man, i just got out of a 2-hour divisional meeting. *snores* at the end of it, they handed out awards to the engineers who performed beyond expectations. as usual, i didn't get one. *laughs* it's by choice, though. i'm ok with the fact that i'm not longer a "stellar" engineer. i do my job, no more, no less. i'm not going to bust my ass and have another nervous breakdown, like what happened to me years back.
what's the award, you ask? it's a coupon for a dinner, reimbursable for up to $150. man, times have changed. back at vivace, during the dot com boom, the employee award was $1000, after tax. not THAT's something that i would work for! and back then, an employee referral at V was $10K, after tax, too. holy shit!
today was a landmark of sorts. i completed my second new year's resolution of 2007. i got up early, got myself psyched up (with a cigarette, of course), and did it. it didn't go as planned, but i'm not terribly bummed out, which is a good thing. i finally got it off my chest, and now i can move on with my life. it's been hanging over my head for over nine months (since 9/23/06, in fact), so i'm glad it's finally over. yes, i am being vague on purpose. and thanks to alan and peter for the cheerleading.
one of the things i'm most amazed about is how my sphincter can tell the difference between gas and solid (or in my case these days, pseudo-solid). like, when i wake up in the morning, i know i have semi-liquid dumps right at the gate, yet i sometimes am able to squeeze out a fart without shitting all over myself. i find that to be absolutely fantabulous. how does it know? how does it do that? the ass never ceases to amaze me.
one of the best and worst things is to be romantically interested in a friend. if it works, it's one of the most wonderful things in the world, but if it doesn't, it can be torture. have you guys ever read the ladder theory? it sucks, to be put on the friends ladder, unable to make the crossing. but yeah, it's a tough situation. i've been put on the friends ladder before, and it took me a while for me to get over the heartache it caused. like i said, i listened to a lot of sarah mclachlan. that song "do what you have to do" is just great wallowing music. :)
remember when i said that i don't like mixing circles of friends? that was brought up because i was thinking about throwing another party at my place (and yes, of course, i would make jell-o shots). however, i would probably invite four groups of people: the bowling gang, the taiko peeps, my stanford crowd, and my online friends. however, i am fairly certain that those four groups of people would probably not mix at all (except for a few). ah, a host's nightmare! maybe some would say that i shouldn't give a shit and just have a good time myself, but i don't like seeing clumps of people scattered about, not mingling at all.
ok, time to go have my final work smoke of the day. man, these headaches are killing me. but anyways, have a GREAT weekend!
wassup, people. not much going on today. i'm still getting headaches, and it's really bothering me now. i just took some tylenol (washed down with some dr pepper), so i'm waiting for it to take effect.
i don't have any subject matter today, so let's talk about the chase. i love the chase. actually, let me change that. i both love and hate the chase. it's a tortuous road, a roller coaster of emotion, and i get off on the pain that it causes me. and in the end, if i get the girl, then i look back and smile and say, "damn, that was good." (and if i don't get the girl, then i wallow for a while, listen to a ton of sarah mclachlan, and it takes a while before i finally laugh about it all.)
some people (like mikeT) would totally disagree with me. but i like working, even struggling, for love. it makes the end result more gratifying, like i actually went through this gauntlet and achieved something, you know? take k1, for example. we both went through this 3-month courtship (from halloween night to the following mid-february) where we both liked each other to the night that we finally got together (thanks to some alcohol, hehe :). things got so pent up within our hearts that when we finally hooked up, all this passion burst into flames, thus starting our fiery relationship. (but then again, we were young and immature, and we just couldn't keep that fire going, and we fizzled out after over a year.)
but yeah, those 3 months nearly killed me. i went through so many mood swings, listened to so much nine inch nails ("something i can never have" was the song), and i called the prospect of her "the big thing." but when we finally got together, let me tell you, it was pretty fucking amazing. like fireworks exploding, cannons going off.
and then there was k2. the chase for her took about 2 months. but chasing her was a lot more laid back because unlike k1, who lived in my dorm (right down the hall in fact) and who i saw every day, k2 and i saw each other much less frequently. we would set up meetings every few nights at random locations to have cigarette breaks (i taught her how to smoke). but the twist here was that she was actually sort of dating this other guy, so that added some drama for me. in the end, i guess you could say that i "stole" her away from the other dude.
the main difference between the two girls was that i became good friends with k1 first, whereas k2 and i just sort of went out and did stuff together (i.e. smoke) right off the bat. and as you know, it can get pretty complicated when you decide you want to date a friend. there's that whole ambiguity of "does she want to be more than friends?" as well as "do i want to risk ruining the friendship?"
but anyways, now that i'm older, i'm not sure how i feel about the chase. in the past few years, i've dated here and there, and most of them have been one and outs. and in those cases, most of them have not involved any chase at all; i just asked the girl if the wanted to go out, and they said yes. and one major exception was k4, who i was gaga over, but who eventually turned out to be a bust after we went out a handful of times. i think that at in my stage in life, i'm just tired of it; i don't feel like i have time nor the patience to pursue someone for an extended period of life unless they're really worth it.
but yeah, something about the chase still seems magical...
so we went to cupertino village again for lunch today, and to try something different, we ate at HC dumpling. (i hadn't gone there in well over a year.) i dunno, it just wasn't good anymore. plus, HC is pretty expensive ($14 a head), so i decided that i had my fill of that place, and i probably won't be going there ever again.
i'm having constant headaches these days. well, it only hurts when i tic; the jarring of my skull is what sets off the pain. yuck. when this happens, it's hard to make it go away, because it's not like i can stop ticcing, you know? anyways, i'm not sure what i can do about it. maybe i'll just constantly take advil or something.
i googled K, an old friend from stanford, today and found his e-mail address. it was nice to hear from him again. he was my industrial music buddy back during freshman year, and he introduced me to a lot of bands that i never heard of. i will always remember the halloween party, where we dj'ed the music together from the third floor balcony. i'm glad to hear that he's doing well.
i'm annoyed when i have to take my morning dump at home. for whatever reason, not all the little turd pieces go down after the first flush, so i have to wait for that one to finish before i flush the second time. i wish i had the office toilets at home; they're powerful! sometimes, their sucking power is so strong that they pull the shit with such force, leaving skidmarks at the bottom of the bowl. damn, i want a toilet like that. (well, without the skidmarks, but with the sucking power.)
so you all know that there are some foods that a guy should eat to make his spunk taste better. (i think cucumbers is one of them.) but did you know that there are foods that a girl should eat so a blowjob doesn't hurt? for example, one time, my ex ate indian curry for dinner, and then we got a little frisky before she got a chance to brush her teeth. damn, that blowjob HURT! my schlonghead started burning from the curry residue in her mouth. it hurt so bad that she had to stop, and i had to go take a shower to wash off.
i wish i had formal training in sports, in both tennis and basketball. i learned how to play both pretty much on my own, so i lack fundamentals. like, i'm jealous of the new guy D, because he has this court awareness and really good dribbling skills. me, half the time on offense, i just stand there because i don't know where to go. sigh. sometimes, i actually get directed by my teammates as to where i should run to get open. ha!
ok, that's it for me today. my head hurts, and i just want to go home and lie down.
so i'm proud of my team. in our second game, we were outnumbered and outmatched, 4-on-5. they were playing man defense, PLUS they had a big guy hanging out in the middle. yet, we won! we shot well and got some good rebounds despite being a shorter team. in our next game, though, it was apparently that we shot our wad, because we lost badly. but still, i was happy with how we did in that second game.
my cold sore is healing along nicely. like i said before, the last time i got one, it turned into a staph infection. i aggravated it a lot because i would open my mouth very wide, splitting the scab. i still do that a lot with this one, but it's still able to heal. yay! no need to go to the dermatologist and get antibiotics.
leeya really dislikes mexican food. yet, when she saw an ad for a lobster quesadilla at el torito, she got all excited. so last night, we went there so she could try it out. funny, though, she got so loaded up on chips and salsa that she didn't even eat half of it. i've hated el torito the two times i've been there before, but this time, i got the baja soft tacos, and they weren't bad. i thought the steak was pretty good, but the weird thing was that there were shredded carrots in there. that was a little odd, but overall, it was ok.
ooh. hunger hit me just now. i skipped lunch today after basketball because i'm going to gombei with peter (he's back!) and alan. i was a bit alarmed because i wasn't feeling hungry at 3-4pm, which is the usual time when i get hungry if i don't have lunch. but now, i'm famished. gombei chicken, here i come!
do you guys like to mix friends from different circles? i don't. the reason is that i don't like seeing awkwardness between my friends. you know, you get two strangers together, and you introduced them, and they just stand there, not talking. ick. during my birthday celebration a few years back (at chevy's), i had two groups of friends there: my online friends, and my college friends. they sat at opposite ends of the long table, and there was barely any interaction between them. i sat in the middle, and i felt all weird and stuff. so that's why i don't mix. of course, i am grateful for friends of mine who have introduced me to their circles; after all, that is how i met the bowling gang in the first place, and i am forever indebted to mikeT for doing that.
i've been ticcing a little more recently, to my dismay. i think it's residual stress from last week's ECO from hell. i know i got it done pretty quickly, but stress usually takes a little while to show up in my tourette's, so of like an aftershock or something. as a result of my extra ticcing, i've been headaches. ugh.
ok, that's it for today. i'm starving, and all i can think about is food. gonna go have a smoke now. ciao!
so i went to southland again today (the third time in four days), on a quest to find dumplings. the lady told me that they don't serve them, and they only have frozen ones for takeout. fuckers! so we left and ate at A&J. i was so desperate for dumplings that ordered some steamed vegetarian ones, but they tasted nasty, not to mention that they took forever to cook. sigh. i think i'm going to go to e-noodle next time to get my dumpling fix. it's a shame, though, because southland had some tasty ones.
i'm wearing a lot of blue today: buttondown, t-shirt, boxers, shoes, and jeans. i think it's too much. it sort of reminds me of my early college days, where i had color themes and would wear one entire color all over. yeah, i used to dress crazy back then. and i had loud clothes, too. the worst was my yellow outfit. the gap had a primary color phase, and i bought a pair of bright yellow shorts and a matching yellow t-shirt. i used to strut around in that outfit pretending i was the sun. ha! i donated a lot of those clothes to goodwill, and i wonder if anybody was nuts enough to actually pick those up.
not much to report today. although, over the weekend, i think friday night, i had these horrible dreams of decapitations and stuff. also, i dreamt that i was going to be sacrificed and stuff. my dreams got so bad that i actually got out of bed early (like 9:50, even earlier than when i get out of bed on weekdays!). i had no clue what to do that early in the weekend, as i usually just roll out of bed and immediately call people for lunch. so i wound up watching music videos on VH1.
lately, i've been thinking about my past crushes and trying to remember how i got over them. when i get a crush on a girl, i get pretty into her, and it gets bordering obsessive. remember how i used to write their initial into the mirror after i take a steamy shower? anyways, not having the girl just fuels the fire, so i wonder how that fire gets eventually put out. hm. i just don't remember. i think a lot of it had to do with "out of sight, out of mind." like, once i moved away to a different school, or on to a different girl, the emotions just subsided. *shrug*
talking to my mom can get very uncomfortable. saturday night, i skype'd her for about 20 minutes. it was fine and all for a while, but then, she brought up the fact that she wanted me to someday convert to christianity. ugh. i know that my dad and i present a huge burden for her because we're not christian. i'm sure that if i were her, i'd be in the same position, because i'd hate for my beloved ones to be burning in hell and stuff. but still, the conversation with my mom got really aggravating when she started saying that i should go to church and believing in this and that. it was even worse last christmas break, when a friend of hers sat me down and told me to call upon jesus's name. what was i supposed to do? so i just shook my head and hoped she would stop talking.
ok, that's all i got for today. my head hurts.
friday night, i had dinner with paul at southland taste. actually, they remodeled and now call themselves "southland flavor cafe." they have a "grand opening" banner hanging in front, and the place was packed. i was disappointed to find out that they ran out of dumplings, so i got the usual 2nd choice: ground pork over rice, no sour greens.
saturday, i went over to mikeC's place and helped nelson disassemble his roommate jamie's bed frame. she was giving it to nelson for free, as she was getting a new (and expensive) temperpedic bed. i was impressed that the whole frame fit in nelson's audi. i think i'll make sure that my next car will have fold-down backseats so i can move stuff like that. anyways, it took about an hour to disassemble the bed frame and another hour to put it back together.
after that, we met up with mikeT in milpitas to have dinner. we tried going to darda seafood, but that place was completely packed, so we wound up eating at chez mayflower. then, we went over to mike's place and watched _bring it on: all or nothing_. i was getting into it, but then, the dvd broken down, so we missed the last 15-20 minutes or so. damn! i wanted to see the ending! after that, we hooked up nelson's small HD antenna and got mike's tv to receive some hi-def channels before heading home.
sunday, 7 of us met up for dim sum at the usual place, dynasty. afterwards, after going back home, i had such bad food coma that i passed out for 2.5 hours. i putzed around for the rest of the day, watching part of the college world series among other things. for dinner, we went back to southland flavor, and once again, they didn't have dumplings. so i got the beef noodle soup this time, and in introduced paul and leeya to this deep-fried bread with condensed milk (in sih juan). they really liked it, so i showed them where it was on the menu.
anyways, it was an easy-breezy weekend. these are the longest days of the year, and i'm really enjoying all this sunlight, but i'm sad that it's all downhill from here.
today's free company lunch was catered by buca di beppo. i used to like that place because the dishes were humongous. but aside from the sheer volume that the kitchen spewed out, i realized that the quality wasn't so good. blech. i mean, today's food was better than the usual stuff, but not by much. i know i shouldn't complain about free food, but still, i just wish it were better.
i've been really restless today. i can't seem to sit still in my cubicle for more than 10 minutes. i keep on getting up and walking around the office, looking for people to talk to. i guess it's been a busy workweek, and i just want to pass time and go home. it doesn't help that my tasks today involve push-button synthesis, which isn't very interactive. i just launch a job and wait for it to finish, so there's nothing to do in the meantime.
i want to see at least one movie this weekend. i haven't seen any of the summer blockbusters (pirates, shrek, spiderman, fantastic 4, etc.), and i feel like i'm getting out of touch with hollywood pop culture. i think the movie that i most want to see is _knocked up_ because i keep hearing that it's really funny. maybe i'll try to round up some people this weekend.
i was pleased during the last game of basketball yesterday. my team of 5 was definitely the underdogs, and we won 7-6. we were scrappy! i don't usually care if we win or lose, unlike some of the other over-competitive players that annoy me to death. but still, it's nice to win sometimes, i guess, and the thing is, i play such horrible defense that my team usually loses anyway. (yes, sometimes i am the big reason why my team loses.) and on top of that, we were playing zone defense against their man defense, and usually, man is much more stifling, so i'm proud of our team for being to score. yippee!
and no, i did not eat the cheese bread that came out of my nose. it was all soggy and shit from being in my nasal passageway. :) i just looked at it curiously (because it was so big, i was surprised) and flicked it underneath my plate, hoping that nobody saw me blow it out of my nostril.
here's an old story that some of you may not know about. one time, i ate two kimchee ramen bowls, then went to take a dump immediately afterwards. i felt sick from all the ramen, so i got this unstoppable urge to puke while sitting on the crapper. now, i couldn't get off the pot because i was taking a shit, so i wound up puking into my left hand. so with one hand full of puke, i had to carefully use the other hand to wipe my ass, stand up, and dump the gack into the toilet bowl. then, i had to again single-handedly button up my jeans (which was not easy) and then go wash my hands. ha!
i've noticed that a lot of my older t-shirts have one small hole in them. where do these holes come from? insects? hm.
ok, gotta go check on some synthesis results. have a great weekend folks!
i took the new guy D to play basketball today. he's good! at least, he has good instincts. his shot is a little rusty, but his handles are nice (between the legs and behind his back), and he made some sick no-look passes. i am jealous of people who've had formal training in basketball fundamentals. i started playing at my first company T, so no one really taught me how to play. i still can't dribble worth shit, especially with my right hand.
yesterday, at sweet tomatoes, i was eating some of that cheese bread, and i coughed. i felt something go up my esophagus, and for a while, i was breathing funny. i kept blowing my nose, and eventually, this soggy, cheesy nickel-sized piece of bread came out of my right nostril. damn! i'm surprised it could even fit through my nasal passageway. hehe.
half an hour ago, i went to the bathroom and squeezed my zit. all this white squiggly stuff came out, and yes, i did smell it (but did not eat it). it had a very distinct, oily odor. i rubbed it between my thumb and index finger, and it made a paste. interesting stuff. so now my zit is a little smaller. maybe i'll keep doing this until it'll go away, hopefully.
when you like someone, how much of it is emotional, and how much of it is empirical? i have a hard time separating the two. i think i'm very susceptible to love goggles. like, when i fall in love with someone, everything about them is wonderful and stuff. and when i finally fall out of love with them for whatever reason, i'm like, "what the hell did i see in them?" there are very few girls that i will always like. the rest of them (like cwg and k4, to name a few), i don't understand what i saw in them or what was so great about them. hm. that doesn't bode well for me in terms of the next girl i go out with, because if i ever stop liking her, then i'm going to be in a dead relationship from my stance.
i think a lot of it is that i get bored really easily. i mean, when you first get together with a girl, there's a lot of room for exploration. you get to learn about a whole other person, their habits, quirks, their past, etc. but once everything has been said, then what? once, i had lunch with k1 at the dorm dining hall, and we said nothing the entire time. that raised a huge red flag for me. we broke up a few months later. i think one of the secrets in a relationship is to keep building new memories by staying active. routines are killer, you know?
i'm having a hard time sleeping through the night. i keep waking up at 4am and finding it difficult to fall back asleep again. hm. maybe i'm sleeping too much. i remember back when i lived with jay at leghorn, i used to go to bed at 2am; i have no earthly idea what i was doing staying up so late. nowadays, i'm in bed by 10, watching sportscenter, and i get up about 12 hours later.
what causes cold sores? i have one on the left corner of my lips, and the last time i got one, it turned out to be a staph infection. i had to see my dermatologist and take antibiotics. ick.
*yawn* ok. it's 5pm. 20 minutes until my massage. can't wait!
today, 8 of us old T (my first company) people got together for lunch. it was a reunion of sorts. it was fun, seeing old familiar faces for the first time in years. my first company has a special place in my heart, especially because it was a small startup. we had some good times working together, and i definitely have a lot of fond memories. the only downside of it was that we went to sweet tomatoes, one of my most hated places to eat, along with its twin sister, fresh choice. (i'm just not a salad guy.)
so i finally polished off the ECO from hell by writing the command list. it felt good getting that off my back. well, tomorrow it'll be official when i review the design with my boss and some other engineers. it turned out to be not so bad, thanks to the fact that we only did an incremental synopsys compile on the MC netlist. if we had done a full compile from scratch, then it would have been utterly impossible. but the incremental compile kept all of the gates i was looking for intact, so the ECO was actually pretty straightforward. thank fucking goodness!
three of my friends have daughters named kaitlyn (or a variant thereof). it's a popular name! that name still reminds me of the girl from _the OC_. speaking of that show, i miss it. i know that there was no way it could have remained good with the kids going to college (see _dawson's creek_), but still, for some reason, i got really attached to that show, and i miss getting my weekly dose.
i really need to cut my toenails. it looks like i have french tips now, that's how long the white parts are. my left big toe's nail is clipping the front of my shoes when i walk, and i better cut them tonight before i play basketball tomorrow and accidentally get them ripped off when i stub my toes against someone else's foot or something.
a lot of my friends have gotten lasik eye surgery. i've thought about it some, but just don't want anybody to fuck with my corneas. sure, not having to wear glasses would be nice, because then i would be able to wear cool shades during the summer. i spent $450 on a pair of prescription oakley juliet's, but i hardly wear them because i'd have to carry around a case for my regular glasses when i go indoors. hm.
so tonight's another two hours of _so you think you can dance_. currently, my favorites are lauren, hok and dominic. although, i don't think the last two have a chance at winning because they're breakers. until they prove to me otherwise, i just don't think they have the versatility that other dancers have.
i've had this hard zit on my right cheek for many months now. it's gotten a lot smaller, and it's not as discolored as it used to be, but still, it's bothering me that it just won't go away. i asked my dermatologist what to do about it, and she told me to leave it alone. ?! am i just supposed to live with it? wtf? *grumbles* maybe i'll give it a good squeeze tonight when i get home and see what comes out.
ok, i'm gonna wrap this up and head out. i'm giddy that i finished the ECO. i definitely overhyped it up, and now that i'm done with it, i'm just so happy that i was able to conquer it so quickly. *huzzah*
i have some very good news. my ECO from hell looks like it's working! *huzzah* the preliminary version passed a test, and now, a modified version (new spec) looks like it's working as well. FUCKING BRILLIANT!!! (i'm talking about me, of course :) at first, it wasn't working, but i actually found a bug in the c-model instead, hehe. anyways, if this thing passes tonight, i'm going to be jumping up and down with joy.
i had an interesting dream between alarm clock snoozes this morning. basically, i had a bento lunch box where every object of food inside it signified all the types of evil out there. i guess it was sort of like pandora's box. but while i was away from it doing something, it opened on its own, and the food got away from me. i vaguely remember picking up a blackish spicy pepper, and that was the wicked witch of the east. weird, i know.
i've got a busy july and august coming up. july will be alan/ting's bachelor(ette) parties in vegas, and then my trip to taiwan. after i come back, the next weekend will be greg's wedding, and then, two weeks later, alan's wedding. that's a lot of stuff! of course, there is work as well, and the month of july will be the big push to tape out our next rev of one of our chips. man, i can't believe 2007 is almost half over. i haven't followed up on one of my new year's resolutions yet, either. gotta remind myself to do it soon, preferably before june's over.
so it looks like jay might wind up as a facial plastic surgeon in beverly hills. that's crazy. i wonder how many more times my salary he's going to make. it's going to be bank! i called him on his birthday this past sunday. he's got a big board exam coming up this weekend, and then it's full speed for planning alan's bachelor party. to tell you the truth, i'm not really looking forward to the stripper part of it. i think lap dances have grown old (and expensive). that is, unless the girl is really cute. i still remember that cute asian girl from sapphire, shannon. she made good conversation, too. it's always a bit weird talking to strippers because they act all sexy, and then they talk and it's like they're just normal people. it's a weird juxtaposition. but yeah, what i'm looking forward to the most in vegas is hanging out with my college buddies.
remember when i said i was down to 9 cigarettes a day? well, it's back up to around 10. i've been so stressed at work that i smoke one extra on my drive home from work. it's like a nice present for myself after i leave the office. i think now that the ECO is done, i'll be able to bring myself back to 9 soon.
my bowling gang friends are so tech savvy. like, they build file servers, download tv shows and stream them over their wireless networks to their tv's, stuff like that. i don't know how to do any of that. hell, i am probably the only one of my friends who still uses a VCR. haha! for my birthday last year, alan and ting bought me four blank tapes. who knew that stores still sell them?
sometimes i wonder what my ex's think about the fact that i have naked pictures of them. i mean, they're *somewhere* in my bedroom stashed in a box in the closet, and it's not like i look at them anymore, but should the fact that they exist on this planet cause them worry? i mean, the weight loss girl has naked prints of me, but that really doesn't register in my mind. i trust her, i guess, that she's not going to publish them to the world. and likewise, i'm going to keep my pictures of my ex's private as well.
ok. it's 6pm. time to go check up on my test.
so the day finally came. the dreaded ECO from hell was upon me, as i decided that today would be the day that i would tackle it. the problem was, i ran into a fatal issue, which was that i couldn't run formal verification between the two netlists. for some insane reason, the latency of the MC (module compiler) generated netlist changed, so there was no way to compare the two modified pieces of code. so i guess we're going to take a risk and run my changes against the C-model and go without using formal verification at all. *crossed fingers*
i really got into it, though. i could tell was stressed today because i requested a short lunch (45 minutes only!) with C and D. i took a lot of quick breaks, and what's more, i only looked at espn.com twice the entire day! now THAT means something. :) to give up an update, i'm pretty much done with a first draft of the gate changes. it turned out to be a minor ECO in terms of number of gates, but finding which gates to modify was the tough part, as this was an MC-generated netlist. yeah.
i had this crazy dream on saturday night. basically, we found this beached whale (or large fish or something), and we cut it open, and there were these three entities living inside of the fat. they got out, and they turned out to be these deformed women (one of them had toes on her waist, ick). but then, they got out and stood up, and they transformed into hot oakland athletics cheerleaders! (do they even have cheerleaders on baseball teams?) anyways, i woke up, and i was like, "huh?"
one cool thing i really liked about mike and christi's house was that all the rooms were painted different colors. for example, there was one room that was a light lavender. now, if you told me that earlier, i would have thought that it would be kind of girly or something, but it actually turned out quite well. i'm a pretty conservative kind of guy as far as white walls vs. colored walls are concerned, but now that i've seen a couple of houses with painted walls, i'd definitely consider painting rooms when i finally buy a house.
at borders on saturday night, i saw a wedding magazine with jordana brewster on the cover. she's really pretty! i had seen her movie trailers before, (i forget which movies) and never thought much of her, but yeah, she looked downright beautiful. hm. maybe i should check out some of her movies from now on.
ok, i'm out of steam. my brain's a little fried right now, and i'll try to write more tomorrow. ciao!
friday, some of us met up at cafe baklava on castro street, this turkish/mediterranean place. i never know what to order, or rather, i always order the wrong thing. i should just get the kabobs. instead, i got this chicken stew, which was decent, but not what i expected. afterwards, we met up with some other friends at tap ex.
saturday, we had lunch at king noodle. i'm not fond of that place anymore; the food crappy (low quality beef and wontons), although i do like their hot sauce. afterwards, i went back home and took a nap. it was damn hot! i heard it hit the 90's inland. (or maybe that was sunday, i'm not sure.) for dinner, we went to vung tau, this vietnamese place in milpitas. paul recommended the combo #1, and it was pretty tasty. afterwards, we hung out at borders books for a while.
sunday, i met up with john and grace at dynasty. it was CRAZY there. they set up chairs for all the people who were waiting, and i was told that the wait for the three of us was an hour and 30 minutes. so we bailed and went to wahoo's fish tacos instead. after that, i went home and watched the u.s. open. i don't usually watch golf, and in fact, it put me to sleep for a while. but i did wake up to watch tiger woods and jim furyk lose by a stroke to angel cabrera. pretty exciting stuff.
for dinner, we went over to mikeT's new house. he and christi have very nice digs, i must say. there was way too much food, although it was tasty. afterwards, we watched this episode of a sci-fi channel miniseries called _the lost room_. i though it was very interesting and engrossing, and although i'll probably never watch the final two episodes. cool plot, though, and i was thoroughly enjoying it.
and that was the end to my weekend. it was too short, of course, as always.
greetings! i'm so fucking glad it's friday. it's been a busy workweek for me. the first two days were spent debugging this dumb block that i didn't know anything about, and then i spent the next few days working on some modifications on this new algorithm that the architect handed down. luckily, though, it passed today with no extra changes on my end. bug-free code on the first try! *flex* yes, i am the man, haha.
so i had another night of insomnia last night. yeah, that's two nights in a row. i got up at like 4:30am to take my xanax to knock myself out. so it's either stress or the heat, i've decided. it's been really hot in the bay area the last two days, and since my bedroom is on the second floor, it gets quite toasty in there when i go to bed. it sucks. the next place i live in better have central AC. either that, or i'm going to have to buy one of those portable air conditioning units. how much do those things cost?
so my boss comes back next monday. i hope he can offline some of my tasks, so i can concentrate on the ECO from hell. right now, i've been looking at it a few minutes at a time. to tell you the truth, i'm scared to do it, so i've been putting it off. yes, i've become a wussy engineer. the last time i was scared to do a work task, i had to "commit to the moment," so i went out to the north face, bought a $300 sleeping bag, and spent the night at the office. i will never forget that day/night. the place ran out of coke, so crashed at 4am. that piece of code was the hardest thing i've ever had to do as a chip designer, and it took months to verify it. i think this ECO will be the second hardest thing ever, and i have to finish it by next friday. yes, next week will be a very tough week.
so D has now joined our lunch posse. so now we have four people. the problem is that the other three all drive coupes, and i'm the only one with a 4-door car. that means that i will be the one most likely to drive us all to lunch these days, unless i want to squeeze into the backseat in their cars. ah, young people and their 2-doors. today, we tried the new guang-dong place in cupertino village. i got the "three delight" dumplings, and they were only so-so. i think i would have liked it had they had hot sauce. instead, i just had a little bit of soy sauce, so the dumplings were sort of bland. southland's taste better, and they're cheaper, too.
so the NBA season is over. man, the cavs got swept, poor things. i gotta hand it to the spurs, they played really well, and they definitely deserved to win. i'm happy for michael finley, but the rest of them have won too much. looking forward to next season, i just hope the mavs don't have to face the warriors again in the playoffs, that's all. but yeah, now there's no interesting sports to watch; it's a wasteland of baseball from here on out until football starts up again.
so i was watching the results show of _so you think you can dance_, and lauren didn't look so hot. it's her hair. it's amazing what a hairstyle can do for your looks. the wrong one can make you extra-fugly, and the right one can make you look extra spicy. i feel bad for the two that got voted off, though; they're contemporary dancers that didn't get a chance to show off what they could do. they got stuck with doing an argentine tango in their first dance, and they got subsequently voted off because of it. i bet if they had gotten to do a number choreographed by mia michaels, they would have stayed on the show. that's too bad.
i can't seem to wear a bandana right. (yes, i know, this is random.) i've tried before, but i think my forehead is at a weird angle or something. i always thought it was a cool look, and i own like three bandanas, but every time i put one on, it just looks really odd on my head. maybe i need someone to show me how to tie it right or something.
hehe. i just noticed that almost every paragraph in this entry started off with "so." and i'm trying to remember if that's how i talk in real life when i introduce new subjects. *shrug* ok, anyways, i'm off to have my 5pm smoke. have a great weekend everyone!
basketball was good today. i resisted temptation to be lazy, and i played for the second time this week. i shot 75%! haha, that meant that i only attempted four shots, and made three of them. the one i missed was a bunny layup; i gotta remember to use the glass next time. i guess i was just too excited to have such an open layup. and what's weird is that this week, i didn't get headaches, and i'm happy about that. i really needed the exercise because i've been stressed, and i think i'm feeling a lot better now. of course, the ECO from hell is still waiting, and i've started to examining the code. yeah, it's gonna be a doozy!
speaking of stress, though, i didn't sleep very well last night. i had insomnia again. i had very restless sleep all throughout the night, waking up often and just laying there, unable to get prolonged periods of shuteye. finally, i got up at 3-4am and took some xanax to knock myself out. it was tough getting out of bed this morning. yeah, it must have been the stress. being a touretter and all, i'm very watchful of my daily rhythms, and i notice the slightest perturbations of my stress level.
1, 4, 14, 23, 25, 36, 8, 6. bloom tracking.
so a friend of mine found jay's plastic surgery advertisement on craigslist. basically, he's offering 50% off on a number of various cosmetic procedures that he's offering. i wonder if he's gotten any responses. i know jay's going to be a great surgeon and all, but i don't know if i'd trust a relative newcomer to such an important operation. how do new doctors get business in the beginning? anyways, i wonder if jay's decided where he's going to set up shop. there was word that he might land in LA, which would be cool because that would mean that i would be more likely to visit him.
i got a letter from my credit card company the other day. they wanted me to call them immediately because of some suspicious charges. i got worried, so i gave them a ring. it turned out that two of my purchases raised a red flag: one was a large purchase when i bought my herbal supplements in bulk (that was like $700 for a 4-month supply), and the other was my annual web hosting renewal. so *phew* it was a relief, but i was definitely glad that they're monitoring my credit card activity. fyi, yes, i do go through my statement every month to make sure that there are no weird transactions.
to do this ECO from hell, i need a week of supreme focus. you know, like how they treat a pitcher who's throwing a no-hitter. have you seen that before? it's pretty funny, actually. when a pitcher's throwing a perfect game or a no-hitter, the rest of the team totally avoids him when he's in the dugout. he's off alone at one end, and nobody talks to him at all. it's an interesting sight. but yeah, i get so distracted at work, with e-mails (both work and personal), and i get so many interrupts with this and that task.
ok, i gotta go. time for a smoke break, and i think i'm gonna take off early after working a little bit more.
man, i am beat today. i can tell my stress level is going up because i feel this nervous energy coursing through me. at lunch, i was fidgeting the whole time, and i had to go have a smoke after i ordered my food to calm myself down. i was able to finish my coding stuff today, so tomorrow i'll start tackling the ECO from hell. in the meantime, i've got a gazillion little things that people are asking me to do. i can't multitask! arrrgh.
so i spoke too soon about my solid dumps. they've become liquid and soft again. like this morning, after i got out of bed, the moment i relaxed my nether-regions to take a leak, some turds came out as well. does that happen to you? like, you can't control which hole opens or closes, and they both let loose? maybe i need to toughen up my kegel muscles by doing some exercises. but sometimes, when i'm trying to take a leak at a urinal, i can feel some shit come out, and i have to zip up and hurry to a stall before i take a dump in my pants. ha!
i am very grateful that milk now comes with those plastic spouts. it keeps it fresh much longer than the old cardboard spouts. yesterday, (june 12th), milk that was supposed to be sold by june 2nd was still fresh. this is good because i go through my milk pretty slowly, because i don't eat cereal every day. on a similar note, have you ever bought "extra rich" milk? i don't know if they still sell that, especially with more health conscious consumers these days. it tastes good, like it says, very rich. of course, it goes bad in like 4 days or something ridiculous like that. but yeah, it's good. and japanese milk tastes good, too. there's something about those japanese cows, i tell you. they've got flavor!
i'm not really looking forward to watching a full two hours of _so you think you can dance_ tonight. that's a long time! the only thing i'm interested in seeing is cool hip hop dance routines and lauren gottlieb. unfortunately, the picture they have of her on the offical site is a really bad one. trust me, she's cuter than that. i just hope she doesn't get paired up with a guy who sucks and winds up being in jeopardy of getting voted off.
i'm getting sick of yuk ge jang. i had it today at corner place. maybe it was the stress, but i just couldn't enjoy it. man, work is really starting to bother me, can you tell? i'm starting to think about it while i'm outside the office, and that is a really bad sign. when i first started working, i took it home with me all the time. i dreamt about it, thought about it in the shower, etc. it was really bad. i mean, i worked hard and did a great job and made a reputation for myself as being a really good engineer, but in the end, i paid a dear price for it when my tourette's got really bad, and i had a nervous breakdown. it's not worth it, letting your job rule you world.
we have a new hire, D. he's from cal, and he's 22 years old. young blood! he seems cool, and he plays basketball, so tomorrow i'm going to take him and introduce him to the bball guys. it's funny. even though i'm almost a decade older than him, i still associate myself with the likes of him and the younger crowd at the company. when his boss A was introducing him to people yesterday, A told him about me, "don't take this guy lightly, even though he dresses like THIS, he's a senior guy." haha! yeah, i still wear jeans and a t-shirt, even though all the other older guys wear nice pants and buttondowns and the like.
ok, i'm bushed. gonna head out soon.
man, today has been a totally frustrating day of debugging. i knew it would be tough when my day started, but i put on my engineering hat and tackled it anyway. like i said, i'm an engineer, and we're supposed to figure stuff out, even if we don't have much initial information to go on. so i dug into the code, but it's just rough when you're not familiar with the design (for me, i don't even know what the block does). i need help!
for the first time in a year and a half, i played basketball on a tuesday (my lunch buddies all bailed on me). i sank a few jumpers, which felt good, but i was tired after only two games. for whatever reason, though, i didn't get a headache today. i didn't do anything different in terms of hydration, so i wonder what was different. anyways, i'm thankful that my head isn't throbbing right now. yay!
so someone from my generation in my family is finally getting married. my younger cousin, S, is getting hitched to her college boyfriend. if i go, that'll be six weddings this year. her wedding ceremony is in LA on december 30th. ugh. more travelling. i've actually met her fiance, and he seems to be a nice guy. my cousin also went to stanford, although we never overlapped while we were at school. people knew her as "dardy's cousin," which i hope wasn't a detriment, hehe. i never knew that people actually knew me, though. i guess the only thing that i could possibly be famous for was dating k2, as she was one of those "inner circle" asian girls.
so last night, i braved the traffic (i wasn't too bad) and drove to san mateo to meet up with jeremy and alan. we went to rainbow pizza, and my verdict is: it's skippable. the pizza is definitely hearty, and i could only scarf down two slices. the three of us got the large, and there were 12 slices (i took home 4 of them) total. i didn't think it tasted particularly good or anything, so i don't understand what was so good about it after reading all those positive reviews on yelp.
back to the subject of work: it's going to be a tough few weeks for me. i really hope the increased stress level doesn't get to me. like i've said before, my tourette's is a lot better now, but the last time i was like this, an increased workload (and the resulting stress) really did a number on me. i hope i doesn't happen again. *knocks on wood* i'm a walking barometer of stress, and it's all reflected in my tics.
i haven't taken a dump today. no urge whatsoever, even during my smokes. did you know that smoking incites your bowels to move? in japan, a lot of those squat toilets have ashtrays next to them. i've never personally had a cigarette while taking a dump, though. i suppose if i were constipated, it would help. i remember this one time when i was totally backed up (we were eating at korea house), and my stomach had all this pressure in it that it hurt. so i got up and went outside for a smoke, and i let out this huge fart. ah, that felt so good.
ok, i need to get out of here. this afternoon of debugging was completely baffling, and i just want to go home and lie down.
man, it happened again. i had a liquid dump after lunch, and the toilet bowl was filled with blood. what the fuck is happening? i wonder if i have a massive anal fissure or something. i'm getting worried. if this happens again, i'm going to get a doctor's appointment or something.
so we went to midori today for lunch. nothing special there. we took a coworker who was visiting from our israel site. on the way back, the song "breakfast at tiffany's" was on, and he started singing along. wow! i had no idea that song was big in israel; i was pleasantly surprised, since the band, deep blue something, scored a minor hit with that song.
on saturday, i pulled out a very old t-shirt from my stack and wore it. the last time i put that on must have been like at least 7 years ago. a few minutes later, while i was having a smoke outside my house, i noticed a long brown hair sticking to my chest. i pulled it off, and i figured it must have been k2's hair. so i reminisced a bit, and i thought about keeping it, but then i thought it was silly to keep a hair for sentimental reasons, so i just dropped it on the cement. farewell, memories!
i'm thinking about buying an electric piano. i don't know where i would put it, though, because space in my place is a little limited, but i do miss playing piano. i need to figure out where i stashed all of my music books. i was at nelson's place a few weeks ago, and he bought an electric piano from jamie a while back. i sat there, and i was completely unable to remember any of the pieces that i had memorized a few years ago. it was really frustrating and sad. i used to be able to play chopin's "revolutionary etude" in the dark! ah, those were the days. all those years of piano lessons, and nothing to show for it. i even had a dream this morning where i bought a piano for $1. it must be on my mind.
work is completely frustrating. not only do i have the eco from hell to do, but i also have to debug these tests for blocks that i didn't design. right now, i'm working on this i2c test, and the block seems to be dead. ?! i have no idea what to do now, and it's completely baffling. sometimes i really hate my job. but i know it's an engineer's mantra to "figure things out" and stuff like that, so i guess that's what i'm just going to have to do. i just hope everything works out in the end; it's the process that's just painful sometimes.
so i'm going to miss the followup episode to last night's _scrubs_ on WGN. the episode left off when JD asked out a girl without seeing her face. i want to see what she looks like! drat. (i'll be having dinner with jeremy and alan up in san mateo tonight.) would you ever do that, i.e. ask out somebody before seeing their face? i would never do that. no matter how cool their personality is or how nice their voice sounds or whatever, the face is totally important. i've been matched with so many girls on eharmony, which touts is personality matching ability as #1, but every time, i demand to see a picture of the girl. and almost every time, when i see her face, i'm like WOAH. (and that's not a good "woah".)
ok. i gotta go. need to go look up how to get to rainbow pizza in san mateo. i hope traffic isn't too bad.
didn't do a whole lot this weekend except eat and rest.
friday night, paul, mikeC and i went to barn thai. they seem to have dropped their prices, as their jun pad poo is only $6.25 now. yay! after dinner, we shopped at fry's, and then i hung around a bit before going home early and sleeping.
i can't seem to sleep in anymore, and by 10:30am on saturday, i was up. i watched a few music videos (something i used to do a lot as a kid), and then i called some people up for lunch. we went to pho nam, and instead of my usual #2 (without tripe and cilantro), i got a rice plate instead. then, we headed back to paul's place, and watched _stealth_. i can't decide whether jessical biel is attractive or not.
then, i went home and took a brief nap before meeting up for dinner at st. john's. nelson's and the "beg for mercy" burger is like a moth to a flame; he keeps getting it, but he keeps getting burned by it. i got it too, and it gave me flaming spicy shits the next day. after dinner, we went to fry's (paul returned some stuff) until they closed. i went home, called my parents in taiwan (using skype), and went to bed.
sunday, i met up with benboy at thai basil for lunch. then, i met up with nelson, leeya and paul at the HOA pool at rivermark, where nelson and leeya went swimming. paul and i roamed around rivermark doing various errands (ATM, renting videos, grabbing some food at mcdonald's, getting some pearl milk tea) before heading back to the pool. then, we picked up mikeC, and we had dinner at pho kim long, where three of us got the tasty #24. i could barely finish mine, even though i got the small size, because of the pearl tea and cheeseburger i had at the pool. after that, i just went home and watched game 2 of the NBA finals. it was a very disappointing game, as the cavs are just not competitive against the obviously more superior spurs. sigh.
hey people. i am dreading one of my work assignments. i have to an EXTREMELY hard ECO on a gate-level netlist. it's generated by MC (module compiler, this tool by synopsys), and it's basically a sea of a few thousand gates, and i have no fucking clue what's what (it's all arithmetic). and i don't know where to begin. eco's in general are tough, and i hate doing them, but this one is going to be a doozy, and that's a HUGE understatement. this might be one of the toughest things i'll have to do in my work career, ever.
it's been a slow day. i just got out of an hour-long meeting, and i had to take a leak during the whole thing. it felt good (almost orgasmically good) to finally piss, but i noticed a strange odor as i drained my bladder. i smelled sort of like black pepper. odd, huh?
oh, speaking of excreting stuff, i took a liquid dump after lunch today. sigh. i think it was the milk i drank last night with the bowl of cereal i had for dinner. but that's not the main surprise. what surprised me was that afterwards, i noticed that the toilet bowl was full of RED liquid. uh oh. am i bleeding out or something? what's with all the blood gathering up in my bowels? should i be worried?
i wet my pants today. no, i didn't piss all over myself, although it certainly looked like it. but i was holding a can of dr pepper in my hands, and i had a monstrous tic. i dropped the can, and it turned completely upside down. half of it spilled out all over my jeans. ick. i hate my tics. after wiping my crotch off, i had to go sit outside in the sun for a few minutes to dry it further. and even then, it was uncomfortable, having wet jeans dry against my legs and my genitals. yuck.
so is anybody watching _so you think you can dance_? i think lauren gottlieb is really cute. i'd do her. she's the one who helped out the choreographer last season, and she finally became old enough to audition for this year's show. i think that means she finally turned 18, so yeah, she's a little young for me, haha. but yeah, i think she's purty. she's got cheeks! and really neat eyebrows.
for the past week or so, i've been waking up every morning at 6am. not sure why. but it's nice to know (on weekdays) that i can get another four hours of sleep, so i just happily roll over and fall back into my happy slumber. lately, though, i've been getting bored in bed around 9:30 or so. by then, i've gotten enough sleep, but i have nothing to do, so i just lay there, snuggling in my blankets and stuff.
re: dehydration after basketball. yesterday, when i played, i had a bottle of gatorade beforehand, and during the course of my two games, i had another. is that not enough liquid? i know there are sugars in gatorade, but i thought the drink is supposed to be good for athletes. hm. maybe next time, i'll just have water.
*yawn* i'm ready to go home. i've been working later than usual this past week. anyways, have a great weekend folks!
so sometime last night, i got my 500,000th hit. i know that it's vastly inflated because of google searches from pervs and stuff, but still, it's a landmark of sorts. and to you faithful readers (including the haters, hehe), thanks! and as always, i welcome comments, both good and bad. lurkers, please introduce yourselves! :)
i played basketball today for the first time in about two weeks. i played two full-court games to 11, and it felt good, although as always, i got a headache afterwards. i swished my first jumper, but missed on the subsequent ones. we played man defense in the second game, and my guy drove past me the first time and made an easy layup, but i locked him down afterwards, so i felt good about my defense after that. i hate playing man (as opposed to zone)! it's so tiring, but i guess i got a good workout chasing him around the court.
afterwards, i tried out this vietnamese deli down the street. $2.75 for a sandwich was pretty cheap, and it tasted decent. while i was eating it, i coughed as i was swallowing, and the food went up my nose. hehe. so i blew my nose a few times, and some bread come out of my left nostril. i hate it when that happens! good thing it wasn't spicy; that hurts! and no, i didn't eat the bread after it came out of my nose, and yes, i was pretty tempted to do so.
lately, i've been having pretty late dinners, late enough that i take my sleeping medication (seroquel) beforehand. and eating enhances the absorption of that drug, so i get really drowsy after my meals. it makes me really dull, socially speaking. last night, i met up with some taiko alums (kara was in town), and we ate at king of krung. i barely talked during the entire meal, and it got to the point where hiroshi asked me if i was ok. my head was drooped down, and i just sat there, like i was about to pass out. hm. the reason why i do this is because seroquel takes a while to take effect, and i don't want to take it late at night and wait a long time before i fall asleep (remember my insomnia of a few nights ago).
i have a huge zit on my right ass cheek. during the day yesterday, i was sitting all lopsided because it was irritating me. i popped it last night while i was in bed, and it HURT. i can tell a lot of stuff oozed out, because my finger was all wet and stuff. why do we get ass zits? i never thought of the ass as a particularly oily part of the body. in fact, mine is kind of dry, especially on the hamstring side. hm.
oh, i remembered some details about that vagina comedian from tuesday night. one thing she talked about was inserting a peewee herman figurine into her twat and getting her juices all over it. and when it dried out, it was all white and flaky. ok, i think this may be too much information for a lot of people (while i appreciate it). but is this funny in any way? i don't think so. yeah, she was a weird girl. and her delivery was just odd, too; she said it in a kind of shy, mousy way, but her subject matter was all bold and shocking. it was a clashing juxtaposition.
ok, my head hurts. i've gotta figure out a way to not get headaches every time i play basketball. bye!
man, i just spent the last hour and a half doing some crazy scripting work. i only used sed, i don't know awk or perl or anything, so it was pretty basic, but still, very intense stuff. i had to fix over 100 tests at once, so there was fucking way i was going to do them by hand. so a coworker came up with a clever way of doing it, and once he showed me how (by writing a cool perl script), i used it on my own. i messed up once, and had to retrace my steps, but was finally able to fix all the tests. cool stuff! i remember when i first learned how to use sed and regular expressions; it was during an internship in high school, at DSC in texas. i thought regexp's were the coolest thing, hehe.
so last night, i joined paul, leeya and nelson for a standup comedy contest. we went to this improv place in downtown san jose, where eleven comedians had six minutes each to deliver a standup routine. there were only two that were completely dumb: the host, and this one weird girl who kept on talking about her vadge. normally, i like vaginas, but she has this weird, shy delivery; i can't describe it right, but anyways, it was really bad. afterwards, we were really hungry (they didn't serve food on tuesday nights), so we went to denny's afterwards, where three of us got the extreme grand slam for only $5.99.
for some reason, even though i had lunch really late last night, i woke up starving. C and i wound up having lunch at IHOP, where i got the country fried steak, scramble eggs, hash browns, and toast (i didn't touch the toast). even though it was more expensive, i thought denny's was better tasting. maybe denny's uses more grease or something. i had major food coma afterwards, and i conked out in my cubicle afterwards.
i'm having more solid shit these days. it's cool. i can feel the dumps coming out of my ass now, especially in the beginning when my asshole expands to let the turd peek out. the stools don't just slither out of my sphincter anymore, and i think the last time i had diarrhea was at alan's house a few weeks ago. yay! i'm not sure what's changed. maybe it's because i'm eating more? i'm gaining weight, too, like i've said before. i weighed myself on my psych's digital scale today, and with clothes on, i'm 166.6 pounds.
so i got into bed at midnight last night, and when i turned on espn, it was the spelling bee. ugh. i can't fall asleep to the spelling bee! so i actually had to turn the tv on to fox sports, where they had _the final score_ program on. i normally dislike fox sports shows. there's something about their production values that i find to be lower than espn's. but luckily, i was able to fall asleep just fine, and i was relieved especially since i had that terrible insomnia from the night before.
i'm getting a lot of solid bloody boogers lately. not sure why. i'm an avid nosepicker, because i like unobstructed airways. but yeah, lately, i've been picking out a lot of red ones. hm.
i had a dream that i totally made out with a girl, and then i was arguing with someone that it wasn't a dream. sort of recursive, isn't it? that i was dreaming that something wasn't a dream? i woke up in the middle of it, and i started arguing with myself that it really did happen. so i went through the list of all the girls i know, and for each one, i was like, "nope, i didn't make out with her." the argument continued after i fell asleep, and it was only after i got out of bed that i realized, to my disappointment, that in fact, i didn't kiss anyone.
ok. i'm gonna take a break now. even though i didn't work that much today, it was a hectic afternoon. *phew*
man, i am fucking tired today. even though i took xanax and seroquel last night, i had a bad bout of insomnia. i was in bed for four hours at least, unable to sleep. i finally fell asleep around 2:30am or so. a couple of times before that, i felt that fading feeling, but i was so conscious of it that it went away. i even had a baseball game turned on, and those usually put me to sleep in an instant. hm. not sure what happened last night. but anyways, i was really groggy when i woke up this morning. i have an early appointment with my psych tomorrow, so i hope it doesn't happen to me again tonight.
ann, the cheap dim sum place is called "bamboo garden," and it's in sunnyvale town and country, near thai basil and the underground parking lot. do a yahoo yellow pages search of "bamboo garden restaurant," because the name of the restaurant itself turns up a bunch of home garden businesses. don't get to hyped up about the food; it's only ok. remember, it's just cheap! :)
so it's all set. my dad booked me a business class trip on united to taiwan and back. i've heard horror stories about united being cramped and stuff, but i hope business class is better. it's on a 777 plane, which people have recommended. we'll see if the flight kills me or not. the flight there comes in at just under 13 hours. holy shit. i hope i can drug myself enough to fall asleep or something. do they have personalized tv's on united? maybe i'll just watch a ton of movies or something.
we went to pad thai for lunch today (in the 500 building on lawrence). i really don't like that place. i got the crab fried rice, and even though they gave me a lot, it had no taste. i ended up eating half of it and taking the rest to go. there was hardly any crab, for what it was, it was expensive ($8.95). i ate the rest of it just now, and yeah, it sucks. i like crab, and the last time i went there, i got the crab pad thai, and it sucked as well. the next time, i'm going to veto it when J or C suggest it.
so the audit defense guy turned in my amended return to the IRS. it's gonna take like 8-10 weeks for the IRS to respond. by his estimates, i owe something like $150 or something. that's such a relief, and a far cry from the $5K that the IRS originally wanted me to pay them. *phew* this audit defense thing rocks! i'm gonna get it every year from now on; it saved me a whole lot of trouble, and a whole lot of money.
so last night, i met up with paul and leeya and company for dinner at shinbala, this taiwanese restaurant (southland is closed for remodelling). he told me that multiple women told him that i was looking down their dresses at his wedding. i am embarrassed. *turns red* hehe. i do admit that i adore cleavage, after all, i LOVE boobs. they're such wonderful things. but i gotta be more subtle about doing it. i mean, i'm tall, so i get some great views, but i need to stop staring when i see a good set. (remember that _seinfeld_ episode with denise richards?) yup. the thing is, though, i don't recall doing it that much at his wedding, and i don't even remember that many girls who were wearing cleavage-revealing dresses. i guess i was too drunk? *shrug*
/an hour later/
i just got out of a meeting. it's 6 now, and i skipped my 5pm smoke. i'm dying fof a cigarette, and besides, i've lost my train of thought. see ya!
so i gave my dad the dates of when i will be headed back to taiwan. it'll be around the end of july/beginning of august time frame. it's gonna be fucking hot there. originally, i wanted to go back there beginning of july, but that collided with alan's bachelor party in vegas.
i'm both excited and nervous about this trip. i'm excited, because, of course, i'm happy to see my family. my brother is going to be there, too, so my whole family will be together, which is a rare occasion. but man, the trip is going to kill me. the long flight(s) is tough on me, especially with my tourette's; i've requested that my dad get me a business class ticket, which costs like three times more money, but i don't care. i don't want to worry about freaking people out and stuff, and i want to have a chance (however small) of being able to sleep on the plane. what i'm going to do is drug myself up (with seroquel and xanax) before the flight and see if that will help me sleep. the last time i flew back from taiwan, they upgraded me to first class, and the seats folded all the way down, and i was actually able to get some sleep for the first time.
i had a solid dump today. it wasn't a log, but more like a medium-sized fragment. i could actually *feel* it expanding my sphincter as it came out, unlike all the squiggles that i've been having that just shoot out without any sensation. it felt good. after looking back at the bowl, i estimated it to be just under an inch in diameter. cool! i wonder what caused it. i certainly miss my old dumps of yore.
so i was supposed to have a "guys' night out" with the stanford buds today, but it got cancelled because jack and alan were busy with work. bummer. i was really looking forward to it. we were going to go to this place in san mateo called "rainbow pizza." it's a greek place, so they also serve gyros and what not. apparently, their pizza is artery-clogging because it has so much cheese. it's well-rated on yelp, and i was totally excited about trying it. i love cheese! shucks. well, we've rescheduled for later, so i'm still hoping we try it out sometime soon.
congrats to lebron james and the cleveland cavaliers for winning the eastern conference! even though i'm west-coast biased, i am totally rooting for the cavs now to win it all. down with the spurs! the first thing i did when i got home from paul and leeya's wedding was log on espn.com and check the score. and when i saw lebron's face on the front page, i knew that the cavs won the series. awesome. i didn't want another spurs/pistons rematch (snoozefest). so i am eagerly awaiting thursday night when the nba finals kick off.
so i've seen a few trailers for the new _fantastic 4_ movie, and i have to admit, as hot as jessica alba is, blonde hair just doesn't work on her. i think it's her dark skin tone that clashes with her new hair color. yuck. it looks really fake! and that's too bad, because i really like jessica. i'd do her in a second.
so in the bathroom downstairs, there's one stall that's for the handicapped, and it's extra-large. that one stall has a really wide crack between the door and the wall, and when you go to check if it's locked, you can't help but look in the crack. and if someone's in there, you get a view of their full monty sitting on thh toilet. it's not a pretty sight, especially if the dude's got their pants all the way down at their ankles. naked crotch shot! and by the way, why do people drop their pants all the way to the floor? doesn't it get drafty? i drop my pants just far enough (mid-thigh) that it doesn't get in the way of my shit dropping into the toilet. *ponder*
ok. i'm off. time for a smoke!
yup. i spent $9 this weekend. total.
friday, i left work early (finished my stuff at work already) and joined paul, leeya and company for their wedding rehearsal at hotel valencia. things went relatively smoothly, and then he invited me to the rehearsal dinner at this vietnamese restaurant (forgot the name) in milpitas. the food was ok, and i had high hopes for this one chicken dish, but it was completely loaded with ginger (which i hate). nelson prodded me on to try the soup, and it was really strange-tasting. interesting stuff.
after that, we went back to paul's place to help more with wedding preparations. my main task was to finish his mini-keg of heineken beer. he was planning on tying it to the back of his car after the wedding, but it turned out that he didn't do it. but anyways, i had like five glasses of beer (and as you know, i don't really like beer), but i took it like a man and got a slight buzz from it. i went home around 11:30 or so, called my parents, and then went to bed.
i set the alarm for 9am, and i got up and tried on my "fat" suit. i say "fat" because i got this suit when i weight 200 pounds. the waist is like a 36, and i'm not even a 32 right now. it turns out that i could slip on the pants even they they were buttoned on, (ha!) so yeah, they were a little big. i got to the hotel just past 10. i mingled a bit, and the ceremony started a little past 11. the weather was all cloud and cold when i woke up, and i was like, "shit," but what do you know, the clouds burned off just before the wedding, and it was sunny and hot and beautiful.
the wedding ceremony was short and sweet, and the bride was stunning and beautiful. paul must have been nervous, because during the ring part, he picked up his ring instead of leeya's, and he picked up leeya's right hand instead of her left. hehe. they had this "voss" water from norway, which apparently is $3 a bottle, and it came in a cool, tall glass cannister. i meant to save it, but i forgot to bring it home. damn!
after the ceremony, some of us stuck around for a bit, and then had lunch at wahoo's fish taco. that's where i spent $6 on a chicken quesadilla. after that, i went home for an hour to watch thursday night's _so you think you can dance_. that scoliosis robot dance dude was really cool!
after that, i got to dynasty restaurant around 3:15 to help out with reception/dinner preparations. geoff and i tackled filling up the centerpieces with water. there were 36 centerpieces, and each of them took a gallon of water to fill up.
the thing is, i have never seen the "behind the scenes" of a wedding before, and i never knew how much stuff went into planning a wedding and reception. there was *so* much work involved! i applaud grace (the wedding planner) for being so on top of things, and i also applaud all the friends for helping out.
so then came dinner. the guestlist was done completely literally minutes before guests arrived, and it was a madhouse, because the list wasn't alphabetized or anything. it took a long time to seat everybody. the food was decent, but i thought it could have been better.
i got drunk. i have four remy martin's and three whiskey's. (john brought over his jameson 12-year.) after drinking all of that, i was already buzzed, and then i went out for a smoke. during that cigarette, i got so dizzy, i almost fell down. it was then that i decided i needed to puke to get the alcohol out of my system. so i found an uninhabited corner in the parking lot, and yacked a few mouthfuls of the fried rice. it was grand. i felt a lot better.
the evening wound down, and i went home after helping the adam (the photographer) load some of his gear into his car.
the next day, paul and leeya treated us to dim sum (again at dynasty). we got so much food it was ridiculous. afterwards, i had such intense food coma and i went home and slept for another 2.5 hours. after that, i went over to alan's house, where ting's dad made us beef noodle soup. yum. then, we walked rylie to rivermark, and i got a guava green tea with pearls ($3).
and that was it. i felt sort of depressed on sunday. do you ever get that way the day after a large gathering? i've heard of people experiencing that, too, after a social event high. anyways, it was a good weekend spent with friends.
this will be an early blog entry for me. man, i had one of the cheapest dim sum outings ever. C and i were headed over to thai basil in downtown sunnyvale, but there was a huge line. but then, we looked across the street, and the there was a big sign saying "small, medium, large dim sum: $1.99." holy shit! that's cheap! so we rushed over there, were seated within two minutes, and gorged ourselves. in the end, the bill for the two of us was $19 (including tax and tip). not bad for dim sum. and now i'm sleepy.
so my hemorrhoids are getting worse. it's flaming big, and it hurts like a mofo. i doesn't hurt to sit down, but when i shift my ass around in my chair, it sort of itches in a painful way. ouchie! what causes hemorrhoids in the first place? maybe i'll look it up on wikipedia and see.
so last night, nelson, grace and i went shopping at macy's for some shirt/tie combos for nelson; he's going to be the officiant for paul and leeya's wedding tomorrow. i was really impressed with grace; she's really good at matching shirts and ties. she picked out some cool stuff for nelson, and she's got some bold taste, much bolder than mine. in the end, nelson spent around $170 on three combos, and i thought that was a pretty good deal, considering that regular price for shirts and ties are like $40 each. so now nelson's all set for the upcoming weddings. i thought it was cool that the tie and (red) stole that he's going to be wearing tomorrow are sort of like 49er colors, as nelson is a huge fan of that football team. :)
after getting back from macy's around 9:30pm or so, i hung out at paul's place for a while. i hadn't eaten dinner, so my stomach was starting to cramp up from hunger. leeya had gotten some vietnamese sandwiches, so i had one. damn, it was fucking good. i LOVE vietnamese sandwiches. in high school, for a long time, i would eat one of them every day. i would go get five of them every sunday, and i went through them, one every weekday. i never got tired of them, especially with their spicy jalepeno peppers and buttery goodness.
so i totally missed an awesome basketball (cavs def. pistons) game last night. lebron had 48 points, and he scored the final 25 points for cleveland in a double overtime thriller. damn, he is fucking good. talk about "taking over a game." and he's only 22 years old! i really hope the cavs win this series. they're the only team i've been rooting for that have a chance to win their series. i just hope they don't get overconfident, as they were in the same position last year (up 3-2 against detroit), but lost the last two games to the pistons. it's too bad that i'll miss tomorrow night's game because of the wedding, but i'll be sending out my good wishes to the cavaliers. *fingers crossed*
before we went out for dim sum today, C and i went to target. he bought two $12 sleeping bags for an upcoming church retreat. both of them were camouflage colored, but one of them was PINK camouflage. ha! he thought it was funny, but i gave him a hard time for buying a girl's sleeping bag. hehe. so why, you migh task, did he buy two sleeping bags? well, he's going to use one of them to lay down on the ground to soften up the hardwood floor. i told him to buy a thermarest or something, but then again, those might be more expensive than $12. and anyway, he's going to return these two sleeping bags after his retreat anyways. but still... a pink sleeping bag...
so for the welldding tomorrow, i'm going to gel my hair for the first time in well over a year. we'll see if i remember how to do it right. i'm disturbed that my bad haircut hasn't evened out yet, so i'll need the gel to press the hair down so you can't see the unevenness. let's hope it works!
ok. that's it for me. have a great weekend folks!