Danny Elfman did a great job of modernizing the songs, but I miss the Ooopma Loompa songs. Tim Burton's sense of art direction is just unbelievable. Every scene is beautiful like a postcard. I noticed this especially in his movie "Sleepy Hollow". And the special effects for movie were really great.

And all of the great characters were there, including the fat german boy and Veruca Salt the spoiled english girl. And the actors playing Charlie's family were excellent. The roles were small omes but the actors brought alot to the shallow characterizations.

If you loved the first one with Gene Wilder, you will love how Tim Burton and Johnny Depp modernized the story.

I’m starting to think it’s too bad I want to leave my company because it’s kind of starting to get a little better. Of course I think this always happens when you finally decide to get your butt in gear and start looking for another job. The universe wants to make sure you are making the right decision. A new person just joined my group this week and I spoke to her this morning and she is really, really cool. We seen to have a lot in common and she was hired to be a writer for the division. And I’m like too bad I’m leaving because I would have liked to get to know her.

But then the assistant for our group told me yesterday that they stopped accruing for our bonus next year because the company is doing really badly financially. It’s not that we’re not making money because we are, we’re just not hitting our plan targets. The mid-year budget reforecast meetings have been brutal, and everyone is cutting from the budget as much as they can. She told me they are also starting to look at open positions to see if those positions need to be hired.

Having done a five-year stint in a company’s budgeting department, let me tell you when a company starts looking at the open positions to see if they are really needed then it’s not a good sign. I also had lunch with a girl from our LA office, where most of our new business comes from, and she told me the sales people in LA were really depressed because they weren’t making their July numbers. And July is our second biggest month for sales.

The company also cut out an $11 million program that I was working on because they decided they couldn’t afford it. This move will have ramifications I think long term, but no one has said anything about it yet.

These are all bad, bad signs. And worse of all, our competitors have announced that they all made great profits in the second quarter. How come all of our competitors are making money and we aren’t?

So I think I’m still getting signs from the universe that I need to move on, but at the same time I guess I’m having some regrets only because there are four people in my group that I really, really like and I will be sorry to not talk to them anymore.

By the way, my boss knows I’m unhappy. She was finally able to drag it out of me, although I think she used underhanded means to do it. Oh well! She didn’t really sound surprised actually, only saying she thought it had gotten better. I told her that what I was going through probably wasn’t fixable, and I said this statement with great sadness in my voice. She said she was going to see if it was workable, but at this point it’s like I crossed a point of no return and can never go back. I’m not saying there aren’t room for miracles to happen, but the company’s financials are starting to really concern me.

It’s such a hot job market right now, and I have a feeling it wont’ be in the next two years when the company really has to start putting drastic measures to save money. If I don’t go now, I have a feeling I will my window of opportunity. I’d rather leave now, then when everyone else will be looking.

And so the job hunt begins. I just applied for two jobs tonight. One in San Francisco, which sounded interesting and one in Oakland. I really want the one in Oakland, although I'm not looking forward to my longer 1-hour, $100 more a month commute. Which is why I applied to sort of interesting job in San Francisco.

The San Francisco job was the first one I did and I think I filled out one of the questions wrongs. Oh well. It took me until the second job posting to figure out what the question really meant.

A long time ago a friend told that whenever she would get depressed about a job, she would start job hunting and she would start to feel better because at least she was in action. She was right. It does feel good to be in action and start applying for jobs. Even if takes awhile or in her case, nothing comes of it, at least you're doing something to get out of your current situation. And that's what really counts!

So the "L Word - love" made an appearance in an email from M-Square, and I'm like not very happy. I hate when a guy uses this word like it's nothing. I never put love at the end of an email. X's an O's don't count, because it's not like the actual word and it's more like flirting and fun. "Love" is a real emotion and one shouldn't be signing one's emails with it unless you really mean it.

Maybe it's because he's a Leo and all my friends tell me that Leos are very emotional. But I don't care, the L-word is sacred!

And he put it at the end of a semi-slammogram of an email too, like the L-word was supposed to negate everything he wrote above it. We kind of had our first little tiff yesterday, where I think I totally embarrassed him at work on the phone and he got kind of upset and basically hung up on me.

My mistake I guess for calling on a bad Monday morning. I was in a bad mood, and thought that talking to him would cheer me up. Guess that was a big mistake because he was having a bad Monday too, and then it just slid merrily down the toilet bowl from there.

And I'm like how did we get to this stage where I feel like we're being cruel to each other like an old married couple? Yeah, we get along like a house on fire and feel like so comfortable talking and telling each other very private things, but we don't know each other that well.

And I guess I don't help things any, because I'm a fly by the seat of my pants type conversationalist who spits out any stupid and inappropriate thought that comes into my head, and yes I suppose I can come across as being unwittingly and unthinkingly very, very cruel.

But I'm not deliberately cruel! I don't say things knowing that it's just going to come across as nasty as hell to the other person, no matter what I feel.

But I don't know, Mercury is retrograding which means communications are messed up and we're both stressed out as hell over work. He's trying to build a 30-year garage type business into a more professional organization and I am very unhappy with my job, and this relationship is probably the last thing either of us needs right now.

But I can't help it! I really, really like this guy! He is so cool, so smart (he graduated from college when he was 19 years old), and so beautifully spiritual. And yes, dare I say, the guy is really, really 90% perfect and I haven't even met him yet.

But the cynical part of me wants to call it quits because he was cruel and knew it and couldn't stop himself anyway, and who needs that kind of behaviour when you're already stressed out. And he found one of my buttons, one of my landmines by accidents and it really, really hurt when he pushed it. But hey I stepped on one of his landmines first which I didn't know would hurt so much since he'd already talked about it, but I guess went deeper than I'd guessed or maybe should have figured.

So I guess we're even as far as hurting each other goes now which means despite the smidgen of doubt that popped into my head, which by the way always pops into my head with every relationship, I'm staying in. And yes, I think he's that worth it!