This quote is from an article in the LA Times that came out on June 14 on A Wok With Jesus: Saving Souls in Chinese Kitchens: Thousands of Chinese kitchen workers live on the margins. A former restaurant owner tends to a subculture most Americans never see.

"Nationwide, more than 1 million immigrants work in 41,350 Chinese restaurants — from mom-and-pop takeouts to mammoth buffet enterprises employing hundreds, according to the Fremont, Calif.-based Chinese Restaurant News.Though many restaurants hire non-Asian workers, Lou's ministry concentrates on the Chinese — the people she knows best.It's a subculture hidden from most Americans. Speaking little or no English, many Chinese immigrants must settle for dispiriting kitchen work — laboring 12 hours a day, seven days a week.Many, here illegally, have no access to labor unions or social service networks. They live in cramped restaurant-owned dormitories or in rented garages without cooking facilities, bathrooms or running water.To cope with their harsh living conditions and mind-numbingly mundane work, many fall prey to gambling, drugs, alcohol and prostitution.Among the worn wooden chopping boards and flashing meat cleavers, hissing deep-fryers and walk-in freezers, the desire for a higher calling is fierce.

"In every kitchen, there's always the same tired old man hiding in the corner near the stove that is his life," Lou said. People in the restaurant business acknowledge a regimen called going "from the pillow to the stove," with no other life. Sadly, it's true," said Betty Xie, editor in chief of the Chinese Restaurant News. "Workers are lonely. They came from far away and don't have family with them. With no English skills, they don't have any choices."They're trapped by the restaurant life. They see no hope."

The phrase I red-fonted just brings tears to my eyes ... I don't know. Somehow I so relate to this image of the old man hiding in the corner. I feel like this in my job right now. My job is not my life, but I am so unhappy at my current job. It hasn't felt like home for these last years, and I keep getting distracted from leaving. It's all been for the best I know. There were lessons I needed to learn, people that I needed to meet, but I had such high hopes for this job that it was going to be a place where I could stay for awhile.

I know I need to give up this hope of ever being at home in job, and that my true job, my true life purpose is to focus on creative writing and not my job business writing of drafting a quality update for a regional medical directors meeting.

I"m listening to New Releases on Yahoo Music, and these are the songs that have caught my ear:

Through Glass by Stone Sour
In the Beginning by The Still
Beautiful by Nick Lachey
Leave the Pieces by The Wreckers
I need you love to love me by Barlowgirl

I was reading this on a chatboard I belong to and I think I fit into this "box".

Newsweek - June 5, 2006 issue

It's a Lohasian moment. The term for these 21st-century New Agers derives from an acronym created by marketers on the West Coast—LOHAS, as in Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability. The movie "The Celestine Prophecy" is opening, based on the 1993 book that may be the most popular alternative-spirituality book of the past few decades. Next comes the film version of Dan Millman's book "Way of the Peaceful Warrior," about a lost young gymnast who is guided through a mystical transformation by a wise mentor. And Al Gore's movie on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," is bound to be popular with the ecologically minded Lohasians. LOHAS consumers (or Lohasians, as they're called at Beliefnet) represent 17 percent of the U.S. population, according to a report released by the Natural Marketing Institute at a LOHAS conference held in April in Santa Monica, Calif. The study said Lohasians are "dedicated to personal and planetary health." Seventy-three percent buy recycled-paper goods, and 71 percent buy natural or organic "personal care" products. They pay more to get foods without pesticides and want their cars fuel-efficient. Among the products and services offered at the conference this year were detoxifying pine oil, organic body lotion, ecofriendly spas and recycled-cashmere sweaters. A decade ago, one attendee said, the conference vendor room offered only "broccoli and tomatoes."Lohasians shop just as widely for spiritual practices. From Buddhism: meditation and admiration of "nothingness." From Hinduism: yoga, gurus, color and chanting. From paganism: an emphasis on honoring nature. From Asian cultures: feng shui and acupuncture. Lohasians devour heaping doses of Western psychotherapy, plus the ideas of the recovery movement ("one day at a time"). They identify as "spiritual, not religious," and many believe in "synchronicity" or "meaningful coincidences" that might be guided by a spirit world. Does this sound like someone you know? If you have a yoga mat and "singing bowls," if you chant or do polarity therapy or energy healing, if you consume goji berries or biodynamic organic wines, you just might be a Lohasian.

—Steven Waldman and Valerie Reiss

I own a yoga mat and took a class in energy healing, but I don't own singing bowls nor do I consume goji berries although I have a friend who is selling them. I think I still qualify.

I went to a seminar with Julia Cameron tonight. She wrote "The Artist's Way" and "Vein of Gold." The woman sounded exactly like Joan Cuzak. She even had the same mannerisms. Cameron said she lives in Manhattan, a block away from Central Park, but her voice is soooo Chicago.

It was fun that she named dropped. She was engaged to Martino Scorcese and worked at The Washington Post during the Watergate era and knew Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

Cameron talked about morning pages, and I decided I needed to start doing them again. It's been years since I've done them, and I know I so rebelled against doing them. But it got the feeling that it was time to do to them again.

I went to Walgreen's after the class and picked up these really cool notebooks and new pens. I love buying new equipment when I'm about to start a project.

I was talking to a woman about one of my novels, and she told it was selfish to not want to write if I had the gift of writing. She told me she couldn't even imagine writing a fictional novel. I don't know. Maybe I am being selfish for not writing especially when I seem to easily make up stories. It's an issue that I am seriously pondering tonight.

Am I being selfish when I don't write because I was given the gift of writing?

Just finished filling out my absentee ballot for tomorrow's election, which I will hand into my polling place tomorrow. In all my years of living in the City and County of San Francisco, I have not once voted for Dianne Feinstein or Nancy Pelosi. I just leave those sections blank since I can't stand either person.

I voted for Fiona Ma only because voting for Janet Reilly would be like voting in Katie Couric for public office. An ex-television reporter married to a one-time political consultant great does not make for a great politician I think.

I voted No on every San Francisco measure especially the one concerning money. I thought the city was out of money. Guess not!

And for whatever reason Phil Angelides just bugs me. I think Steve Westly is more my kind of democrat because I like my politicians to have business experience.

And yes I voted for Jerry Brown for Attorney General, but not Deborah Ortiz for Controller.