After my last web update detailing my depression and the temptation to smoke, I received all sorts of letters of sympathy throughout the web world.

For example, my friend Dom wrote:

"don't worry, dear one. you are loved."

Uncle Dave Lewis from the Midwest wrote me:

"...to cheer yourself up, you may wish to check out your own page at www.imdb.com if you haven't seen it. It contains three credits for movies you were in. Just click in the search box for "Wong, Kristina" and give that ego a little stroke."

I've already seen myself on imdb.com. But still that was a nice gesture on his part.

My mother called to tell me that she was glad that I am not a smoker and that she once in my age was so sad that she smoked two cigarettes before saying to herself, "This is stupid." And then never smoked again.

All this feedback leads me to believe one thing... these web updates are reading like cries for help. And godammit I will not have that.

I'm a champ and I'm going to bounce back.

So check me out, on Saturday night, when I could have buried my sorrows in a bottle of wine and wrapped myself up in my bedsheets like a little burrito, I instead decided to do what I should have done months ago when my sadness set it...

TAKE TO THE MIC! TO THE KARAOKE STUDIOS I WENT!!!

When the going gets tough, the tough rock the mic!

It was totally expensive. $26 for an hour of singing. Had it been happy hour, I would have been able to sing for over 4 hours with a friend. But so worth it.

Me singing Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" But what a rush. I felt alive again. For a moment.

Here I am singing "Stairway to Heaven" which we had to cancel halfway through because we were paying by the hour and this song takes like 20 minutes to sing.

The big bummer of the night was that I wanted to sing "Zombie" by the Cranberries. And they didn't have it! For shame! Now the song will be in my head until I find a karaoke place that has it. So I have listened to it like 5 times this morning, and going.

Me and my friend Jen who didn't really want to come but knew I needed the fix and came because she's a good friend.

These are the things that I am going to work on to get my life on the fast track to happy land.

1. It's National Novel Writing Month! and thanks to Nanowrimo.org I have an ass kicking to finish 175 pages this month for my book.

2. I have always wanted big buff arms. So I am going to start working on big buff arms. Push-ups, weights, I am going to have big muscular arms!

3. I am going to look for a Buddhist Temple to start going to. I was raised this weird mix of Buddhist/ Taoist/ Christian/ Atheist/ Pagan. But I think I need to start hitting up the Buddhist tip. My mother's side of the family has very strong roots in founding the Chinese Buddhist/Taoist community in SF. And I feel like I need to go and explore that again. (Instead of living this godless life I've been living for so long.)

4. My gig at Scripps in a week and a half! Doing excerpts of my show "Free?"

5. More singing karaoke. It's still in my blood. If anyone on the Westside is up for some Happy Hour Karaoke, hit me up!

Woo! See you soon!

I can take care of myself dammit! I am a grown ass woman!

Love,
Kristina