twenty-five seconds of silence

debugging the nonexistent

*RAAR* i spent two hours today debugging a feature that turned out to be removed from the chip. FUCKING NUTS. i went ground up, wondering why the hell the input wasn't toggling, and when i finally got to the chip level, it turned out that the input was grounded. what the hell, man. i was pretty pissed off after that.

so apparently, whatever sickness i had the other day only lasted for like 12 hours. so i'm good to go on the camping trip, although i requested greg bring his 2-man tent for me so i don't transfer any residual germs to other people.

i had lunch today in palo alto with barden and gwen, the latter who was in the area for a wedding. we went to the new mango cafe, which was sporting an entirely (and unrecognizably) new menu. i ordered the jerked chicken quesadilla (because you know i love quesadillas), but it was horrible. damn, i knew i should have ordered the goat curry over rice. but still, it was good catching up with the two of them, even though i just saw barden on monday.

so facebook is pretty cool. you can write applications for it and share it with all the other users. so today, i added the superpoke and (fluff) friends apps. i adopted a monkey and named it "monchichi." neat-o. this may be a novelty, though, but yeah, it's still pretty cool.

my sports knowledge is dwindling. i still turn on _sportscenter_ every night, but the thing is, it's taking me a lot less time to actually fall asleep to it. so i'm losing touch with all the goings on in the sports world. this faster sleeping business is due to my earlier start time, i'm 100% sure. lately, i've been waking up around 8-8:30am still. isn't this a huge mystery, especially considering that i've been probably one of the laziest people when it comes to sleeping in? *ponder*

is it illegal for telemarketers to call cell phones? if it is, then thank goodness for that. it would really piss me off if they did that, wasting my minutes and generally being a big nuisance. i do have a landline, but i have the most basic service, which only costs like $5 a month. i still get calls from random people, though, like this one woman who's looking for a dude named "francisco." go figure.

am i the only one who sorts my cell phone contacts by last name? everyone else i know does it by first name. hm. am i too business-like? i will say, though, that i sort my e-mail folders by first name, but fyi, i only have e-mail folders for girls that i like or have liked in the past; everyone else (except my stanford guy-buddies and my family) goes in this massive "friends" folder.

so when i was hanging out with jan, jeremy, kate, etc. on monday night, we were talking about our college friends, and it seemed like there was more drama with friendships between girls than friendships between guys. why is that? is it because guys are just more chill? i've personally seen more falling out over girls' relationships, and just a general sense of increased cattiness. of course, that's not to say that i haven't lost any of my guy friends myself; there are definitely some male friends that i've grown apart from over the years, but those are more due to fading away than fights and bad blood and stuff.

ok, it's 6. i wanna get out of here. have a STUPENDOUS long weekend folks! and hope i don't get lost out there in the wilderness!

dusita's spicy

hey peeps. sorry i didn't blog yesterday; i had a meeting from 3-5pm, and then i had to pick up my car from the dealership.

tuesday night, paul, leeya and i had dinner at the new (2nd location) dusita. since nelson wasn't there, we were free to order some spicy food. we got the pad kee mow, super spicy, and boy, was it fucking hot. it didn't even had taste; it was just fire and pain. i won't do that again. the next morning, i took three dumps within a span of half an hour. ouchie! paul later told me that he took some fire-y dumps as well. hot damn!

i think i'm coming down with something. i had some close contact with a coworker C, who's been sick for like the past two weeks. i felt a bit funny last night, and i woke up with a dry throat, dizziness, and a bit of weakness. my cigarette tasted a bit weird (which is a bad sign), so i took some dayquil. i feel pretty good right now, but i just don't have the same pep like i'm used to. i hope i'm 100% for the camping trip this weekend. maybe i should ask greg to pack his 2-man tent for me, so i can quarantine myself.

i wonder how much whiskey i'll drink over the weekend at tahoe. we won't have ice, and i hate drinking the stuff neat. it's just too harsh. it burns!

i had a bloody liquid dump after lunch today. i went to meet up with benboy in milpitas, and when i got back, i had my usual post-lunch diarrhea. when i looked down, it was all bright red. i get this once in a while, maybe every two weeks or so. should i be worried?

saliva's sort of neat, because it's both a lubricant and an anti-lubricant. for example, you can use it as a "sticky" agent, like when you lick your fingers to get a better grip on paper and cigarettes. but then again, you can use it to slicken things up, like during sex and stuff. how oxymoronic! amazing stuff, saliva is...

i've been spending some time on facebook recently. it's yet another one of those social networking sites, like friendster and orkut, but this one's a little cleaner and yet cluttered at the same time. there's a lot of nuances to facebook that i haven't quite explored yet, like applications and stuff. remember when i used to go out on dates with friendster girls? ah, that seemed like ages ago. the big one was k4. the funny thing is that i don't even find her attractive anymore, yet i was *so* into her back then. she's engaged now, fancy that.

so speaking of social networking sites, i got a random invite from someone i didn't know to www.quechup.com. i checked it out, and it's yet another one of those sites. has anyone tried it out? i didn't feel like creating another profile (felt lazy), so i deleted the e-mail. man, what's the point of all these things?

so mikeT asked me today if i would frequent a retail establishment if a cute girl worked there. ah, that harkened me back to the days of BR girl. remember that? man, she was so hot. she had the perfect face. sigh. to think that i spent all this $$ at BR just because of her. i saw her at maruichi again a few months ago (with her boyfriend, i presume), and she was just as beautiful as i remembered. girls who look like that make me want to cry.

ok, i've gotta do some work before my 4:30 meeting. see ya!

double-booked

i had two events to go to last night, so i first met up with the taiko folk at sushi tomi on castro. ann and zack brought their hapa (you know i love hapas) daughter mika, and she was just super-cute. it was quite the old-timer taiko reunion, but i felt that the food left something to be desired. sushi tomi is ok for lunch, but given the expensive dinner prices, i didn't think the food was worth it.

so after we finished dinner, i zoomed up to san mateo to meet up with jan and her husband shaun at jeremy and kate's place. jan was one of my freshman dormates at stanford, so we go way back to 1992. it was great seeing her. we chatted until like midnight, so by the time i got home and slipped into bed, it was 1am or so. i love having social activities during the workweek! :)

i haven't taken a dump today. hm. i wonder what's up. and plus, i've only peed once, too. seems like my body doesn't feel like excreting.

i felt a bit sad after alan and ting's wedding. i think it was because it's the last of the weddings where all of us college buddies will see each other. the next time will be *my* wedding, and who the fuck knows when that will happen. it was really good seeing all those old familiar faces again, drinking, smiling, chatting. sigh. jay was like, "i miss vegas already," and he was giving me some soft pressure for me to just find a girl and find an excuse to throw another bachelor party already. haha. but yeah, i'm the last single guy now.

so i switched my GPS voice from jill (american english) to emily (british english). but really, i should be using karen (australian english). it would fit me to a T, given my history with girls with names that start with a "k." ha! maybe i'll try karen out for a while and see if i like her. greg has told me multiple times to not get "stupid" and become dependent on GPS. i used it last night to get to jeremy's place even though i knew exactly how to get there. yeah, i think i'm getting stupid already. uh oh. (my excuse was that i just wanted to get an ETA, and plus, it was dark, and i couldn't really see his street sign.)

jan mentioned that she would never blog because she felt like people should have "boundaries." i found that interesting. i mean, do i feel like i should have stricter boundaries? i have definitely stepped across the line before, and that's how i alienated several people (mainly girls that i've been intimate with). but now, i'm more cautious, and i think twice about talking about mentioning past sexual escapades, and i definitely don't use first names and even refrain from using initials sometimes. but other than that, i feel like i can let it all hang out on this blog. (but of course, there are definitely things that i have not talked about. i do have secrets, you know...)

ugh. i e-mailed my mom last night that i felt some pressure to get married from my friends, and she told me 1) that i shouldn't feel pressure and 2) that she and my grandmother have been praying for me. doesn't #2 negate #1? hehe. i wonder if she would get pissed off i didn't marry a christian girl. usually, religion is a deal-breaker for me, and i would suppose that me being agnostic would be likewise for religious girl. it just wouldn't work, knowing that after death, i would be going to hell while she would be going to the other place. but anyways, yeah, now that alan is married, i definitely feel a bit weirder. funny, though, because i always thought that alan, the serial monogamist that he is, would have been one of the first to get hitched.

one of my coworkers gave me an israeli cigarette today. he just got back from there, and now i'm afraid to smoke it. (i fear it's too strong, and it'll make me dizzy.) he joked and said that it'll "kill me faster." smokers are pretty loyal to their brands. for me, it's marlboro lights. i've been smoking these for so long that other cigarettes taste weird, and i don't get the same satisfaction from other brands. although, when i first started smoking, i tried all sorts of brands: magnums, sobranies, dunhills, marlboros, lucky strikes, camels, etc. i even smoked cloves; those smelled so good, but i stopped when i heard that they would eventually make my lungs bleed.

part of me wants to work in a startup again. i'm definitely not looking forward to the stress part, but i sort of miss having the "dream." you know, the dream of striking it big and working towards that goal, that big payoff. i guess it just all boils down to money. i'm a greedy bastard. i mean, i have enough cash for a down payment for a house right now, but that'll drain practically all of my savings. i want to live more comfortably than that. i want money money money!

ok, i think i'm going to try out that israeli cigarette now. bye!

hunter

i want to be a hunter again
i want to see the world alone again
to take a chance on life again
so let me go

so i was e-mailing a friend of mine who just broke up with her boyfriend of 6 years, and a random fact popped up in my head. it was about how dido's song "hunter" is about being single again. i learned this fact when mikeT, greg and i saw her in concert up in berkeley a few years ago. i thought it was the coolest thing, equating a single person to being a "hunter." neat-o! great metaphor.

so alan and ting are headed off to costa rica right now. i think they're already there, in fact. good thing i have the tahoe camping trip this weekend, of else i would have nobody to hang out with this labor day weekend. (phew) i'm looking forward to it. my second time camping ever! i think we're going to be eating well, too. i'm going to bring my own toilet paper, though. i have two fears: getting diarrhea on a hike and not being able to sleep with other people in my tent. we'll see what happens. but it'll be fun; i think there's like 14-15 people going, so it'll just be one big party. i'll consult john and see which one of us will be bringing the whiskey. :)

so i was IM'ing jay this morning, and he mentioned that maybe it's the sunlight that's making me get up earlier. i replied that it's probably not the case, since the sun still rises around the same time. but that got me worried: when daylight savings hits in october, the sun's going to rise an hour earlier. that might give me trouble, since i think i am definitely sensitive to light. hm. man, what the hell is wrong with me? what changed two weeks ago? fyi, i got up at 8:30 this morning, once again. and the first song that i played on my iMac was "bye bye bye," in honor of that brilliant dancer at the wedding. haha

so football is *almost* finally here! this sunday, the cowboys are playing the giants on national television. i was so excited, but now i just remembered that i'll be on the camping trip. shit. it's a rare thing, to see my beloved 'boys on tv when the 49ers and raiders dominate the airwaves out here in the bay area. oh well. i'll be cheering them on in spirit. go cowboys!

i didn't sleep naked at the hotel on catalina. i was too afraid of catching some sort of nasty disease through my schlong's contact with the sheets. yowza! both nights, though, i was buzzed or drunk, and i took xanax, so i fell asleep with no problems. but yeah, sleeping naked is the only way to go. i also slept with clothes on during my week in taiwan, too; i didn't want to freak my parents out, so i just wore my entire stanford outfit in bed (basketball shorts and a dry-fit tank top). amazingly enough, with clothes on and no sportscenter to watch, i managed to sleep well in taiwan, so maybe it's just all psychological. *ponder*

man. tonight, i have two dinners at 6:30. i'm going to the one i committed to first (the taiko gathering), and i'm going to call afterwards and maybe head up san mateo afterwards to see jan. a lot of driving! but i haven't seen jan in ages, so i want to catch up with her. she was invited to the wedding this past weekend, but didn't attend.

my post-lunch dump today was amazing. it was like a string of soft goodness being pulled out of my ass. but for once, it was actually *less* matter than i expected. it's these post-lunch dumps that i'm afraid of when i go on the camping trip. the morning ones are very regular; i take a shit within 5 minutes of getting out of bed. it's pretty amazing; i can fart in bed, but when i stand up, i guess gravity pulls the stuff down to my sphincter. but the ones after lunch come after my post-meal smoke, and they're semi-regular. so we'll see if it comes when camping. maybe i'll have to take some squares of toilet paper and a plastic bag on the hike.

ok. almost time to go to dinner. ciao!

alan and ting's wedding

so friday, i met up with jeremy and kate at los gatos and drove down to LA. the trip wasn't as painful as driving down alone, thanks to the good company and the tunes on my iPod. we stopped at a burger king, and i had a tasty whopper (with cheese, of course), and i witnessed jeremy eat three hamburgers. the traffic on the 405 was horrible, but we made it to the ferry with an hour to spare. *phew*

after checking into the hotel, we went to the welcome dinner and saw many friendly faces. i love the feeling of being surrounded by friends at a happy occasion. the dinner was a pizza buffet, and that night, i proceeded to drink three whiskeys (jameson, of course), a GIGANTIC double-shot of tequila (i couldn't finish it on one sip), and a shot of jagermeister. that last one was absolutely disgusting, as i hate black licorice. but they had it on tap, and when i noticed the sign, i mentioned that i never had it before, so alex got it for us. needless to say, i puked twice when i got back to the hotel.

the next morning, i woke up at 10, and jeremy, kate and i grabbed breakfast at this placed called "original jack's." yummy spinach, garlic and sausage omelette. we walked around a bit, and then visited alex and ellen's 6-week daughter, sophia. i had massive food coma, so i fell asleep for three innings of the dodgers' game on tv. afterwards, we walked around a bit, and then got changed for the wedding.

ting's cousin chris and i were in charge of taking pictures for the guestbook, so i was busy with that and couldn't mingle. the ceremony itself was short and nice. alan's mom was reportedly crying (i couldn't seen her face). afterwards, it was an open bar, so i ditched my guestbook duties (chris was handling it fine on his own) and got more whiskey. all in all, i had six whiskey's that night, but all i got was a slight buzz and dizzy feeling.

dinner was a serve-yourself style kind of thing, and the highlight for me was the prime rib. afterwards, of course, there was dancing, and the best part was when there were only two people dancing, and they played n'sync's "bye bye bye." the guy knew all the dance moves from the video, and afterwards, everyone gave him a rousing ovation. bravo!

alan and ting's first dance was sort of a tango of sorts, and alan started out with a rose in his mouth. ha! i thought it was awesome. and jay's best man speech was awesome; he even mentioned me in the speech, talking about how alan had to make sure i wasn't passed out during that horrible bike ride from pier 39 to tiburon the first day that we met ting. fyi, jay and i IM'ed for about 40 minutes about a week ago, when he grilled me for facts about the two of them to ammunition for his toast.

it was so great seeing my college buddies again. i got a lot of pressure at the end, because the next time we all gather up again will be my wedding, since i'm the last single one left. man. i wonder when that will be. but yeah, it felt so nice to be surrounded by old friends.

sunday, we had a quick breakfast at the hotel, and then checked out of the hotel. mid-way on the road, we ate again at IHOP (country fried steak!), and then arrived in los gatos around 6pm or so. i called around to see if people were available for dinner, but no one was free, so i just grabbed a sourdough jack and watched some tv, and went up to bed. so that was uneventful. but all in all, it was a great weekend, and i'm really happy for alan and ting. cheers!

medicated laziness

so apparently, with medication (xanax), i am able to sleep in. last night, i went to bed around 11pm, so i took the pills to knock me out. i slept straight until 9:30 (when my alarm went off). so now i know that there's a way i can get more shuteye if i want to. i don't take xanax unless i get home late and want to fall asleep faster, though, so this doesn't happen that often.

the reason why i got home so late was because i joined the bowling gang for trivia night at katie bloom's in campbell. after having wet burritos (i couldn't finish mine) with adam, rae and will, i jetted over to campbell. the questions were pretty tough! the worst one was this handout where we had to match ten wars and the years in which they took place. (history was always my worst subject.) the other people were expecting more from me, it seemed, and i felt like i let them down. but my knowledge of trivia is pretty limited, which i kept explaining to them. oh well.

jay's best man speech runs about 8 minutes. that's pretty long, isn't it? he's consulted me on some details, and i noticed that he collected a lot of facts to work into his speech. i think it'll be pretty good, and i'm looking forward to it. i'm also looking forward to drinking with alex. i don't have to drive while on catalina island, so i can get as trashed as i want. yay! but like i said, no puking on the suit!

last night, before i took a shower, i started scratching the top of my feet because it was itching. it felt good, but apparently, i scratched a bit too hard and ripped off a few layers of skin. i didn't know this until i got into the shower, and the water made my feet burn with pain. ouchie!

so what makes a turd float as opposed a turd that sinks into the bottom of the bowl? i think i asked this before, and someone told me it was the gaseous content of the shit. today, during my post-lunch dump, i was able to excrete both kinds in a single sitting. and there was a LOT of "stuff." there was a cup-full of stuff filling up the bottom, and there was a bunch of crap floating at the surface, too. man, it must have been the wet burrito.

so one byproduct of waking up early is that i get really hungry during lunch. before, i would get up around 10:40 or so, so lunch would be right around the corner. but now, i roll out around 8:30, so i have just under 4 hours of being awake before my first meal of the day (i don't eat breakfast unless it's a basketball day). so by then, i'm starving. today, even though i woke up late, my stomach was growling by the time C and i left for our lunch break.

so two of my female friends went to do yoga last night. one of them said that the other girl was very "bendy." that's a turn-on. because you know what that means: bendy sex! haha. one time, during a romp, the girl was like, "you should have told me i needed to do some stretches!" oops. :) i guess i was spoiled by my previous flexible gf, who could do the splits and stuff like that, no problem.

so i have a question related to webpages. you know how on image searches, you have the option of doing "safe searches" that filter out pornographic images and such? so how does the search engine know if a picture is x-rated and stuff? do people have to sit there and look through all the pictures and mark them as "adult content" or not? *ponder*

yesterday, the texas rangers beat the baltimore orioles 30-3. no, that is not a football score. it's a baseball score. !! that's the most runs scored in a modern MLB game. holy fucking shit! in some ballparks, the scoreboards couldn't even handle a number that high. impressive! espn had a great story today about the 100 biggest beatdowns in history, and this was #8 or so.

i've got a great idea for a birthday gift for k1. it's a cd by sara cracknell (the lead singer of saint etienne), with this great song. the last line of the chorus goes, "i'm living in the penthouse, basement boy stay away." i think it's the perfect sentiment of how she must feel about me.

t-minus 40 minutes until my massage. can't wait!

ok, i'm headed off to LA/catalina island tomorrow morning. it's gonna be a good wedding. take care, people, and have a STUPENDOUS weekend! i'll see you guys on monday! *muah*

gaining weight

so i hopped on the scale this morning (my usual naked morning weigh-in), and i was 5 pounds heavier than i expected. i attribute this to the past couple of meals i've had: the indian buffet, the massive sushi outing, and last night's crazy buffet experience. and tonight's not going to help, either; i'm having wet burrito night with adam and company. i'm packing on the pounds! in anticipation for the wet burrito, i went to joy luck place today and only ordered one plate of dim sum for lunch: 4 leek dumplings. the waitress grumbled something about me ordering so little, but later i explained to her that i was going to have a big dinner, and she nodded her head.

so after walking by the big joy luck place entrance, i instantly noticed a poster featuring twins, the HK cantopop group. i had a crush on gillian chung (one of the two girls) a few years back, which inspired me to purchase one of their cd boxes. of course, their music sucks, but she's just ridiculously cute. and the other girl, charlene choi, is cute, too. they're actually coming to the bay area (cow palace) to perform. no, i'm not going to see them, but yeah, they're a cute duo. i'd do them. :)

so each of these four weeknights, i've had a social event for dinner. it's cool, having something to do besides going home and plopping down in front of the tv, however beautiful my new sony hdtv is. last night, after crazy buffet, i was supposed to help alan and ting fold their 120 wedding programs, but fedex kinko's offered to do it for only 3 cents a page, and in the end the guy threw it in for free. i actually made an executive decision in their wedding by deciding which of the two colored resume papers to print the programs on, ha!

one of my online friends asked if i talk the way i type. i'm not quite sure. my words do sort of come out in a conversational manner, but i think they're better organized than my speech. i go back and edit some of my blog words sometimes, so maybe the answer is no. but yeah, that's an interesting question.

tonight, after wet burrito night, i'm headed to campbell to do this trivia night thing at katie bloom's with some of the bowling gang. it should be fun. i used to love playing trivial pursuit, and i used to be pretty good at it. but lately, i haven't fared well at the game. my brain has gotten stupid. the thing is, some of my friends (ahem, emi, who's birthday is today) are ridiculously good at reasoning out answers. for me, i either know the answer or i don't. and lately, my mind has been failing me. like during my last smoking break, i drew a blank when i tried to remember the name of the actor who played deacon frost (awesome name) in the movie _blade_. (the answer is stephen dorff, who i think it quite good-looking, btw.)

speaking of stephen dorff, i tried to start a list of guys i would do if i were gay or a woman. you know, a list of male nubiles, if you will. i didn't get very far. i know there are a lot of hot guys out there, but i just can't think of guys that way. i got as far as: taye diggs, gregory peck (in his prime), and stephen dorff. hm. maybe paul walker? and that's about it. oh! and barry zito. he's hot.

i'm excited that alex will be spending the weekend on catalina island. i look forward to drinking with him. he'll be my whiskey buddy. he recently welcomed his baby girl sophia into his life, so it was unsure whether he'd able to stay the night for alan's wedding, but he finally decided to do it. that's cool. we're planning on getting shitfaced together. neat-o! i just hope i don't puke all over my suit.

this one time, i went to a party with my ex-roommate paul, and i drank a 40, three beers, and some vodka. i wound up puking all over myself and passing out in the couch. it was disgusting, having my own vomit all over my shirt and stuff. i feel bad for the people who had to ride in the car with me on the ride home, having to smell all that shit the entire time. responsible drinking is the key!

ok, i need to talk to a coworker about some stuff now. toodles!

great bowels of fire!

man, my GI system is wrecked. yesterday, i ate indian food for lunch, and for dinner, nelson, paul and i all got the "beg for mercy" cheesesteak at st. john's. it was spicy! at 6:47am, i was rudely awakened by a stomachache, and i took the first of four painful dumps. i took another one after i got up, and then yet another one a few minutes later. (my 4th dump was a bloody liquid shit after lunch.) my sphincter is all sore from the excretions and the wiping. ouchie!

so i am really enjoying this getting up early thing. for the past few days, i've just been listening to music on my computer. my favorite beastie boys song is now "body movin'," and i really want to see them in concert now. they're probably one of the last groups (along with the cure) that i want to see live.

so J's taiwanese girl pick today (off of yahoo's taiwanese personal ads) was a troll. i did not like her at all. he also showed me a link to pictures of some popular star named vivian hsu, who i thought was cute, but a little bit too vulnerable-looking. we'll see how long his quest to convince me that taiwanese girls are cute lasts. i mean, i'm sure that each country has cute girls, but i'm just curious as to what percent of the population is cute, as i found that there was a dearth of attractive women when i visited there a few weeks ago.

greg's funny. he IM'ed me today, offering to bring his two-person tent just in case i wanted to sleep naked on the upcoming tahoe camping trip. i politely declined, but then again, i wouldn't mind having a tent all to myself. i'm a little concerned whether i'll be able to fall asleep with other people in the same tent as me, as i haven't shared sleeping space with other people in a very long time. the last time i shared a bed with someone else was early on during my italy/spain trip, and i found it to be very uncomfortable. and before that, it was with my girlfriend, so it's been awhile.

so raise your hand if you like morning sex. i think it's refreshing and a nice way to start your day, but a few times, i've found myself to not be in the mood. i mean, i get morning woodies all the time, but that's more a function of biological tumescence and less a function of being sexually horny. there have been times when my ex found me sporting a nice boner and decided to hop on, but i'm like, "huh? get off of me!" but in the end, of course, it felt nice, so i just acquiesced and eventually got in the mood. i mean, who would turn down sex? but definitely, i've woken up in the middle of the night and found myself craving a nice midnight romp. hehe. there were numerous times when my gf found herself without her underwear on and something between her thighs. :)

so alan and ting finally took me up on asking me to help out with their wedding planning. tonight, i'm going over to help fold programs. i'm also going to help transport some of their stuff to catalina island. in addition, i'm also one of the two people in charge of the photo booth. along with ting's cousin, i am going to take polaroids of the guests as they come in and man the guestbook table. it's pretty low stress, so i happily accepted the task when they asked me to do it.

i still haven't broken in my $45 flip-flops. had i known that they were that expensive because of the liquid-storage feature, i wouldn't have gotten them. i still think that it's a ridiculous feature. who the hell would drink out of a shoe? but yeah, i think it's going to be really weird, wearing them. none of my friends have seen my toes. not that they're ugly or anything, but i'm just not used to not wearing socks. my dad raised me to always wear them; he thinks bare feet are ugly, so i grew up always wearing covered shoes.

C and i went to miyake today for lunch. i haven't been there in YEARS. i used to go with k2 practically every weekend when we were in college. i got my two favorite rolls: the poki deluxe and the chelsea (named after chelsea clinton, when she used to attend stanford). and of course, the cali rolls there are awesome. i came back stuffed with like 17 rolls for only $15 (cheap when you're talking sushi). i wanted something light for lunch after yesterday's fiery asshole syndrome, so i thought sushi was the perfect solution.

okily dokily, i'm off!

rediscovering music

this morning, i got out of bed at 8:30, but as usual, i didn't want to go to work that early, so i did something that i haven't done in a very long time: listen to some music on my iMac. it was really nice. music used to be a big part of my life, and i realized that i really missed it. so i just went through my iTunes library, picking out some songs that i liked, and i just grooved along while checking e-mail and websurfing. i'm actually looking forward to the roadtrip down to LA now, because i'll be bringing my iPod along. music galore!

yesterday, after finishing brunch at los gatos cafe, i felt the urge to take a dump, so i went to the bathroom and did the deed. when i looked down before flushing, i noticed that the little specks of turds were GREEN. eww. what makes the stuff green? *ponder* either way, i thought that was gross.

i just got a call from jessica a few minutes ago. we talked for 25 minutes. even though we had two long hiatuses in our relationship, she's one of my oldest friends. i've known her since she was like 12. we have one of those "brutally honest" friendships, where she calls me a dork and stuff like that. :) she came out to visit me a few octobers ago, and she might come to visit again! so that's good news.

so the manager at my company left today. *sniff* our last words were, "go stanford!" haha. i'm sure i'll think of him every time our alma mater is on tv, and i'll probably e-mail him whenever our basketball team plays in an exciting game, now that i know his personal e-mail. we had a farewell lunch for him at sneha, and i was really looking forward to eating indian food again. but like ting said, the food's not as good anymore. two of the dishes were really salty. ick. so i'm going to suggest going to shan next time; someone said that the food's really good there.

so i've noticed that football in 1080i isn't as good as football in 720p. i talked to the picture quality guru today, and he says it's true, because whenever there's a lot of motion, 1080i is downgraded to only 540 lines of resolution. but, if it's a relatively still picture, 1080i will look better. hm. he gave me a lot of technical jargon which i can't reproduce here, so i'll take his word for it.

my friend J's funny. ever since i wrote that taiwanese girls aren't that cute, he's been a little offended, so today he sent me a link to a taiwanese yahoo personal ad. and he's going to keep doing it until i am convinced that taiwanese girls are cute. ha! (i gave today's girl a 6.7/10.) but what i will demand from him is the number of ugly girls he has to look through until he finds a cute one, like a "signal to noise" ratio. :)

so there's even more of my friends getting married this year. by the time 2007 ends, there will be 12 of my friends who will have gotten married. NUTS. even though i'm only going to 6 weddings, i am planning on buying gifts for all of them. that's a lot of moolah!

one of female friends broke up with a guy, and now she's taken him back. is that ever a good idea? what makes you think a person's "improved?" i mean, do people really ever change, especially when they're older? i can understand if they were really young and immature, but what about at our age? hm. i am skeptical about this. i know, i am just looking out for her, but i don't want to see her think that this guy's turned over a new leaf, only to find out that he was just putting on an act.

*yawn* i had food coma today. indian food for lunch always does it to me. i took a 15-minute power nap today afterwards, and it really helped.

ok, time to wrap this up and finish my dr pepper.

good saturday, slow sunday

friday night, nobody was available for dinner, so i grabbed a sourdough jack (so tasty when you're hungry) on the drive over to greg and cheryl's place and ate it in the car. a bunch of us went over there to eat their wedding cake. it was really sweet, though, and i couldn't finish the frosting and fondant. john brought over a tupperware container full of ice, so i had some whiskey (bushmills), but i didn't feel like drinking, so i just had one and stopped there.

saturday, i got up at SEVEN THIRTY. crazy. i watched some tv, and then grace picked me up, and the two of us headed up to foster city to watch mikeC participate in a dragon boat race event. in the middle, we grabbed some dim sum at mr. fong's down the street, and the two of us stuffed ourselves silly with 7 plates worth of food. mike's boat came in 2nd in one race and 3rd in the second race. we left around 2:30 or so. i really enjoyed talking to grace; as much as i love hanging out in a group, one-on-one conversations really are the best.

after i got home, i went to paul's place, and we went to fry's. paul bought three 750GB hard drives for his computer (damn, that's a lot of storage), and then we went back to his place and watched an episode of _survivorman_. les stroud is crazy. i'm really impressed that he has the know-how to survive by himself in such extreme places, though. i would probably die in one or two days.

after that, i met up with alan and ting at mercado for a quick in 'n out dinner, and then we watched the 5th _harry potter_ movie. the series has really gotten a lot darker and serious. i was disappointed that ron and hermione have become mere props, as the movie really focused on harry as main protagonist. but when hemione showed up on the screen, i really did my best to ogle her. :) she's cute!

so my plan now is to probably read the 6th and 7th books. i definitely want to read the last book, since i've heard it's really good and emotional. i want to find out for myself who dies and who survives.

sunday was much more unsatisfactory. five of us had a late brunch at los gatos cafe, which is probably my favorite brunch place now. i had a southwestern omelette with guacamole (instead of sour cream). yum. afterwards, we walked around for a bit, and then i got home around 3 and just crashed for about 2.5 hours. i watched some tv (the movie _dave_, which i really like), and for dinner, i grabbed a jack's spicy chicken and some mozzarella sticks. and i just spent the rest of the night chilling at home.

and that was it. i wish i had done more on sunday, but it was definitely relaxing to stay home and enjoying my new tv.

housework

so there was a lot of commotion at my place this morning. i got up at 8, and an hour later, these guys came over to fix the light switch and the garbage disposal. then, the property manager (nancy) and the cleaning lady came 10 minutes later. at first, the repair guys said that they couldn't fix the stuck garbage disposal, but then nancy unjammed it with a broom handle, very resourceful. when she turned it on, though, it started smoking, and it smelled horrible, like rust flakes. so she decided to replace the whole thing. meanwhile, the cleaning lady (maria) proceeded to clean all the 2.5 baths. i left after about half an hour to go to work, so i'm hoping to go home tonight and find my bathroom all spic and span.

so someone asked whether i can adjust my hours at work now that i'm getting there 1.5 hours earlier. well, not really. i still have to show face time, and although i'd like to leave earlier, it would look bad if i did. i'm still leaving around 6 or so, so that's why i'm not going to work at 8am; there's just no point in doing that. speaking of work, i did some good sleuthing today. one of the simv's was crashing on me, so i did some experiments, and i finally figured out why the simulation was dying. (an environment variable wasn't set.) eureka!

so congratulations to the winner of _sytycd_! i'm not going to give it away so you people who haven't watched it yet don't find out, but yeah, i was really happy for him/her. i accidentally spilled the beans when i talked to ting this morning, and i felt really really bad. *bonks himself over the head* i should have thought about it before i revealed to her who won. but anyways, i really enjoyed this season, and i'm looking forward to seeing the tour in november. my favorite repeat-performances of last night were the two shane sparks hip-hop numbers. it was great seeing lauren and dominic again, too.

we went to e-noodle today for lunch. dumplings! i couldn't decide between dumplings and leek-boxes, so i got the former, and D got the latter, and we shared. that was the perfect combo. i was disappointed they didn't give us the pig-ears, though; the side dishes were bad this time. oh well. oh, and the dumplings were smaller this time. phooey. and they gave J 13, and me 11. i guess they boiled them together and miscounted them when they split them up.

so i found gift registries for all the weddings i'm not invited to. i think i'm going to buy them gifts anyway. remember when i bought k2 a gift? and her husband said, "thanks for the gift, thought it was not necessary. please let this be the last time we hear from you." ha! i wonder if they've moved back to the bay area yet.

relight! i'm waiting for your e-mail. i tried e-mailing you this past week (hotmail account), but it bounced back.

so now i have no tv to watch for about a month. i'm not sure what shows i'm going to follow this upcoming season. definite _scrubs_ and _how i met your mother_, but what else? of course, there's football as well, and in the winter/spring, stanford basketball and _american idol_. hm. i think that's probably enough. but if you had to name one show that i should follow, what would it be? suggest something!

there's nothing wrong with being perverted. in fact, i probably wouldn't date someone who wasn't. :)

you something that i used to love but haven't had in a while? gummy peach rings. i used to eat bags of those at a time at the office, but then, some of the bags got tainted or something, and they tasted really awful, like they were laced with some sort of nasty chemical. hm. now, i'm really craving some. does haribo make them?

one of the side effects of being up at 8am is that i am smoking more. it's because i'm awake for more hours during the day. NOT a good thing. the next time i get a physical, i'm going to ask for a chest x-ray.

after this weekend, my next two are booked solid. next weekend, i'm headed down to LA for alan and ting's wedding, and then (labor day weekend) it's greg's tahoe camping trip. this year is turning out to be a lot of fun, with all the weddings, bachelor parties, and stuff like that. i'm enjoying it. :)

ok, almost 5pm. the weekend's gettin' close!

i give up

so i think i'm just going to accept waking up at 8am from now on. i got up at 8 today, watched an episode of _scrubs_ that i taped last night (elizabeth bogush, the faceless MRI patient, is hot!), and then went through my iPhoto collection to find good photos of alan and ting for their wedding's slideshow. then, i left home around 9:15, got breakfast at mcdonald's (this time, a sausage & egg biscuit and hashbrowns), and just went to work at 9:30ish. i felt pretty productive.

i have a zit in the middle of my forehead. it fucking hurts! it feels like a bone bruise in the middle of my skull. i've tried to pop it, but it won't give. ouchie!

so there's this hot girl from our branch in china here. i caught sight of her at the company lunch last friday, but i haven't seen her lately. i've wandered around the cubes on the third floor, but i can't find her. i think mainland chinese girls are more attractive than taiwanese girls, but according to my coworker J, hong kong girls are even less attractive than taiwanese girls. i don't have any data points on that, though. but yeah, i want to go find this girl and introduce myself; maybe she's gone back already, though. i'll go on another scouting mission after i write this blog entry.

relight! e-mail me!

so i bought carol a wedding present today. she didn't invite me to her wedding, but i got her a present anyway. i miss our friendship. we used to talk every tuesday night (after bowling), but then she went off to business school in new york, and we naturally stopped corresponding. after she came back, we never resumed our talks, and we just drifted apart. yeah, friendships come and go, i guess.

it's crazy, though. i know of TEN weddings this year. i'm going/have gone to six of them, and the other four, i'm either not invited or i'm not going. a lot of people getting hitched up. and a lot of money being spent on gifts, bachelor parties, plane tickets, etc. it's all good, though; i love seeing happy wedding ceremonies and love uniting people and all that. it makes me all mushy and shit.

the last basketball game today was great. we lost 6-7, but we put up a great scrappy fight against a team that was clearly dominant. they had two awesome centers, two good shooters, and a great slasher. we were outmanned, outrebounded, and outplayed, but we managed to keep it close all the way until the end. so i was very pleased. root for the underdog! :)

anybody want a broken 27" sony trinitron tv? i'm thinking about recycling it, but if anybody wants to take it and fix it or whatever, it's there for your taking. it's got a good remote and everything. let me know!

so tonight's the 2-hour season finale of _sytycd_. it's been a really good season. i am so much more impressed by what these kids have done, compared to the folks on _american idol_. learning a song doesn't seem as strenuous as learning a choreographed dance, especially since for some of the dancers, they've never had experience with all the styles and stuff. my favorite performance last night was the viennese waltz. that shit is hard! i took some social dance lessons at stanford, and the viennese waltz is fast and dizzying. i could never keep up with the beats, and going counterclockwise is much harder than going the other direction. danny and lacey made it look effortless and just beautiful. plus, i never noticed that the avril lavigne song was in a waltz beat. fyi, i'm rooting for danny to win, even though he has no personality; i just think he's by far the best dancer of the final four.

ok, time for me to get a haircut. it's about time. gotta look good at alan & ting's wedding!

morning insomnia... again!

so for the second straight day, i've woken up at 8am and haven't been able to fall back asleep. i thought yesterday was a fluke, but now i'm getting really worried. today, i turned on espn around 8:30, listened to a bit of sportscenter, and then i just got up and went downstairs to test out a dvd on my new television. (it's beautiful, by the way. :) then, i just went to work at 9:30. it was cool, though, because when i sat down in my cube, within a few minutes, i got like 3 IM's. i love chatting!

so yeah, my tv arrived. the delivery guy gave me a window of 5-8pm, and he finally came around 6:30. he helped me set it up and wire the devices (cable, vcr, dvd) and stuff, so i tipped him $10. (do you normally tip? it was a "white glove" service.) now, i'm going to test out an HD antenna (all i really care about is football) and buy an expensive surge protector/power strip.

so now that i go to work early, i'm justified in leaving early, too. but what am i going to do with all this newly found time? i don't want to just go home and watch tv, and there's not even good stuff to watch anyways. hm. *ponder* man, if only i could sleep in more. i know, alan would tell me to go to the gym and get buff or something, heehee.

oh, speaking of alan and ting, jay IM'ed me today, and we chatted for like 40+ minutes. he asked me some stuff about those two, as he was gathering some facts about them for his best man's speech. i got curious and dug into my old geocities journal, and i found out the date when alan and ting first met: april 13th, 2002. man, that was a long time ago. i'm big on dates, for example, i still remember when k2 and i broke up (january 20th, 2000), stuff like that. but anyways, i found a picture that was taken the day a&t first met, and i forwarded it to them for their slide show. ah, first encounters and stuff like that. that shit makes me all emotional.

remembering dates and things like that goes along with my penchant for documenting things. i mean, that's why i keep a journal/blog. one of the biggest reasons why i document is so i don't forget what happened in my life. one big failure, though, is taking pictures. i haven't taken a picture in like years, and i think i should start doing that again. i've been really lazy (heh, that's an understatement) in photographing outings and stuff, so maybe i should make a resolution to at least bring my camera to a&t's upcoming wedding. i guess the thing is, with the bowling gang, there are so many camera buffs that i don't really *need* to take pictures, because the other guys do such a good job of that already.

so i made a big deal about cheryl's eyebrows. she got them threaded before the wedding, and i noticed them instantly when i saw her the weekend prior to the big event. those of you who know me know that i have many fetishes. they include: eyebrows, eyeglasses, short hair, and black stack heeled penny loafers. you can even throw in tall girls, 5-letter names, and names that start with "k". man, if i ever find a girl who fits all of these descriptions, then i'm gonna pursue her with all of my fucking might, haha. :)

have you ever "stolen" a girl? meaning, pursued a girl when she was going out with someone else? i did that once, and it was with k2. when i first started correspondence with her and meeting up with her for our midnight smoking sessions (i was the one who taught her how to smoke), i had no idea she was sort of dating this other dude. but then, she told me that she was seeing this guy B. i even remember asking her if they had kissed, and she said yes. i distinctly felt my heart sink and had this thought of "what the fuck are you doing with me then?" going through my head. but we still met up, and for whatever reason, the topic of B never came up again, and k2 and i just eventually hooked up. weird, huh? B's friends all hated me after that, of course. so i guess the lesson here is to never give up, hehe. but then again, karma might just come and bite you in the ass.

oh, and one last thing: i got a google phrase today: "safeway women with huge melons." uh... they're talking about breasts? or fruit?

ok. i think it's time to finish up my can of dr pepper and go home.

no more "radio" shows

so my tv is coming today! i got a call from the shipping company, and the delivery is going to be from 5-8pm tonight. verrry exciting! hopefully everything works, and i get no stuck pixels. *fingers crossed* no more listening to television! yeah, lately, i've been listening to old reruns of _friends_ and _scrubs_.

i had a case of morning insomnia today. i woke up at 8am and just couldn't sleep any more. so i turned on espn and listened to sportscenter, nfl live, and other shows. i finally got out of bed at 9:30, went to mcdonald's and ordered breakfast. when i got to work, i turned on IM, and i got to see when other friends got to work. it was kind of neat, but i don't plan on doing this again in the future.

i had a dream about k1 last night. i don't know why she keeps popping up in my slumber. i mean, it's been almost 15 years since we went out and broke up, but i still have these dreams where we meet again in the future and i try to be friends with her. i guess first loves and relationships are hard to forget, huh.

guess what? i'm going camping! haha. yeah, greg invited me on his third annual tahoe (emerald bay) trip. i've only gone camping (taiko retreat back in college) one other time, so i'm looking forward to it. my one major concern was whether there was a place where i could take a dump, but greg alleviated that concern by telling me that there were toilets at the campground. so i'm all set. i need to get a sleeping pad, but that's about it. it's going to be during labor day weekend, so it's coming up fast.

hey relight! e-mail me (just mouse over the "quoth dardi!"). i want to talk to you. i tried e-mailing you today, but it bounced back. and yes, the wedding i went to this past saturday was in aptos, at the seascape resort. but anyways, if you read this, write me!

so basketball today was a mixed bag. i missed every single one of my shots, but on the flip side, during the last game, we played good defense. we were down 4-6, but came back to score the last three points to win the game. i played down (zone defense), and i was being coached by robin, the guy playing the middle. we locked down on d, and we won on a steal by W. good job! *claps*

so yeah, like i thought, lauren got eliminated last night. that's too bad, but like nigel said, she really did peak too late. i still think she's fuckably cute, though, and i'm glad that she made it this far so i could ogle her this whole time. i'm actually thinking about getting tickets to the _sytycd_ tour when it hits the bay area. they're performing on my birthday, in fact, at HP pavilion. i'll see if ting and alan want to go.

so you know those four rotating discs at the top of the building in downtown san jose? apparently, they're semaphores that are code for an entire book written by this author. they were finally solved last week by two guys. interesting stuff. i used to love puzzles, and i was always wondering what the hell those discs were all about. and now we know!

they say that the best way to get over someone is to find someone else. i think that's true. getting over a girl can be really tough, especially if you still hang out with her. it takes an awful lot of maturity and strength, and even with that, there are almost always lingering feelings. when another girl comes along, it gives you something to new to focus your energy on. what i do wonder, though, is whether it's important to have complete closure on the former girl. maybe it isn't necessary. anyways, that's something that's been on my mind lately.

ok, well, i better wrap this up and finish off my workday. gonna head home soon and wait for my tv! yay!

full-day lecture

man, i've been in the company's lecture hall all day. we had a video guru give a lecture, from 10-11:30am, and then from 2-4:30pm. amazingly enough, i didn't fall asleep. if this had been college, i would have dozed off for sure. i hate to admit this, but i fell asleep through over 50% of my classes at stanford. i hate to think that my parents paid so much for my tuition, and i wasted all that money.

we went to maruichi for lunch today. i tried the spicy miso ramen for the first time. it was ok, but not as spicy as i would have liked. and being $1 more, i think i'll stick to the kuro or tonkotsu from now on. both D and C got the combo B (three cali rolls and three gyoza), and they couldn't finish it. it's a good deal, but it's just too much food; i stopped getting the combo B a long time ago.

so apparently, there is one more person leaving the company. the manager who's leaving dropped the hint, but he refused to say who it was. what the fuck is happening?! the turnover rate this summer is abnormally high, and i am getting concerned. i hate seeing good people leave, and if it's someone from my team, then i think we're really fucked. we've been hiring, but it's all managers and stuff, not people we really need: engineers. *RAAR*

one of my friend's mom got in a very serious car accident. the car's totalled, and she got hit from the driver's side, and they had to cut her out of the car. luckily, her car had a side airbag, or else she would have been seriously hurt. still, though, she suffered a fractured pelvis. it makes me wonder if i should buy a car with side curtain airbags. hm. this is the second serious car accident among people i know in a week. i almost got in an accident on the way to the wedding; i took my eyes off the road to look at the GPS, and i swerved into the right lane (i was on the windy 17). luckily, there wasn't a car there, or i would have sideswiped it. *phew* i am really fortunate.

i am really nervous for lauren on tonight's _sytycd_ results show. i am almost certain that she's going to get voted off, despite the fact that i voted for her three times last wednesday. oh well, she's too young for me anyways, and she has a boyfriend, too. :) i am thinking about getting tickets for the tour, and i'm sure ting would want to go, too. i'm gonna check out the dates and see if i'll be able to go to the show.

i got an e-mail from the taiko e-mail list that the fruit mangosteen is going to be allowed back in the states. i'm going to look for it. apparently, there has been some theories that mangosteen juice can alleviate tourette's symptoms. i've heard from two sources that it's true. so i'm willing to try it out. i gotta do some research, though, because i have no idea what the hell a mangosteen looks like, or how to eat it.

geoff is a man. i touched his left pectoral muscle at the wedding. i had to. when he told me that he was going to do 50 pushups, i was like, "wow!" i mean, i have other friends who can do that, but still, it was like *nothing* to him. he just got on the floor and did it as if it were one pushup. me? i think i can do like five in my current state. back when i played taiko, i was in the best shape of my life, and i could do like 40 back-to-back. but now, i'm just a skinny-ass wuss. but yeah, back to geoff's pects: they're rock hard and bulging. haha.

anyways, that's it for me today. i'm gonna to find some dr pepper now. ciao!

great weekend

friday night, i had dinner with ting and alan and ting's dad. they're one phase 1 again (south beach diet), so i recommended andy's bbq so they could eat all meat. man, their whiskey (johnnie walker black) was $7.50! holy shit. ah, my whiskey habit is draining my wallet.

saturday was greg and cheryl's wedding. a few of us grabbed a quick lunch at pho nam before heading back and changing and then meeting up again to carpool. i drove this time, and i tested out my GPS. it told me to take a wrong exit, but i disobeyed jill (the voice of my GPS) and went by the directions on the wedding invitation instead.

the ceremony was beautiful. in the backdrop was the beach and the ocean, and mike's officiant duties were pulled off without a hitch. the great touch in the ceremony was the letters to the parents; i thought it was very heartfelt, and i think i would like to do that in my own wedding. of course, the groom handsome, the bride was beautiful. and leeya! she cut her long hair and appeared with really short hair and a stunning dress. you guys should know by now that i *love* short hair, and i must say, she's hot! :)

i had four whiskey's thoughout the night, and grace and i shared a long island iced tea. greg was pretty drunk by the end of the whole thing, and i've never seen him so happy and tipsy. haha. they put me at a good table where i knew everyone, so the conversation was good throughout the night. oh, and i puked once, but just a teeny bit when i was buzzed. but i was pretty sober by the end of the night, but i did have mikeC drive my car back from aptos to santa clara, and i drove myself back from there.

anyways, it was a great wedding, and i am very happy for greg and cheryl. on their guestbook, i simply wrote, "congrats. remember: sex is good." hehe.

sunday, i wanted to have dim sum, but my partner in crime, grace, wasn't available, so i think we'll do it next week. so instead, paul, mikeC, nelson and i grabbed mexican food at la bamba. ah, super carnitas burrito! i haven't had one in months. afterwards, we went to REI, and i bought my first pair of flip-flops. it cost me $45. they're reefs, and what's really WEIRD about them is that i can store liquids in the heels to drink later on. what an odd feature.

after that, we went back to nelson's place and watched some beach volleyball, and then i went home. i called up adam, and he invited me to some hawaiian-themed bbq at this dude's house. i was a bit hesitant to go, because i didn't know the host or anybody else there, but i decided to carpe diem the whole thing.

and so, i turned out that the host, T, is one of my regular readers on this blog! ha! small fucking world! he actually introduced himself to me a while back at pepper lunch in milpitas. so i was really happy about that. so i hung out, and watched the chargers/seahawks preseason game (adam is from san diego, so of course he was rooting for the chargers), and i chatted a bit and stuff. it was a good time as well.

so that was my weekend. it was really good and well-rounded; i met up with alan and ting, had a great wedding with the bowling gang, and even met some new friends. :)

farewell, michael

hey people. so my coworker michael left today. i shook his hand, and now he's gone. *sniff* he did a good job here. we weren't the best of friends or anything; he was quiet and mostly kept to himself. i'm sort of selfish, though, and the biggest impact this will have on me is that i will have to take over his systemC modelling work. ick. but yeah, a lot of people are leaving. there's that manager i have been talking about, and then two young guys are leaving within the next month of so, one of them being C, one of my lunch buddies (he's going to UCLA for a ph.d.).

so it looks like i'm not staying in the hapuna prince hotel for mikeT's wedding. i'm joining mikeC, paul, leeya, geoff, pak, and nelson in a condo. i think it's a better arrangement, since i'll have more people to hang out with (i think we're volcano hiking on friday), and it will certainly be easier on the wallet (no more $210 a night). so that'll be cool.

i overheard that one of the new guys (a verification manager) worked at texas instruments. my ears perked up because i worked at TI for 4 summers back when i was in college. so i went over and talked to him for a while, reminiscing about dallas and stuff. that's cool, finding common stuff about people. i need to work on my conversation skills, and one of them is finding a common ground with others and building on that.

i was browsing this one blog of a cute girl that i discovered way back when (leah), and i found out she's married. she's only 21! that's pretty young, isn't it? i often wonder if young marriages work out. i mean, she's in college still, and i often find that people change a lot when they're in school, and after graduating, they find out that they're different people and want different things. i mean, k2 and i went through college and beyond during our 4 years together, and our lifestyles sort of diverged, which contributed greatly to our breakup. of course, my worsening tourette's was a huge factor, too, as i became socially hermetic and simply didn't want to do anything.

i had dinner last night with geoff (among other people), and he seemed to become obsessed with finding RG's blog. the history of RG was that he was the guy who set up this meeting of bloggers, and that's where i met geoff, ben, and mikeT. and the ironic thing was that i became friends with all of them, except RG. that meeting pretty much changed my life in many (important) ways, so i am indebted to him, but for whatever reason, he's disappeared from the internet. odd.

so there was talk last night of a camping trip. i have only camped once, but i am tempted to try it out again. i have nothing against camping, but my big fear is having to take a dump out in the wilderness, especially with my diarrhea. yuck! so we'll see. this bowling gang is pretty outdoorsy, and i think it's cool that they are, so maybe it'll rub off on me. well, then again, alan and ting are outdoorsy too, but i've just never taken them up on their invites to go backpacking and stuff.

last night's cowboys/colts game was semi-promising. i mean, the cowboys' first-teamers had two long drives, but the problem was they couldn't score touchdowns and settled for two field goals. in the red zone, the colt's run D stiffened up, so i am a little concerned. but we'll see. luckily, the cowboys play in the relatively weak NFC, so i think they have a good chance to get in the playoffs, barring any serious injuries. *knocks on wood*

so this video guru is giving a presentation at 10am on monday. normally, i would skip it, but his subject matter is right smack dab in the middle of my work realm, so i think i need to go. i just hope my tv doesn't arrive in the middle of his talk. i gotta remind myself to put my phone on vibrate instead of turning if completely off. oh, and i definitely need to remind myself to turn off my phone during greg and cheryl's wedding. don't want to ruin the moment. *cringe*

what i'm looking forward to the most for their wedding is mikeT's speech. he's the officiant, and greg gave him full control over what he's going to say. it's gonna be good! haha. i really like the idea of having friends being officiants. it's a nice personal touch, rather than having some random priest or religious figure marrying the two people. if my future wife is ok with it, then that's what i'm going to do too.

ok, time to putz around a bit, and then i'm off to my massage. have a STUPENDOUS weekend folks!

the big shipment

so my tv shipped today! i should be getting it next week sometime. fyi, i ordered a sony 40" bravia XBR2 LCD tv. it's our reference model here at the company, meaning we try to make our tv's look as good as that one. i'm pretty excited about it, although now i'm thinking about converting to digital cable so i can get all the HD channels. in the meantime, i'll probably borrow nelson's small HD antenna to see if i can at least get the over-the-air signals. HD football!

speaking of football, tonight is the cowboys/colts preseason game. so i'm going to leave in a bit to watch the first quarter or so. go cowboys! i have some mild expectations for this team this year, but we'll see how wade phillips does as our coach. i hear he's more easygoing, which the players like, but i do wonder what the lack of discipline will do for the players. and of course, TO is injured with back spasms.

i've been unreasonably happy lately. i feel like i'm on antidepressants or something. it's a good thing, i think. i remember back when i was on effexor (during my suicidal period), and that drug made me feel like i was in the clouds or something. i'm not quite *that* happy, but this week, i'm just grateful for having friends and family and stuff like that. and plus, i'm excited for greg and cheryl's wedding this weekend. i was thinking about bringing a bottle of bushmills whiskey, but greg told me they'll charge extra for that, so i guess i'll just spend money at the bar.

like i said, one of the managers is leaving the company. he's leaving for a better position, so i understand his career move. i'll definitely miss him, though. we talk sports a lot; for example, we've both been waiting for barry bonds to hit 756. the best time for us is during the stanford basketball season. but yeah, he's leaving, and it sucks to see a good friend go. he's been here ever since i joined back in 2003, so it's been four good years with him.

last night, my tv died almost completely. i got a picture for like 10 seconds, and then it flickered and went black. i actually *listened* to an episode of _scrubs_. it was like the dark days of radio! so for the football game tonight, i'm going to watch it on my dinky 13" tv in my bedroom.

i found a place to recycle my old broken tv. i was thinking about just throwing it in the dumpster, but i remembered that electronics have a lot of toxic chemicals in them. there's a place in los altos that accepts tv's, so maybe i'll get alan to help me take the tv in TING's volvo SUV. (ting made it very clear that the volvo is hers. :) i thought about fixing the tv, but i think it'll be too expensive. my coworker told me of this place, but the diagnostic evaluation already costs $75. ouch!

re: magnesium. damn, i keep forgetting to ask my psych about that. next time, i'll reread the article and print it out for him.

so i think lauren is gonna get voted off on _sytycd_. i actually called in last night to vote for her. thrice, even. even though i think she's hella cute, i don't like her hair. i'm not a fan of bangs that hang straight down. i hate that look. but, that rumba with dominic last week still makes me shudder. yowza! cool thing is, it's on youtube, so i can watch it over and over again.

ok, i'm off to watch the game. go cowboys!

money flows like water

man. in the last three days, i've spent $3K. on monday, i bought my GPS (it came today), yesterday i booked the hotel for mikeT's wedding ($210 a night), and right after lunch today, i ordered my TV . i'm not looking forward to my credit card bill. no more spending money!

last night, i went to palace for the first time. it's an all-you-can-eat korean bbq place where you have to cook your own food. alan was the grill master, and i ate a lot of meat, compared to what i usually eat. i was pretty stuffed by the end of the meal, and i felt a little nauseated. didn't puke, though. i ordered a kirin ichiban beer, too; i gotta stop doing that, because the beer is no good. the kirin is good in japan, but the stuff in the states is brewed by anheuser busch in LA. not genuine! and palace ain't cheap, either; the dinner buffet was $21.99, and the beer was another $4.

my coworker C was involved in a massive auto accident. he rear-ended someone while going 50mph, and he fractured his right index finger when his airbag when off. damn. i think his truck is totalled. that's horrible. he had to eat his lunch today with a fork, as he couldn't use chopsticks with his splint. i remember when i broke my finger (playing basketball), i didn't use the split because i had to type. and as a result, i have this bone spur that never healed; if you rub my left ring finger, you can easily feel this bump where my bone is coming out. eek!

i saw my psych today. both of us are very pleased that my tourette's is doing decently right now. i mean, i still have a violent tic that goes off from time to time, but the frequency is much less now. *knocks on wood* he mentioned how i was a touch patient. i mean, i went through so many medications (and combinations of stuff) until i found the right "cocktail." we'll see how long this lasts. i mean, i eventually want to taper down on the number (and dosage) of drugs i'm taking, but right now, things are going pretty well. and i'm happy because of that.

so one of the managers here is leaving. i'm kinda sad. he's my sports and stanford loyal buddies. i would even venture to say that he's a bigger stanford fan than i am because he hates cal. (i don't mind the rivalry, and i even cheer for cal sometimes.) he's done a good job, and i will miss him. sigh. i hate seeing people go, but i guess that's the nature of silicon valley. it always makes me wonder how long i'm going to stay here.

of all the shows that have come and gone, i think i miss _ally mcbeal_ the most. man, i loved that series. i think it's because ultimately it was about love and relationships. and quirkiness! my favorite character of all was john cage. hehe. and plus, _ally_ had a character with tourettes (anne heche)! it was the only tv series where i actually cried (when billy died). the only thing i didn't like about that show was that calista flockheart got too thin. she looked horrible. during the first season, i thought she was adorable, but i don't know what happened to her; she just got all skeletal and stuff. ick. and also, it's a shame that robert downey, jr. got kicked off the show because he got arrested.

the other day, after taking a dump, i wiped so hard i *broke* the toilet paper. now, remember, i fold the toilet paper in 1/8ths, so that meant i ripped through an 8-ply block! now that's wiping pretty hard! luckily, i didn't get shit all over my fingers. just thought i'd end this blog entry with that.

ok, off for a smoke.

catching up with technology

so i'm making big purchases. yesterday, i ordered a GPS, and these past few days, my tv has been dying on me. it's been flickering and giving me a black screen; i've had to turn it on and off a few times to get a picture. i've had this sony 27" CRT for 10 years now, and it's finally time for me to go HD!

luckily for me, i work in an HDTV (among other things) company, so i've got all these years of expertise to advise me. i talked to the picture quality architecture guru this morning for like 15 minutes, and he told me that we benchmark our tv's against the sony bravia XBR2. so that suits me perfectly, since i'm a sony slut. i mean, even my landline phones and alarm clock are sony! hehe. i know sony's expensive, but hey, like i said, i'm faithful to the brand. HD, here i come!

i played good basketball today. i actually got some offensive boards (i boxed out!) and got some easy putbacks, much to the delight of my teammates. the competitive guy was on my team, so he was pleased. he's a decent player, but he can be a pain in the ass sometimes when you're not playing well. i don't like competitive people; they take the fun out of playing because all they care about is winning, and they'll bitch and moan when you make a bad pass or take a bad shot. but anyways, i played three games today, and we won two of them.

i had a dream that an ice demon was chasing me. it was NOT a fun dream. basically, we were at a restaurant, and i opened up a freezer door, and this white skeletal monster was in it, and it proceeded to chase me down a few hallways. i woke up shaking and scared. ick. have you ever had dreams where you're running, but you can't run fast, like you're stuck in molasses? i get those sometimes. it's really frustrating.

this week is crawling by. i've been having trouble sleeping, and it's difficult to get up, too. i'm excited for the weekend, though. it's greg's wedding! unfortunately, since i only have two suits, i'm going to recycle the suit i wore for geoff's wedding back in february. it'll be the navy tommy hilfiger suit with yellow suspenders. and on sunday, i'll most likely buy my new tv. it'll cost more, but i don't want to wait for amazon.com (which is a few hundred dollars less) to deliver it. hm. now that i'm typing this, a few hundred dollars sounds like a big deal. i should save my money. (thanks to mikeT for researching for me.)

football season is upon us! it's time to start rooting for my beloved cowboys. the other day was the hall of fame induction, and i caught michael irvin's speech. it was pretty emotional. but anyways, i am hoping and wade phillips is a good coach, and he can take us to the playoffs again. i am still haunted by tony romo's bobble this past january. *shudders*

my good friend emi's pregnant! i'm so happy for her. they don't know the sex of the baby yet, but already, her husband is thinking of names from _the lord of the rings_. can you imagine a girl named eowyn? i think it'd be cool. hehe. sigh. so many big things happening to my friends. babies, weddings, house buyings. me, i'm just stuck in neutral. wtf, man.

ok, well, i'm heading off soon. it's been a good day, albeit it's only tuesday. i'm having dinner with alan and ting tonight, too. haven't seen them in forever. yay!

back in the swing of things

hey people. i guess i still have a bit of jetlag because it was hard to fall asleep last night, and it was also tough to get up this morning. but it's not too bad, though. hopefully by tonight, i'll be ok.

i ordered a GPS today! i got the one that greg has, a garmin nuvi 360. the only thing i cared about was the text-to-speech feature. i don't like the ones that tell you turn in like 800 feet, because they're usually off, and i can't judge the distance anyways. i should come later on this week, and i want to use it in hawaii for mikeT's wedding. i'll probably even use it for alan's wedding in LA (hate navigating those los angeles highways) in two weeks.

and other good news! my IRS audit for the 2005 tax year was finally resolved. so instead of paying the $5000 that they claimed i owed, i wound up only having to pay just over $150 ($137 plus interest). the tax audit defense service i paid for (only $40) was well worth the money, so i'm going to get it every year from now on. my paranoia paid off! haha. i called my audit guy today just to thank him for doing such a good job. :)

so i'm all set for mikeT's wedding in hawaii. i booked my room at the hapuna prince hotel, the same hotel that mike and christi are staying at. it's pricey! originally, a whole bunch of us were going to stay at this condo, and the cost for ALL of us the entire time would have only been a $150 cleaning fee. talk about dirt cheap! but that fell through. bummer. i was looking forward to a cheap stay, but i guess that was not meant to be. but at least now i bed to sleep on, instead of having to bring a sleeping bag and slumbering on the floor, and now i'm closer to the wedding party, and on top of that, i'm right smack dab at the same venue as the wedding itself. the only thing i have left to do is to find a pair of flip-flops. i have never worn flip-flops in my life.

i did some good work today. i'm debugging this OTP test that's failing, and i'm still not done yet. i'm using debussy, this fancy waveform viewing tool. it's powerful! i'm not used to it, though, because i've been using VCS all my engineering life. but yeah, debussy rocks. if i use it enough, i just might switch over.

i'm still shuddering over lauren's hotness on SYTYCD. hot damn. i mean, the picture of her on the official website is horrible, and she looks really bad there. but during her rumba with dominic, she wore this backless dress, and it was a really sensual dance, and then they kissed, and the whole thing just added up to be a totally sexy experience. *swoon* after watching the whole episode, i rewound the tape and watched the dance again, and then i watched the kiss a few more times. smoldering, just smoldering!

when i went over to greg's place yesterday, i instantly noticed that cheryl (greg's soon-to-be wife) did her eyebrows. she got them threaded. as you probably know, i have an eyebrow fetish. and cheryl's eyebrows were really well done. bravo! she then asked me who else has good eyebrows, and instantly replied, sherilyn fenn. you know, then girl from _twin peaks_. i never watched the show, though, so you might know her as ginger from _friends_, the woman with the fake leg who went out with chandler.

ok. i'm bushed. time to head home.

jetlagged weekend

so the flight back was awesome. i drugged myself up (with seroquel and xanax), and i slept the entire way, except for the meal service. i was already sleeping by the time we took off, and the engine noise woke me up. i was slurring my words when the flight attendant asked me what kind of food i wanted. :)

paul picked me up, and when i got back, i cleaned the apartment in anticipation of the walkthrough by my landlord at 3pm. for lunch, paul, nelson and i went to st. john's. i was craving a hamburger because i didn't eat american food in taiwan (except for a sausage egg mcmuffin at mcd's early on). beg for mercy burger! yum.

so my landlord came in the afternoon, and i was surprised that he and his wife had immigrated to new zealand. i just jotted some notes of some things to repair (light switches, some wet patches in the bathroom, etc.), and he left within 10 minutes.

then, i watched last week's _so you think you can dance_. hot damn! that rumba with dominic and lauren was good. lauren looked so FUCKING HOT that i wanted to cry. i don't know if they planned the kiss at the end, but i would have done much more than kiss her, hehe. but the problem was, my vcr taped the results show, but it got a giants baseball game instead. *RAAR* so i went online to find out that two of my three favorite dances got voted off! *RAAR* later on in the weekend, i went on ew.com and read a recap of the results show, and now i want to see it. i hope alan has it tivo'ed so i can watch it.

for dinner, five of us went to dusita for some tasty thai food, which i had also been craving. duck run! pad kee mao! afterwards, paul, nelson and mikeC went to play LAN games, and i went over and watched satellite (i.e. east coast time) SNL. that "sofa king" (say it out loud to get the joke) bit was pretty funny. and then i went home and slept.

apparently, i had a bit of jet lag becuase i woke up at 2pm. then, i went over to greg's place, where they were doing some wedding stuff. i said hi to greg, cheryl, john, etc. and hung out for a bit, and then gave grace her belated birthday gift.

afterwards, i went to pick up jeffrey at the hyatt in santa clara. he's an old friend of mine from my high school days in dallas. i hadn't seen him in like 13 years! so it was awesome to catch up with him. he was in town for an interview for a sleep medicine fellowship at stanford. i took him to fuki sushi for a $90 meal. i had toro for the first time ($14.50 for two nigiri!), and i have to say, i wasn't impressed. but still, the food was good, and i had my whiskey. (i know, i swore off whiskey after that night in taiwan, but i guess not.)

after dropping him off, i went home, took a shower, and had a hard time falling sleep. damn this jet lag. but still, it was a great weekend, and i'm glad to be home. :)

taiwan, the finale part 2

so this is *truly* my last entry from taiwan. i'm at the VIP lounge at the airport, and i board in half an hour.

i got a big sendoff last night. i had expressed that i wanted to drink some whiskey, but my family sort of frowned upon me ordering expensive drinks at restaurants. so last night, i met up with my ex-coworker tony, his girlfriend rita, and (later on) his brother scott at this lounge. we ordered a $100 700ml bottle of 12-year glenfidditch (sp?) and drained it in 2 hours. i had like 7 drinks, and i puked twice. :)

it was pretty fun. i got pretty buzzed, and i smoked my brains out. we ordered a lot of deep-fried food (mozzarella sticks!) and just talked. i have never spoken so much chinese before. i think the fact that i was buzzed meant that my inhibitions were down, so i used phrases that i never used before in front of my parents (in my sober self). i still didn't quite understand everything people were saying, so a lot of the times i just nodded and pretended like i understood.

they had jameson coasters! so i got 8 of them. YAY! i told the owner of the bar (who was actually pretty cute) that jameson was my favorite whiskey, so she actually went out and ordered it from some place and brought it over. by that time, though, i was already toasted, so i didn't drink much of it. and unfortunately, plain jameson is way un-smoother (not a word, i know) than 12-year glenfidditch, so the other guys didn't like it. oh well.

anyways, it was a great way to end the taiwan trip. i was sort of hungover this morning; my lips were all stuck together, and i felt like puking in bed last night, but it was still fun. :)

ok, i'm going to look for a place to smoke in the airport now. wish me a safe trip home! geesh... a 12-hour flight.

taiwan, the finale

well, this will be my last post from taiwan. i leave for the airport tomorrow morning, so tonight, i'm gonna see if i can stay out as long as possible so i can crash on the plane. if i can't do that, then i'm gonna have some major issues because i arrive in the states at 9am, and i need to stay up throughout the day.

anyways, to clarify, the "tian" in the "tian ji" (frog) means "field" or "patty" (as in "rice patty"). i got it wrong, thinking it meant "sweet." but no matter, i won't eat that stuff. :) i had stinky tofu today. in the states, it comes in dry cubes, but in taiwan, it comes in a stew or soup. it smelled horrible, but it actually tasted ok. i've eaten it before, though, so i wasn't shocked or anything, hehe.

ok, let's talk about taiwanese girls. i've been on constant lookout for cute ones, and sad to say, i think i can count on one hand that number of girls that i found attractive. in fact, the cutest one that i found turned out to be a chinese-american girl (i think she was one, because she was speaking perfect english with her friends).

i went out with my ex-coworker and his girlfriend the other night, and according to them, the hot girls ("lah mei," or translated as "spicy beautiful") come out after midnight. unfortunately for me, i usually get tired by then, but maybe tonight, if i meet up with them again, i'll try to stay out late enough to see if they really are attractive. :) we drove by a club that night, and he said some of the girls were "lah mei," but i didn't notice if any of them were particularly spicy.

but yeah, the women here aren't much to look at. although, on a side note, i have come to appreciate earrings on girls. a good pair of them can really make a nice face look even better, sort of like glasses. (you all know of my eyewear fetish, right?) i'm not talking about studs, but stuff like dangling earrings or hoops. yum!

oh, speaking of my ex-coworker, i think he's gonna be rich, or maybe he already is. he left my company to go work in taiwan, and his company is doing really well. he pulled up in a porsche 911, and later on that night, he told me that his net worth is about a million bucks (US, of course), and it might double. hot damn! of course, the downside is that he works like a slave, often until midnight, and during tapeout periods, he has been known to work until 3am. while i envy his money, there is no way in hell that i could take that sort of pounding and stay sane.

as much as i've been eating, i think i may have actually lost weight. i've been eating a lot of variety of food, but the portions are nowhere as big as in the states. this entire week in taiwan, i've only seen one fat person (as in really fat), and i haven't seen any guys with beer bellies or anything of that sort. it's just the american culture that promotes that whole "super size me" thing, i think.

anyways, that's about all i have left to report. i was wondering when my mom was going to preach the gospel to me, and she gave me her speech about an hour ago. i was pretty uncomfortable, but at the end, she told me that she wasn't trying to persuade me to convert to christianity on the spot or anything, so i appreciate that. my family's sort of weird that way; half of us are religious, and the other half are tolerant agnostics. i wonder how much of a burden the religious side has; it must suck to be them, when they believe that they need to "save" us from going to hell.

ok, well, it's been a good trip. i with my cousin D stayed here longer, so the three of us (D, my brother and i) could have roamed around the city together more, but at least we got to do that a little bit. this trip was better than the one last year in terms of doing stuff, so i'm glad i came out.

all righty-o! i'll be home in about 30+ hours. until then, wish me a safe journey back to the bay area!

taiwan, day 4

well, things have wound down a lot. my uncle and cousin left last night. it was fun exploring the city with my cousin and little brother; the three of us went out a few days ago. we were like this trio of 6-foot-tall guys roaming about, and i really enjoyed that. now, it's just the four of us chang's, except that my dad works on the weekdays, and we only see him at night.

yesterday, we had some awesome beef noodle soup. it was probably my favorite meal here so far. simple and good. the beef was very tender, and tendon was awesome, and soup was spicy and wonderful. yummers. i came home, took a shower and crashed, and woke up and ate again. very simple day.

it's around 3pm here, and our chauffeur took us on a little hike in the mountains. the scenery is very pretty here; it's very green. we did see some sulfur spewing from the side of the mountainside, and man, it stunk. right now, the others are sleeping, and i'm happy to get some downtime, hence the blogging.

frankly, i'm sort of ready to go home, from a tourism aspect. i've seen enough of taipei/taiwan, and there's not much else to do. i do want to find another t-shirt for grace (who took me to the airport, and might pick me up on saturday because alan had to cancel), so that's one last thing to do. i found her one two days ago, but i think it's too small.

i think i'm just going to chill here the rest of my stay here and spend time to enjoy being with my family. i know that's the main reason why i came here, after all.

so apparently, there's a glut of taxi drivers here in the city. my dad is very picky about which taxi he rides. some, he says, only speak taiwanese, which he doesn't understand. others are rude or don't know the directions. some taxi's offer discounts because they can't find customers. i guess we're lucky because we have the benefit of having a chauffeur during the day. i feel sad, though, because he waits for us while we're out having fun. what a job. i guess i should feel better because at least he has a job and is getting paid.

man, my brother and cousin are buff. like i said, we're all six-feet tall, but they're really built and stuff. i'm so scrawny compared to them. my brother weighs like 200 pounds! when i was that heavy, it was all fat, but my brother's weight is due to muscle. he can dunk a basketball! holy shit! me, on the other hand, i can't even touch the rim. i feel small. hehe

we had peking duck the other night. did i mention this already? i can't remember. but anyways, you know how i love duck skin and fat. so at the end of the meal, there was still some left, so i just ate the last pieces, to the dismay of the other people. it turns out it was because i ate the ASS of the duck, the fattiest part. yeah, i felt like puking afterwards, it was so greasy and fatty.

so i think the whole "falling asleep to sportscenter" thing is a mental thing. i'm having an easy time falling asleep here, and of course, i don't have that show to lull me to sleep. my theory is that i get so much sleep in the states, that i need some sort of crutch. here, i'm sleeping about 9-10 hours a day compared to about 10-12 hours back home. anyways, just an observation.

i finally got my dump schedule set according to taiwanese time. up until this morning, i was taking a shit during mornings, but mornings pacific time. it was only today that i finally got my usual diarrhea when i woke up. hehe. funny how jet lag affects our shits.

ok, that's all i got to report for now. gonna go have a smoke now on the balcony. toodles!