i did good work today. i successfully debugged a hanging test by comparing waveforms with a previous chip's run, and i figured out the problem. so it seems to pass now. *phew* slowly but surely, the 90+ failures in that damn FBUS block are getting whittled down. i canNOT wait to wash my hands of this fucking block and move onto something less troublesome.
i attended company lunch (i.e. free food) today for the first time in months. it was greek food, and i took two bites of it, threw the rest away, and called up some friends looking to go out. luckily, alan responded, and we met up at choi's for some korean food. their potsticker sauce is very satisfying.
i think i'm going to have problems finding someone to see the _sex and the city_ movie with me. certainly, none of my guy friends will want to see it, that's for sure. it's not getting good ratings, but i am definitely intrigued by the fact that it's got "graphic nudity" according to the reviews. which of the girls is getting naked? *ponder*
so the ads for _the happening_ by m. night shyamalan are touting it to be his first R rated movie. what's so special about that? why would that make you want to see it? is it like, "oh, it's got to be violent/sexual, so i *really* want to see it now." hm. anyways, i'm not a fan of his work, so my response is very tepid.
one of the contestants on last night's SYTYCD had a name that was spelled "phucdat." what an unfortunate name. poor guy. he mentioned how he got made fun of a lot, and he got beat up and thrown in his locker frequently. :( but with a name that looks like "fuck that," i'm not surprised. i watched two two-hour episodes back to back, and boy, i was tired of watching dancing after that. there are more audition episodes to come, too, and i'm getting bored already. so far, there's only one or two cute girls. one of them was this brunette girl named courtney with the spanish parents. i think i like her the best so far. but otherwise, there haven't been any standouts.
my morning song: "love is a battlefield" by pat benatar. i think the reason why this song was in my head was because brooke white sang it during the AI semifinals. she did a pretty good job on it, too, stripping it down. i've been getting up pretty late this past week, and this morning, i got into work around 11:15. ugh. luckily, my boss doesn't sit near me, or otherwise i'd look pretty bad. but oh well, i was productive today, so i'm happy with myself.
i get annoyed when i think i'm finished taking a dump, and i've wiped, and then more stuff comes out. i guess i feel like i'm wasting toilet paper. this happened to me at the office today. it almost happened mid-wipe, too. like, i was in the middle of my first-wipe, and then all of a sudden, my asshole opened up, and some more liquid shit came out in a burst. luckily, i didn't get it all over my hands. *RAAR* it's worse at home, because i have nice toilet paper, and i don't like the fact that i have to use more than i have to. (yes, i know toilet paper's relatively cheap, but still.)
so my OCD about checking that my doors are closed and locked paid off the other night. it turned out that in my haste, i forgot to close my garage door after getting home, and i didn't find out until i checked it during my nightly routine. wowzers! *phew* it's a good thing, because i don't lock the door to my garage, so anybody could have come in at night and killed me or something. i think the reason why i forgot to close it in the first place was because i was carrying something in each hand as i got home (like groceries or mail or something), so my normal entering routine was thrown off.
did somebody mention something about free yogurt at red mango (grand opening party) this saturday? if so, let me know for sure, and maybe i'll check it out. to be honest, i wasn't very impressed the first time, and it's a bit far for me to go for yogurt when mel's place is right down the street from me. but then again, maybe i'll see yul working there, which is always a giddy sight for me. he's a celebrity!
i need to ask the facilities people at my company what happened to the V-8. we seem to have stopped carrying it for the past few weeks, and i feel like my vegetable intake has been almost nonexistent. as much as i think V-8 tastes disgusting, i sort of miss that salty tomato ickiness that i've gotten used to taking once a day. and while i'm at it, maybe i'll ask about the vitasoy, which we haven't had for years. i miss that stuff, too; i used to drink 4 of those a day.
ok, i'm taking off. it's too late to be here on a friday night. have a great weekend!
so, as you know, last night, nelson and i went to see the cure in concert. man, this is the last time i will ever go to a cure concert. as nelson warned me, it ran three hours long (plus the opening band, 65 days of static, which was all instrumental). my count (i think i may have missed a song or two) was 36 songs (25 + three encores of 4, 3, and 4 songs). THIRTY-SIX songs! holy shit! luckily the seats were padded so my ass didn't get sore. here were the notables for me:
3: fascination street
7: lovesong
9: pictures of you
10: lullaby
19: just like heaven
20: a letter to elise
my favorite was definitely "fascination street." and the crowd favorite was "just like heaven"; when they started, about 80% of the people jumped up and started dancing. i probably knew less than half of the songs (while nelson, whose favorite band is the cure, knew all but one of them), so i have to admit i was sort of bored during part of the concert. but man, i was tired by the end. at various points, i smelled pot, and i thought it would be nice to get stoned so i could enjoy the music more.
i wanted to buy a concert t-shirt, but 1) they were pricey ($35!), 2) there wasn't anything particularly cool, and 3) i didn't deem myself a worthy cure fan to deserve a t-shirt. so i saved my money and didn't get one. i got home, checked my e-mail and espn.com, had a smoke, went to bed, and watched the rebroadcast of the celtics/pistons game. i ended up falling asleep around 2am. so i'm dead tired today. and plus, my ears are still ringing. damn, i'm getting too old for this shit. (the only two bands/artists i want to see now are morrissey and the beastie boys.)
this morning, i had this amazing dream about seeing jackie chan play with this spinning blade that was dangling from a mini helicopter. he was performing his own stunts, of course, so he managed to avoid getting cut by the blade. but all of a sudden, his left index finger got cut, and blood started spewing everywhere. he said he was ok, so he got into this self-propelling go-kart and raced off, blood still gushing like a water fountain. and then i woke up. (weird dream, huh?)
the reason why i woke up was because i got a phone call from this dude wanting to sell me golden state warriors season tickets. he knew that i had bought tickets earlier for the warriors/mavs game in march, but i then told him, "hey, look, i'm a mavericks fan." that shut him up, (you see, i was sort of upset that my dream was ruined, and it was kind of early in the morning) and he didn't have anywhere to go in the conversation, so he said he'd contact me later and hung up.
so tonight, i have four hours (well, more like 3:20 without commercials) of _so you think you can dance_ to watch. i taped last night's 2-hour show because of the concert, and there's 2 more hours to watch tonight. that's a lot of dancing, and i'm not sure if i can take it. we'll see.
i'm eating goldfish crackers right now (parmesan flavor). i saw them in the downstairs vending machine, and i immediately started drooling. but somehow, they're not as good as i thought they would be. they're rather dry. but still, i'm powering through them, and they're sort of growing on me. goldfish crackers are sort of nostalgic for me; i remember eating them when i was a kid. ah, the memories.
is paisley completely out? i haven't seen a paisley tie in ages. i used to love that pattern; i had paisley ties and shirts and stuff. but now, i think it's hideous. it looks like paramecium. sometimes we need to distance ourselves from fashion, and we realize that we were fools to wear what we did. i of all people should know; you should have seen me in early college, because i absolutely had no fashion sense. i blame it on my parents for not giving me an allowance so i could buy my own clothes in high school, so when i finally shopped for myself in college, i just went nuts.
back then, i mixed plaids with stripes, wore all primary colors at once, and get this: i had an all yellow outfit. yup. bright, saturated, solid yellow t-shirt and matching shorts (i got them at the gap). it was ridiculous. and i even tied a solid red buttondown around my waist, and i would go biking around campus, pretending i was the sun. yes, the sun. and don't forget my yellow, purple, green and black cloak. i wore that around, as if it was mardi gras year round. sigh. what a joke. i have since donated those clothes to goodwill. i wonder if anybody has picked that stuff up.
i farted in my cube today, and it really smelled. like, it truly was a horrible stench. i hoped it didn't seep over the walls into my neighbor's area. i don't remember the last time i had such horrible-smelling gas. i mean, i usually cup my farts and sample them myself (yes, i enjoy doing that), and they're usually quite innocuous. was it something i ate? my last two meals have been pho and a southern chicken sandwich.
ok, off for a cigarette break. ugh. lots of tv to watch tonight. i hope there are some good auditions on SYTYCD.
so the other day, at some drive thru, i got a canadian dime as part of my change. i didn't know what to do with it. but when i went to san jose airport to pick up D, i noticed that there was a currency exchange booth by the baggage claim. so i walked up, held up the dime, and asked the lady there if i could get my 8 or so cents in return. she shook her head and rudely gestured me away. what, bitch, was my money not good enough for her? hrmph. so yesterday, we had a guy from our toronto labs in house at the office, so i just gave the coin to him.
so tonight is the cure concert. i'm going with nelson, who regards the cure as his favorite band. i'm sure he is much more excited than i am about sitting for three+ hours (plus some no-name opening band, ugh) in one place. he's been watching youtube videos and reading up on previous gigs for this tour, so i think he's pretty psyched up. me, on the other hand, i just hope i don't get a panic attack or fall asleep. i hope they have cool t-shirts, though. i usually get a concert t-shirt at every concert i go to, unless they're extra fugly.
my morning song: "overkill" by men at work. this song was made popular by _scrubs_ when that guy with the guitar would show up at random places and sing this song. (and at the end, dr. cox grabbed his guitar and smashed it to pieces.) i love this song. i was humming it while i took my morning dump, haha.
so! thanks for the info on hermaphrodites. i think i heard somewhere that most of them don't have fully formed penises. but do they produce both eggs and sperm? crazy! i wonder if they can fertilize themselves. and thusly, i wonder what kind of weird mutations that would cause for their babies. fascinating stuff.
i was trying not to drink too much stuff this afternoon for fear of having to take a leak at the concert. but alas, i forgot about that plan, and i'm finishing a dr pepper as i type this. i gotta remember to force a bathroom break before i leave the office.
this morning, as it was a wednesday, the tree trimmers and the lawn people were outside making a bunch of noise. they woke me up, but after a while, i was able to tune them out. unfortunately, that meant that i tuned my own alarm clock out, so i woke up at 11:15am. uh oh. when i saw the time, i leapt right out of bed and rushed to get to the office. damn, that's late. i wonder what my coworkers think of me, getting to work so tardily.
remember when i said i joined an internet dating site out of boredom (and because it was free)? well, i got a message from this asian girl whose handle was "shortych*nk." (asterisk so she can't search for herself on this blog) i was rather put off by her use of "chink." i mean, no self-respecting chinese person would use that term, right? or am i being too pc?
ok, i shall look for red envelopes the next time i hit cupertino village. i'll need a couple anyway, for my brother's graduation and the weddings and receptions i'll be going to. ah, money money money.
i think i have hemorrhoids. i was scrubbing the soap out of my asshole last night, and it hurt. i kept going, though, because of course, everybody wants a clean asshole. luckily, i don't have to push out large turds these days, so i don't have to test my sphincter much. hm. we'll see how i do during tonight's shower.
so i heard from jo-ann yesterday that she and ricky got married in singapore. congratulations! i was madly in love with jo-ann back in the day, around 2000-2001. this was right after i broke up with k2, and i started hanging around taiko folk again. when i first saw jo-ann, i thought she was radiant. i saw her perform, and she had this big smile and short pigtails. so cute! and she had this singaporean accent that was just wonderful to listen to. anyways, i pursued her for a long while, but it didn't work out, much to my dismay, and eventually i got over it. anyways, i'm really happy for her and ricky, and i'll most likely attend her reception in sacramento at the end of june. road trip!
ok, it's almost 6. i gotta go get a bunch of cash (to pay nelson for the ticket and for t-shirt money) and meet nelson to carpool to the concert. let's hope i survive the event!
so i have this horrible habit/compulsion of spitting when i smoke. it's like my mouth just dries up, so i need to generate saliva and stuff. anyways, at work, i have two smoking venues: outside in the parking lot on the steps, and outside the cafeteria area. i target my spit on the same areas, so over the many months and gazillion smoking breaks, i've built up this dark (almost black) crusty matter on the concrete. well, guess what? over this past memorial day long weekend, they cleaned it all up! they must have gotten a chisel or something, because they scraped all of the gunk off, and the stuff is all gone. ah, a new blank canvas for me to create. i wonder how long it'll take for me to build back the crusts.
as far as i can remember, i have never dreamt about taking a dump. that's a good thing, because otherwise, i'd probably let loose my bowels in my dream and soil my sheets. every time i take my morning dump, i make sure that i'm in the real world, but i'm not sure that i can be 100% positive i'm not dreaming. so far, i've been lucky that i haven't crapped in my bed.
last night, after taking a shower and drying myself off, i had to take a dump. i towel-dried my asshole before taking the shit, but when i tried wiping, my sphincter was still not completely dry, so the toilet paper wouldn't move when i tried swiping it on my butt. because of that, i wasn't comfortable going to bed naked with an unsatisfactorily-wiped ass, so i hopped back in the shower and gave my butt an extra-hard soapdown. it was only after the second shower that i felt good enough to hit the sack, otherwise, i would have felt the urge to prove my asshole with my finger and smell it. (ick)
re: switching contexts over the weekend. yes, i do hit different venues with different friends and stuff. the main reason why that happens is because i don't have a girl. if i were with someone, i'm sure my weekends would be more monotonous; i'd just spend it mostly with that someone. but because i'm single, i try to fill my weekends with "stuff," roaming around and jumping from one social situation to another. *shrug*
i have an incredible hankering for mcdonald's southern chicken sandwich. the problem is, there isn't a mcd's close to my house, so if i were to get one, it would get cold by the time i got home. hm. maybe i'll get one near work and eat it in the parking lot? hm. sounds sad. but man, i crave it.
last year was the year of the weddings (i went to six of them, and five other friends got married as well), but this year is getting up there as well. i have two weddings this year, but i also have three receptions (post-marriage gatherings) lined up. wow! i plan on giving gifts to all these weddings, so that's a lot of cash i'm dishing out. where can i buy red envelopes? do i have to trek all the way out to chinatown in SF? maybe i'll look online.
so i remember back when i used to look at skin mags, i saw some ads featuring hermaphrodites. you know, girls with both schlongs and vadges. are those real? how come there were no men with both organs? anyways, they were freaky, but intriguing at the same time. it must be awesome to get both kinds of orgasms. think of all the possibilities! but i do wonder... how do they take a leak? do they pee out of their penis, or do they have a urethra tucked away in their vagina? anyways, can you tell that i'm fascinated by this? i would absolutely love to meet one and investigate his/her genitalia.
man, i am beat today. i got up two hours earlier than normal to pick up my coworker D from the airport. i fell asleep both before and after basketball. D saw me taking a nap, and he said it was way too obvious what i was doing. ugh. but i couldn't help it! i was just so tired.
i am getting worried for my grandfather (mom's dad). i've heard that there are times when he stands up, and then he can't move. :( he's well into his 80's, i think, so yeah, he's getting up there. i guess at that age, the body just starts to fail and shut down. sigh. some other old people i know (like my cousin's grandmother and my dad's mom's remarried husband) are also not doing well, healthwise. both of them have cancer. it makes me wonder about the finality of it all.
during dinner at gombei last week, grace asked each of us at the table what we thought we would die of. i said stress or lung cancer. that latter one, though, is something that i can prevent. i really don't plan on smoking once i get married and have kids. i don't want my kids to see me as a smoking parent. but i do wonder how hard it will be to quit. right now, smoking is such an ingrained routine in my life. it gives my days structure and relief. so we'll see. and stress is a constant reminder in my life, because of my tourette's. the disorder is heavily stress-driven, i.e. my tics get worse when i am under more stress.
sorry to end this on a down note, but i'm getting hungry. and i do think i'm going to hit up mcd's and get that southern chicken sandwich. i can't wait!
so my long weekend was mainly characterized by unremarkable meals. :(
friday night, grace, john, nelson and i went to fish market for dinner. i don't really like fish, so i got my usual crab cakes. (i almost got the fish and chips, though.) the crab cakes were sort of ok, but there were four of them, and eventually i got greased out. amazingly, grace ate all the garnish that came with my dinner, including the parsley and the entire bed of cabbage. wow.
saturday, i got up around 11 or so, and i waited until paul, nelson and leeya finished watching the _indiana jones_ movie, and we met up at los gatos cafe for brunch. normally, i absolutely adore that place, but i made the mistake of ordering the fajita steak omelette. i realized that steak strips and omelettes don't really go together. so that made my lunch a complete failure.
after that, we went back to paul's house, and we watched _there will be blood_. nelson was pretty wrapped up in the movie, but this was my second time watching it, and i didn't even like it the first time around. but i guess i had nothing better to do, so i just sat there and watched the entire thing. then, i went home and caught the NBA playoffs.
then, we met up with grace and john at high five pizza in san jose. the pizza wasn't very good (it was like round table pizza, which i really dislike), so that was another bad meal. then, we drove all the way up to mountain view for pearl drinks. leeya got a bunch of those little winnie the pooh trinkets; she gets so excited about them! it's really cute.
sunday, i got up at noon and went to aimee's big bbq at las palmas park. there were a lot of her friends there who i didn't know, so i mostly hung out with paul, the grillmaster. i had a sausage and a hot link, which were made slightly better by the spicy heinz ketchup which i brought. i also talked to paul's older brother andy for quite a while.
then, i headed off to stanford for the collegiate taiko invitational concert. there were like five groups that performed, and (i'm not biased, i'm being objective here) stanford was the best one in terms of artistry and polish. but it was definitely interesting to see the styles and level of play among the other groups, which included UCLA, UC davis, and cal.
while i waited for the taiko workshop leaders had their debriefing meeting, i went home and caught some of the NBA playoffs, and when they finished, i met up with a whole bunch of them (including some stanford taiko alum) at garden fresh, this chinese restaurant that serves "meat" made out of purely vegetarian matter. it was weird. i mean, it looks like pork, beef and chicken, but it doesn't taste like it. i didn't like it very much. but still, i got to see shoji and kris (some of taiko mates of mine), so it was worth it.
then, after dinner, i headed off to paul's place and hung out. of course, nelson was watching _there will be blood again_ (man, he is obsessed with this movie), and then, when they started playing LAN games, i left and went to bed.
sunday, four of us went to in 'n out for burgers. i got a double-double and a cheeseburger, animal style. i felt sick afterwards from food overdose. then, we hit REI, where i learned about BPA, this harmful chemical found in nalgene bottles. hm. maybe i should buy a new one, since my old one has this stuff.
we went to paul's house for a bit, and then he and i hit up yogurtland for our dessert fix. then, i went home a bit, watched some basketball, and then i took a nap, overslept, and met up with jay and alan (and their wives) at korea house for the final meal of the weekend. i got the kimchee dol sot bop, but man, it was overloaded with sprouts, which i hate.
after that, i introduced that gang to yogurtland, which they had never been to. (yes, i had been there just hours before.) and i bumped into greg, cheryl and edric. ting went nuts and tried like 8 or so flavors in one cup. they seemed to like it, so i was glad the expedition wasn't a bust. after that, i just went home and caught up on the sporting life of the day.
so that was it. man, the weekend flew by quickly, and i was a bit cross with the bad weather and the unsatisfactory meals. i would have liked to have hit kim long and gotten a better omelette at los gatos cafe. oh well. next time! and yay for a short work week!
i know, i know, i swore off mongolian bbq the last time i had it, but my ex-coworker organized an outing today, so i went and didn't make a fuss about it. it was damn good, too; i had the biggest bowl i've ever made. after i came back from lunch and had a smoke, i promptly passed out for half an hour in my cube. awesome. the problem, though, is that the price went up yet again! it is now a whopping $12. only a year or two ago, it was mere $8, and now the price has gone up 50%. damn. a friend of mine who was there said that the price of ingredients has gone up. hm. i don't think it's worth it now, even with the added shrimp and ice cream offered, neither of which i take advantage of.
i watched the full 2-hour season premiere of _so you think you can dance_ last night. most of it was boring, but i thoroughly enjoyed phillip chbeeb's audition. he is just awesome. (youtube his name.) i can't say that he'll do well in the show, though, because he's probably not versatile enough to handle lyrical or ballroom dancing, but his own unique style is just fucking amazing. i could watch it over and over again. and that last guy (the street dancer in santa monica) was pretty rad, too. but poor ting; i e-mailed her with a reminder that the show was airing, and she even remembered it, but she only caught the last 10 minutes of the show. whoops.
nailbiting is a really weird habit if you think about it. what drives a person to chew off a body part? very odd, i tell you. i've been a nailbiter ever since i was a little kid. my parents did all sorts of crazy (and traumatic) things to stop me from doing it, things that i won't get into. eventually, after i grew up to be too old to harass, they just gave up. these days, i still bite my nails, but not to the point where they bleed or look awful. they just look a little short.
neckties are also pretty random, too. who came up with the idea of dangling a really uncomfortable, constricting piece of cloth around you neck and calling it "fancy" and "sophisticated?" and bowties, too. those are even more upscale. hrmph. i actually don't mind neckties these days, though. after two years of doing academic decathlon and wearing suits and stuff, i grew into it. but i hate, just abhor, wearing tuxedo's. they make me feel all stuffy, and they make me want to scream and rip them off. at least with suits, you can mix and match colors and have at least some personality. (suspenders, baby!)
this morning, i woke up to the smell of something burning. i thought my place was on fire. when i got into my car, the smell was there, too, so i thought there was a problem with my car. and then, when i got to work, the smell was *still* there, so i was just confused. it turned out that the entire south bay was stinky because of a massive fire near the santa cruz/santa clara county border (so i was told). man. i hope people are ok, and there wasn't too much property damage.
man, k1 is popular. she has her own fan club on facebook. plus, she has her own wikipedia page. i wonder what it's like to be a minor celebrity. i guess i've had a teeny, tiny taste of it. i've been recognized on the street before because of this blog. one time, this dude named van (he used to have a blog, too) saw me outside of a club and called out my name. i was drunk off my ass (but luckily, i had just puked my guts out, so i was at least feeling better), but i was at least coherent enough to carry a conversation with him. another time, a reader of mine recognized me at a vienna teng concert. and of course, there's tim, who said hi to me at pepper lunch in milpitas. those moments made me feel happy and popular. so readers, if you ever see me in person, don't be shy and feel free to introduce yourself! :)
i just felt a twinge in my asshole, so i went to take a dump. it was 100% pure liquid. at first, i was afraid it was blood, but it turned out to be green liquid. green! hm. i wonder why it was that color. i hadn't had odwalla superfood in many months. i am definitely relieved it wasn't blood, though; the next time i schedule a physical, i'm gonna talk to my doctor about that.
so the second tekoki video i have is very smart. most handjob videos are very boring; for 5 minutes or so, it's just monotonous stroking. but this video has this thing called a "comeshot loop" or something, where they assemble all the money scenes into one big montage. that's a lot more exciting, i think. oh, and in one scene, one of the girls teabags herself. i start laughing when i saw that; it's not sexy at all, and it's just ridiculous and very humorous. who the hell finds teabagging sexy and titillating? not me, that's for sure.
i am pleased to announce that my left testicle is no longer sore. i guess it was just a freak accident that day, like i sat on it wrong or something. during dim sum last weekend, jack asked me if i was ok in front of everyone, but he didn't mention my nut, so everyone was sort of puzzled at his question. he was like, "how is your left side?" and i replied, "it's ok." jeremy looked at me funny, and i just quickly dismissed it with a "never mind." haha. no, i didn't want to announce to everyone that i had a sore left gonad.
ok, things are winding down at the office. it's not even 5:30 yet, but i'm leaving at that time to take D to the airport. and that's it for my workweek. yay, LONG WEEKEND! anyways, take care everybody! i'll see you guys next tuesday!
so i took off basketball early today and gave myself enough time to get hungry (i don't feel hungry immediately after exercising), and then i went to mcdonald's to try out two new items on their menu: the sweet tea and the southern chicken sandwich. both were decent. the tea was nice and sugary, and the sandwich was good, too, although it's probably really bad for you. alan and ting said that it's an imitation of the stuff you get a chick-fil-a, which i've had before in texas, but don't remember. anyways, i might get those items again, especially the tea, since it's only $1 for 32 ounces.
so i suffered through the 2-hour _american idol_ season finale last night, and i am ecstatic at which david won. and he won by quite a margin, too: 12 million votes, or 12 percent of the 90+ million votes cast. last night, before they closed down the american idol songs on iTunes, i got my wireless router working, and i bought david cook's "always be my baby" (by mariah carey), which was really good. i listened to it about three times before i went to bed. that, along with jason castro's "over the rainbow" were the only two songs that i deemed worthy of downloading this season. there were two other songs that i wanted, but they were performed during the top 24, so they didn't have studio-length versions. they were david cook's "hello" and kristy lee cook's "faithfully."
and just when i washed my hands of a long-running reality competition show, another one starts; _so you think you can dance_ starts tonight with a full 2-hour premiere. i like this show even more, so i'm excited. i just wish there were a break between the two shows, though.
i have no plans made for the long weekend so far. i do want to see _narnia_ and _indiana jones_, though. yeah, generic summer blockbusters. are there any good indie films out? i haven't seen an art house flick in a long time. the first movie, i want to watch just to keep up with the story. i read the first book (_the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe_) when i was a teenager, and i hated it, so i didn't bother with the rest of the series. i think they should make _the prydain chronicles_ into movies. that was a far better series. (this is the one with _the book of three_, _the black cauldron_, and _the high king_).
no, it doesn't matter what ethnic background my readers are. i was just wondering, because it seems most of my readers are asian. (at least, i assumed most of my commenters were asian, but i have no idea why i made that assumption.) most of the blogs i read are by asian writers, and i'm not sure why that is. well, a lot of them are by people i know in real life, and these days, most of my friends are asians.
back in high school, i had a much more diverse set of friends. my best buds were japanese, indian, german, and jewish. but when i went to college, there was a vastly larger percentage of asian people (compared to texas, of course), so my friends' ethnic backgrounds shifted dramatically. i guess you tend to gravitate toward people who are more similar to you? *shrug* i dunno. but in some ways, i miss having a more heterogeneous set of friends.
i think it's time i get some frozen yogurt tonight.
so one night after i dreamt about k1, i had a dream about k2 this morning. her hair was dyed orange, and when she saw me, she gave me a kiss on the temple and then one on the cheek. i remember being nervous seeing her, because we aren't on good terms, but everything turned out ok in the dream. i also had a dream earlier about being captured and rendered mute by two korean people. i woke up all jittery and scared, but i remember thinking, "wow, what an interesting dream." of course, my efforts to remember any details failed. damn, i should get some batteries for that digital voice recorder ting and alan got me for my birthday a few years ago and keep it next to my pillow.
i know i swore off mongolian bbq the last time i had it (due to massive food coma), but i'm meeting some ex-coworkers tomorrow at su's for lunch. i can't wait. i guess i didn't learn my lesson, huh? but damn, the stuff is good. i've had pretty cheap lunches of late; i had yoshinoya yesterday and mcdonald's today, so i guess i'm due for a pricier lunch. (mongolian ain't cheap nowadays; it's around $13 after tax and tip.)
so does hugh hefner really have multiple girlfriends? i've caught bits and pieces of _the girls next door_ on the E! channel, and it seems like he has that one main girlfriend. so who are the other girls who live at the playboy mansion? does he sleep with all of them? it must be nice to have a harem of women. sometimes i think it's a shame to place all this pressure one girl to be everything to you. it would be better to spread your expectations and needs over multiple women, so no one girl get bogged down. like, if one of them is tired and overworked, then the next one can step right up.
one of my friends is a victim of bad timing. like, she met a nice guy, but he just left for another continent, and she's moving to another continent as well for a year. that's sad. i've been in a similar situation before, too. it sucks. i've also met cool girls when i've been in a relationship. i know, my blinders should have been on, and they pretty much were, but now, over a decade later, and being out of the relationship, i look back and wonder how it would have been to date those other girls. it was like a window of opportunity that i didn't take, you know? and now those windows are closed.
ok. 6pm. time to check on a test and then leave for my massage. yay, massage!
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so this morning, i had a dream about k1. we were back in school, and i had to find her to have her tutor me in some math class that i had missed. that was very odd, since *i* was the math/science whiz in real life, and she was totally not. (in fact, i don't even remember her taking any math class. and i was also the one who wrote her programs when she took a cheesy easy computer science class. she even dropped the "physics for poets" class!) anyways, it was an interesting dream, but i woke up to my alarm, and i couldn't get back in the dream again. rats.
it's been a frustrating day at work. i spent a good chunk of time digging into some code, looking for a bug or reason why our chip hangs given a certain programming parameter, but i eventually found something that seems to be the root cause. i showed my boss, since he was the one who wrote the code, and we filed a footprint in the issue tracker. i don't know what we're going to do about it though, because the fix is not easy. the code was also partially written by an ex-boyfriend of one of my friends, which i thought was amusing; his code is not as pretty as mine, haha.
last night, grace invited me to meet up with her volleyball pals at duke of edinburgh, this irish pub next to cupertino village. they finished around 9pm, so i was starving by the time i got there. i ordered the chicken/mushroom pie, which was tasteless aside from the pepper they added. i did get some whiskey though, which was good. i would like to go there again, namely to try two dishes: the french dip and the beef wellington. i hear about the wellington all the time on _hell's kitchen_, so i want to see what all the fuss is about. but anyways, i don't know if i'll join grace and her buds again; it's just too late for dinner, unless i eat a snack or something to tie me over.
so _american idol_ finally ends tonight. i feel bad for david cook. he got stuck with two choices by someone else for his first two songs, and they didn't quite fit him. oh well. i'm pretty sure archuleta's going to win. i did vote for cook twice last night after i came back from dinner. but man, a two hour finale? that's a lot of junk they're going to have as filler for a 10-second announcement. i'm not looking forward to it. but! _so you think you can dance_ begins tomorrow!
do you guys get weird sexual urges sometimes? when i was a kid (like early high schoolish), i was in the middle of a piano lesson, and all of a sudden, i had this irresistible compulsion to grab my teacher's boobs. (of course, i didn't.) but man, it was overwhelming. i mean, her chest was right there. you know, during piano lessons, the teacher would lean over and stuff to turn pages or to correct your hands, so the proximity of those breasts would be quite close. ah, my piano teacher. i wonder if she's still teaching.
one time, when i was elementary-school age, i was eating dinner, and i tapped my hand on my dad's crotch. he was very surprised, and then he got mad, like, "don't you ever touch my schlong again!" or something to that effect. haha. i don't know why i did it, either. it was just a random action on my part. maybe it was a tourettic spark in my mind.
so it looks like i'll be able to go to my friends' hawaii wedding. i was originally waffling on it because there was a chance my mom was going to be in town, but the wedding is going to be in late july instead of late june, as i had originally thought. hm. i'll have to consult my boss on this, though. we'll see. this wedding is in honolulu, which i think i would find more interesting than kona, as i have more of an affinity for cities. the wedding invite is pretty cool, and they're going to webcast their ceremony! (they're doing a small ceremony in vegas, and the hawaii thing is just the reception part.)
so my ex-coworker gave me some more examples of my quirky coding and documentation at my old company. for example, i had one module called the "deskew busmeister." and in some documentation, i said that one state machine would enter a state if it received a "glorious number of errors." "glorious," huh? how's that for quantitative? ha! :)
anybody got any good stock tips? since i sold off my COP shares yesterday, i'm looking for a place to put this money. if i make money out of your tip, i'll take you out for a meal!
i wonder how many non-asian readers i have. any of you out there care to leave me a comment? de-lurk! since i signed onto that online dating site yesterday, i've gotten some flirts and messages from some caucasian girls. i was sort of surprised. i thought white girls didn't care to date asian guys.
ok. 6pm. time for a cigarette. happy hump day!
no, i'm not lactose intolerant. i've had milk and cereal for dinner (although, i haven't had for maybe two weeks) a couple of times, and that's given me no problems. so frozen yogurt is fine with my system. last night, i went to mel's yogurt fantasy right when it closed (they were shutting down the machines when i got there) and got my fix. mel told me that they were trying to emulate pinkberry's iciness, but i tried it in front of her and told her that i didn't like it. i like her place specifically because it *isn't* icy. so i hope she switches it back. and this time, i got plenty of nice, fresh, soft mochi. *yum*
i grew up drinking whole milk, but i haven't had that stuff in several years. i became lactose intolerant during one summer between college, when i didn't have milk that entire time. when i went back to school, i had milk, and boy howdy, did it fuck me up. but i resolved to build it back up, so i just kept drinking milk and getting diarrhea. eventually, i became normal, but man, it was a really painful process. i will remind you of that one lunch i had on the toilet; that was because of milk-induced runs.
basketball today was a mixed bag. we won one tough game, 11-8, but during our next game, we got demolished 2-11. the other team shot like 80%, and we just couldn't get any offense clicking. maybe we shot our wad during that first game. oh well. i got that dehydration headache afterwards, too, despite drinking three bottles of gatorade after. i took some tylenol afterwards, and the headache's gone now.
i sold my shares of conoco-phillips (COP) today. i bought in at $73 a year and a half ago on a tip from my ex-coworker adam, and it hit $93 today. i figured it was a good price, so i pulled the trigger. i know, it's not much of a gain, and i only bought 50 shares, so i made an even $1K profit before taxes. i'll buy adam lunch. (adam bought in at $59, lucky bastard.) and i'll re-buy the stock if it falls back down.
it's always tough to decide at what price to sell. greed sets in, you know? like, you've already made all this money, but it's not *real* until you actually sell the stock. like sandisk (SNDK); i bought it at $37, and i set the target at $60, but it hit $59.75 before it fall all the way down to the $20's. shit, i missed it by only 25 cents! arrgh. that really sucked.
damn. my boss just came in, and we have a very bad "limitation" in our chip. it seems we have to look into it, which means i have to debug a part of chip that i didn't even design. i hate this kind of work. lately, i've been doing a lot of that kind of stuff, since a lot of engineers moved on and left their work for me to take over. sigh. a respected ex-coworker once told me that the sign of a truly good engineer is the ability to handle/debug/take over somebody else's design. well, i'm definitely getting a lot of practice doing this shit.
i've been getting a lot of ingrown nipple hairs these days. like i said, i pluck my nipple hairs. it feels good. to get an ingrown one out, i take my tweezers and slide them over the pore really hard, sort of like scratching them very aggressively until the follicle juts out. yes, it bleeds sometimes. but it's very rewarding to finally get it out. but ingrown nipple hairs feel really uncomfortable; i rub them a lot when i'm in my cube, and it feels like little needles poking my chest. ick. (sometimes, i lift up my shirt and examine them; hopefully, nobody catches me doing that, though, because that would be a strange sight.)
so before all this debugging mess at work, i got bored, and i saw this banner ad on my yahoo mail page about this internet dating site, so i got curious and clicked on it. it was a free site, so i joined for the hell of it, and i went through 500 profiles in like 40 minutes. of those 500 girls, there only 3 that were cute enough for me to look at their profiles. one of them had a good posed picture and a very bad picture, so the pessimistic side of me decided that she looked bad in real life. one of them looked great in glasses (ah, the fetish), but she turned out to be a 19-year-old college student. and the other one had a nice face, but she was pretty large in her other pictures. so there you go. 40 minutes gone.
i think i sprained my left thumb. i'm not sure how or when i did it. (i don't think it happened during basketball today.) the right side of the joint is all red, and it hurts when i press it. shit. once, for some insane masochistic reason, i tried to bend it sideways, and i put so much force on it that i heard a tearing sound. that was really stupid. yes, i have hurt myself in many ways. did i tell you guys that i once sprained my own ankle with my bare hands? i just gripped it, and i bent it so forcefully that it popped this huge pop, and the next day, i wouldn't walk. it was at the end of my sophomore year in college, so i couldn't move out, and i had to enlist my friends to move my stuff into storage. yes, i am dumb.
ok. i gotta get back to debugging. sigh.
man, i was tied up at work for like two hours doing this detective work. we had a mysterious problem where half of the tv was grey (black graphics), and the other half was black (black video), and there was no reason why that was happening. after a lot of dead-end brainstorming, i think i found out the problem. the dude had to leave, so we'll see if my theory holds up tomorrow morning.
i always underestimate how much shit comes out of my ass. today, i took a mini-dump at the office after my stomach started hurting. there were like two "little" squirts, but when i looked back afterwards, the little channel at the bottom of the toilet was filled up almost all the way. amazing!
i had an argentinian cigarette today. one of the other smokers offered me a marlboro light, and i was like, "uh... i already have one." but then, he showed me his pack, and it had some spanish on it. he told me that he just got back from a trip to brazil and argentina, so i tried it. it was very light, almost tasteless. it was like i was sucking on regular air. i wonder what kind of tobacco it was used and where it was made. anyways, i didn't feel satisfied, so my next smoking break came a lot sooner afterwards.
i booked my tickets to LA on southwest for next month. my boss gave me the green light to take thursday and friday off in mid june, so i can go to my brother's college graduation. hopefully, i'll be able to see some friends down there as well, but i'm not sure how much free time i'll have. my aunt is throwing a birthday party (she'll be turning 60), and my brother has two events for me to attend.
so i wrote an e-mail to one of my ex-coworkers the other day, and he told me that he had to explain to people why some of my old code had the word "WTF" in it. haha. luckily, i don't have code that says "shit" or stuff like that. i have, in the past, written code with words like "process_baby" or "happy_reg." and not to mention some gate-level stuff where i named the gates "katie_holmes_is_hot" and such. :) i guess you could call it a personal touch?
yes, i do watch porn, but i have no idea if other guys get hair on their scrotums. that's because pretty much all guys in porn shave their pubic regions. i have never seen a guy with a full-blown pubic thatch. so they probably shave their balls, too, if they get fuzzy down there. i checked last night in the shower, and yeah, i've got some really long pubes bursting out of my sack. they're funny-looking.
2, 2, 2, 1, 11, 22, 56. that's the number of flowers that have bloomed out of the plant outside my place. yes, i force myself to count each time there's a bloom. that last one (56) was a pain in the ass to count, because i miscounted a couple of times, and then i had to recount over and over again to make sure i got it right. and i do this every time i go out for a smoke. luckily, the flowers don't last very long; they shrivel up after like 2-3 days, and then i can relax and not worry about them for a while.
do you know people's shoes? i do. and because of that, during my mini-dump today at work, i think i took a shit next to my boss. i really didn't want to come out of the stall at the same time as him, so i hurried after i finished my business, washed my hands quickly, and left before he got done. *phew*
i think i have a frozen yogurt addiction. this is way worse than my obsession over boba a few years ago. over the past week, i've had froyo like six times. and i'm craving it now as i type this. hm. maybe i'll stop by mel's place on the way home. ugh. they say this stuff is good for you, but it's still calories, and not to mention all the carbs in the all-important mochi.
ah, i'm glad the weather has cooled down. i have three layers of blankets on my bed, and i had to go with two layers during the heat wave. last night, i still slept with two layers, and this morning, i felt cold. that's a good sign. i'm keeping my windows open now for the rest of summer. i like that slight breezy feeling at night (my head's just under the window), even though it means a noisier night. (i can hear the cars on the 85.)
how come some highways are prefaced by "the" and some aren't? like, i say "the 101," and i say "280." hm.
i am dreading the day my iMac dies. it took me three weeks of sitting in front of my computer to rip all of my 700+ cd's. i think adam told me that if i get a new iMac, file transfer of MP3 collections is fairly easy, but still, it's still a hassle. plus, i have my photos and other random files and such to carry over. i went to the apple store the other day, and computer are so cheap these days (relatively speaking, compared to how much i paid for my iMac).
ok. time to go home. it's game 7 between the hornets and spurs!
friday night, i met up some of the bowling gang for dinner at pizza chicago. surprisingly, leeya came, which was odd because she hates pizza. (the story goes, her parents own a pizza store, so she grew up eating too much pizza.) we got our usual (great chicago fire and the fridge), and buffalo wings for leeya. afterwards, we went to fry's and then back to paul's place to hang out.
we went to yogurtland at 10:50, ten minutes before closing, and the line was out the door. nuts. yogurtland has struck it big. i wonder if they'll charge more than 30 cents an ounce to make more money. one of the guys who ate with us (ed, i met him for the first time) got something nuts like 28 ounces, over $8! and he ate it all, too.
saturday, i left the house at 1pm and didn't get home until past midnight. great day. i started off with a late lunch at the peninsula creamery in downtown palo alto with paul, nelson, john and mikeC. ah, the chicken salad melt on toasted white, one of the greatest sandwiches ever. after lunch, we headed off to magnolia hi-fi, where paul spent a good chunk of time looking at speakers for his home theater system. i called up amyM and talked to her for a solid 20 minutes.
but the real reason why i suggested that place was... RED MANGO! yup. it opened that day, and yul was working there, too! yup. i said hi to him, and he recognized me, but he couldn't shake my hand because he was cutting up mangos. i got a medium regular (they only have two flavors, regular and green tea) with mochi for $4.95. the yogurt was good, a little thicker than pinkberry, but i must say, i think i like pinkberry better. still, i liked it, but i'm not sure if i'll drive all the way to downtown PA just for red mango.
after that, we went back to paul's place and watched _enchanted_. i fell asleep during the middle part, but i thought, from what i saw, that it was a cute movie. then, we went shopping. yup, shopping. i actually bought some stuff, too. i scored big with a nice shirt (light blue stripes with a white collar) that was on sale (originally $99) for $39 at club monaco, and then, i got a ben sherman brown/beige striped polo at macy's for 20% off. leeya went nuts buying stuff for paul.
we had dinner at the food court, but i wasn't hungry, so i just got a jamba juice (banana berry). the rest of them had mongolian bbq. (yes, i know i love mongolian bbq, but i don't like the stuff they have at the mall; they don't have chili paste.) then, we went back to paul's place and watched parts of _no country for old men_. i swear, nelson is obsessed with this movie.
sunday, i had a birthday dim sum outing for alan with the stanford crew. there was lots of talk about home buying and babies, so i didn't really say much during the conversation. still, it was a rare time when jack, jeremy, jay, alan and i were together, so i really appreciated it. we had a nice two-hour lunch.
then, i headed home and watched the second half of the celtics/cavaliers game. it was a very good contest, a legendary battle between paul pierce and lebron james, who both scored over 40 points for their respective teams. after that, i watched some of the _so you think you can dance_ season 3 marathon on MTV. it was nice seeing it again; it was like seeing old friends, especially dominic and the very HOT lauren gottlieb. oh, and amyM called me, and we talked for half an hour.
then, i headed off to grace's house, watched a bit of _the empire strikes back_, and we headed off to gombei santa clara for dinner. i got the curry udon, which was pretty bad. the curry wasn't thick enough, and the noodles were too thin. at least the spicy tuna rolls were semi-decent. after that, we went to breaktime for dessert.
i went home after that, and i flipped between the rebroadcast of _empire_ and this standup routine of carlos mencia. that dude is actually pretty funny. and then it was it.
overall, a pretty good weekend. and i just found out that next weekend is memorial day weekend! yay! i can't wait to have three days off.
so i tried out the new gombei (homestead and lawrence in santa clara) today. the menu is different, and they have a full sushi bar there (and the sushi looks cheap). what is disappointing is that they don't have the "gombei" combination (which is what i get about 80% of the time), so today, i got the chicken katsu curry. the curry was decent, but the chicken was a little thin, and not very juicy. still, though, it was good enough to warrant me going there fairly frequently, now that there's a japanese restaurant near my workplace.
debugging is going ok, but there are two testcases which are giving me real headaches. i fixed the pinmuxing, but there are some mismatches in the read data that i have no idea how to debug. *RAAR* i really hate the fact that i inherited these old legacy modules. that's one reason to work for a startup: you get to start with these brand new, fresh designs, and you don't have to maintain any old shit. ugh.
when i got home last night, the temperature on my thermostat was a balmy 80 degrees. i immediately stripped off all my clothes and spent the rest of the night naked. and, i had a hard time falling asleep; i'm guessing it was 85 or even higher in my bedroom. tonight's going to be even worse; it was already 78 this morning when i went to work. yikes! i hope this heat wave will end soon, or else it's going to be an unbearable summer.
i miss smoking naked. back when i lived at leghorn, during the brief period between jay moving out and alan moving in, i would have naked cigarette breaks on the balcony. i lived on the third floor, and i had a fairly private vantage point, so after taking showers at night, i would partially air dry outside with a smoke. that was really nice. i also remember smoking naked in my room when i went to japan back in 2001, and that was pretty cool, too; i just had to be careful not to burn myself when i ashed.
for some reason, my left testicle is really sore. i think it's drooping low or something, so i'm squashing it when i sit down. i hope that's the problem, and it's not testicular cancer or anything. speaking of which, i need to schedule my annual physical. it's already may! my primary physician at palo alto medical foundation retired this year, and he assigned me to this other doctor somewhere at the los altos branch. i think this doctor is a woman, so i wonder if i'll feel weird dropping my pants for her. what if she's hot, and i get a boner? ha! you know that i'll be trying to stare down at her cleavage when she kneels in front of me to check my balls.
basketball is taking its toll on my feet. my ankles and soles are really sore these days. the thing is, we don't even play on hard floors; the floors at city beach are lined with this plastic tile, so that should be softer than the concrete you get at outdoor venues. ugh. i wonder how professional athletes handle the rigors of an 82-game season, not including playoffs.
in terms of other exercise, i am itching to play tennis and taiko. the former should be easy: just grab a friend and go play. maybe i'll do it when the weather cools down. that latter one, though, is all about commitment. there is a group readily available to play with in mountain view, right where i live. i know most of the people in the group, and they're friends of mine. so what's stopping me? the answer: the practice (and performance) schedule. they practice three days a week, and i just don't know if i can do that. but for the past few weeks, i have been thinking about it more and more. we'll see if i do anything about it.
it's nice to see that stanford is back up at the top of the director's cup standings. i just checked wikipedia today, and after trailing cal for a while, we're in the lead once again. yay! talk about a dynasty!
i can't wait to go home and pluck my cheek hairs. i've been rubbing my left cheek all day, feeling all the little stubbly follicles that have reared their heads. for some reason, my left cheek hairs grow faster than my right ones. go figure. also, am i the only guy who has hair growing out of his scrotum? not a lot, though; just like one or two stray hairs. it's really weird-looking, having like 2-inch strands coming out of my ball-sack.
i think i've completely outgrown _friends_ and _seinfeld_. i used to love those two shows, but now, i find neither of them funny anymore. in fact, i now get annoyed by the laugh tracks. hm. is there such a thing as a humor gap, similar to an age gap? i wonder if i'll ever grow tired of _scrubs_ them, like in 10 years or so.
i'm debating whether or not i should go to red mango this weekend. tomorrow's the alleged opening day, but i wonder if they'll need a few weeks to get their machines calibrated to optimal quality. i remember the first time i tried mel's place, the frozen yogurt was all icy and stuff; i needed a second try before it was all creamy and nice. maybe red mango will need the same treatment, and i don't want to drive down there this weekend and be disappointed with the first impression.
damn, my left nut is sore.
man, it was fucking hot out there today. the last time i distinctly remembered it being this hot was when i was in vegas for jay's bachelor party several years ago. basketball was fairly painful, and my chest was dripping with sweat afterwards. (no, i didn't take a shower afterwards, so i avoided talking to people when i got back from playing.) and tomorrow's supposed to be even worse.
i hope i don't catch a cold. i've been going in and out of the hot weather and the cold air conditioned office, and i keep sneezing and sniffling whenever i step inside. the alternating extremes are not good for me, no? anyways, i've put on my track jacket, so it should be better now.
i'm always said that money should not get in the way of friendship, but today i lent a friend $500. i went to the bank, withdrew five $100 bills, put it in an envelope, and handed to my friend. i mean, it's not like he's destitute and will never pay me back (in fact, he had that much in cash on hand already, but he just wanted newer $100 bills, funny guy). he's a good, trustworthy guy, and he said he would pay me back next week. i've seen people lend money (like my mom and hr girl) and not get it back (completely or at all), and it's been a sore spot in their friendships with the people they loaned the money to. luckily, $500 isn't a huge amount (if he had asked for $1K, i would have hesitated), and i think my friend is pretty dependable.
i've had three bottles of gatorade today, in addition to one can of dp and one v8. i've been pissing like a madman, going to the bathroom every hour at least. even so, i've got a dehydration headache from basketball. rats! i took some tylenol about half an hour ago, so i'm hoping this throbbing goes away.
this morning at work started off badly. i had the ridiculous task of debugging NINETY-ONE tests. holy shit! luckily, there are no bugs in the code so far. these tests are related to the FBUS block, and it's a block that i inherited after its original owner left the company. i hate this fucking thing; i really want the company to hire someone junior to take it over. i don't understand anything inside it, so if i had to debug something real, i wouldn't know where to start. but so far, so good.
because of the heat, i've been having naked time every night at home this week. it's about 70-75 degrees in my living room (ground floor) when i get back, and the temperature holds pretty much even by the time i go to bed. however, my bedroom is upstairs, and i can feel the temperature rise when i climb up the stairs. i opened the windows in my bedroom, but one of the screens has a big hole in it (i have no idea how this happened), so i only opened two of the three windows. last night, i got a heat-induced panic feeling while trying to sleep, but luckily, i was able to fall asleep without taking xanax. but man, that panicky attack was really uncomfortable; for a moment there, i was afraid that it was going to go full-blown. yikes!
was it just me, or was fantasia's performance on last night's _AI_ completely horrible? i think simon thought so too, as evidenced by the horrified gaped-mouth expression on his face. anyways, as expected, it's going to be a david vs. david finale, but i don't think anything's going to stop archuleta from winning because of the hordes of teenage girls who will vote non-stop for him. i heard the radio that he said "gosh" a dozen times last night in his hometown tour video. what a swell kid. ha! this year has been dull, though; i can't wait for it to end so i can watch _so you think you can dance_. i hope there's a hot girl on it, like lauren from last season.
two of my cousins are flying out to taiwan tonight (it's a post-midnight flight, which i guess you could call a "red-eye," but i thought only eastbound flights qualified as red-eye's). they're staying with my parents in taipei. one of the reasons why they're going is to see their terminally ill grandmother. i wonder what it's like, knowing that this will most likely be the last time you're going to see someone. the finality of it all, you know? very sad.
all the times my gf's and i broke up, i never planned on us breaking up in advance, so i didn't get to savor the last times we slept together. i think i still remember those times, though, and there was nothing special about them. but if i had known that they were going to be final romps, would i have done anything differently? would i have cried? tried to remember each movement, caress, moment and emotion?
anyways, it's time for me to go. i'm sort of dreading going back to my non-AC home, though. oh well. naked time!
hm. i saw my psych today, and i told him that my tics were a little worse since the last time i saw him, two months ago. he gave me an article of a study about this guy who took finasteride, which provided him with some improvement in his tics and compulsions, so he suggested that maybe i can get on it if my tourette's gets any worse. do you know the commercial name of finasteride? PROPECIA. ha! the hair growth pill? hm. i am not so keen on it. but anyways, i laughed when i saw the brand name, and i was amused that medications have such wide ranges of uses. who would have thought?
clams, potatoes, carrots, onions, thyme, parsley, cream and celery. those are the eight ingredients that were named in last night's _hell's kitchen_ clam chowder palate test between matt and ben. yes, i have a compulsion for lists, and i forced myself to memorize this list. ugh.
i have other compulsions, too. one of them that's particularly annoying is checking that my doors are locked/closed. i check that my garage door is closed and my front door is locked before i head up to take a shower, but after that, i run down (naked) to check again. i mean, i *know* my doors are locked, but have to check again before i feel comfortable. and it's not as simple as looking at the locks, either; i have to put my hands on the locks and *feel* that they are in the correct position. isn't that fucking aggravating? and even after that, after i'm halfway up the stairs, if i'm not satisfied with the way they feel, i come down once again and feel the locks again. yeah, OCD is a real bitch.
i like the animated superpokes on facebook. amyM wished me a happy hump day today, and the animation for that is a dog humping a fire hydrant. haha. i really hope i get to see amy this summer before she leaves for hong kong.
so for the first time this year, i ditched my patented hoodie sweatshirt and wore one of my puma track jackets as my outerwear. it's hot out there, man. and it's only going to get worse this week. damn, it's only may! you may ask why the hell i'm wearing a track jacket in 80+ degree weather, and the answer is that the office is blasting its AC, so it's actually a little chilly inside. but outside, it's definitely t-shirt weather.
well, one good thing about this hot weather is that i don't have to use the heater for naked time at home. the tipping point is usually somewhere around 67 degrees or so. anything less than that, and i need to turn on the heat not to feel cold. last night, it was around 70 or so when i got home, so naked time was plenty good unassisted. i'm really worried about sleeping tonight, though; i need to remind myself to open the windows when i get home so cool down my bedroom.
do you have to dress up for graduation? i'm going to my brother's UCLA graduation, and i forget if you have to wear a suit and tie for that. from what i remember, i don't think so, but my own ceremony was so long ago that my memory's sort of fuzzy. i really don't want to take my big luggage thing down to LA with me; i'm thinking a nice pair of pants and a nice buttondown (i.e. club monaco gear) will do the trick.
i'm sort of anticipating a hard project at work coming up. we had a project meeting for the next rev of the chip this morning, and my name was nowhere to be found. apparently, the algorithm and architecture team wants to "reserve" me for the next few months to work solo on this tough block by myself, so i'm thinking, it's gotta be a tough one. while i welcome a challenge, i'm sort of dreading it as well, because i'm not as good a designer as i used to be.
so i might get froyo twice today. D and i ate at choi's for lunch, and afterwards, i went across the street to cafe aroma and got some yogurt/mochi. (i think they ripped me off, though.) diana just e-mailed me and jen, and she wants to go to yogurtland. who would turn down such an invitation? :)
i got audited by the state of california for my 2005 tax return. (remember that i got audited by the IRS for 2005 last year.) luckily, instead of $5,000 (which is what the feds wanted), they only want $100. so it's not that much. *phew* i called the FTB today, wanting to know why they said there was an underpayment, and then i saw that it was for 2005, not 2007, which is the year that i thought the audit was for. and then i understood; apparently, there was this $700 distribution from some retirement account back during that year that i forgot to declare. so yeah, i guess it's my fault.
ok, i just got called in to do some test failure investigation. i better look into that before the yogurt expedition. bye!
well, the high is wearing off, but i was really happy with work earlier this afternoon. i wrote a little 200-line C program to do some checking of some data produced by the RTL simulation and the "golden" audio data, and the test passed! the code was fun to write, and i was very pleased with myself. a lot of stuff i do isn't fun at all, but i really enjoy writing code. and C code is more fun than writing RTL code, so it was even better this time around. ah, i should have gone the software route, methinks.
so the heat wave is impending. according to the meteorologist this morning on the radio, this thursday and friday, it's supposed to hit the mid-90's. ouch! i am NOT looking forward to it. i wonder how my body will react when i play basketball on thursday; maybe i'll bring two bottles of gatorade just in case i need some extra hydration. but what i'm worried about the most is sleeping. i can't sleep when it's hot, and even though i sleep naked, being without clothes doesn't help much when my bedroom is around 80+ degrees. ugh.
there was this summer one year back in dallas where i attended a week-long tennis camp from noon until 5pm. it was 115 degrees out on the courts, and when i got home, after my sweat had evaporated, i had these salt crystals all over my body. it was ridiculous. the first day, i think i passed out after i got home. what people told me to do after that day was to fill up two gallon-sized milk jugs with ice, and to drink all the melted water throughout the day, which wasn't hard to do through the course of those five hours. nuts, man.
i love sneezing. it feels good. unfortunately, i can't do it on demand, so i really savor those times when i get a good sneeze or two in. it's really random when it happens, though; like, i just went outside for my 5pm smoke, and when i sat down, i sneezed. why? *ponder* anyways, it's like an orgasm for the nose. yum.
i wonder if i could get off if a girl were to give me a handjob. the problem would be that i would be worried that she's getting bored. same thing goes with blowjobs. i've had girls give me one, and after only a few minutes, i'll feel guilty, and i'll pull them up, and we'll do something else that involves the both of us. yeah, guilt is a real bitch sometimes. i mean, i have no problems if i'm the one giving head, though, because i actually enjoy dishing out the pleasure. but if the situation is reversed, i start feeling really bad.
i had a close call during basketball today. one of the opposing team members passed the ball really hard to one of this teammates, but it went right through his hands and into my stomach. there was this huge "POP" sound, and i immediately felt this sharp pain and fell down, clutching my midsection. i was down for like 30 seconds, curled up in a fetal position, and eventually, the pain went away, and i was able to get up on my own. but damn, if it had been a couple of inches lower, my genitalia and gonads would have been destroyed. *phew*
the other day, one of my female friends was wearing a short skirt. she had nice legs, so i thought it was pretty sexy. if a girl has the legs, then she should flaunt them, that's what i say. i especially like that line/indentation that delineates the quads and the hamstring. it's a similar turn-on to ass dimples or nice cleavage. i remember there was this girl in high school who used to wear this miniskirt (i think the brand was "jongo bongo" or something like that) once in a while, and it was insanely short, and all the guys would go bonkers over her. anyways, since the weather is warming up, i expect to see more girls in short skirts. i'm looking forward to it.
i think i'm overhyping the red mango grand opening too much. it's like _iron man_; i'm bound to be disappointed. especially since when they open on saturday, they might not have the machines calibrated correctly, so the yogurt might be suboptimal. but still, i plan on going this weekend to try it out. and yes, i can't help it, but i am prepared to be blown away. ugh. expectations suck. they ruin everything.
ok. i'm off. gotta buy some altoids.
hey peeps. thus begins another week of work. i just checked my paycheck, and i have over *six* weeks of accrued vacation time. damn, i need to go somewhere. i haven't taken a "fun" vacation (my trips to taiwan don't count) in four years, since my italy/spain trip back in 2004. last night, paul and leeya were talking about a potential trip to the UK this summer, and i'd definitely be interested in that. i love irish whiskey! i bet i'd be able to find some good shit to drink over there.
yes, yogurtland is the self-serve place. and like i said, you can get all the mochi you want. it's awesome. the yogurt itself (i only got the plain tart, but they have like a dozen flavors) isn't as good as yogurt fantasy, but the offset of the infinite mochi makes up for the difference. plus, it's way cheaper. still, though, i'll still go to mel's place sometimes because it's only 1+ mile away, but if i'm in the vicinity of yogurtland, i'll definitely stop by. the funny thing is that the yogurt dispenser is really slow, and it looks like a machine's ass painfully pooping out a white turd.
D and i went to southland today for lunch, and i made the mistake of trying out a new dish: the combination chow mein. i've gotten the combination fried rice, which is decent, but the chow mein was a disaster. it was sort of sweet, which i can't stand. i added some hot sauce, which made it slightly better, but all in all, it was gross. it was like mongolian bbq gone bad, very bad. i salvaged my lunch with a guava green pearl milk tea at fantasia to get rid of the aftertaste.
i've got a potentially busy summer. i've got my brother's graduation mid-june, maybe a wedding in hawaii, a possible trip back home to dallas with my mom, a visit to/from amy, another wedding (my best friend from high school, kevin), and that UK trip. it'll be good, i can't wait.
i've got "the way i am" by ingrid michaelson stuck in my head. it's a very cute song (yes, i know it's been out for quite a while now). i can imagine it as an endearing wedding dance song. my friend paul forwarded me the youtube of her performing it on letterman or something, and she's sort of cute, mainly because she wears cool glasses. ah, the eyewear fetish surfaces again!
when we went to see _iron man_ yesterday, some idiot couple brought their baby to the theater. i was really pissed off, and apparently so were some other people. in the middle of the movie, the baby started screaming, prompting some people in the audience to yell out "shut up!" and stuff like that. i was just really annoyed. eventually, the dad took the baby outside. i mean, yes, i know if you can't find a babysitter, and you want to watch a movie, you have no choice. but tough luck; no movies for you then!
20 minutes later...
emi just called me. i love emi. we used to call each other every sunday for like a year, before she moved to japan to be with her husband, who was studying taiko there. she was the one who got me hooked on _buffy_, and that year when she was in japan, i taped all the buffy episodes of the final season and mailed her the videotapes.
so do circumcised guys need lube when they get handjobs? i'm wondering because the friction on the head must be pretty chafing after a while, i'm thinking. so far, after watching the tekoki video i got a few times, some of the girls start off by applying lube, and i'm wondering if it's a necessary thing. anyways, i'm really glad i'm uncut and natural. my kids will be the same. does anybody know if more and more kids are uncircumcised these days? i know that when my brother was born, they gave him the chop; i don't know why, though, because both my dad and i are natural, and they must have consulted with my parents, no?
ok, i think i'm going to head off now. i wanna catch the end of the celtics/cavaliers game 4.
friday night, i had trouble finding people to eat with, but i finally got a hold of grace, and we had a late dinner at chevy's (around 9pm or so). i wasn't that hungry, though, because my indian buffet was still being burped out at that time. there must have been a prom and a high school birthday party, because the place was packed with teenybopper girls, complete with a limo outside. grace was stressed out with a bad dog meeting, so she got a beer, and i got a maker's mark on the rocks (bad, i will never get maker's mark again).
saturday, i wore a suit for 10 hours straight. i got up at 8am (ouch!), put on my college suit, and headed off to hakone gardens in saratoga for adam and rae's _qiu jin_ movie shoot. they shot footage of us walking around in the garden, and we were supposed to be chinese scholars in japan. i talked to this guy george for a bit (we were supposed to be discussing "scholarly" things).
then, they shot footage of qiu jin and sun yat-sen giving a speech to the students. unfortunately, i didn't get to be a part of that shot because the room was small. however, i was a bit relieved because everyone had to sit seiza (on their knees), and that was a bit painful for everyone. i should know, since i had to do that a lot when i was in taiko and in japan.
after the shoot, i headed off to grace's house to meet up with john, and the two of us drove (separately) to J's father's funeral. it was a sad event, as expected. i sat there, looking at the three kids, and i was sort of overwhelmed in thinking about the fact that they are now without both of their parents now. (i attended their mother's funeral last year.) that must be a bleak feeling. the buddhist guy chanted for a full 50 minutes or so, and i wondered how the man memorized all of that stuff.
after the burial, we went to a restaurant and had a chinese banquet. we had a table of nine of J' college and bowling friends, and we chatted and stuff. J came by, and he seemed relieved that the ordeal was over. his dad had battled with cancer for two years, and i guess i could see his point. the suffering was over, and now his father could rest.
i drove home, took off my suit, and watched the end of the celtics/cavaliers game. man, the celtics just can't win a road game to save their lives. then, i met up with grace and john at southland, and mikeC joined us, too. we grabbed pearl tea at fantasia, finished up our drinks, and went to breaktime (my first place). i thought that was a cool place. i was getting a little hungry, so i ordered a tuna sandwich. that was one of the best tuna sandwiches i ever had. simple, and to the point. (of course, i was influenced by the fact that i was hungry.)
sunday, my coworker D came over. while i was waiting for him, i called up a few friends to chat. i talked to carolyn and dave for 30 minutes, dj for about 10 minutes, and jeremy for 10 minutes. when D got here, he started off his laundry before we headed off to lunch. i took him to wahoo's, and he seemed confused by the ordering process. he eventually figured it out and ordered two carne asada tacos. i got my usual, the spicy chicken quesadilla. but the point of going there wasn't the food; it was to go to yogurtland! infinite mochi! i got a little bit of the original tart yogurt, but then i got a giant scoop of mochi. and my tab came out for $1.80. so cheap!
after lunch, we went back to my place and watched the lakers game. it went to overtime, but the jazz eventually won. man, home teams are doing well in the second round. then, we went to watch _iron man_. i had really high expectations, since it got 92% on rotten tomatoes. i was disappointed. it wasn't "smart" like all the reviews said. *shrug* i mean, it was decent, but just not spectacular.
after the movie, i headed over to paul's place, and four of us went to dusita for dinner. i really dig their spicy food. dinner took quite a while, though, because there were only two people working the entire place, and the restaurant was almost full.
afterwards, we went to... yogurtland! haha. yup. we even bumped into aimee and her friends there as well. (earlier in the day, mikeT and christi went there, too.) this place is really popular. this time, i got more yogurt, and a ton of mochi as usual. the tab was $3.54. however, it was cold at night, so i was shivering by the time i was done.
when i got home, i IM'ed 3 people at once. amy apparently had a disastrous radiohead concert (never even got to see them), nelson got back from yosemite (i was worried all weekend that something happened to him because he wasn't answering his cell phone), and adam was stressed out because he had a lot of work to do. and then i called it a night.
man, i've been burping up my indian buffet lunch all afternoon. i mean, it tastes good coming back up, but it's a little annoying, you know? and next week, i'll probably go back when my ex-coworker and i meet up; she absolutely loves indian food, and i'm sure that'll be her choice of venue. oh well, maybe i'll just get one plate of food this time and call it a day. (i had 1.5 plates today.) i didn't get the massive food coma as expected, which was good because i went straight into a meeting after i got back to the office.
there are two things that i hesitated to eat that i regret not trying sooner. one of them is the gulab jamun, the indian dessert that's like a super-sweet indian donut. those are awesome, and one time, i ate *SIX* of them in one sitting. yes, that was overkill. and the other is the potato pan-chan dish at korean restaurants. i tried them only a few months ago, and dude, they're really tasty.
it looks like i'll be wearing a suit almost all of tomorrow. first, i'm going to be an extra at adam and rae's filming for their movie, qiu-jin. i'm gonna have to set my alarm for the insane hour of 8am (yes, that's insane for me) and drive to hakone gardens in saratoga for a 3-hour session from 9-12. the required attire is a suit. then, i'm going to a funeral for a friend's father. he lost his mother last year, so i feel really sad for him. to lose both of your parents at such a young age, i can't imagine what that feels like. my mom was in really bad health a few years ago (to the point where she couldn't get out of bed and couldn't talk, so she had to write stuff down to communicate), and i was worried for her. but she pulled out of it eventually, so i haven't lost anyone that i really cared about yet.
i was completely let down by the _scrubs_ season finale last night. there was absolutely no advancement of the plot! it was just some random fairy tale which was totally lame. and plus, it was really confusing because two of the characters shouldn't even had been there (one of them quit, and one of them died.) dumb. i hear that the show might switch networks to ABC next season, with a lower budget. hm. i hope it's still good, but i'm going to try to keep my expectations low.
and after that was _the office_. it was the first episode where michael really started to piss me off. he's just such an ignorant asshole. i wanted to beat him up. oh well, the hour-long finale will be next week, and then i'll wash my hands of this show for a few months. i'm actually looking forward to not having that much tv to watch during the summer. (the only show i watch then is _so you think you can dance_.) that'll give me time to watch movies and hang out with friends at night.
i lost my dvd of _kissing jessica stein_. i'm very distraught. kjs is one of my favorite movies of all time, and i was looking for it today so i could lend it to D. i own the dvd, the soundtrack, and the movie poster. it's that good. it's well-written, well-acted, and a good story. i think jennifer westfeldt's character is adorable, and plus, she wears cool glasses, which makes me even more attractive. if i can't find it over the next few days, i'm going to buy the dvd again.
while looking for kjs, i found out that i have three copies of _leon: the professional_. one of the us version, one of the uncut international version, and one is some fancy digitally remastered release. this was natalie portman's screen debut (i think), and even then, i knew that she was going to be special. (but not in a "i'd do her" way; that came a little later.) the difference between the us and uncut version? some scenes that hint at a romantic relationship between mathilda and leon. (not that they have sex or anything, but she just mentions that she wants to. i guess the american censors had an anti-lolita-esque sensibility.) but anyways, the uncut version is much better, and i highly recommend it.
so i was bored yesterday, so i gave my tekoki video another chance. in one of the scenes, the girl switches from a handjob to a blowjob, and the dude actually blows his wad in the girl's mouth. and you can see his spunk seeping out of her lips. i thought that was pretty cool. too bad the girl was ugly, though. yes, it matters if the girl is attractive or not. she was asian, which i guess some non-asian viewers would find "exotic" or something, but as far as asian women go, she was pretty damn fugly. what a turn-off.
did anybody see the injury to chauncey billups (the detroit pistons' point guard)? he fell, and he had to do the splits on the court, but he couldn't go down all the way, so he must have strained some muscles. (apparently, he has a hamstring issue.) dude, if that happened to me, i would have torn my groin up. i am NOT flexible at all. i can't touch my toes. i can't even spread my legs 90 degrees apart. i look ridiculous when doing stretching exercises. poor me.
however, flexible girls are a turn-on. (like tang wei in _lust, caution_.) one of my ex's was pretty bendy, and one time, in bed, we were romping, and i was going in from behind, and she was doing the splits. i looked left, and then to the right, and her legs were in a straight line! i was like, "woah!" this other girl was not so flexible. and since this was after splits-girl, i had a certain expectation, so i put her in a certain position in bed (her legs over my shoulders), and she was like, "dude, you should have told me to stretch beforehand!" haha.
ah. the 6pm bell has rung. i'm outta here. have a good weekend folks!
so those of you who see me frequently know that i'm always wearing the same two zip-up sweatshirts. i have this navy blue one from abercrombie, and there's the other brown paul frank one. well, those two are getting super-tattered, especially around the cuffs. so today, i dug out a cream-heather A&F one and wore that one to work. the problem is, it's stained all over (although so are my other old ones), but this one is very light-colored, so you can really see the blemishes. ugh. i can never wear light-colored clothes, especially as outerwear. i've tried washing this sweatshirt, but the stains won't come out. man, i look like a slob.
i've got a headache from basketball dehydration. i get these quite often, even though i drink a whole bottle of gatorade while playing. today, we played four games (two to 7 and two to 11). i ran quite a lot, as demonstrated by the amount of sweat that came out of my pores. it was fun, but man, this headache is pretty painful. and it doesn't help that every time i tic, the violence of the impact makes the throbbing worse.
i think i'm getting sick, too. my nose has been sniffling today, and i think it's because i walked around the office without my sweatshirt right after basketball, so my pores were all open in the air conditioning. right now, snot is pouring freely from my nose. ugh. i hope i don't wake up tomorrow with a full-blown cold. *crossed fingers*
so what i didn't report earlier this week is that i ordered some new porn. hehe. i got some tekoki videos. i was all excited about it, especially when it came in the mail yesterday. however, it turned out to be very BORING. i mean, it was exactly what you would expect: a girl on her knees, giving the guy a handjob for like 10 minutes. i guess i got what i ordered, huh? i guess what i wanted it to be was normal sex, with a nice explosive handjob at the end. hm. i guess that's a little too specific. oh well, that's money down the drain.
so after basketball today, my old boss stopped by with a guest. it turned out to be a guy that i used to work with. he and i joined the company on the same day back in july 1997, and we were in the same team for the first two projects. we didn't get along so well; it would be an understatement to say that i had a personality conflict with him. anyways, i greeted him cordially and shook his hand. i mean, i haven't worked with this guy since the late 90's, so the animosity has faded. lately, i don't really hate anybody anymore; i don't hang out regularly with people i dislike, and those that i used to abhor, i only see in little doses, so that's fine with me.
some of my coworkers are surprised that i change for basketball in my cube. i'm like, "what's the big deal?" all i do is take off my jeans and slip into a pair of shorts. it's not like i get naked or take off my top or anything. i wear boxers, too, not briefs. even back when i was in college and played taiko, i would change in front of everyone, too.
last night, when i was sleeping, i had a weird discovery. in my dreams, i remembered the lyrics to that miley cyrus song. (and i'm pretty sure i got them right, like, i didn't just make them up or anything.) the strange thing is, when i'm conscious, i can't remember those lyrics. interesting, huh, how our memory is better in dream world than the real world. i think _mythbusters_ did this experiment once where they demonstrated that our memory can be enhanced under hypnosis; i wonder if this dream thing is a similar process.
man, my head hurts.
i'm 20 minutes away from getting a massage. i'm really looking forward to it, although i'm not sure if my headache will ruin the whole experience. i've been carrying a lot of tension in my neck and shoulders, so i definitely need some work in those regions.
ok, that's it for today. time to leave soon. gotta check up on some simulations before i go.
man, i got destroyed by mongolian bbq today. my bowl of food was bigger than ever, and it was a struggle finishing it. after i got back to the office, i passed out for a good 30-40 minutes in my cube. the cool thing was bumping into tiffany, the hr girl at gfn who came after *the* hr girl. she recognized me while i was getting my food, and i said hi and gave her a hug. she's a bubbly personality. and she even dated with charles woodson! (he's a heisman trophy winner, i think, who played for michigan and later on for the raiders.)
anyways, no more mongolian bbq for me. i just cannot deal with the food coma aftermath. btw, i didn't try the rice/cooking wine because i was skeptical of how it would change the taste, so i just stuck with my usual recipe, which was fabulous as always.
i've always wanted to be a pen twirler. i know it's a geeky skill to have, but i always thought it was cool. i tried it once, but it was just impossible. i guess it takes a lot of practice. i wonder, though; did all pen twirlers go through hours of practice before getting it right? two of the engineers in my team can do it, and i get mesmerized watching them.
so a random girl facebook'ed me today. before adding her as a friend, i wrote her a quick message asking her how she knew me or if she was a blog reader. she said she was just looking for friends, so i was like, why not. anyways, i'm still waiting for some of you readers/lurkers out there to add me on facebook. come on! go ahead, do it! :)
so one of the games (_xenogears_, an RPG by squaresoft) i sold to my friend (who owns a videogame store) raked in $95. wow! what a killing! i had no idea xenogears was that valuable. my friend complimented me on my taste of videogames back then, but i couldn't take the credit. you see, back then, i subscribed to _next generation_, this videogame magazine, and i only bought games that got rated well, so that's why i only owned good games. i was more of a collecter rather than player; i would buy games, play them for like an hour, get frustrated at the learning curve, and then drop them. oh well. at least now i'm getting use out of them. (or rather, mikeT is getting use out of the store credit that i'm giving him.)
so i asked my aunt about ann/anne, the girl i knew way back when with the ridiculously sexy voice. my aunt didn't remember her parents, but she deduced one possible friend, and gave me her name. so i contacted the mom today (through her realty website), and i'm crossing my fingers that i got the right person. if this doesn't work out, then i guess i'm shit out of luck. let's hope for the best.
i remember how i found jessica, this other old friend of mine who i lost touch with for like 8 years. i knew her dad was a chiropractor back in dallas, so i looked up his last name and "chiropractor" on google and actually called up his practice. i got him on the phone, and i stammered out "h-h-hi... i'm an old friend of your daughter, and i'd like to contact her." i'm glad that he didn't think i was some stalker or madman, and he was kind enough to give jessica my phone number. but damn, jess is being a punk these days; i haven't talked to her in ages, aside from a brief text message over christmas break.
ick. i just burped up (and swallowed down) some of my lunch. it tasted like lay's bbq potato chips.
i am wondering if i should even attempt going to dim sum on sunday. fyi, this sunday is mother's day. last year, grace, john and i tried going to dim sum on father's day, and dynasty was packed beyond belief. in fact, they even had tables outside of the restaurant, in the atrium where the escalators were. nuts! and the wait must have been something like an hour or even longer. hm. i do crave dim sum, though. (the reason why i can't go on saturday is because i plan on being an extra for adam and rae's film.)
my friend S called me up on monday night. she's one of the few people who's open enough to tell me that she gets brazilian waxes. she even measured her landing strip and gave me the dimensions. (i forget the numbers now.) anyways, i love shaved pubes on women. it's probably from watching too much porn, but i do think it looks so clean and elegant and aerodynamic. one time, my ex shaved hers, and i got a boner just by thinking about it. too bad, we broke up soon after it happened, or else i could have enjoyed it more.
i can't recall when i first got my pubes. i don't remember what age i was, or what it looked like when they first came in, or whether it itched or not. it's like i went from being shorn to having a full-blown afro in my crotch. same thing goes for my armpit hair (i don't have much there, though).
ok, i think i'm leaving half an hour early today. the guy i'm working with went to see his chiropractor, so not much i can do here.
my boss and i went over my review today. nothing extraordinary or unexpected happened, but he did ask me if i wanted to manage someone, like a new college grad. i was a wee bit pensive on this question. i've never wanted to do anything related to management, mainly because i think it's rather boring (meetings, powerpoint presentations, etc.). but i do have this sort of paternal/fraternal instinct, for example, taking D under my wing and befriending him and giving him advice sometimes. (and i also gave advice to other new college grads that had left, like J and C.) so i thought about this question from my boss for a while, and i told him maybe, in the future, i'd think about doing it.
hehe. nelson's been waiting to buy cure tickets for the both of us. i guess the way it's been working, the ticket service has been selling them along the sides of hp pavilion, and only now, it's starting to sell them for the middle (far side). man, i don't know if i can sit still for three hours. i mean, it's a great value for my money, but... three hours? i think i'll probably wind up falling asleep. i just hope the band will play songs that i recognize (the only two albums that i know really well are _disintegration_ and _wish_) and not obscure stuff.
some of the engineers here smell really bad. i'm not going to name a race, but you probably know which one i'm talking about. i don't know why they have such an odor. i just went to take a leak, and i went to a urinal recently vacated by a dude. the stench was almost unbearable. i almost switched to the other urinal, but the way i figured, it was only a few seconds of pain, so i just sucked it up and went anyway. foul!
so my coworker D was supposed to go to our branch in israel, but the problem is, he has a taiwan passport, which has expired. and taiwan won't renew his passport, because the country wants him to go back and fulfill his military duties. so basically, the poor guy can't travel anywhere outside of the states now. his only hope is to get a US citizenship, which he's now applying for. man, the things we take for granted.
lately, my morning diarrhea has produced so much stuff that i have to flush twice. i guess the problem is that the stuff has a lot of gas in it, so there are a lot of floaters that don't go down with the first flush. man. and the thing is, i wait until the toilet refills before i get in my car (i've had problems with the toilet not completely stopping the refill process), so it adds an extra minute or two to my morning routine. what causes some turds to float and others to sink?
do you guys memorize your credit card numbers? i do (well, at least one of my credit cards), and i find it to be very handy. like, whenever i order a pizza, or whenever stanford calls me up asking me to donate money, i like the fact that i don't have to pull out my wallet and read out the number. i know, it doesn't save that much time, but still. with the advent of technology, i find that we rarely memorize anything these days (phone numbers, e-mail addresses, web URL's).
my hair has somehow change directions. the patch in the front used to stick straight up (that horrible triangular mohawk thing i used to have), but now, it just flops forward onto my forehead. and i'm not sure why it's doing that now. i don't use gel anymore (except for special occasions when i need to look good), so i don't do anything different with my hair. hm. it's quite a different look, though, because less of my forehead is exposed.
yes, i realize that that cam pic on my blog is over 4 years old. i will put up a new picture someday. in the meantime, you can find me on facebook if you want. i really like my facebook profile pic. (thanks to adam for taking that picture at tim's bbq.)
have you ever been a victim of relative-attractiveness? what i mean is, you're at a function, and you find a mediocre-looking girl attractive simply because all the other girls there are super fugly. that's happened to me before, and i didn't know it happened until i met that girl one-on-one. i was like, "woah there!" so be careful when gauging someone.
basketball was super tough on me today. i think it's because it was relatively warm in the gym, and hence, rather draining. i was completely wiped out when i got back to the office. luckily, that mean guy from last week wasn't there, so we played our games peacefully without any disturbances. i woke up too late to grab breakfast, so i just got a filet o' fish before i went to work. yum, tartar sauce.
ok, well, that's it for me today. i'm drinking my second can of V-8; i figure i should get more vegetable matter in my system, so i think i'm going to make this a regular routine.
i texted a friend from the crapper today at work. i was taking a dump, and i felt unsatisfied, so i sat there, waiting for the next round of shit to come. so, during that wait, i pulled out my phone and texted a message (about the dallas stars) to my friend J. he responded very quickly, while i was still sitting in the stall. i hope he wasn't offended. (i led off the message telling him i was on the loo.)
last week, i had a few pisses where it really hurt. my inner schlong head stung with pain, so much so that i winced and flinched and cut off the stream. i don't know what it was, maybe a cut inside my urethra or some small stones in my urine? anyways, it hurt quite a bit, and i hope it doesn't happen again.
guys, did you know girls can start and stop their streams on demand, almost instantaneously? i had no clue about that until i ran an experiment with an ex. i would give her "start" and "stop" commands, and she was able to respond to them within split seconds. for guys, starting a stream takes a while; it takes quite some times to start the flow, letting it go from the bladder, through the urethra and out. and i've noticed that i'm particularly slow relative to other guys; often, when i hit the urinal at the same time as another dude, i wind up standing there with nothing happening longer than the guy next to me.
re: wiping my ass. yeah, i'm afraid of looking at the toilet paper. i get grossed out by having my shit out in the open, so close to me. maybe subconsciously, i'm afraid that i'll smell it and get some on my face or hands or something. or worse, i'll eat it. eww! so yeah, i just wipe my ass twice (hard) and flush. believe me, it was worse before, because i used to just wipe once before some people on my blog gave me shit for it. but so far after switching to the double-wipe method, i haven't noticed any skidmarks on my boxers, so i think it's a decent system. thank goodness for ass cracks!
amy's back from colombia! she just called me. i'm really hoping that she'll come out to the bay area before she heads to hong kong for business school. i haven't seen her in five years. maybe i'll go back to dallas while she's there this summer, and we can hang out. we'll see. seeing her is one of my major goals this year.
so D and i were all set to go to mongolian bbq today, but then, we decided that it was too expensive, so i threw out yoshinoya as an alternative. it's only half the price of mongolian, so we ended up there instead. what i get there is their "spicy combo, extra sauce." it's good shit, and only $5. still, though, one of these days, i've got to get my mongolian fix.
so one of my ex-coworkers tony, as i found out, is about to strike it rich. he left my company and joined a taiwanese startup that's apparently stealing all of our low-end customers. and his company is going public soon. *RAAR* of course, he works like a dog, and when i saw him last year in taiwan, he told me about his 3-4am workweeks. would you work like that for a couple million bucks? i would say yes, but i know that with my fragile mental condition, i might not survive it. but yeah, i'm jealous of him.
so i got the ball rolling on the quest to search for this one girl i knew back in my late high school days. i e-mailed my aunt in dallas, asking her for her help in finding A, who's the daughter of a friend of her husband. she has one of the sexiest voices ever. i remember feeling weak talking to her over the phone, that's how sexy she sounded. of course, i haven't heard from her in like 15 years, so my hopes of finding her aren't that high. we shall see.
i really enjoy finding long lost friends. like jessica (hadn't talked to her in 9 years), pritam (10+ years), zz (10+ years), etc. i hate the idea that there are some people who i used to talk to that i can never contact again, like a door closing on me permanently. i've even found some old teachers of mine, and i'm always flattered that they (well, most of them) remember me. but yeah, searching (and finding) old friends is really gratifying.
this morning, i had a gruesome dream where i was biting my nails, and i kept going and chewed through the bone in my left pinky. it was really gross, and i started panicking in my dream. it didn't really hurt, but i freaked out because i didn't know how to heal my finger. then i woke up. i checked my finger, and it was intact again. *phew*
the stopclock on my beloved yellow tag heuer watch broke this weekend. the minute hand is now pointing at 44 minutes instead of 0. *cries* you don't get it. i LOVE this watch. it's yellow! i've had it for around 8 years now, and it's one of my most prized possessions. (plus, i got a 30% off deal at a chinese jewelry store, so that made it even sweeter.) now i'm debating whether i should go watchless for like a month and pay the $$$ and get it fixed. the jewelry store will most likely send it to switzerland for repairs.
ok, it's 7pm. time to go.
friday night, alan was really hungry, so we went to hometown buffet. that's right, hometown buffet. i had never been there before, but i had a bad feeling about the place already. (i never do well at american buffet places.) and i was right; the food was really bad. alan and ting always swear they'll never go back there after eating there, and once again, they did the same. after dinner, they were too tired to do anything, so i just went home, watched tv, and called my mom.
i set the alarm for 10am on saturday morning, and i was really excited for the day to begin. first up was brunch at sushi house with sonya. five of us got together there, and we had a good time catching up with sonya. she lives on boston now, and she doesn't do much outdoor stuff (while she lived out here, she did triathlons, for example), so she wasn't as tan as she used to be.
after brunch, we piled into my car and went to downtown palo alto in search of red mango. we found it, and the door was open, but one of the guys inside yelled at me that they weren't open yet. :( i had dishi go in and ask when they were going to open, and they told him some time next week. so we went to fraiche to get our yogurt fix.
after that, we parted ways, and i went home and took an hour nap. and then, i watched the kentucky derby. big brown was amazing. i turned my tv off right after the finish, so i didn't know about the euthanizing of eight belles. how sad. :(
i called up some friends to see if they wanted to watch _harold and kumar_ with me, but no one wanted to, so i just went and saw it by myself. it was funny in parts, and i appreciated the female nudity, but it wasn't as good as the first one.
after the movie, i rushed over to menlo park to have the gombei dinner with some taiko peeps. it was sort of a fiasco because we had a party of 7, but only 4 showed up. also, the curry was watery and diluted, and it didn't taste very good. oh well.
after dinner, it was time for the stanford taiko spring concert. the songs were in much better shape than last week, but there were THREE dropped bachi (drum sticks). how horrible. i buried my face in my hands when it happened each time, and the last one (during the finale piece) was just tragic. the guy kept playing until the end, and it was so noticeable that he was playing with only one bachi. ugh.
i stuck around for the reception for a little bit, and then i jetted off to paul's place for paul and mikeC's birthday party. some people had already left by the time i got there (around 11pm), and when i arrived, people decided to do a tequila shot. i guess they were waiting for me to drink. so we had a shot of patron silver. i wanted to drink some more, but i guess one shot was enough for everybody. people played mario kart, a gift from leeya to paul, and paul put on last year's victoria's secret fashion show, which quieted the guys (who must have been mesmerized by the scantily clad women) and perked up the girls (who proceeded to gawk at the girl's emaciated bodies). and then most of us left afterwards.
sunday, i set my alarm for 10am, but got out of bed around 10:45. i called up hr girl, and we met at hong kong flower lounge in millbrae at 12:15. the line was ridiculous, but by the time she actually arrived, we got a table relatively quickly. it was great to see her; the last time we saw each other was like two years ago. she said i lost weight, and i thought she still looked hot. we had a good time catching up, and i went through her wedding pictures. man, she has a great booty, as accentuated by her skin-tight wedding dress.
after i got home, i turned on the lakers/jazz game, but i passed out for two hours and didn't see the ending. then, i just watched some movies on tv until dinner. one of them was _the mask of zorro_. you know, i think catherine zeta jones is empirically beautiful, but i am just not attracted to her.
for dinner, greg, nelson and mikeC met up at los charros, where i introduced greg to their super carnitas wet burrito. at the same time, the dallas stars and the san jose sharks were playing game 6 (greg's a fan of the sharks), so when we left, they were in overtime, and greg and i rushed back to our respective homes and watched. it was nuts. they played FOUR overtime periods. after the third one, i called up greg, and i complained to him that i was bored, and i was going to bed. while brushing my teeth, i heard that the sharks were in a penalty, so i figured that the stars might score a power play goal, and they did. *phew* and the game was over. i hope greg's not too bummed.
and that was it. saturday was awesome. and i'm really happy that i saw two old friends that i haven't met up with in a long time.
damn. i really wanted to see _made of honor_ get good reviews, but so far, it got 1.5/4 stars in the mercury news and 12% on rottentomatoes.com. ouch. when i saw the previews, it look kind of charming, even though it was pretty much the exact same plot as _my best friend's wedding_, only with the gender roles reversed. but i really enjoyed MBFW, so i figured i'd like this movie, too.
i've dated my best friend before. it was awesome. we were best friends before we hooked up, so it was actually kind of torturous, that whole period where we both really liked each other but didn't if the other one reciprocated the emotion. but when we finally got together, it was amazing. i don't know if that'll ever happen to me again. (but maybe it's a good thing, because it puts a lot of pressure on the relationship.)
i've got a busy day tomorrow. brunch with sonya (who i haven't seen in years), a possible red mango expedition in the afternoon, a gombei outing for dinner, a taiko concert at 8 at stanford (you should come; it's at dinkelspiel auditorium), and paul and mikeC's birthday party afterwards. i'm gonna be exhausted, i think. yet, i am really looking forward to all those events. it's gonna be fun. and sunday, i think hr girl and i are finally going to be able to meet up; i haven't seen her in like two years!
i might have shit in my pants today. i'm not sure. i farted in my cube, and then i felt something weird between my ass cheeks. i did some more work in my cube, and when i shifted my butt in my seat, i felt some more strangeness. so i finally rushed over into the bathroom, got in a stall, and wiped my ass. i didn't look at the toilet paper, though, so i don't actually know if i leaked anything out.
i've realized that i have more responsibilities at work that i can handle. since a lot of people left, i'm taking care of a lot of old blocks and legacy knowledge. some apps people came by with questions, and i didn't have a clue how to answer them. and then, i got slapped with some debugging requests for a block that i'm taking care of, but i don't know how it works. this kind of stuff really makes me feel inadequate and helpless. i need to bone up and study all these things that i've inherited; it's definitely one thing i need to get a grasp of to improve my importance in this company.
so last night, i saw the nambla episode of _south park_. wow. nambla. i've known about their existence before, but today, i went to their website and read a little bit of their literature. they're really serious about having sex with boys! i couldn't believe it. how can they claim that these relationships are consentual? little kids don't understand what the hell they're doing! that's pretty messed up.
i don't remember what it is that i wanted to do to the girls i liked before i knew what sex was. maybe it was just hugging and kissing? *ponder* i mean, my first crush was when i was like 4 years old, on this girl named kathy. she had a twin sister named kay, but i definitely thought kathy was cuter. what's really funny and odd is that much later on in my life, i saw a picture of the two of them, and they looked identical to me. so yeah, i started liking girls really early on; i never thought they had cooties or anything. but i never wanted to "do" them until i knew about sex, so i forget what sort of physical things i wanted to do.
in sixth grade, i made a computerized database (programmed in BASIC) of all the couples and rumored couples and wishlist couples (like me and the girl i liked). it didn't just list names; it also had some crude comments, like "bill wants to have a dick connection with mary." i made it password protected and everything, and i only showed it to my closest friends. somehow, word got out about it, and i became famous in school for having this "secret couples list." hehe. it was like major gossip and everything.
my crush in late elementary school was this girl named brooke. it started in 4th grade and continued all the way through until i graduated 6th grade. she wore these glasses that magnified her eyes to a ridiculous degree. so yeah, my eyeglass fetish started with her, and it goes strong to this very day, haha. i remember in 4th grade, we all gave each other valentine's cards, and i wrote with painstakingly perfect handwriting "to: brook" on her card. yes, i spelled her name wrong. how fucking embarrassing. i must not have been very popular in elementary school, because i got a lot of cards that had "i don't mean this" scribbled next to the "i'm gushing over you!" or "my heart is bubbling!" or other generic valentine greeting.
ah, valentine's. i hate v-day. never was a fan of the holiday. i don't know why women put so much pressure on their men on 2/14. it's just a random date in the year, you know? just because i said i didn't think this day was special and i wasn't going to do anything special, i've had a razor thrown at me (while i was naked and vulnerable), and i've had the girl chew me out (loudly) in the middle of a quiet restaurant. ugh.
i think it's time to cut my toenails. yesterday, when i took off my shoe, i noticed a red blotch on my sock. i didn't think too much of it until i took off that sock, and i realized that blotch was a blood stain. apparently, my toenail had cut a hole in the neighboring toe, which i found curious because i didn't feel it when it happened. hm. well, yeah. time to trim those suckers down.
ok. time to get ready to leave. a few e-mails to write, and i'm off. a (hopefully) fun weekend awaits!
last night, while taking a shower, i blew my nose into my hand. it was all blood. kind of shocking, if you ask me. it didn't hurt at all, and the blood wasn't dripping out of my nose before, so wtf? hm. anyways, this morning, i picked my nose, and as expected, a lot of dried blood flakes came out. i wonder what happened. was it stress related?
the other day, my pee smelled like mcdonald's sausage mcmuffins. very odd. i stood there at the urinal, and i just made a weird face, like "huh?" the urinal didn't smell before, so i didn't think it was the guy who used it ahead of me. anyways, i'm very sensitive to smells, so i was very perplexed.
we made some very good progress on my AC testing at work. i told the chip manager, and he seemed very pleased. oh, and i got my performance review from my boss today. he had a lot of good stuff to say about me, so i was happy about it. we'll see how much of a raise i get this july. (my company postponed its raises by 3 months. hrmph!)
i think i have a concussion from my ticcing. this is a serious matter. i don't tic violently that often, but when i do, it's a doozy. my chin slams into my left shoulder, and it's quick a shock to my system. i've been getting these throbbing headaches when that happens, and it really hurts. ouchie! ugh. how do you recover from a concussion? you just have to wait it out?
we had a confrontation during basketball today. i was very worried. we had a new guy, E, and he started complaining a lot about getting fouled. at one point, he got really pissed off, and he stormed off the court in the middle of our last game. the guys were like, "let's be civil," and luckily, it was near the end, so we just played cautiously, like we were walking on eggshells. everyone tried to avoid him, and he roamed around the court like he was in a bubble. i was afraid that he was going to beat D (the guy E was complaining about fouling him) up, and D is my buddy, so i was really scared. man, some people are just so emotional. no wonder NBA players get technical fouls and ejections and stuff like that. (btw, i didn't score a single point today. very poor showing.)
last night, i had frozen yogurt for dinner. i stopped by yogurt fantasty after work, and i got my usual: medium tart with mochi. i was very upset with their mochi last time, as it was really stale and hard. but this time, the mochi was 100% fresh and soft. wonderful! the only bad thing was that they didn't give me very much of it. different people there shape the yogurt differently, and that determines how much mochi they give me. i think my favorite way is when one of the girls fills the container up halfway, puts a layer of mochi down, and then tops it off with the rest of the yogurt.
i just took a leak before writing this, and the guy next to me had this big grin on his face. i wonder what the hell he was so happy about. i've often wondered what i would do if the dude next to me looked over and took a long hard gaze at my schlong. would i punch him? here at work, we have these shoulder-height walls in between the urinals, but they're still low enough that you could peek over if you were on your toes. so far, that hasn't happened yet, but man, that would be hella rude.
i've been getting some facebook friend requests from people i don't know. if they're from you readers out there, then just write me a little message in the request telling me you're a reader, and i'll gladly add you.
adam showed me an article yesterday about this new electrical component: a memristor. since forever, there have only been three electrical components: a resistor, capacitor, and inductor. but now, there's this new one, and it's a pretty sweet one, which remembers how much charge has been pumped through it. it will enable all sorts of new features, like instant-on computers and such. (of course, it will take a while for practical uses to be implemented.) but then again, i don't envy future EE students who have to study it and do all the math required; i already had enough problems with RLC circuits! :)
i still haven't gotten over my ass-scratching habit when i'm talking to my coworkers. every now and then, when i'm standing there, i notice that my hand naturally goes down my pants, and i have to quickly pull it out. what the hell, man. in high school, i had a teacher who would lean back in his chair and massage the sides of his crotch while he talked to you; i imagine that my habit is just as bad. ugh.
ok, i'm off. time to look for my coworker.