Fruits of the "next blog" button (top right).
I have no idea how someone could read this blog, let alone write this way. Clearly, the educational system is not what it used to be; this is an obvious indication that we shouldn't be cutting educational funds any further.
* "bezzi" is apparently a little-known synonym for "best"
Bored on a Friday,
waiting for time to pass by.
Time to leave here yet?
Big yellow Hummer.
It's parked outside my window,
ruining my view.
Instant messaging
consumes much of my time here
in the office place.
Writing in haikus
is really a lot of fun!
Will you try some, please?
Five, seven, and five
syllables go on each line,
They don't have to rhyme.
Okay, let's say you're making a root beer float. Pretty simple, right? Just two ingredients: root beer, and vanilla ice cream. But when you make it, which do you put in the glass first, and which goes in second/after? Why?
* Incidently, I highly recommend Henry Weinhard root beer with "Draught Style Head", brewed by the Blitz-Weinhard company up on Oregon. Good for drinking, awesome for root beer floats. Available at Costco!
Gosh, remember when we used to record songs on our cell/pager voicemail messages, and people who wanted to leave a message with us would have to endure listening to a chorus of whatever the latest song playing in our heads was?
(Aside, San Diego is gorgeous, even if I was only there for a day of meetings.)
I woke up this morning with a frightening realization: I'm not where I want to be in my life. Not mentally, not financially, not emotionally. And my first thought was to run to hEr and tell hEr everything, hoping that I could get my life back on track.
When people play video games, they can really get into it. They get engrossed in the game, completely immersed in the alternate reality of the moment. They get warm. They push the buttons real hard. They get frantic with the joystick.
I mean, the general mechanics of the game controller are quite simple. There's typically a button for each function -- one to shoot, one to jump, directions for turning / looking, whatever. And sometimes one of things that vibrates when you crash your racecar. But that's about it.
So I get a kick out of watching people play and expect other magical things to happen when they use the controller. Like when they're turning left around a hairpin turn, and their whole bodies lean left, their controllers are way left, and tilted almost sideways.
You know what I'm talking about. Heck, you've probably done it before too. Like when you need your superhero character to leap higher than they've ever leapt before. And with every press of that jump button, you "jump" your controller.
As if the controller could secretly feel that motion you're doing. "Jump. Like this. No, higher, you stupid controller! Like this!" Maybe it's some kind of tension measurement in the wire -- it can feel your controller cord looping and swinging or something. Either way, the magic kicks in.
"Oh, I see. They want to turn left. I can tell by the angle they're holding the controller at, that they want to turn a little harder. Even harder left turn?? Okay!"
And then some people take their physical involvement to the extremes -- I can't tell you how many times I've seen people turning videogame racetrack corners, only to fall over on their sides ... and still try to recover.
A while back, I went to see "Little Black Book", which is a movie about what a girl discovers when urged (by her evil friends) to go through her boyfriend's PDA while he's away on business. In short, it's about how she goes psycho in a tsunami of distrust in her man.
I've heard of such things happening. I know of people who will check their partners' emails and call logs in the suspicion that something's happening behind their backs. More often than not, it's the girl who (in some sort of emotional fury) is snooping in her boyfriend's stuff, but it definitely goes both ways.
This movie struck a chord with me, and I still don't understand the thoughts that must be going through one's head as they embark on that witch hunt.
What are they hoping to get out of it? Clearly, they think something is there, and they hope to find it, to uncover the scandal within. And when they do, all hell will break loose:
- there will be a verbal fisticuffs, much drama
- they will cut the other person off
- the relationship will end
- they will be better off by themselves, happy ending and all that good stuff
Great plan. Except I see it as a self-fulfilling prophecy, based on the personalities that typically come into this situation. This person (let's for convenience's sake label this as a "her") starts on a quest that seems relatively harmless at first, but she suspects him of things. Evil things. Bad things. Sometimes these are founded, sometimes they're not. Either way, there is probably little benefit of doubt granted here. And when an initial search turns up nothing, the mentality isn't that "there is nothing to hide", but rather ...
"No no, I know it's there. Something's fishy. I just haven't found it. I'm probably not looking hard enough; must try harder. Oh, I'll find it."
Friends. We (almost) all have them. They share in many aspects of our lives, as we share in theirs. But a question crept up on me the other day: what really makes a friendship? What forges these connections? What is it that bonds us together as friends?
Is it the time that you shared in the past? Like getting to know each other through school? I have friends that share nothing in my life today, but with whom I had close experiences with in the past -- school, work, whatever. And today, I have very limited correspondence with them -- maybe once a month or so, and short spurts at that. What is it that keeps me feeling like their are still close to my heart? Is it just the history of our crossing paths? Because there are many people who have come into my life and left just as abruptly, and I wouldn't think of them anywhere near the "friend" status.
Or how about friendships borne from some common experiences you are going through? Like a support group, or moving from Canada to the Bay Area, for instance. I certainly have some of those (though a lot more are simply acquaintances, really). I rarely see most of them, and some of them I barely even talk to. But when I do, it's like there isn't much distance between us, even if I don't necessarily know what's going on in their lives. (Imagine a continual game of catch-up.)
Or can friendships come from just the convenience of repeatedly being in the same place at the same time? What is it that welds our paths together in spot points?
Wow, online shopping outbound logistics in the US is really getting good, particularly in the automated processes! Fulfillment happens so quickly nowadays; see how fast this latest package got to me!
08.11 1230p - BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED
08.11 0217p - SPARKS NV - ORIGIN SCAN
08.11 0219p - Fernley NV - SHIPPED
08.11 1033p - SPARKS NV - DEPARTURE SCAN
08.12 0245a - RICHMOND CA - ARRIVAL SCAN
08.12 0319a - RICHMOND CA - DEPARTURE SCAN
08.12 0426a - SUNNYVALE CA - ARRIVAL SCAN
08.12 0801a - SUNNYVALE CA - OUT FOR DELIVERY
08.12 1054a - SUNNYVALE CA - DELIVERY
The shipping was literally overnight, and heck, it was SuperSaver (free) shipping from Amazon.com! (Never mind that they took a while to send it out after I ordered last Friday.) So now, my toy has a new friend, yay!* Hope they play well together!
Okay, enough. I have to bring this up. You ever see how close the actors talk in the movies? You know, when they're talking about something one-on-one. I mean, they're looking straight at each other, and their faces are just a foot apart! Seriously, who talks so close? I mean, I understand it's done like that for the framing of the scene/shot, but still.
Try this: hold your face just 12" (30cm) away from your monitor (yes, this one). Pretty damned close, eh? Now imagine that's a person's face (to whom you are not attracted).
That's too close for comfort, I'd say. Makes everybody's face look widescreen. Heck, you can barely even focus your eyes for very long like that. For me, that's clearly in the invading-my-private-space zone. At that closeness, you are probably going to be very conscious suddenly about all your bodily odours (and hoping they don't exist).
Some things, they just don't teach in school. And they should. About a friend's kid:
"Hey, C, you need to teach your son how to pee properly. He's doing it wrong! He stands there at the toilet, does his business, and then shakes the last drops off ... all over his pants."
Speaking of Chinese food, I intentionally left out a key representative item because it deserved its own posting. It's that mysterious glowy red sweet-n-sour sauce.
I don't even know where to buy that sauce! Maybe Safeway has some in the "ethnic foods" aisle. Maybe Ranch 99 (T&T Supermarket) has it. If I tried to buy some there, would they see that I'm Asian, yell at me for asking, and then kick me out of the store in disgust? Would the older ladies in that sauce aisle give me dirty looks and whisper amongst themselves and point at me behind my back, appalled at why my parents didn't raise me properly to know that that sauce isn't really intended for us?
I think Crayola should name that red and put it in their next box set: Sweet-and-Sour-Sauce Red.
My new baby is here! I spent all weekend with her, and kept her locked in my room for the most part. I can't really understand why she had to fly all over the place -- she came a long way to be with me! Don't get me wrong, because I'm certainly very glad she made it here before the weekend. Check out her two-day itinerary ...
08.05 10:06am - SHANGHAI CN - Picked up by FedEx
08.05 10:06am - SHANGHAI CN - Left Origin Location
08.05 09:01pm - SHANGHAI CN - Left Ramp
08.05 01:46pm - ANCHORAGE AK - Arrived at Sort Facility
08.06 03:46am - INDIANAPOLIS IN - Left Sort Facility
08.06 05:09am - OAKLAND CA - Arrived at Sort Facility
08.06 06:02am - OAKLAND CA - Left Sort Facility
08.06 07:40am - SUNNYVALE CA - Arrived at Destination Location
08.06 08:10am - SUNNYVALE CA - On FedEx vehicle for delivery
08.07 09:45am - MOUNTAIN VIEW CA - Delivery attempt
08.07 02:46pm - MOUNTAIN VIEW CA - Delivered
White people love Chinese food. (Yes, all sorts of people like Chinese food, but that's not my point here.) My friends and I have endearingly adopted the term "white-people-Chinese-food" to encompass the various versions of Chinese food that Westerners tend to like.
Fortune cookies, for instance. Standard Chinese food aperatif, right? Only, they didn't start out anywhere in China -- they were invented right here in San Francisco. And there's honey garlic, which I'm pretty sure is not of pure Chinese descent.
Then there are direct descendants of Chinese (or Asian) foods: egg noodles, sesame oil or sesame seeds, crispy wonton strips, and the sweet tang of hoisin sauce. And then "the white man" decides that suddenly, everything that has any of these ingredients becomes marketed / labelled as "Asian Style".
You know what I mean. A lettuce salad with grilled chicken and tomato and a bit of cheese: definitely Western. Ah, but sprinkle with crispy egg noodles, drizzle with hoisin sauce: an Asian delight, magically transformed! Yeah, like our Chinese legends have heros gathered around feasts of such salads.
Yet, I feel like the biggest culprit is sesame seeds. I mean, sure, we eat sesame seeds in our foods. Why not? They're yummy. But just because your dry ribs have some on them doesn't make them Chinese. No. They're just dry ribs with salt and pepper and sesame seeds on them.
No, not even if you dip them in hoisin sauce.
(At least McDonald's doesn't claim their Big Mac buns to be Asian style. Thank goodness for that.)
Last night, sHe shared a song with me, a song that brought tears to hEr eyes. I listened to it, read along with the lyrics, and I could see why. I mean, sHe was right; it was a mirror of our situations. I didn't know how an "angel" could hurt hEr so badly either, and I had no worthy explanations for hEr.
"There are many things in the air with me right now. One day, perhaps we can share a chat over coffee some day in the near future, and I will regale you with tales of this time."
"You always say that."
"I will. Tales. I promise."
"I've heard you sing that song many times. I won't be waiting."
And something in me wrenched. I wanted to tell hEr about everything in my life, to catch up with hErs, to share my innermost secrets about where I am and wish I were. I wanted to pour my soul to hEr.
But I couldn't. But the time wasn't right. Not yet. But I know there's a connection; there has to be.
"I know. I promise. Tales."
We all know the phenomenon of viral marketing: referrals from trusted sources are worth a lot more than a billboard kicking on the side of the highway. But to what extent do we trust those referrals?
Let's say you need to find a doctor/dentist. Or a new TV and living room furniture. Or a vacation package. Or a tanning salon. Our first choices are usually to ask our friends/family about whatever we're looking for. But would you tend to blindly take advice or referrals from them?
In the case of the medical professionals, do you just assume that your friends have done their due diligence on the doctors? If you get suggestions for a home appliance or some electronic toy or whatever, do you take it at face value and figure that if it's right for them, that it's right for you? Or do you spend hours and hours pouring over the specs to make sure you're getting what you want? And where do you look to do this research?
I'm sure most of you will say, "It depends." I mean, of course it does. But what does it depend on? Who do you tend to trust, and for which situations? Give me some examples here (for or against); give me some brain fodder.
(There's a greater reason to my line of questioning. Trust me on this.)
When you're in Vancouver (visiting or otherwise), where are the must-eats you always go? A friend of mine is visiting and she asked me for some pointers from a local. I have my own list, but what's yours?
