Love, Hate...what?

I love and hate California all the same. On one hand, the open space is appealing, and the relatively mild weathers make it much easier to buy clothing. On the other, high-crime; raising estate prices (I don't care what you say, estate agent commercial, now is NOT a good time to buy a house! Unless you're super rich); high taxes for the non-wealthy; a new generation of good-for-nothing egocentric kids that grew up privileged and does not know the value of hard work. I cannot bear to live facing these things everyday.

Doesn't help that so many of my friends are staying in L.A. after graduation...or that I also got into a local graduate school in the area. I'm so torn on where to go or what to do.
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Damn, I hate it when people pressure you into drinking alcohol. One or two requests is fine, but if a person keeps insisting after the second rejection, it just makes the entire outing lame and awkward. I don't drinking alcohol because I can't drink alcohol. It's Newton's Law in reverse: what goes down must come up. (I believe Calvin and Hobbes also said the same thing...). A few years back I thought I was just overreacting to alcohol (i.e.; it's all in my head), but apparently it's not; a couple of my relatives react poorly to alcohol so I'm assuming its something genetic. But no matter about that, I'll probably have to put up with this sort of social drinking pressure for the rest of my life.

And no one should ever, ever make physical contact with me beyond that of a hand shake. I could be over reacting at times about this, but I have my reasons and whilst I may not indulge them to anyone, I think it's still polite to maintain physical distance if I ask for it. Jeez, no one would ever attempt to make physical contact with me in Hong Kong...people in the U.S. has this weird super-informal way of greeting each other with hugs and kisses that took me several years to get used to...