Albert's Blog

Duncan Cuteness of the Day 12/9

2011-12-09T00:27:00.001-08:00

When Duncan rides in my car he likes to stand on the center console and look out the windshield like he's my copilot. I noticed today that when I'm driving on the freeway, he folds his ears back like when he's running really fast. I <3 puppy.

Cuteness of the Day

2011-11-08T12:02:00.000-08:00

Cuteness of the day: I just shampooed my carpet so it's all nice and fuzzy. After a week now, I can see Duncan's little silver dollar-sized paw prints in the areas I haven't flattened myself. Cute!

Richter Scale

2011-11-07T16:42:00.000-08:00

No matter how well I understand how logarithmic scales work, my puny human brain doesn't understand it intuitively. For example, the Richter scale. My brain thinks a 5.0 earthquake is almost as bad as a 7.0 earthquake and a 9.0 is not much worse than that. However, if you look at total energy released, it becomes a miracle Japan did not sink into the ocean or that anyone is alive over there.

One way to better grasp the intuitive size of an earthquake is to translate the logarithmic Richter scale into something linear, like total energy released. This can be thought of as roughly the destructive power of the earthquake.

4.0 -- People who've never felt an earthquake before think this is a big earthquake
63 GJ

5.6 -- Oklahoma earthquake
16,000 GJ

6.7 -- Northridge earthquake (LA)
710,000 GJ

7.1 -- Loma Prieta (SF)
2,800,000 GJ

8.0 -- Lots of (unhappy) places and predicted for SoCal at some point
63,000,000 GJ

9.0 -- Japan
2,000,000,000 GJ

So intuitively, the earthquake in Japan is like 125,000 Oklahoma earthquakes all at the same time. My silly puny brain doesn't even understand what 125,000 sizable earthquakes at once would feel like.

Source - Wikipedia -- I don't claim this to be a scientifically sound analysis; it's just to give an intuitive sense of sense of scale and how bad we are at communicating it to each other.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T23:35:00.000-07:00

Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. Usually I invite my friends over to watch zombie movies and drink pumpkin ale, but this year I didn't have anything planned and I was pretty bummed about it.

As I arrived home from work, I decided that doing nothing was unacceptable so on a whim, I dressed Duncan in his trusty dinosaur costume (thanks, Lauren!) and we went trick or treating!

I've always loved trick or treating. The costumes and house decorations are so creative and it's the one time of year everyone's door is open and neighbors are meeting each others' families. Parents take off work early and bring their children around in a world of make-believe and spooky fun. However, as I was growing up, trick-or-treating seemed to be dying out with parents taking their children to malls where it was safer. I was worried Duncan and I wouldn't find any one out and about.

Wow Mountain View, did you prove me wrong. Mountain View's Halloween is completely off the hook. It is bigger and better than any of the Halloweens I had growing up. There were so many children, parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents, dogs, friends crowding the sidewalks that Duncan and I had to walk in the street half of the time. All the children were giggling and the people handing out candy smiling. Everyone was having so much fun!

The decorations were nothing short of amazing. They included a spinning tunnel you could walk through (to get extra dizzy) and a complete animatronic-ized haunted house/graveyard display that, in my opinion, surpassed even the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland (it turns out the owner, after catching the attention of amusement parks, now consults for them on these things).

Duncan had a great time taking everything in -- his tail staying tightly curled up and his nose, eyes, and ears exploring everything. He was quite the center of attention being his cute self in his cute dinosaur outfit (proud dad) eliciting squeals of "doggie!" from children and adults alike. The only time he was a bit spooked was at the haunted house with all of its booming voices and sudden sprays of smoke.

As we hit the end of the houses, we did end up knocking on one door exclaiming "Trick or treat!"... that of Matt and Maricia and Duncan's good friend Luna! After wresting with Luna and stealing her favorite stuffed turtle, Duncan and all of us went out to explore the neighborhood some more. Then finally it was time to head home.

To top off the excellent evening, I dimmed the lights, lit a pumpkin spice candle, and watched an episode of my favorite Halloween show, The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror. I looked next to me to find my little one all tuckered out. What a wonderful Halloween.

It's spring time again

2011-04-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

It's spring time again and all those cute little fuzzy baby animals are running about. There's a little bird family of two living in my office's courtyard and I've been watching mommy bird and baby bird going about their business for a few weeks now. Since the courtyard is enclosed, they run about on the ground by my feet and around the bushes without a care in the world.

The little baby bird has been growing and is just a little bigger than a golf ball now. It spends the day running about and chasing after its mother. The mother hops around trying her best to stay focussed on finding food despite the constant pursuit and chirping from her baby. Once in a while it is just too much for her and she runs away from the chirping manace as quickly as she can, though she never goes too far.

When the mommy bird finds something to eat (and hasn't eaten it herself) the little baby bird runs up to her and the mommy bird drops the food in the baby bird's eagerly awaiting mouth. The baby bird then chirps after her for more.

And thus goes the familiar story. Happy Spring!

Dog Philosophy

2011-02-22T14:30:00.001-08:00

From the front page of dogwork.com:

If you live by these dog rules, you will be a happier person!
There's a lot we humans can learn from dogs. If you live your life by the same philosophy that dogs do, you will be much better off in life. In the wild, animals fight only for two things, not a fancy car, not clothes or jewelry, they just fight for food or a mate, everything else they get after that is just pure happiness.

Dog Philosophy:

1. Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joy ride.
2. Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.
3. When loved ones come home, always run and greet them.
4. When it's in your best interest, always practice obedience.
5. Let others know when they've invaded your territory.
6.Take naps and always stretch before rising.
7. Run, romp and play daily.
8. Eat with gusto and enthusiasm.
9. Be loyal.
10. Never pretend to be something you're not.
11. If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.
12. When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by and nuzzle them gently.
13. Delight in the simple joys of a long walk.
14. Thrive on attention and let people touch you.
15. Avoid biting when a simple growl will do.
16. On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.
17. When you're happy, dance around and wag your entire body.
18. No matter how often you are criticized, don't buy into the guilt thing and pout. Run right back and make friends.

Dear Chevy Volt Driver

2011-01-25T11:20:00.000-08:00

Dear Chevy Volt Driver,

I was driving down the freeway today when I spotted you blowing by me on my right. At first I didn't pay much attention. I figure if you like looking at the right-side of my car so much, who am I to stop you -- there are fewer door dings over there. However, your brand-new-dealer-plate-oddly-awesome looking car caught my attention. "Wow! It's a Chevy Volt! I've never seen one in person before," I thought as you swerved awkwardly through the traffic. "Impressive, it looks good, has serious zip (as demonstrated), and is better for the environment! I think Chevy has done this hybrid right."

As I sat there admiring the striking lines of your car, you cut off a fully-loaded pickup truck carrying five people and a bed full of cargo. "It's okay, I bet that guy's on a test drive. People always drive like that on test drives -- you have to see how your car/economical-hybrid performs on the edge!"

I pulled off the exit towards work thinking I had bid your maniacally-swerving-and-speeding self goodbye only to find you two cars ahead of me on the offramp. "Funny, I wonder if he works where I do. Sweet, I get to check out his car for longer. I wish he would stay in one lane long enough for me to really get a good look. That car is pretty hot!"

Finally, I follow behind you to the left turn towards my building. Instead of making the left in an ordinary fashion, I see you swerve your awesome-looking hybrid sharply to the right before whipping the wheel back left and gassing it to make the turn, narrowly missing the two full shuttle busses unloading dozens of my coworkers onto the curb.

Chevy Volt Driver, WHAT THE HELL. Where did you learn to drive like that, Speed Racer? That is NOT the fastest way around that turn you dumbass. Did you think you were all badass flicking right then left trying to get a "better line" so you can get to your cubical faster? Your line was total CRAP. If you knew anything about driving, you'd know what you did is called a Scandinavian Flick and is completely inappropriate for that situation. What a freaking newbie.

Oh yeah, my shuttle-riding coworkers and I are thankful that you apparently can't Scandinavian Flick properly and therefore did not "rally it up" into our asses. See you tomorrow, douchebag.

Sincerely Yours,
Albert

P.S. Nice car!

My Birthday Gift

2010-12-21T00:53:00.000-08:00

After spending a wonderful evening with friends, I bundled up, grabbed my fluffy puppy, and stepped out onto my balcony to watch the lunar eclipse. What an experience! The clouds were low and lit gentle pink from the city lights. The gaps in the clouds formed beautiful moving windows framing the pitch black of space dotted with brightly lit stars like Christmas lights. Just by Orion almost straight up in the sky hung the reddish sphere of the eclipsed moon, the centerpiece of this evening's celestial stage. Just as I was thinking how impossibly perfect -- almost Disney-like the sky was this evening, a bright shooting star blazed across the sky. That was the grand finale of my day, standing there looking up in awe, thinking of loved ones, and hugging a very fluffy and warm puppy to my chest. What a priceless birthday gift. The Universe is such a wonderful place!

Congratulations Maricia and Matt!

2010-10-07T00:36:00.000-07:00

Maricia and Matt are married! Yay!!! What a wonderful wedding. Pictures here http://albertkuo.smugmug.com/Friends/Matt-and-Maricias-Wedding.

First Harvest

2010-09-17T16:05:00.000-07:00

I am a food idiot. I honestly don't think about food much. I could attribute this to my fortune in always having enough to eat, but that wouldn't be the whole story. Really, I'm just clueless when it comes to food. Therefore, in my years since graduating college I've only had one food epiphany: I can go buy whatever I want whenever I want and eat it... for example, bacon.

Now, thanks to my new gardening hobby, I've had my second food epiphany ever. Ready? It's Earth-shattering I tell you. I can grow whatever I want so I don't even have to buy it to eat it. And it's basically free and doesn't require any driving. It's like magic!

So for my first magical experience, one of my favorite vegetables (even though it's a fruit), red bell peppers! Diana bought me a cute little pepper plant from a farmers' market and it sprouted two very cute peppers. Did you know that red bell peppers are just green ones that you procrastinate harvesting for a really long time? It's perfect for me!

They were so heavy they bent the plant over and grew on the ground. The plant must have been relieved when I snipped them off (it did spring back upright just a bit).

Then I chopped them up using the fantastic new knife Will got me.

I threw them in with some Costco frozen vegetables (okay so I'm lazy).

And voila, dinner of champions complete with Costco Mickey Mouse chicken nuggets and Gewürztraminer! Very very classy.

As an interesting aside, I just noticed that this meal was brought to me by a lot of the most wonderful people in my life. The bell pepper plant was given to me by my dearest Diana who also introduced me to the Costco Mickey Mouse nuggets and Costco frozen veggies (and "Costco cooking" in general), the knife was from Will, the stir frying know-how from my dad, and the Gewürztraminer from either Matt and Maricia or Will and Lauren. Thanks everyone!

Ireland 2010 - Day 3

2010-09-14T00:07:00.000-07:00

The first part of Day 3 was really really crazy. First some background. I'm used to riding dainty thoroughbreds who are built for speed, like a Porsche for example. They have dainty little bones and dainty little hooves, and ginormous muscles. They also make high-strung cats seem relaxed by comparison.

Imagine how far my eyes bulged out when we show up at the first hill going up towards The Burren and start doing some serious bog stomping, boulder scrambling, and trailblazing on our horses and none of them even bats an eye (or snaps a leg for that matter). We were knee deep in swamp one moment and knocking rocks off the side of the hill the next. And finally, we get to the top and there's an alter-like slab of raw limestone jutting out the hillside marking our accomplishment. I'd never felt quite so adventurous in my life -- it was everything I could do not to start humming the Lord of the Rings theme. Okay, maybe I did do that ... later.

You may have noticed that the surface of The Burren is crisscrossed by rather deep fissures. I didn't really think much of it until our host, Nicola, stopped us at lunch just before I was about to go find a bush to stand by (if you know what I mean) and casually mentioned that "Oh, if you wander off be careful, it's dangerous out there." I looked around and only saw soft grass. "The grass grows up from the deep sharp fissures in between the rocks so you can't tell where the cracks are." Yeah, and the grass also grows on top of the rocks and around the rocks and everything looks the same. It didn't help that there were few bushes and that I had to really do some hiking to find privacy. It was nerve-wracking never knowing if after my next step would leave me stuck in the ground, legs bleeding, with my pants down and worse yet, having to explain that to someone (assuming anyone ever found me). Luckily, things turned out okay.

The afternoon proved much less adventurous as we traveled along ordinary roads. In fact, I got a bit bored here as our goal was to cross two hills so that we could cross two more hills the day after and come to the ocean. We started talking about how the tour itinerary promised us dolmens and we hadn't seen any, so Kiki showed us this one.

It wasn't until after we had all whipped out our cameras and started snapping away that Kiki laughed and told us that it was only 20 years old and some farmer built it for fun. Sigh.

After a while we finally parked our horsies in yet another ridiculously picturesque spot (sure beats the horse-poo-filled patches of dirt where I'm used to parking my horse here).

In the evening, we headed out by bus to the Cliffs of Moher, which I had wanted to see my last visit to Ireland but never made it. I made it this time -- in driving wind and rain. No matter! It was worth it. It's eerily beautiful how the gentle grassy slope dotted with cattle slowly rises along the horizon until it crashes abruptly into the ocean in these majestic cliffs.

Of course, not wanting to be outdone by the weather, we took shelter inside the museum nearby and pretended it was a bright and sunny outside to take our minds off our cold dripping clothes. The museum happily accommodated our delusion.

And of course, we finished the evening off with a pint of Guinness as always.

Additional pretty photos are available here: http://albertkuo.smugmug.com/Travel/Ireland-2010

Here's a video I put together for our third day. Unfortunately there isn't any footage of the crazy morning adventure because, well, I was busy adventuring.

(link at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUXEmXA-iDI)

OmG pUpPy!!!!1

2010-09-07T19:20:00.000-07:00

I picked Duncan up from A Dog's Life (kennel) and they handed me this. KAWAII DESU NE?????

Ireland 2010 - Day 2

2010-08-31T23:51:00.000-07:00

I woke up the second day really sore but excited to head out again on the trail. The first item of business was to catch our horses who had wandered all the way up the hill over night. It was quite a hike up there but the view was amazing.

We spent the morning riding over the ridge. At the top, we could see the entire lake and valley we'd traversed the previous day. It looked like such an impossibly long way to travel without a car. I imagined I was a traveler in a past age on my trusty steed trekking across the country -- that is until I had to move aside for a car to drive past.

We spent most of the day in the forest. I got a chance to step into it and enjoy its green moss and tranquil sounds during lunch.

The rest of the day was simply making distance in the forest which seems boring in concept until one realizes that making distances means going FAST and I love going FAST. We rearranged our horses with the fastest in front and Kiki our guide made sure we couldn't keep up. It was exhilarating tearing through the winding forest trails whizzing by trees, scattering rocks, and splashing through puddles at almost a full gallop. The wind howled in my ears and the clapping of Cuchulain's hooves reverberated among the trees.

After we reached our destination we let the horses out onto the field...

and then we gawked as something completely nuts happened. A large lorrie pulled up and our hosts led the horses into the back one by one and packed them in like Tetris pieces. We didn't know you could do that with horses -- it's enough trouble getting them into large and empty trailer all by themselves.

We arrived at our bed and breakfast, took showers and were greeted with some rain, horses, and a famous Irish rainbow.

Dinner was both delicious and absolutely hilarious. The young French girl performed card tricks for us. Later, Mandy told some jokes and got us all singing songs from all our different countries at the dinner table. Andrea, one of the Germans, realized that she knew almost as many French songs as the French and Belgians at the table!

And of course, after dinner there was the requisite pub + Guinness + traditional Irish music. Ahh what a satisfying end to a satisfying day.

Here's a video I put together of my second day.

(link at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbTCyrwpglg)

The Nissan Cube - Unexpectedly AWESOME

2010-08-27T11:28:00.000-07:00

I took my car in to get serviced today and they gave me a loaner. I was delighted when the Hertz guy turned from the pickup truck I usually get and opened the door of a Nissan Cube: http://www.nissanusa.com/cube/. I've always loved the funky exterior styling but was skeptical otherwise figuring it was probably a simple econobox. Boy what a surprise! It's feels super roomy inside with its high roof, enough trunk space with a large swing-door hatch in the back so you can load all manner of odd-sized objects. The interior is young-looking but still classy and the materials are quality (for this price range). All the controls have a nice solid but soft click to them. And it's jam packed with features: traction control, speed-sensitive stereo volume, adjustable steering wheel, steering wheel controls, song names on the radio, etc.

Most importantly, it's actually fun to drive! It won't win any drag races, but it's impressively zippy in the low range and can scoot through the turns solidly. I'm digging its focus and simplicity -- it accomplishes its mission of being young, fresh, and practical, yet stays safely away from any over-the-top 12-year-old-boy styling and is actually quite civilized. Two thumbs up!

Ireland 2010 - Day 1

2010-08-26T23:20:00.000-07:00

What do you do when you find out that you have a week off in between jobs? Obviously, you book a trip to Ireland and clearly, you go there and ride horses.

It's probably one of the most spontaneous things I've done considering I booked everything just two weeks in advance.

On Monday night, I took a red-eye over to Ireland from New York and discovered Aer Lingus does not understand that you're supposed to sleep on a red-eye. I guess it's their only flight so they spent all of it with the lights on selling me duty-free items and stuffing me silly with food -- which was nice, but really some sleep would've been nice too.

I landed at 6am in Ireland and hit the ground running (or cantering as it were). The tour recommended I sit Tuesday out but the itinerary looked too good to pass up so I signed myself up. They looked at me like I was crazy when I arrived, got dressed, and asked, "Hi! I'm Albert. Where's my horse?"

They handed me Cuchulain, an Irish draft/hunter/Connemara mix named after a legendary Irish hero.

In the morning we rode on some roads and trails through the country side where every inch was covered with luscious and irresistible green.

After several hours of riding, we stopped for lunch.

The horsies had their lunch too.

We grabbed ourselves some dessert from the local berry bushes (which grew everywhere like weeds!).

The afternoon was where the ride went completely off the hook (and why I pulled an all-nighter to ride this day). We rode from the hill down into the valley and when the forest opened up, we found ourselves at a beautiful placid lake, Lough Graney. We wound our horses around the shore until our guide Kiki pointed her horse straight into the lake and we all walked into the knee-deep water. After a bit, we trotted, bounding up and down in gentle arcs as the horses changed their movement to get through the water. Then Kiki asked, "Are we ready for a canter?" "YES!!!" And off we went cantering through the lake. I have never experienced anything quite so exhilarating in my life. We were flying through the lake with nothing but an expansive mirrored surface before us, wind blowing in our faces, and the splashing of hooves slicing a trail through the water behind us. It was incredible.

After we were through, we looked back at the lake with amazement grinning from ear to ear and giggling nonsensically. Such joy!

Then we wound our way through a forest, up a hill, and parked the horses in a pasture for the night.

We stayed at "the farm" (the An Sibin Riding Centre, their home base) that night and rested our tired bums (six hours of riding!!!). I found out I was among a distinguished crowd: a British priest who said things that made even me blush, a well-off Scott who hated dirt and germs but rode horses and had a child, and a middle-aged Texan woman who'd watched Battlestar Galactica and said, "frack." You can imagine just how entertaining the dinner-time conversation that night was!

Happy 1st Birthday Duncan!

2010-08-01T01:01:00.000-07:00

Today is Duncan's first birthday! Well, official birthday anyway. He was probably born sometime between the 26th and the 28th, but the breeder didn't know (tell me about it), so I put 31st on his papers just to be safe.

I wanted to make it special for him so we went on three long walks instead of 1 short one and we even got to play in my friend's back yard for a while! Then I went to Petsmart and came home with a truly irresistable treat. He LOVES bully sticks and my friends and I HATE them because they really stink. But today is Duncan's special day, not mine, so I got him the biggest bully stick I could find.

The second he saw that he went absolutely NUTS. He finally managed to regain enough self-control to sit down, though he was shaking like crazy.

Finally, the handoff. Happy Birthday Duncan!!!

OHMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOMNOM

Duncan liked it so much that when I told him to go to bed, he specifically ran back to grab it and take it to bed with him. I've never seen him take anything to bed with him before.

I'm glad I could make my little boy so happy. Tomorrow I scheduled a special play date with his favorite friend, Bear because playing with Bear is his favorite thing to do. He's going to love it!

A Great Day

2010-07-25T23:52:00.000-07:00

I had a GREAT day today. I slept in, woke up, walked my dog, went over to Matt and Maricia's, walked their dog (Luna) who is a total sweetie, had lunch at Eric's Deli (my fav), picked up Luna on the way home, plopped her in my apartment with Duncan so they could play, pre-orderd Starcraft II, found a Mac driver for my webcam, sorted through my several-month-backlog of mail, talked to my dad about starting companies, talked to my mom, took out the trash, took the dogs out for a walk to Castro Street, got a wonderful new flavor of Pearl Milk Tea (roasted oolong), came back and pruned my garden, found as I was chopping down a dead plant to throw away that it was still alive at the core and sprouting new leaves, harvested my first tomatoes ever, cleaned up the patio, played with the dogs, had a great conversation with Diana filled with fun hospital stories, got a wonderful thank you note from her sister-in-law, RSVP'd for a wedding, watered all my plants, wrestled with the two dogs, talked to Matt and Maricia as they picked up Luna, watched Luna and Duncan bump into everything and everyone as they wrestled all over the apartment, ate La Fiesta left-overs, watched an awesome car show on Hulu, watched a Stargate Atlantis episode, talked to my old friend Howard, brushed Duncan, put him to bed, mowed my little window-box lawn with scissors, took a nice warm shower, typed up this blog post, and now I'm going to sleep.

A Billion More Photos

2010-05-07T02:28:00.000-07:00

I just posted a billion more photos
here: http://albertkuo.smugmug.com/Other/Plants
here: http://albertkuo.smugmug.com/Me/My-Apartment
here: http://albertkuo.smugmug.com/Friends/Tanya-and-Chris-Wedding
and here: http://albertkuo.smugmug.com/Duncan/6-to-12-months

Enjoy!

I gotta say, Adobe Lightroom is a really nice piece of software! Managing and touching up my photos has never been easier. It's rare and delightful when software is super simple and super awesome.

Aphid Holocaust -- Chemical Warfare

2010-04-01T00:48:00.000-07:00

It turns out ladybugs are like Roombas. They scoot around in a haphazard fashion around the plant, only munching on aphids that their tiny little heads run into. A little off to the side and the ladybug simply steps on and over aphid. Also like Roombas, aphids get full easily. In desperation, I resorted to picking up stray and hungry-looking ladybugs and placing them on aphids to get more aphid-eating to happen.

After a week had gone by, there were no more ladybugs and tons of aphids, mostly on the undersides of leaves. Frustrated, I decided to escalate to chemical warfare. I got a spray bottle some horticultural oil (organic) and blanketed my garden. Some burned leaves and a few sore muscles later, I now have an aphid-free garden thanks to my new weapon of choice!

My Puppy Mornings

2010-03-25T14:39:00.000-07:00

I get up, walk over to Duncan's crate, let him out. He does lots of morning stretches, front legs first, then back, then front and back a couple more times. He throws in a few wide-mouthed yawns for good measure. After that, I help him clean his face and he licks licks and licks my hand.

Then he gets impatient and runs out to the living room, grabs a ball, comes running back and pushes it against my leg to say, "Let's play!" I say, "Duncan, busy!" He looks a little miffed and takes the ball with him back to the living room and begins chewing on it.

As I'm getting ready he will try his darnedest to interrupt my routine with ball in mouth and his cute puppy-dog eyes trained on me. Sometimes it works (and then I'm late for work), most of the time it doesn't. I go to put my pants on and I say, "Pants inspection" and he runs over and thoroughly sniffs the legs of my pants (he started this -- I have no idea why he loves this so much). He will then wander around my room, wedge himself under my bed, then sit by it waiting for me to get dressed.

Now dressed, I go to the living room, log onto personal and work email, take care of both all the while saying, "Duncan, busy." After that's over, I go onto my balcony and tend to my garden. Duncan knocks something over and I scold him. He looks sorry for a few seconds, then knocks something else over.

At last, his cuteness overpowers me and I grab a hold of that ball he's been shoving into me for the past half hour and start a raucous game of tug-a-fetch (I throw, he fetches, then I try to take and he growls).

Finally, it's time for work and I pack up my laptop. Duncan sees this and knowing what might be coming and gets very excited and sits very still. He knows that sometimes when he sits, good things happen for no discernible reason. It's his good-luck position. As I reach for my jacket, he knows it's on and he runs with a huge smile to the door and begins pacing around frantically, "Don't forget me! You do that sometimes! Please don't forget me!"

I forget something and it's not Duncan. It's my keys, my wallet, some papers, my laptop, or something. He sits down and looks at me impatiently. I get my act together and grab his leash.

Now he is vibrating with excitement. I grab my right shoe. Before I can protest, he sits on my left shoe. He looks intently at the door and thinks maybe he isn't sitting properly to get the door to open so he wiggles his butt around. I try to pry the shoe out from under him and he shoots me an impatient and violated look. Finally the shoe comes out (no thanks to him) and I put it on. I open the door and he shoots out as if fired from a gun. He waits at the top step, his excitement turning him into a white fuzzy blur until I say with must anticipation, "Okay!"

And we begin our day.

Aphid Holocaust: Day 1 - Biological warfare

2010-03-10T22:17:00.000-08:00

Previously on Albert's Garden -- I planted lots of plants: sage, lavender, achillea, lithodora, parsley, chives, rose cuttings. All was harmonious, beautiful, and fragrant. Then one day, I found my sage bush wasn't green with leaves; it was green with aphids. I tried to contain it. I pruned off the infected branches. I sprayed with neem soap/oil. They just kept spreading and spreading.

Just when I thought all hope was lost, I remembered an experiment I wanted to try in elementary school but didn't had the money, attention span, or parental approval to try. I wanted to get a bunch of ladybugs and feed them. Feed them aphids.

This week on Albert's Garden --

Awww yeah. That's 1500 ladybugs right there. 1500 very hungry and disgruntled ladybugs (they did just spend three days in the US Postal system after all). I sprinkled about half of them all over my garden. They made satisfactory little *tink tink tink* sounds as they fell into place on my plants. I look forward to tomorrow when the aphids realize that though my last name may not be Bauer, they've pissed off the wrong gardener. Say hello to my little friends you leaf suckers!

My newest pet peeve

2010-03-05T12:12:00.000-08:00

New pet-peeve: I've decided anyone who snaps, chirps, and or whistles at my dog and expects that I will keep him from running to him/her will get a face-full of Duncan from now on.

I am the Prince of All Cosmos!!!

2010-02-27T09:56:00.000-08:00

My wonderful Princess of All Cosmos made my dream come true. I am the Prince of All Cosmos!!!

Duncan in the Sun

2010-02-09T12:19:00.000-08:00

I got up this morning and felt absolutely wonderful despite being a few hours short of my usual sleep time. I couldn't figure out why until I realized my room was flooded with warm sunlight the likes of which I've only seen a couple other times in the last many rainy weeks.

I walked over to Duncan's crate, let him out, and we said our usual good mornings. We walked out of the bedroom into the living room and found it flooded with morning sunlight. I remembered why I picked an east-facing apartment. I had forgotten how light and sunny it can be in there!

Eager to enjoy the light Duncan and I stepped out onto the balcony to find the sun, blue sky, and a nice cool breeze. We sat for a while together enjoying the sun on our faces.

Duncan's New Friend

2010-01-25T23:47:00.000-08:00

My coworker hosted a movie night and a couple of my friends had their little ones along. One of them, Lexi, fell in love with Duncan and spent the evening squealing with delight as she chased after him with outreached arms around the house.

I had spent the whole evening stressing about making sure Duncan was behaving himself and not knocking over any toddlers (he is only a baby himself) but it only took a few of these wide-mouthed smiles from Lexi to put me more at ease.

Water Puppy

2010-01-21T00:12:00.000-08:00

It was raining quite a bit this week and the central courtyard where Duncan usually plays at NVIDIA had accumulated 4-6" of water. I was on my afternoon walk with Duncan (mandatory rain or shine) and as he lunged to play in the courtyard, I figured heck, we were both soaked anyway, let's see what Duncan does with the pool of water.

At first he tip-toed in and sniffed it suspiciously. Then he took a few steps and the water splashed up onto him. He stared intently at it, challenging it. After a pause, he swatted at it and it splashed him in the nose. Then I saw his face light up and he started splashing with his front paw. He ran a few steps in each direction kicking up water all around. This escalated quickly into jumping and finally a full gallop back and forth and back and forth at top speed tearing around with paws lifted high splashing and biting the water leaving a rooster tail of water behind him.

Part of me that was screaming for me to stop this wet, muddy, dirty, inappropriate-for-work madness but instead I just let him be. His look of sheer bubbling joy as he playfully splashed around was more than worth the strange looks I was getting from coworkers and the crazy cleanup that followed. I've honestly never seen Duncan have so much fun in his whole life and it warmed my heart to know that he was happy.

The Morning Routine

2010-01-17T01:19:00.000-08:00

HAI! WALK PLEEEEZ???

YAY WHEEEEEEE! SUPER PUPPY!!!!

Duncan's Bath

2010-01-09T13:02:00.000-08:00

I gave Duncan a bath today. What does he do right afterward? Pees on my bathroom floor, sits in it, lays on the toilet plunger, poos outside, gets poo on his face eating it. This just further confirms that cuteness is an evolved survival trait.

A New Hope for a New Year

2010-01-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

People are cool. They keep coming up with neat ideas:
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/

Sitting for a treat

2009-12-17T00:31:00.000-08:00

Duncan's cuteness for the day:
It turns out if you tell Duncan you have a treat but don't give it to him, Duncan will run around sitting in random places and containers until he gets the treat. Today's sitting destinations included:
-- Beside my chair
-- On the balcony
-- Inside his litter box
-- Inside his toy box
-- In the middle of the living room
-- Inside his crate

:)

Sun Rain

2009-12-12T13:01:00.000-08:00

My happy place today: standing on the balcony in the bright sun with my puppy by my side watching the white clouds blow by and sun rain fall.

I am thankful for...

2009-11-26T15:44:00.000-08:00

Just one of the many things I'm thankful for this year:

Photo by Matt Rosin

Puppy Graduation!

2009-11-23T23:21:00.000-08:00

Puppy (aka Duncan, Dunkie, Punky Dunkie, Dunkie Pooh, Powdered Doughnut) graduated from Puppy Preschool today! Each of us took turns performing all the tricks we learned in class in front of everyone. We did sit, down, stand, stay, spin left, spin right, touch, "stick 'em up!" (look like a prairie dog), and on the side with reasonable success, especially considering I've been slacking a bit on daily Duncan training. What can I say, I'm a busy single parent!

The class was a blast. After hiding under a chair for five weeks, Duncan finally came out to play with the big puppies today! Everyone was excited to see the little snowball bouncing among the rambunctious puppies.

I've decided they should make puppy class a type of therapy for people. It's been a stressful few months for me and I can say without a doubt, almost nothing cheers me up as quickly as a tumbling pile of fuzzy puppies.

Aaaand Mark Casem FTW

2009-11-23T23:14:00.000-08:00

Just a quick update to the Comcast "saga". Mark, amazingly enough, responded to my previous unhappy post. He was very helpful and put me in touch with a regional representative and she helped iron out my issue. Now I'm back to Comcast internet only for my pre-TV price, just like I wanted. It's not even the best price out there -- I'm just happy to have the old price back just like they said I could. Hooray for some great customer service! Anyways, just wanted to give credit where it's due.

Comcast ruined my day

2009-11-12T15:58:00.000-08:00

Mark Casem from Comcast, if you're reading this, this is for you.

Two posts ago, I mentioned how a really wonderful lady at Comcast made my day. Mark Casem, from Comcast (who scours blogs for Comcast feedback) left a comment asking for my account info so that they could use my service-person as an example. I hesitated because I've always been wary of Comcast and wanted to make sure everything was panning out correctly before I gave anyone special recognition.

Turns out I'm glad I never gave my account info and I'm glad my service-person was not used as a positive example. She flat-out lied to me and ended up costing me quite a bit of money and since Cocmast is a monopoly here, I have no way to express my anger but to keep paying Comcast more money. How f'd up is that.

I began with $25/month internet service. Then I added on cable TV. I asked her explicitly many times if I could remove the cable TV without raising the price of my internet service as this happened to many of my friends. She reassured me repeatedly that it would not raise my price -- a decent business practice -- I was immediately suspicious. However, I took the calculated risk and went ahead thinking I'd never have to cancel my TV service.

Today I called to cancel my TV service today because I just don't have time to watch TV. Not unexpectedly, I find out there's no way to cancel my TV service without tripling my internet service cost. I expected obfuscation from Comcast, not outright lying.

So I guess I'll add this blog post onto the mountain of anti-Comcast material. If you want internet, try ATT Uverse or DSL. If you want TV, just get Netflix or watch stuff off the internet and over the air. There's more material on the internet/Netflix than I can watch in a lifetime.

i has a puppy

2009-10-21T00:36:00.000-07:00

He is cute. I am sleepy. See him here: http://albertkuo.smugmug.com/Duncan

The wonderful Comcast lady made my day

2009-08-25T00:20:00.000-07:00

I had a really, really bad day today. I spent all day snapping at friends and falling behind at work. I've been moving non-stop since Saturday and I'm exhausted in mind as well as body and I feel like I have no home.

Ordering cable from Comcast was the last thing I wanted to do after all of that because I expected it to be a negative experience. Instead, I stumbled across a hidden jewel. Her name is Verselle and she is a wonderful human being. Talking to her made my day.

She has integrity. I called her last week to add TV to my previous internet-only order. She said she could add it but she'd have to cancel my internet order (because it hadn't been installed yet) and rebook it under her name. That would cut into someone else's commission so she risked her own commission and told me if I could wait until after installation (today), she would call me back and set it up then. She even threw in a bunch of extras to make it worth my while.

She works hard and has a positive attitude. She takes her call center job seriously and took it the extra mile by offering to follow up with me after activation and managing my account so I could have a customized deal. While we were chatting, I got the feeling that the economic downturn had been difficult for her and her family, yet instead of being bitter about it she was simply thankful for my business and wished me well.

She is generous and caring. Her blessings for me were so sincere I was left speechless.

Meeting people like her always makes me take a good hard look at myself. At the same time, it also makes me feel comforted and thankful knowing that there is so much good out there.

A Full Earth

2009-06-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

Earth really is a beautiful place. Can you imagine if you saw this rise every evening in the sky instead of the plain-white disc of the moon? I'd be wondering what it was like on that world. Lucky me!

Video: Full Earth Rise from space.com

Christmas Party 2008 photos are up!

2009-05-27T10:21:00.000-07:00

After over five years at Strongbadia (our condo), Will, Lauren, and I decided it was time to really let the place shine, so we threw the biggest holiday party we've ever thrown. Coincidentally, it landed on the evening of my birthday. Thanks to the company of all our friends, it was one of the most special birthdays I've ever had.

Photos are here: http://albertkuo.smugmug.com/gallery/8348527_tTkbH/1/547377128_yA6NB

BSG.. what a beautiful farewell

2009-03-21T22:19:00.000-07:00

When my friend lent me her Battlestar Gallactica DVDs, I was skeptical. Are you kidding me? Why would I ever want to watch a show based on a campy 70's sci-fi series with such a goofy name starring some guys and half-naked lady robots. It sounds ridiculous!

The DVDs sat on my coffee table for months collecting dust. Then one day, I got so bored and had so little to do that I had no choice but to see what all the hype was about. The result of that one moment of boredom was completely, unexpectedly wonderful. My friends and I have subsequently been taken for a ride on one of the greatest dramas in history.

One of the most striking things about Battlestar Gallactica was that exactly half of my friends following it were women. The only other science fiction story I know to break through the aversion most women have to science fiction was the book Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. In both cases, the reason was clear. The stories were not about technology but about people and the human condition.

The most precious part of Battlestar Gallactica to me was that it was a high-saturation portrait of how I see humanity's reality. Nothing was conveniently black and white. The villains were heroic, filled with conscience -- they had souls. The heroes were flawed, selfish, sinful, yet pushed to succeed in spite of themselves. Their world was scientific, yet no one could escape their greater purpose, their destiny.

Last night, my friends and I gathered with drinks in hand and trepidation in our hearts and watched the final episode of the series. If I only had one word to describe it I would say it was beautiful. Every character found the end of their journey. At the destination, some found a new beginning, others found completion. All found peace.

"Angels walk among us," is a quote from the show. It's true. There are those like Ron Moore and the cast and crew of Battlestar Gallactica who can bring us a gift like this work. It is a rare thing for any story to remind me that outside the depths of ugliness within humanity, the universe is a beautiful place and it makes me grateful to be a part of it. I'm sad to see Battlestar Gallactica go, but like they say, "all this has happened before, and all this will happen again." The future does bring great things.

An Afternoon with Reco

2009-01-12T17:05:00.000-08:00

Recently, I've taken to snapping a photo or two every day with my iPhone and sending it to whomever might care how my day is going. I figure it's an interesting glimpse into my daily life. My blog has traditionally been about weightier and more introspective things, but sometimes the best things in life are in the little things that I pass by on a sunny Sunday afternoon. So I figure hey, why not share these photos with the world!

This Sunday was particularly wonderful. It was warm and sunny like it hasn't been in NorCal winter in decades, the hills were green, the sky blue, and the air fresh. Reco and I went on a walk in the back country adjacent to the barn and I snapped a couple photos along the way that I felt embodied the experience. The ride reminded me why I love Reco and this riding thing so much.

After I galloped up the hill, an older gentleman who'd been watching stopped to say, "Now that is a beautiful thing." And beautiful it was -- I felt like the most fortunate person in the world.

Reco and I on Central behind the barn:

Reco and I atop Bryne overlooking Stanford and the bay:

Moving in the horses

2008-11-15T18:16:00.000-08:00

Finally, both Reco and Decision Time are are moved out of their stalls and into the feeding pasture. Both have had to slowly peck (bite, tear, kick) their way up the social hiearchy. Apparently humans aren't the only animals that can be cruel to each other.

The resident alpha horse of the pasture, Snowball: Ender of Worlds (Yes, his name really is Snowball. Guess what color he is?) is finally content to leave Reco and Decision Time alone instead of attempting to fillet them alive. The blood has stopped flowing and all are well fed -- except for the poor worn J.B. who's only crime is being really really old. It seems that Reco, our submissive, unassuming, kind-hearted beta horse has pecked his way up from the bottom of the herd -- by pushing J.B. away from his food. Sigh.

Anyway, it's been a long journey. All the photos below can be found here on my smugmug page. Here's an email I sent to Jen (Reco's owner) after I put him into the feeding pasture after the first few days:

"Reco politely asked the Other Horse for a few bites to eat but was rebuffed. At first, he stood aside mournfully, but then his hunger got the best of him and he slowly crept toward the hay and stole a few nibbles here and there. Then upon realizing that this Other Horse, though ears pinned, was not Snowball: Ender of Worlds, Reco became brave and began to partake fully in the pile of hay. At last the Other Horse grudgingly accepted this new intruder and though they were not friends, there was food aplenty for all."

Here's a couple more photos of Reco and Decision Time:

Halloween Horse Show 2008

2008-11-12T13:59:00.000-08:00

I discovered casual schooling shows were fun earlier this year so I decided to enter in the only other schooling show at Westwind Barn, the annual Halloween Horse Show. You may have seen pictures I took from a previous one in my gallery. It's really fun with jumps decorated with corn stalks and pumpkins and a special costume class where you dress yourself and your horse up.

This time I had Reco all to myself so I entered into the Low Hunters and Low Jumpers classes (2'3"). I haven't been riding all summer so I figured this would be plenty to challenge rusty ol' me.

In Hunters, I knocked down a pole and figured that it wasn't a big deal. That's what Jumpers is for: a second chance! During the Jumpers round, I clobbered the second fence and was very disappointed that I'd blown both of my chances. However, as I came around the bend I was amazed to find the fence still up! I continued happily around the course cleanly and went immediately into the jump-off course (they only timed the jump-off course). I was originally going to go "Albert speed" they call it (terrifyingly fast), but I asked my instructor if there was such thing as "too fast." She said, no, but there was such thing as "crashing and burning." So we kept it at a very sane pace and ran a clean round.

I ended up placing 6th (to which everyone always asks if there were more than 6 people in the class -- yes there were about a dozen) and taking home my first "Horsie Ribbon" I call it. Very exciting. The ribbon's technically for Reco, but whatever, I appreciated it more so I took it home and hung it on the mantle.

Here's the fantastic video Lauren shot complete with excellent commentary (my favorite). Enjoy!

Emma

2008-08-31T23:00:00.000-07:00

Emma, our beloved dog and what we considered to be the fifth member of our tightly-knit family finally came to the end of her life's road today after a decade of gracing us with her presence. She's been gone but some hours and she's already very sorely missed.

I got a phone call from my father a couple days ago that Emma had been having health problems the last couple weeks and that they just found out it was cancer. They did an ultrasound and found masses on many of her major organs and that the prognosis was very grim. To make matters worse, fluid was filling up inside and making it difficult for her to breath. She was vomiting all the time and couldn't keep any food or water down. I immediately booked a flight home so that I could say one last goodbye to her.

I arrived today to find her panting and barely able to move; her condition had worsening at an alarming rate. Then I learned that my parents had decided that today would be the day we would put her down. I wasn't prepared -- it was so soon.

We all spent time this afternoon with her, showing her in our own ways how much we loved her. I spent the time sitting with her, scratching her behind the ears where she loved it most, and keeping her company while reading a good book, our favorite pastime together.

And then it was time.

The entire time I couldn't really convince myself fully that this was the right thing to do. Should I be more sure of the data? If Emma were a person, would I be more careful, try harder, not give up? Then I looked look at her gasping for breath, clearly thirsty yet throwing up any water she drank. If she was walking yesterday and like this today, I could only imagine how terrible tomorrow would be for her and how little hope it would hold. We were out of time.

If there's one thing in life I truly learned today, it's that when it comes to morality there is no black and white, right or wrong, and therefore, no correct answer no matter how badly I want there to be. It's something I've understood academically but only now do I understand the full crushing weight of this truth. There's nothing like ending a life you care dearly about for what you believe is their own good to paint the world in suffocating gray.

My father and I placed Emma on her favorite rug and lifted her into the car. We took her to the vet while my mother and sister stayed behind. The entire time Emma was weak yet alert. I could see in her eyes that she was her good old self: intelligent and alert, yet I knew she was trapped in a failing body. That's what made it the hardest for me. I couldn't believe there was anything wrong with her. Why did we have to do this thing?

After some paper work we had some time alone in the room with Emma. My father said his long goodbyes to Emma and left the room. The vet gave me the option of staying with her when they would do it or to leave. It didn't take a heartbeat for me to opt to stay. If I was to impose on her this fate, this ultimate betrayal, I couldn't hide from her behind a door. However, shame and responsibility were only a part of it. What was most important was that I wanted to be there for her so that she had a familiar face, a familiar smell, and a loving warm touch to be with her until the very end.

Emma lay on the table, sniffing and looking around, looking at me... the vet asked if he could do it then and I gave the word, "Yes." Her head lowered, her eyes closed, and then she was gone.

-----

The first time I met Emma, she was a bratty little Samoyed puppy accompanied by her much more well-mannered sister. I remember the woman selling the puppies had come to my mother's school to show the dogs and have us pick one. While Emma's sister lay calmly under an office chair, Emma was sticking her nose everywhere and squeezing under and around every piece of furniture in the office.

We remembered that the dog book recommended picking an active puppy, so my mother and I chose Emma though I had my misgivings at the time. I didn't think she would turn out to be like our previous sweet and regal dog, April, and that we were in for an exciting time.

It turns out I was right. My mother wanted to name her Daisy, but after a week of observing her mischief and participating in vigorous wrestling matches with her, I didn't think that name suited this little lady. She reminded me of none other than Jane Austen's Emma: intelligent, strong-willed, mischievous, slightly manipulative, yet greatly loving and endearing, and she stayed true to her namesake until the end.

Unlike our previous dog April, we let Emma in the house daily when we were home and in this way we grew even closer in communication and understanding of each other. She quickly became a member of the family in our hearts and minds and it was almost as if she were another human in the house with her own quirks, likes, and dislikes.

The language barrier between man and dog is usually bridged in only one direction: man teaches the dog his language. Emma, however, had too many opinions to let us have all the say in the house. One of her strongest opinions was that she should be taken for walks daily. At first when my mother would ignore her for too many days in a row, Emma reacted like most dogs and overturned plants, dug up the trash cans, and caused a general mess.

Over time, Emma's communication developed a nuance that we found intriguing and rather endearing. If my mom started skipping walks, she was sure to find one single piece of trash dead center on Emma's rug in the morning. It was always exactly one piece and always exactly in the middle of the rug, like a minimalist art work. This was the first warning shot. If ignored some more, she would place another piece of garbage on her rug after the first was cleared. After a couple warning shots, Emma would escalate and knock one plant over and repeat until she got her walk. It got to the point where once, I saw Emma's message, pretended I didn't notice it by leaving it there to buy myself more time, and then walked her as soon as I could, fearing loss of flora within the house.

Of my fondest memories of her are her greetings every time I flew home for a visit. I was away most of her adult life visiting no more than once every couple months, but that in no way dimmed her joy at seeing me return. I'd show up at the front door, turn the key, and step inside. Emma would jog quickly to see who it was, see that it was me, and I would instantly have a large white ball of fluff careening across the slippery tile floor towards me, tail wagging with huge smile and uncontainable excitement. In the early days, I'd even have to ignore her for the first couple of minutes because if I bent down to return her greeting, she'd wet herself in excitement.

These greetings were always immediately followed by a raucous chase and long wrestling match in the carpeted living room. The Emma-Albert homecoming wrestling match became a recurring spectacle for my family and any visitors fortunate enough to be present. It was something I eagerly looked forward to every time I flew home. What was especially endearing for me was that my mother said I was the only person Emma played that with. She apparently never forgot those fun wrestling matches we had when she was a small puppy.

There was one particular homecoming that I will remember forever. I'd just flown home, gotten out of the car, opened the door and stepped inside as usual only to find that there was no careening white fur ball. Where was Emma? Ten seconds later, I saw her trotting around the corner a ways down to investigate the noise at the door. Apparently, I'd shown up just at Emma's dinner time because she had a large block of dog food in her mouth that she was moving to her eating place before I interrupted. Emma looked up and caught sight of me, stopped, and stared at me with her hazel eyes for a full second. Then I saw a look of recognition spread across her face. Her jaw literally dropped and the once-treasured chunk of dog food fell forgotten to the floor with a dull thump. Her face lit up with joy and she came bounding up to me tail swinging wildly while trying to lick me silly with her pink tongue.

Our goodbyes were much less eventful, but sweet nonetheless. At first my departures went unnoticed, but eventually she figured it out and when I brought all my bags downstairs, she would hang around anxiously until I left for the airport. I considered this to be my sendoff, her love for me.

Today it was my turn to return the favor.

Live from Hong Kong -- Part 2

2008-08-21T01:49:00.001-07:00

It's strange, but I thought before coming to Hong Kong that it was one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world and therefore, would have things like ubiquitous cheap or free wireless internet. What I found was that there was indeed ubiquitous internet, but that it cost an arm and a leg, on the order of 50 cents a minute. It seems the US isn't the only place where communications carry a high premium and are run by large monopolistic corporations. Ironically, the only time I've been able to find decent internet access here is at the airport (I'm about to depart). Here's it's free and fast.

My preconceptions of Hong Kong were based on rave reviews of friends who've visited and the fact that I've heard people refer to it as the social and economic center of Asia. I imagined a cross between Singapore and Taipei, basically a large and fun westernized metropolis but distinctly Asian in character.

What I got was, in a way, exactly what I expected, yet that extra zest of "Asian-ness" was noticeably missing. Hong Kong feels like New York City of the Asian world and is distinctly Western. The myriad of saturated colors and flavors of what might have been an organic Eastern city have been tempered, refined, and quantized into an aesthetically pleasing yet limited palette.

The most blatant example is the Temple Street night market I never went to. How could something I've never been to indicate anything? Walking it by day, I had high hopes. It was very Chinese -- narrow messy bustling streets with strange smells abounding. Well, I never went to it because it wound down at 11:30pm and closed at 12am. What kind of night market closes at night??? I've never even seen when the Taipei or Beijing night markets close because I've never been able to stay awake that late!

Fortunately, natural geography plays a critical role in keeping Hong Kong from becoming just another large city in the world. The heart of the city lies on Hong Kong island which basically amounts to a smallish yet steep and magnificent mountain jutting out from the sea just across from the mainland. It's lush and green sides fall quickly toward the city built on the narrow shore and into the ocean. Therefore, it's a short trip from the highest peaks into the fantastically built city, and then to the soothing ocean filled with boats of all shapes and sizes. It's incredibly dynamic.

The buildings themselves are an incredible sight: tall, graceful, and awe-inspiring yet tasteful. I've seen too many cities fall into the "mine is bigger and louder than yours" trap. Think Shanghai where the buildings are huge, purple and pink, and gaudy. Or New York where the contest has been going on for so long that the city has turned into one large concrete cube. Hong Kong is an architectural work of art. My favorite building is what I call the "bamboo shoot building." It's the tallest building in Hong Kong and normally a building this size risks looking like a huge garish spike in the city. Yet this building is organic and gentle despite its size and compliments the green mountains behind it. It really looks like a bamboo shoot with tapering segments and a rounding top growing out of the soil at the foot of the mountains.

Alright, more next time -- my flight is about to take off.

Live from Hong Kong

2008-08-19T02:58:00.000-07:00

Seven years ago, I was in Beijing when there was a special news report on television: Beijing had won the right to host the 2008 Olympic Games. I remember announcers crying, fireworks exploding, and all kinds of celebration and mayhem. I also remember thinking how fanciful it would be, if seven years in the future I returned to China to watch the Olympics. In the intervening time between then and now, I'd given little thought to this idea and dismissed it as something that would be nice to do but too difficult to arrange.

Since then, I've picked up my ultimate pastime, horseback riding, which would ultimately prove to be my ticket to the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

It turns out that my riding buddy, Tanya's, father is a member of the Hong Kong Jockey Club and acquired tickets for all of the Olympic equestrian events in Hong Kong for her and all her friends (including me). And so, last year, quite disbelievingly we arranged the trip that I am now privileged to be on.

It never really felt quite real until that first day when I walked along the Kowloon shore and looked across the harbour at the world-famous Hong Kong skyline. The trip that began with this breathtaking view of Hong Kong would ultimately lead to the climax: cheering on the US equestrian jumping team as they rode by on their hard-earned Gold Medal victory lap.

Screw People Who Don't Use Turn Signals

2008-03-26T12:56:00.000-07:00

I had yet another near-accident with someone because they didn't feel like moving one finger to flip their turn signal on. I'm so sick of this crap. If you were sitting on a bench somewhere and could save a person's car or life by just lifting one finger, why wouldn't you do it?

Reasons I've heard from otherwise intelligent people why they don't use their signals:

1) It gives other drivers information.
Duh. That's the freaking point. I can drive defensively and accomodate your every whim if you just tell me what you're going to do.

If other drivers are asses and close gaps because you're signaling, just signal at the last minute as you move on over. You still get benefits of signaling with opportunity for last-minute saves and you get your spot in the next lane too. I grew up driving in LA. I know this works.

2) Why signal when no one is near you or you can see the whole situation?
This is when it's MOST important. You just THINK you see everyone and know the entire situation. It's the cars you DON'T see that you really need to notify so they can avoid you.

Also, if you think about it, you also don't even really know what the other cars will do because maybe they don't signal either. It's insta-karma waiting to happen.

To summarize this rant, it just takes one finger to save yourself and others from crushed cars and maybe crushed body parts. If you don't signal, you're saying my safety isn't worth the trouble of moving your pinky. SCREW YOU, you selfish bastard.

New England, the rest!

2008-02-17T20:11:00.000-08:00

It's been months, but yeah, I just posted some videos my sister and I took while we were in New England.

Here's one from the Fryeburg County Fair (Maine) Horse Pull event. All I can say is WOW, such power! The sleds are 3000+lbs of concrete. You can get an idea of how heavy they are when you see the tractor reset the sled. Unfortunately, the camera microphone couldn't pick up the chest-resonating thud when the horses connected with the concrete sled.

Here's another from the fair's petting zoo. This one is definitely a cuteoverload.com candidate. If you have the sound on, yes, the little squeaking noises are coming from the baby goats.

And finally, here's a short clip of the most amazing ride I've ever had. We wanted to see the fall colors from the sky, so we booked a hot air balloon ride in Vermont. We almost didn't make it due to high winds and low visibility, but in the end, we took the risk anyway and were rewarded with the most amazing experience I've had in recent memory. Not only could we see plenty of the rolling red, orange, and green Vermont hills, but we had a unique opportunity to take the balloon above the clouds. There is nothing else in the world like flying in a wicker basket among the clouds. Those who know what my license plate says can fully appreciate how wonderful an experience it was for me.

Morning Visitors

2008-02-07T00:16:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning to gentle coo cooing sounds and walked over open my patio door blinds. As I pulled the string and let the day in, I noticed two round fluffy shapes sitting on the railing outside. Who else but my favorite couple of Mourning Doves sitting close together in the morning light. They seemed a bit cold and were scrunched up into little fuzzy balls, peaceful and calm. I gently sat back down in my chair and admired them trying not to disturb them.

They'd built a partial nest on my balcony last year until I scared them away by accident one morning. I was so happy that they were back. I'd been planning to make some sort of shelter for them should they ever return and found myself ill-prepared for the much anticipated event. No matter, they were here and were clearly doing alright. I was happy enough that they visited my balcony for a morning.

Greetings from New England!

2007-09-30T21:13:00.000-07:00

I'm on vacation with my family over in New England. We spent the last two days in Maine, which seems a bit like the boondocks of the east coast, but I gotta say I love it. It's so beautiful and everything's slower, which is a nice change of pace. The scenery is a welcome change with rolling hills and old weathered mountains covered with a mix of evergreen and deciduous trees, some of which have turned a powerfully saturated shade of red. The bare stone shoulders of the mountains slope gently into the sea creating hundreds of bays, alcoves, and islands, making up what is the beautifully formed coast of Maine.

Several other things that caught my attention. The lobster is, of course, to die for as is their blueberry pie. And most impressively, no seriously, they have the world's cleanest bathrooms, hands down.

About the lobsters, yesterday we went to this lobster hatchery today and saw baby lobsters (very cute) and learned all these cool things about raising, releasing them to sea, and maximizing their chances for survival... and then we had one delicious lobster dinner. It admittedly felt a bit wrong...

Today we went to the Fryeburg County Fair -- I swear I have the only Chinese family that would fly thousands of miles to attend a county fair in Maine. They say they attract over 300,000 visitors in the one week they're open. It seems that in 300,000 people, only four are Asian: my parents, my sister, and I. Despite feeling a bit out of place, I had a great time looking at the baby goats, arts and crafts, and watching the horse pulling competition. In case you're wondering what a horse pulling competition is, it's a competition only men would think of, and as a man, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Basically, you already know what it is. There's something big and heavy, and you pull it with a horse. Specifically, the weight comes in the form of concrete blocks on a sled and the horses are gigantically built strength-exuding steeds who'd make any man feel inadequate. Great times. I need to see monster truck races next.

Alright, tomorrow, off to New Hampshire. Until then...

Ireland pictures up!

2007-09-06T00:26:00.001-07:00

My pictures from Ireland are now up in my Photo Gallery. Sorry there aren't too many pictures of me riding. My friends and I were too busy flying over jumps to be taking pictures! Enjoy.

Life is shaped like a diamond

2007-09-06T00:05:00.000-07:00

As I sit at home by myself watching TV shows from my childhood, I can't help but think that life is shaped like a diamond. If you can imagine walking from one end of the beach to the other from the beginning to end of my life, I began alone, one set of steps, joined quickly by those of my immediate family. Then as time went on, I was joined by more and more until in college, there were footprints everywhere and the edge of my world stretched far past the horizon. Now the world is narrowing again, I can once again make out the faint outlines of the edge of my world, my possibilities. The number of prints left in the sand decreasing; I'm walking onward with fewer and fewer of them until one day it is just my own two feet again.

Ireland Part 2: Success and even more Ibuprofen

2007-08-07T00:45:00.000-07:00

A bit late for part 2 of this series, I know. But better late than never. I'll go ahead and transcribe what I wrote for myself in my journal. A bit of it overlaps with my previous post, but oh well.

Greetings from Ireland! I am here at last after wanting to come for many years. I really should remember to travel more often; the world is such a wonderful place and my time and freedom are of limited supply.

This place is as wonderful as I'd imagined it to be. Everything is Irish green, the country side is beautiful with rolling hills, tall limestone cliffs, the gentle Atlantic Ocean, stone walls, cute houses and thatched roof cottages, and puffs of white sheep everywhere. The best part of it is everyone's relaxed attitude. Honesty, Ireland could be the 51st US state and fit right in. It's almost like the Midwest of Europe. It makes me feel very comfortable, relaxed, and at-home, something I never quite felt in England.

The best example of such an attitude was our first day at the Clonshire Equestrian Centre. For our second lesson of the day, Dan, one of the owners took us out onto the cross country course which was, as they say here, brilliant. I thought he was going to give us an introductory ride around, show us all the jumps, and leave it at that, but no, he sent the entire lot of us packing over all the jumps on the course. Of course, I completely freaked out because the most I'd jumped before this trip was maybe a few foot-tall fences -- fences that fell down if you hit them, and here I was presented with logs, stone walls, water-filled ditches, chicken coops, and large dirt berms. This is when I took the proverbial "plunge" like I did freshman year when I followed the Stanford Band into the pool with all my clothes on. I decided that though I was unskilled and inexperienced, I believed that if I dug deep and stuck to the basics, I could make it over the jumps without falling off the horse.

That belief got me safely through all but one jump, an up bank followed by an immediate drop. It was the only jump I had any real doubts about. I lost both my stirrups on the up bank and landed on my horse's neck. Then, with me clinging onto his neck for dear life, he proceeded to jump off the multi-foot drop. After hearing a large gasp from the crowd watching me, I fell off smacking my head, shoulder, and butt on the ground. Luckily, the ground was soft and I came away with minor bruises and a very sore bum the next day.

Fortunately, after many more arena jumping and cross country jumping lessons, I started to solidify my form over jumps to something more safe and controlled. Tanya and Heather wanted to try some flat work, but I must admit I was there solely for the jumping because boy did I find the horse to learn on.

His name is Baltimore and he's an Irish sport horse. He's calm, very professional, and knows how to jump better than any horse I've ever ridden. Learning on him is incredibly easy because he's the perfect crutch for a beginner like me. He handles 100% of the jumping: gait, pace, striding, takeoff, and landing. He does the absolute bare minimum required to clear the fence and he does it without any fuss. This is my dream horse, the "trusty steed" that I seek. As Tanya pointed out, my relationship with Baltimore is purely pragmatic and very "manly." There are no emotions clouding judgement; he does his job, I try to do mine, and we both go over the fences expediently and as safe as my position will allow. Apparently, one day, I want to buy an Irish sport horse.

Unfortunately, not all the horses are so safe and calm. Laurie's horse, Tough Guy, took too big a jump over one ditch, popped her loose, and she fell (for a second time). She ended up going under the horse which scared the living daylights out of me because his rear seemed to step on her chest. Luckily, he only kicked her on the thigh, but her knee and ankle are pretty banged up. This is all very sobering seeing what can happen even to the best of us.

By the end of the week, I'd slowly replaced some of my sheer recklessness with some skill and was getting more solid and consistent with the jumps. Unfortunately, I couldn't acquire enough skill in time and took another spill over the tiniest of walls. I had ducked because I didn't want to smack my head on a low-hanging branch while going over the jump, lost my balance and came loose. To my surprise, I landed on my feet! While I was busy admiring the fact, my horse, Baltimore, decided it was time to make an escape and bolted all the way back to his stall at the barn. This made the whole ordeal a bit embarrassing, but I was just happy I'd made it safely to the ground yet again.

The last day we were there, I decided to take it easy and went out on a gorgeous trail ride and bid the green Irish countryside farewell. I honestly can't wait until I visit again -- there are very few places in the world I feel truly at home. Ireland is one of them.

Ireland Part 1: Ibuprofen

2007-07-02T15:40:00.000-07:00

Greetings from Ireland! I must say this place is everything I hoped it would be. The people are wonderful, everyone is laid back, the grass is green, the clouds puffy, the sheep are too, and there are horses and great riding everywhere. It has been raining every day here, but there are hours of sunshine to break up the wetness and lift the spirits.

Our first stop was Galway. Getting there involved a crash course on how to drive on the left side of the road, manage a left-handed stick shift, and navigating roundabouts and intersections without the help of any street signs. We got there safe and sound, however, and enjoyed two days of wandering the western coast of Ireland which had gorgeous sea cliffs, cute seaside towns, and large limestone mountains bathed in lush green grass dotted with little fuzzy white sheep. I also had my first taste of Guinness straight from the homeland tap and boy was it an experience. Guinness is so incredibly good here. The stuff in America is pretty good, but this stuff here is to die for.

Yesterday, we headed south to Adare and the Clonshire Equestrian Centre, one of the most prominent centers in the area. Today, we had our first lessons there. In the morning I began by jumping 1' fences in an arena. For the non-riders, 1' fences are for beginners, and they consist of a pole supported by two stands on either side. If this horse hits the pole, the falls to the ground and no one is worse for wear. This is about the level of jumping I've done in the past. In other words, I don't really jump at all.

Our second lesson was a cross country ride out in the 100+ acres of the riding center. At first I thought we were just out for a grand tour. It was our first day, after all, and I was a beginner jumper. Surely they wouldn't be having me jump ditches, stone walls, tree trunks, dirt birms, and small ponds... I was casually following our instructor and the other horses when I started noticing that the horses were taking a quick hop up something. To my horror, I realized that we were jumping up a large stone embankment and that in 20 seconds time, it would be my turn. Facing something completely out of my league, I had two choices: 1) Tell the instructor there was some kind of mistake 2) Throw caution to the wind and just go for it. I chose #2 and had a blast. After that, we went cantering around the fields jumping random things that were not only way higher than 1', but went up, down, around, and none of these obstacles would fall down if I messed up.

Things were going wonderfully until I bit off more than I could chew and fell off my horse. It was funny because I could hear the entire class gasp as I lost both sitrrups, landed on my horses neck with one jump remaining, and then completely bounce off and onto the ground after the last jump. Luckily, I landed on by back/butt/neck and am obviously fine. Nonetheless, I took some Ibuprofen and will be feeling poperly horrible tomorrow.

One thing of note are theses Irish sport horses. I usually ride Thoroughbreds whom I consider completely crazy. They would never allow me to jump down an embankment into water, up the other side, and over a chicken coop. My Irish sport horse, however, was absolutely brilliant. He took me, an absolutely cluelesss beginner, all over that course without any fuss. He clearly knew what he was doing and jumped everything wonderfully and under control. It was so wonderful having a horse take care of me for once, instead of me trying to keep the horse sane all the time.

And another random note, Peter Lynch of Fidelity owns an incredibly large estate next to the riding center completely with the most gorgeous gardens, ponds, and fields I've ever seen. Strangely enough, the landscaping reminds me much of some of the most beautiful Chinese/Japanese gardens I've seen. Imagine, a lush green field tens of acres large sloping downards in the center towards a large pond lined with cattails and small groomed trees. In the center of the pond is an island with a single large tree with gigantic green canopy.

I look forward to more cross country jumping tomorrow. Hopefully I'll stay on top of the horse the entire time this round!

Flashback Episode 2

2007-06-24T02:13:00.001-07:00

Just moved over all my 2004 entries. Man there were a lot back then. Knock yourself out.

Adventures with Reco

2007-06-24T00:43:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know, I ride a horse named Reco (short for Reconciliation). He's owned by my friend Jen and is a fun thoroughbred -- usually sane but sometimes... excitable we'll call it. It never seems to be a dull moment riding Reco, so every once in a while, I'll send Jen the next installment of my serial, Adventures with Reco. I'd think she'd be sick of these emails by now, but she seems to enjoy reading them as much as I like writing them.

I was perusing them while cleaning out my email and came across this fun one. Some background so you understand: 1) Altamont is a street in the super-rich neighborhood of Los Altos Hills, 2) "two-point" is the position you see jockeys ride in, 3) Horses spook like crazy if there are loud sudden noises behind them.

hi jen,

Just wanted to let you know that I got Reco out today. We went traipsing around Byrne doing our usual canter bit. At one point while I was cantering up Altamont in two-point w/ my butt sticking out, these two teenage punks zoom up behind us in a BMW they obviously didn't pay for and scream "Ride it baby, yeah!!!" Scared the shit out of me, but didn't phase Reco one bit.

After I'd calmed down from thinking things like, "What the hell, are you TRYING to kill me?!" it occurred to me I'd just been cat-called by a couple teenage boys. HAH! I hope they both go home and pretend they didn't just check out a guy. Who knew my ass was that cute anyways.

Albert

Missed Connections

2007-06-11T23:47:00.000-07:00

Recently, a friend of mine significantly advanced my quest to spend as many hours as possible mindlessly browsing the internet. He introduced me to the "Missed Connections" section of Craigslist.

It all began when a flight attendant caught his eye. Apparently, the "look" was reciprocated, but he was too shy to take any action. He was telling us about this story over lunch and how he regretted not getting a number when someone at the table mentioned that there was a Missed Connections section on Craigslist exactly for this purpose: to post would've, could'ves, and should'ves in the vain hopes that, upon invoking the powers of Fate and Destiny, the object of affection would read the post and make a connection.

We all laughed that something so ludicrous yet tantalizing could exist on the wonder that is the internet and hounded him into posting on it just to see what would happen. Of course, none of us expected anything to come of it, yet we were entertained by the concept and thought it would be fun for him to try, so he did.

Three days later, after we'd long forgotten about the curiosity that was Missed Connections, my friend came bounding up to me and exclaimed that he had gotten a response! It wasn't from the flight attendant, but from a friend who knew the person. I was floored. The world is funny place.

That caught my attention and I had to see this section for myself and found that it wasn't exactly what I expected. Predictably, there are a lot of posts like, "You were at Starbucks Thurs 5pm and I thought you were really cute but was too shy to ask you out." The unexpected content was the sheer number of people who knew the person they loved or wanted and were just online, venting into the black hole of the internet their happiness, misery, lust, anger, or feelings of closure. I was struck by the sheer amount of candid human emotion on those pages. It seems that anonymity is all that's necessary for people to bare themselves to the world. The result is a wonderful display of homogeneous human feeling.

To give you a taste, here are some interesting posts I found on there. Until we meet again... on Craigslist.

---

I vote that next time you aren't so modest with your blue shirt. - w4m (downtown / civic / van ness)

You stopped by my cube again, only to leave too soon. You were wearing that blue shirt that I like so much, but this time you made use of too many of the buttons. You were fired up and excited and now I am. Bring that fervor to our next encounter, leave out all forms of modesty and I'll help relieve you of your tension.

---

was I just paralyzed by your gorgeous eyes at Coffee to the People? - m4w - 28 (haight ashbury)

Sitting with our backs against the wall, 4:30ish.......
Of course I thought you were cute, but (being attached) was not seriously considering getting flirtatious.
But on your way out, you just murdered me with those eyes!
Wow.

---

You should think. - w4m - 37

Just had dinner with your wife.
Me. The other woman. One of a few, I know.
Your wife is beautiful. Funny. Smart. Vivacious.
And so am I.
You should think about the amazing women you f*ck over, and why that is.

---

To my old boyfriend... - w4m

Hey there.

I hope you're well. I hope these lines somehow make their way over to you.

Though I won't reach out to you directly with this, I just want to express that I'm not angry with you anymore. I hold nothing against you and do hope you know that when I did, I did really love you, even if only in a peculiar way of MY very own.

Know that I've finally reached that place where none of it hurts at all anymore. My fists are no longer clenched as I do really forgive it all.

I guess I also needed to say this for myself... that I made it, that I'm finally here... and wow, it feels really good.

So as to keep within the rules of this forum, here's a missed connection for you and me - a missed connection with peace - that I wish had come to us both a long, long time ago.

Be happy and always remember to take good care of yourself and yes, of course I'll do the same.

Your old girlfriend.

Pet Peeve of the Day

2007-05-09T12:20:00.000-07:00

Contrary to popular belief, apologizing for something (even ahead of time) does not make whatever it is suddenly okay. If I anyone says to me, "I'm sorry to be a bitch, but < insert bitchy comment >," and expects me to be alright with everything one more time, I will wring his/her neck.

Happy Wednesday.

Choice

2007-03-24T00:34:00.000-07:00

There's been a lot of talk lately within my circle of friends about Fate and Destiny, one's lot in life and how most of it is just dumb luck. The context is usually that we should feel lucky and not take our wonderful lives for granted, a common example being that we are lucky to be well off, well educated, and living in a country that despite its faults, is a great place to live in and truly a land of opportunity.

While I agree that I had nothing to do with any of that, instead of giving dumb luck all the credit, I decided to dig deeper. I did not choose the comfort and wealth of opportunities I've enjoyed, nor did I choose to be born in the US where those items are more easily had. My parents chose them for me. They chose to work hard for themselves and their children. They chose to give up a life near their families and everything familiar in Taiwan and move here because they wanted my sister and me to enjoy the fruits of this country and their labor. My parents, in turn, were afforded this option by their parents, who worked hard to provide and educate their children. Their parents did the same.

The chain goes on and on into the past. I did not just get lucky, a great many people worked hard to make it this way for me. It's no wonder some cultures worship their ancestors. They recognize that their forebears had as much to do with their current circumstance as any of the gods that control the wind, the land, and the sea. Believing that our lives were completely ruled by fate, destiny, or luck would be giving far too little credit to ourselves and to others in our lives. Though much of our given lot in life is ultimately out of our control, we must remember that the deck can be stacked and that behind every card played, there is a human choice.

Brrrrrr

2007-01-18T23:25:00.000-08:00

Okay, it's really cold right now. And it was the day before and the day before that. The frost has killed the flowers I was so proud to have planted and kept alive (for once) and frozen my windshield washer fluid. Yes, like any normal Californian, I'm pretty sure I had just plain old water in there. I did learn one interesting thing though. My room is difficult to heat because it shares 3 walls with the outdoors and half of one wall is a glass patio door. All that I have to keep me warm is a less than effectual baseboard heater and for the longest time, I'd always wake up freezing. Then it occurred to me that it wasn't the lack of heating that was freezing me; it was the fact that the thermostat is conveniently located 5' off the ground, 3' above me when I'm in bed. The baseboard heater doesn't generate enough airflow so by the time morning rolls around, there's a bubble of warm air 5' off the ground and the rest below that (including me) is freezing. So now I just leave a fan on in the room and I'm all warm and cozy.

Besides the being constantly cold thing, I've also been a bit "on-tilt" lately. I've traced the cause to two specific things: 1) lack of exercise 2) uncertainty in the horse dept. As most of my closer friends know, riding is the foundation of my sanity, especially when work, girls, or life in general is trying to kill me, so any perturbation there has ill effects.

I've basically come to an impasse in my riding. I haven't made any measurable improvements in the last year, so something has got to change. First thing is to start riding more often which will take some life priority changes (riding take an inordinate amount of time). Then I have to decide if I want to keep riding my current horse, Reco, or if I want to switch and lease another horse. This other horse would likely be Puck (real name: A Midsummer Night's Dream. get it? get it?) who is this tiny little five year old Morgan who was raised like a puppy and therefore behaves like one. He will honestly try and sit in your lap if you let him and he enjoys nibbling and licking people all over. He's oh so very cute.

The funny thing is, since I've considered switching horses, Reco has been extra friendly to me. It's as if he knew and was trying to win my love. One day I visited him and he spent the next 20 minutes making a fuss of me, nuzzling me all over and trying to swallow my shoe. Last week, we turned him out and he seemed so happy to be playing with me and following me all around.

Anyways, hopefully I'll know the way soon enough.

It's time for the flashback episode

2007-01-04T21:02:00.000-08:00

You know how when TV shows run out of budget or stories for a season, they'll smack together an episode composed almost entirely of flashbacks which basically amounts to watching a really boring clipshow? Well, I'm going to steal the idea and use it on my blog. I've been meaning to port all my old posts (think vintage 2003) over here, so I'll use this opportunity as an exuse to take a walk down memory lane by posting them in batches. It's interesting to see where I was in life three, four years ago and also the change in my writing style. I think engineering has really pounded any eloquence I ever had into oblivion. No matter.

I've just finished copying and pasting all the 2003 entries. The dates are accurate (the times are not). I hope you enjoy the old posts. The 2004 series will be coming soon...

Happy New Years!

2007-01-04T00:41:00.000-08:00

Happy 2007! Normally I dislike doing the whole New Year's resolution thing because I feel like I should always be trying to better myself regardless the time of year. In fact, last year was the first year I ever made a New Year's resolution. I changed my mind because I figured it wasn't a bad idea to have an annual meeting with myself and realign my goals, priorities, and rally some motivation to shake myself out of complacency. The only caveat I give myself is that I'm only allowed to make resolutions I intend to and know I'm capable of keeping, just like how I only make promises that I can and will keep.

Last year the resolutions were simple: 1) Get a girlfriend, 2) Eat out more with my friends.
Unfortunately, #1 was ultimately unsuccessful and more offputting than anything. #2 was fun and now I know a few more nice places to go eat and hang out.

This year, I'm leaving things more open-ended and long-term, mostly because I have too much for one year and being at a sort of cross-roads in my life in all aspects, I'm not exactly sure what my situation will be in a year. Here's the list:
-- Go travelling. I maxed out on vacation days this year (7 weeks) and had to keep selling them back because I didn't go on a single vacation. I'm in my mid-late 20's and am unattached. The next time I'll be this free is when I'm retired. Places I want to go include: southern France/Spain and Monaco for the Formula One Grand Prix, Ireland to ride horses, South America, and Taiwan. I already have a trip scheduled for Hawaii this April.
-- Cook. NVIDIA has been serving me lunch and dinner ever since I graduated almost five years ago and thus I've been able to dodge what most would consider a necessary life skill. I've decided it's time to finally bit the bullet because I'm horribly sick of cafeteria dinner and because I would love to make someone a nice homecooked meal.
-- Ride more. Ride MORE?! Yes, I'd like to ride at least twice a week from now on. I've plateaued in my riding and it's driving me insane. I want to be good. I want horses to like me instead of pinning their ears back whenever I get on them. Also, I've taken a real liking to the idea of having a closer connection with the horse I'm riding. In the end, it's the communication and relationship with the horse that I enjoy most about riding.
-- Improve my Chinese. I'm thinking of starting a Chinese club at work where we sit down for one hour a week and speak only Chinese. This is pretty much the only way I think I can maintain my rapidly deteriorating speaking skills.
-- Girls?? Verdict is still out on this one.
-- Career path. After four years, I'm finally doing what I wanted to be doing and it's everything I thought it could be! However, arriving at a destination means enjoying the view and then choosing a new destination to hike to, so my task is to come up with the next stop.

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-25T01:16:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone! And to all of you who aren't Christian (like me), Merry Christmas anyways; it's the thought that counts. This year, I got many wonderful presents from everyone including emails, cards, text messages, books, games, and clothes. This year, however, I got a present in its purest form from someone I least expected: Emma my large white and fluffy dog.

I had just driven down from Northern California and knocked on the door hands full with all my luggage when my mom opened the door for me. I staggered in and began depositing my stuff on the ground when Emma, curious to see who'd come in, came trotting over from around the corner with a large chunk of her dinner in her mouth. When she saw me, she stopped dead in her tracks and just stared. Then as it dawned on her who she was looking at, her eyes got wide and her jaw dropped and the chunk of meat she had just been cherishing a second ago fell straight from her mouth onto the ground. Having completely forgotten about her dinner, she galloped up to me tail wagging and tongue licking my face.

My mom watched the whole thing and we both remarked that it was the cutest thing we had ever seen because we both knew how Emma would normally growl and fight tooth and nail if anyone tried to take her dinner away from her. I guess it's why humans love animals so much, because when we see something like this, we know it is a true and sincere gift of love.

The Best Birthday Ever

2006-12-20T01:17:00.000-08:00

I can honestly say that this was one of the best birthdays I've ever had. The celebrations started early in the month with a wonderful trip to Yoshi's jazz club where we watched the Taj Mahal Trio perform great music. That was great fun especially because it included friends from many different circles of friends whom I never see together. Then my friends from work took me out to one of my favorite restaurants a week later. Last night, just before my real birthday at midnight, I got the much anticipated annual phone call from my long-time friend Amy. This morning, I woke up to find an email filled with birthday wishes and wonderful life updates from my friend, Andrew, in Russia that I met in 10th grade on an exchange program. Throughout today I was peppered with phone calls and emails from more family and friends all wishing me the best. Finally, tonight, I thought I'd have to celebrate by myself and my chicken pot-pie-with-candle-on-top since everyone was out, yet not an hour later, I found myself surrounded by friends I haven't seen in a month. When it came time to blow out the candle on the cake, for the first time ever, I couldn't think of what to wish for because at that very moment, everything was perfect.

I honestly feel like the luckiest person in the world right now to have so many wonderful people I care about dearly; I feel rather unworthy to have this gift. My dearest friends and family, you've filled my entire December with love and joy. In this season when I'm usually wishing for what I don't have and others do, you've made it completely impossible not to be thankful for what I do have -- all of you.

The Color of Rain

2006-12-09T01:17:00.000-08:00

I’m sitting in my living room listening to the pattering of the rain on the skylights and watching the pine trees outside twist and sway with the wind. Everything in the house is illuminated by the dim blue-grey glow I call the color of rain. I’m tucked in on the couch under a warm blanket wearing the same hooded green sweatshirt I wore on rainy days over a decade ago in middle school. A lot has changed about the sweatshirt since then; there are loose threads here and there and numerous holes in the sleeves for my fingers to poke through. A lot has stayed the same; it still keeps me warm on rainy days.

Rascal Flatts

2006-07-21T01:18:00.000-07:00

I just got back from my very first country music concert. At first, when my friend asked me to go with her, I was skeptical, but in the spirit of trying something new, I decided it would be a most fun experience, and boy was I right.

My friend had already forced me to listen to a few songs, one of which is now one of my favorite songs of all time, so I knew the music would be good. But what I was really looking forward to were the people.

I haven't seen that many 4x4's, cowboy hats, denim mini-skirts, and stinky large men outside of Central Valley ever. Instead of pot, there were cigars. Instead of grungy male teenagers, there were blonde girls with cute hats. Instead of filing orderly into the dirt parking lot, there were SUVs and trucks offroading it up the embankments, blazing their own parking spaces. What a riot!

I must admit some of the music isn't what I'd choose to listen by myself on the radio, but it should did make me want to square dance and that kind of thing is always a fun time. Thanks, Julie, for taking me. It was a blast!

Quarter life crisis

2006-06-09T22:06:00.000-07:00

My quarter-life crisis is finally winding down after reaching a rather spectacular climax last week. For six months day and night, I asked myself the hard questions: Am I ready to get married? If not, when will I be? What about kids? Yes, I definitely want kids, but seriously, when. In two years? In four? I'm 26 and I want kids before I'm 30 or 32. If i'm married for two years before I have kids, and I date two years before I get married, I've got two years or less to date all the women I need to find The One (or one of The Ones as I like to say). What am I looking for in a partner, in a girlfriend, in a wife? Am I too picky? Am I not picky enough? Does experience matter? Am I done playing? Do I want to travel? Do I want religion? All these questions haunted me to the point of mental exhaustion and I'm so glad that they're finally all answered -- for now.

Perhaps the most externally visible manifestation of my crisis is the fact that after 26 years of refusing to "play the game," I've finally started dating. I started with a single's party and speed dating, both of which were fun activities and yielded some dates, which have kept me insanely busy.

Many have asked me why I started all of this; granted the time was ripe and all that good stuff, but what single-handedly reversed my course and made me overcome one of my largest mental blocks ever; what was the catalyst? What other than a woman could cause a man to question his existence?

I've heard a lot of people say that you "just know" when you've found the right one. I wasn't sure if I believed them or not. I'd certainly experienced this in other more mundane areas of life, like car shopping or house shopping, but I wasn't sure it could apply to something so abstract and complex as a human being. Yet, even though it took me a while to realize it and even more time to admit to it to myself, she was it and I just knew. She was what I wanted. She was The One.

When I say she was The One, I don't mean she's the ideal woman of my dreams. That woman doesn't exist. I've checked. What I mean is that I believe there are certain qualities that are most important to me and many women might have them, each with their own twist, additions, and subtractions, resulting in a range of good matches for me. She just happened to be the first one to fall in this range. But what a splash she made!

I was so excited that there were women out there in the world like her, that what I was looking for was real, I had to find one for myself. Thus the dating like crazy thing. At the same time, the hard questions started. If The One could just show up on my doorstep as randomly as she did, I'd need to be ready for when the next One came along. There was no way I was going to miss another opportunity, considering how rare they are.

You might be wondering now, if this girl was so awesome, why didn't I just go for her? Well, that's what last week was all about and it's a story I'll have to tell another time.

And we're back...

2006-04-26T01:22:00.000-07:00

Alright! I'm back! The last four months have been absolutely insane. You remember how I changed groups at work and my life was all wonderful for a while? Well, come December, I got pulled back into that evil dark cave known as the lab and stuck there doing stuff I consider far worse than my old job. Basically, in my four years at NVIDIA, I've actually become somewhat useful and have been given some more responsibility. As a result, I found myself waking up, driving to work, and being hours if not days behind schedule the second I stepped in the building. Every five minutes, for the next 14 hours, somebody or some people would need something from me an hour ago. Nobody could proceed without me doing something -- I didn't even have time to go to the bathroom most of the time. That might sound a bit conceited, but it's not that I'm all that important. I just somehow, inadvertently became the hub of this project -- everything went through me.

Anyways, one nervous breakdown later, I've magically popped out the other side of the tunnel and now I stand in the sunlight once again. Since then, I've embarked upon a massive self-improvement project which some might call a quarter-life crisis. More to come...

Bizarro Family

2005-10-25T22:05:00.000-07:00

I've been suffering from this stupid cold that everyone and their mom seems to have. Over the weekend, I decided to take a walk to make myself feel better and ended up going to McDonald's. I got my food as usual and noticed a very attractive asian lady standing in front of me. She looked like she was in highschool, but I'm guessing she was maybe... 30 tops. I was idly admiring her waiting for my turn in line when an old white guy stepped in front of me. At first I was taken aback because I thought he'd just blatently cut in front of me. Then I realized that he was with the woman. Hmmm, interesting.

After they placed their order, I thought no more of them and got my own food, sat down, and began to eat. Half way through my meal, I noticed that the asian girl (no offense to women, I call her a girl because that's what she looked like -- a girl, like really young) was sitting with the old white guy and his two young white kids. Huh?! I spent the rest of my meal trying to figure out her relation with them -- she seriously looked like the white daughter's older sister.

As if that wasn't weird enough, the man was listening to his iPod at the table while the two kids try to steal McDonald's Monopoly pieces from each other and she just sat there, staring into space. The table was completely silent. I kept thinking to myself, "This is sooo freaking weird." I was so fascinated at this point that I'd completely stopped eating and was just staring at them.

Then, after at least 15 minutes of iPod, monopoly, and staring, the asian girl leans over and puts her head on the man's shoulder. AAGHH!! Meanwhile, the kids look like they don't even know she exists, and the guy still has his earphones in. Finally, five minutes later, the girl whispers something and the guy manages to pop out one ear phone to listen to her. Then when she's done, he puts it back.

That was definitely the most fun I've had people watching in a very long time -- a much needed break because life's been getting a bit stressful as of late. Lots of friends in need and work being off the hook. There's only so much of me... feel like I'm being ripped to shreds. Anyhow, I wish you all the best in finding your bizarro peole of the day.

I love Halloween

2005-10-20T22:05:00.000-07:00

A brief update on my otherwise normal life.

Went to Thunderhill again (track) and had a real blast!!! until I spun off the track, into the dirt, and my right-rear wheel found the GINORMOUS hole in the otherwise smooth Grassy Fields of Happiness. The whole time I was spinning I was thinking, "don't flip don't flip don't flip". Things felt pretty smooth until WHAAAM. It wasn't until I drove back onto the track that I noticed something was very very wrong with my car. Unfortunately, I'd pretzeled my right rear suspension. Towing it back all 180 miles was a feat in itself (go AAA!) and I have Nick to thank for helping me out with the towing and lending me his oh-so-fun POS Galant to drive while my car was in the shop.

Anyhow, my car's finally back, though still dusty and laden with fauna from the offroading experience. I'm glad to have it back -- I really missed it, despite my new-found appreciation of the POS Galant.

In other news, I fell off my horse, Payback, last week. It wasn't as bad as last time, but I'm definitely scraped up and in minor pain all the time. Could be worse I guess, but he's tried to kill me so many times and has utterly failed. I'm disappointed to have him get the better of me this time.

Finally, it's almost Halloween and I've busted out all the Halloween candles and decorations. The only thing I'm missing is a neat little CD with Fall evening sounds, like crickets, breeze, etc since I live in this silly thing called a city and can't just go outside for that stuff. I have no idea why I came to love this holiday so much. There's just something about the Fall night that's so mystical with glowing Jack-o-lanterns and walking around in the dark. You know how much I like glowing things and walking around at night. I guess Halloween really is one of the more imaginitive holidays -- complete with a tinge of the occult. Anyhow, I wish you all a very merry Trick-or-Treat!

OMG TEH MODS ARE IN1!!!1!

2005-09-06T22:03:00.000-07:00

I've been wanting to change two aspects of my otherwise perfect car for a long time: massive understeer (typical of lawyer designed cars) and the clutch delay valve, which limited clutch engagement speed thus making it very hard to figure out where the clutch was in relation to the clutch pedal. This weekend, I finally got off my ass and did my first mods! Oh MAN do I love my car even more now. To give you an idea of how excited I am, here's an email I just sent my car friends Nick and Lukito:

Yay! With Lukito's help (and his ramps, wrenches, towels, jacket, cardboard box, vice grip, bleeder, and pliers), I finally got that frickin CDV out of my car!!! It drives like normal now!!! My upshifts are so much smoother and my downshifts are even better. Before, when i let up on the clutch too quickly (like from a stop light or something), it felt like my clutch would hesitate and then all of a sudden slap the flywheel. Turns out that's exactly what was happening. Now that it follows my foot, it smoothly engages. And I don't have to play "guess where the engagement point is" game anymore! Okay sorry, you can tell from how excited I am how bad it was driving w/ that thing on. Thanks for the help and the equipment!

Also the alignment is starting to show it's true colors, especially on freeway onramps and medium speed curves. The slack i mentioned is gone (maybe the tires just needed a few miles to adjust to the new alignment). In it's place is more turn and less scrub. It feels more like it's on rails. Not revolutionary, but definitely an incremental improvement from before. Can't wait to pwn you all on the track!!!

Albert

New Orleans Destroyed

2005-09-02T22:02:00.000-07:00

This is the headline I was waiting for after visiting the city during Christmas. Just like The Big One is always on the mind of a Southern Californian at some level, the final Category 5 hurricane that would drown the city was on the mind of those I came in touch with in New Orleans. They were spared that, but I guess a Category 4 was good enough.

After I'd gotten back and was enchanted by the mystical sinking city and did a little research on it. I read the city was plannning to better protect itself from a large hurricane with higher sea walls and whatnot. I wished at the time that they would stop planning and start doing. I liked New Orleans and I hated the idea that it might one day disappear into the ocean.

Now that that day has finally come. Though the city remains, I'm heartbroken to think that all those beautiful places I visited less than a year ago are now either under water, or filled with refugees and rotting bodies. When I see names like River Walk and other areas I strolled along, the difference between my sunny mental image and the current war zone-like conditions is beyond my comprehension. I imagine the floor of the convention center, no different than any ordinary floor I've ever seen, now stained with feces and bodies. It's like when someone says there are over one thousand of something. My mind doesn't truly understand that. It just knows it's bigger than ten and that ten dead people is too many already. The best I can do is go through my gallery and view the photos I took of New Orleans one by one and imagine it submerged or destroyed.

What the most disheartening news of all isn't the extent of the distruction, the appalling conditions, or the thousands of deaths. It's the fact that when there is so much destruction and suffering, when people need each other the most, there are individuals who are roaming the city, raping, pillaging, burning, and shooting at each other and even hospitals. Every close friend I have can tell you of my obsession with post-apocolyptic stories, for example, the movie 28 Days Later. Basically, anything about the end of the world -- not existance, but of normal civilization. I am so obsessed with them because they reflect my worst fear about humans. I completely believe that humans, when reduced to the most basic level, are merely over-glorified animals and will behave accordingly. I WANT PEOPLE TO SEE THESE STORIES in the desperate yet futile hope that at least some can recognize this in themselves and, when the time comes such as now, fight and rise above it. My hope is all but destoryed to see that, just like in every story about the end of the world, it's not the aliens, zombies, hurricanes, or earthquakes that are the true enemy, it's humans, ourselves.

The stories coming out from New Orleans, the REAL stories, disgust me. I am ashamed. Those who are shooting, raping, destroying, desserve either to be shot on sight or to live a very long life full of pain, agony, and suffering. They deserve the worst this world has to offer. Those of you who believe in a benevolent God or believe humans are somehow superior, take a long hard and cold look. Then look in the mirror and smile. See those sharp canines in your mouth? They're meant to kill and tear flesh from your victims.

That said, for the vast majority of you still in New Orleans who are decent and just trying to survive, I send my best wishes. I know expressing my sorrow, indignation, and well-wishing won't do you any good, but I hope my donation does. Hopefully, with enough time and effort, New Orleans can be reborn as a new and equally beautiful city as the one I left not so long ago and hopefully your lives can be mended just as well.

Track Day!

2005-08-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

Every time people find out that I own a BMW, they inevitably ask with a smirk, So is it really the Ultimate Driving Machine? My response is always, Err... dunno. I like it a lot? Whoa, how is it that I dont know if my own car is the Ultimate Driving Machine? Well, its not something I can find out just by driving to and from work, or even on a twisty mountain road even. Theres just no way to push my car or me to the limit on public roads and still be safe. Then came my very first Track Day and now I can safely say that my car is, in fact, the Ultimate Driving Machine.

My coworkers had been bugging me about going to the track even before I bought my bimmer. I wrote it off as something Id never have the car, time, or money for. But the seed was planted and I when I chose my car, I made sure it could hold its own if I were to ever drive it in a ... spirited fashion.

A year passed and I began learning the ins and outs of my car. My morning and evening commute quickly became the best part of my day, the highlight of which is what I like to call the NVIDIA Autocross. Its basically an off ramp, on ramp, exit, and obstacle-filled parking lot all in super-quick succession. After negotiating the course every morning at fun speeds, I like to look around in the car and in the back seat and note how successful the morning drive was. If all items in the car have swapped places, or better yet, ended up wedged in strange configurations against the doors, I know Ive done my job well.

After living the The best part of waking up, is squealing tires ... in your cup? mantra for a while, I began to have an inkling of just what my car could really do. We started organizing scenic drives up by Skyline Blvd which runs the ridge line and and is as gorgeous as it is fun to drive. Finally, Id had just about as much fun as I could driving safely and as legally as possible on public roads filled with other cars, people, curbs, dogs, children, hikers, bikers, horses, rocks, potholes, etc. Things were getting boring. The obvious solution? Go to a NON-public road, somewhere meant for driving and safe. Thunderhill Race Park was it. As my friend, Nick, so kindly demonstrated with visual aides, it was a driver-oriented track with very few walls and lots of grassy fields of happiness should I accidentally remove myself from the track. This was in contrast to places like Laguna Seca which have concrete walls of death everywhere to protect spectators.

I was like a 12 year old with A.D.D. on crack the week leading up to Track Day. I was so excited I couldnt think straight. Every time I tried working on something (work, whats that?), my mind would drift and eventually the sound of engines and tires would fill my head. I signed up with NCRC (Northern California Racing Club) who were incredibly helpful. They assigned a mentor, Dean, whose sole purpose was to answer as many stupid questions as I could throw at him.

Finally, on Friday, Nick, Jason, and I drove up to Willows, CA and checked into our room. We talked cars for a while and general driving techniques before heading to bed. The next day started bright and early. We met up with our fourth, Lukito and drove off to the track. Lukito had only been to the track once and was going to be in my running group (we both would have instructors riding with us all day). He was driving his Galant VR4 a.k.a. POS Galant which is this vintage 1991 4WD car with 10% remaining paint, crappy tires, and ridiculous amounts of horse power courtesy of his manly turbo. Nick (who got me into this mess) was beginner-intermediate and drove his Subaru STi. Its this 4WD silver thing with a ginormous wing in the back and huge hood scoop in the front. We like to call it Factory Rice. He also has ridiculous amounts of horsepower and very sticky tires and loves initial D way too much. Jason, the veteran of our group used to track his M3, but recently upgraded (or downgraded depending on your point of view) to a Lotus Elise which has a teensy weensy engine but drives like a go-kart.

Lukito and I began the day with a quick classroom lesson on what the flags meant, when to go, when to stop, etc. while the big boys and girls with their GT3s, GTAs, Porsches, etc. went to play around on the track. Then it was my turn. I met my instructor, Jay, who is a moderator on bimmerforums.com, a site that I frequent. We hopped in my car and before I knew it, I was in the pit lane waiting to be waved onto the track.

The first moment on the track was one of the strangest experiences ever. The track looked like a street and smelled like a street, but didnt go anywhere and i knew i was meant to drive ALL OVER it the left side, right side, even the berms (curb-like things) and I was meant to do it FAST. I had no previous experience to tell me how fast or slow I should be going, or where to be on the track when. It wasnt long before I heard the tell-tale screeching of my own tires and ended up OFF the track.

After being scolded like a little child by the track attendant, I pulled into the paddock and had a chat with my instructor. He decided to give me a ride in his E36 M3 race car to show me the line and speed to take through the track. Despite his going slowly for educational reasons, I still had the ride of my life. Driving on the track really is like having your personal roller coaster.

Then came my second shot at driving the track. I was very apprehensive about going off the track again, so I decided to go really slowly, ignore the cars stacked up behind me (who I let pass at the straights), and concentrate on getting the line down. I was still missing every other apex and finding myself in strange places on the track, but overall, things were much improved over the first session. I even managed to stay on the paved part the whole time!

I decided to take a break after that and caught a ride in Nicks STi just to see how a more seasoned driver in a faster car took the course. To sum up the ride, Id call it the grossest abuse of four wheel drive Id ever seen (yon WD!!!1). Wed go blazing into the turns with all four tires screaming and Nick would skid the rear end around so that it was pointed at the turn exit. Then instead of gently sling-shotting out of the turn, hed slam his foot down and claw his way out full throttle. The most exciting part was when we finally overtook a brand-new Lamborghini that wed been following for a few laps. We started out behind the it in the pit lane and Nick asked me if I thought he could pass it. I said no, probably not. A few laps later after watching the Lamborghini take several atrocious lines, I looked over at Nick and said, Hey, you know... I think you can take this guy. Nick just smiled. Then the next lap, we blew his doors off. Nick was done smiling and was busy whooping and laughing. As luck would have it, the track photographer just happened to capture the pass, Nicks victory over the Lamborghini was immortalized.

Throughout lunch, we discussed our experiences up until then. Nick and Jason were having a blast, but I was slightly disappointed. My second run was good and consistent, but excruciatingly slow. I wanted to go faster, dammit. I was wasting the track. I resolved to fix the situation and psyched myself up, trying to shake off jitters from my earlier excursion into the dirt. I knew I could go so much faster, still be safe, and still stay on the track. I kept telling myself to stop driving like a sissy and to start driving more like I do in Gran Turismo 4. No more of this driving miss daisy stuff!

On my third run, I made it happen. When I had enough available traction between the turns, my right foot was all the way down, my mind screaming for speed and my car obeying. Maintaining the line was my first priority and it held, but I definitely felt the rush of speed, especially coming out of the turns, down the straights, and the good hard braking before the turns. It finally felt like I was doing some high performance driving!

My attitude adjustment was rewarded when I began passing some slower cars. I actually passed someone else instead of the other way around! At the end of the session, I came barreling onto the straight and who did I see in front of me? None other than my fellow newbie Lukito! The track event wasnt a race, but it sure felt good to know I was no longer the slowest person in the group.

By the end of the day, I was completely overheated (it was 100 degrees all day long), exhausted, and my brain felt really really fuzzy, like it was made out of cotton. I sat in some more rides and drove two more sessions. When it was over, we packed all our stuff up, took some pictures, and removed the tape from our cars. We had some dinner and consumed gallons of iced tea, had some good laughs about the day, discussed our successes and failures, celebrated Nicks victory of the day, and then headed home, just four guys, our cars, and the sunset.

Sea Island, GA -- Part 2

2005-07-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

The first day, we woke up nice and late, got some lunch at the beach club and drove up to Savannah. I didn't have any concept of what it was supposed to be like, so I wasn't able to fully appreciate it. Judging by the murmurs of my more well read friends, however, I'd say it was everything they hoped it could be. My favorite part was the square parks situated in the center of what you would call a round-about which were square shaped. They were nice and shady and contained various monuments to commemorate a miscellany of historical figures, one of which was a large rock honoring Indian Chief Tomo-Chi-Chi.

After a fine dinner, we headed back home to Sea Island and found ourselves in the middle of a sprawling thunderstorm. The rain was warm and steady as was the thunder and lightning. We got back into the house, poured ourselves some drinks, and lined up the rocking chairs on the back porch. Then we sat, listening to the raindrops fall on the house and on the plants outside. I remember thinking how different the world sounded in the rain, so many small noises and drips and shuffles. Every 20 or 30 seconds, a streak of lightning would shoot within the clouds and light up the entire marsh before us. In an instant, we would go from seeing 10 feet of backyard lawn and trees to miles of water and lush grass. Every so often, the clouds would send a streak of white electricity into the marsh and light up the world with a loud clap of thunder. All the while, we were dry and sheltered, rocking slowly back and forth on our chairs, warm with the slight tropical breeze, enjoying our drinks, the view, and the good company. I don't think I've ever been so content in years. It's little wonder that it became the defining moment of our trip for everyone -- an experience we wouldn't soon forget.

The next day, we went out for a morning horseback ride along the beach. You can guess that this was my idea. Some get post cards wherever they travel, some buy souvenirs, I ride horses. I was planning to go myself, but everyone seemed to like the idea so everyone signed on, including Will who's love for horses knows no bounds (he despises animals). As soon as we arrived, it was immediately apparent which horse belonged to Will -- the gigantic Clydesdale. When all 6'7" of him was finally mounted on his gigantic steed, I swear the only thing he was missing was a battle axe and plate armor. The ride itself was okay. I was hoping to canter along the beach, but the group was a bit too large and novice to really handle even a trot, so I ended up listening one of the guide's riding stories. Still, even walking along the beach was fun and relaxing. Kate seemed to enjoy it. Hawk, unfortunately, is as allergic to horses as I am. Seeing him after the ride, I understood what I must have looked like after my first ride, all puffy-eyed and breaking out into hives. The fact that I came out of that wanting to ride more make me wonder if I'm crazy.

Sea Island, GA -- Part 1

2005-07-18T21:54:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, my roommate Will hatched a crazy idea to use up his parents' accrued Southwest frequent flier miles. He suggested that we all take a vacation together to his vacation house in Sea Island, Georgia. We' d all heard a lot about his place at Sea Island -- he always seemed to be going there for some reason or another. He spent almost every Thanksgiving there and all his family reunions were there. I began imagining what it would be like there. The name made it sound like small island off the coast of Georgia with a single house on top with kids running around outside by the crashing waves. I admittedly let my imagination run a bit wild on that one, but it was fun to think about nonetheless.

To Will's pleasure, we roundly praised the idea and began to make plans. Will and I had always joked about how we were swapped at birth and grew up in the wrong states, me among small asian women and he among tall blonde ones. This was our chance to prove our theory correct. After several months of schedule conflicts and aborted attempts, Will, Bill, Kate, Hawk, and I finally departed for the deep south on June 30th, just in time for July 4th weekend.

The flight there was a bit more eventful than we'd hoped. After an hour's delay, we boarded the plane and go under way. A couple hours into the flight, we heard the captain come onto the PA. At first, I figured he was just giving his usual greeting and providing flight information that I think only I care about, like altitude, air temperature, wind speed, etc. But instead, I heard, "There is no cause for alarm." Stop right there, I thought. That is NOT the right way to begin any sentence. Scenes from Airplane flashed through my mind. "There is a problem with the flight control system. We will be landing in Phoenix, Arizona where we will determine if we need to switch aircraft." He then went on to explain that the rudder trim was busted (and compensating in the wrong way to boot) -- a minor problem, but flying in a broken airplane is just a bad idea no matter how benign the problem.

Then we began the fastest decent I'd ever seen a commercial airliner do. Round and round we went as we corkscrewed down towards Phoenix. Finally, the airport came into view and even though I had faith that there really was no cause for alarm, I decided that if we crashed and burned now, I was happy with my life up until now and that dying would be less preferable, but ultimately alright. We made our final approach and landed safely on the airstrip. Far off, I could see at least six bright yellow emergency vehicles with their lights flashing, waiting for us on the tarmac. No cause for alarm, eh?

After stealing another flight's airplane, we were again on our way towards Nashville, and then Jacksonville Florida. By the time we made it to Sea Island, it was 2am and we were all exhausted from the entire day of traveling. We knew all of it was worth it, however, when we pulled up to Will's house and were stunned. In my Californian mind, it was straight out of Gone with the wind, the southern plantation style architecture was something I'd only seen in photos and movies, and just a little in New Orleans. Not only was it gorgeous, but it was big. Really big. It was one of those houses where you ask, "You mean real people live in those?" We got the grand tour -- all five bedrooms plus common areas worth. My favorite room was the spacious living room that had an entire wall of glass doors leading out to the back porch overlooking the marsh. That back porch was my favorite place in all of Sea Island and was to become the focal point for the six days and five nights of our stay.

The next five days were heaven.

The Light

2005-06-23T21:53:00.000-07:00

This has to be my favorite love letter ever. If I had a girlfriend, I'd send her this because anything I wrote myself would pale in comparison. It's not full of puppy dog love or saccharine musings. It's real. For those of you who've never heard it, I thought I'd share.

The Light by Common

Yo..

I never knew a luh, luh-luh, a love like this
Gotta be somethin for me to write this
Queen, I ain't seen you in a minute
Wrote this letter, and finally decide to send it
Signed sealed delivered for us to grow together
Love has no limit, let's spend it slow forever
I know your heart is weathered by what studs did to you
I ain't gon assault em cause I probably did it too
Because of you, feelings I handle with care
Some niggaz recognize the light but they can't handle the glare
You know I ain't the type to walk around with matchin shirts
Relationship is effort I will match your work
I wanna be the one to make you happiest and hurt you the most
They say the end is near, it's important that we close..
.. to the most, high
Regardless of what happen on Him let's rely

  There are times.. when you'll need someone..
  I will be by your side..
  There is a light, that shines,
  special for you, and me..

Yo, yo, check it
It's important we communicate
and tune the fate of this union to the right pitch
I never call you my bitch or even my boo
There's so much in a name, there's so much more in you
Few understand the union of woman and man
And sex and a tingle is where they assume that it land
But that's fly by night for you in the sky I write
For in these cold Chi night's moon, you my light
If heaven had a height, you would be that tall
Ghetto to coffee shop, through you I see that all
Let's stick to understandin and we won't fall
For better or worse times, I hope to me you call
So I pray everyday more than anything
friends will stay as we begin to lay
this foundation for a family - love ain't simple
Why can't it be anything worth having you work at annually
Granted we known each other for some time
It don't take a whole day to recognize sunshine

  There are times.. when you'll need someone..
  I will be by your side, oh darling
  There is a light, that shines,
  special for you, and me..

Yeah.. yo, yo, check it
It's kinda fresh you listen to more than hip-hop
and I can catch you in the mix from beauty to thrift shop
Plus you ship hop when it's time to, thinkin you fresh
Suggestin beats I should rhyme to
At times when I'm lost I try to find you
You know to give me space when it's time to
My heart's dictionary defines you, it's love and happiness
Truthfully it's hard tryin to practice abstinence
The time we committed love it was real good
Had to be for me to arrive and it still feel good
I know the sex ain't gon' keep you, but as my equal
is how I must treat you
As my reflection in light I'ma lead you
And whatever's right, I'ma feed you
Digga-da, digga-da, digga-da, digga-digga-da-da
Yo I tell you the rest when I see you, peace.

  There are times.. when you'll need someone..
  I will be by your side..
  There is a light, that shines,
  special for you, and me..

  ..take my chances.. before they pass..
  ..pass me by, oh darling..
  You need to look at the other side..
  You'll agree..

A little bit stale?

2005-06-16T21:52:00.000-07:00

Or perhaps a bit moldy? Nah, the mold would have already evolved into brilliant civilization and then fallen into cold lifelessness since the last time I updated this page. I've been getting a steady stream of complaints from procrastinators everywhere that I've neglected my page for the past couple months. It is true that in years past I've updated my blog much more frequently. I think that's because I used to have meaningful things to say. Now I'm just a cog in the wheel, going about my business -- the daily grind if you will. Therefore, since I clearly have nothing interesting to write about, I shall write about recent happenings that I personally find interesting and you shouldn't.

A couple weekends ago, Barbara finally returned to the U.S. from her yearlong stay in Bologna, Italy for her Masters program. She technically flew in from China where she was visiting Andrea, but that's an unimportant detail much like the rest of this post. We'd been planning her visit for a while, but I didn't really get excited until I realized the possibilities of resurrecting my dormant life of Starbucks, CPK, rides on the beach, dancing, and Cold Stone's. As if she'd read my mind, she emailed me and asked for exactly those things during her four day stay here. Thus, the fun-filled weekend began.

Everything progressed more or less as planned. I ended up chauffeuring Barbara all over the bay area because she had to meet with some lawyers for informational interviews. By Sunday, my right hand was raw from the shifter and my left leg fatigued from the clutch.

One stop included picking up Bailey, Barbara's bunny, that a nice woman in Dublin had babysat for the year she was gone. For those that don't know, Barbara has a thing for cute fuzzy animals, the most recent of which were Charlie the Chinchilla, and Bailey the Bunny, both of which I've had the (dubious) pleasure of babysitting at one time or another. Unfortunately for Bailey, Barbara ended up returning to Chicago without him this time since American Airlines would only allow dogs, cats, and birds onto the plane. I almost called them up to ask which animal they would personally prefer to sit next to on a plane: a growling (and/or yipping) canine, a fanged and clawed cat, or a cute fuzzy bunny rabbit.

We had some of the most fun on Saturday when we celebrated our riding instructor, Laurie's, birthday. I brought my new Nikon D70 SLR to the barn and had a heyday shooting photos of Jen and Tanya jumping their horses Reco and Payback. Then, after their lesson was over, Laurie began the "I'm Laurie, it's my birthday, and I'm going to play with all of my horsies" jumping session. She started on Reco first and took some fantastic jumps. The only way to describe Reco's jumps in writing is to say that he's too big and powerful for his brain. Certain words like "uncoordinated" and "overeager" come to mind. After Laurie tired of Reco, she got on Payback and romped around some more. Payback, unlike Reco has the opposite problem. His brain is too big and powerful for him. Some might even say that he's too f*#king smart for his own good. However, intelligence and coordination do pay off while jumping and he made some amazing jumps that afternoon. Even when Laurie led him astray, he remained composed, corrected for her as if it were nothing and created picture-perfect jumps every time. What an athlete he is!

After the jumping madness, we stopped by Max's Opera Cafe for a late lunch and a toast to Laurie. I delicious end to a wonderful afternoon. All of the photos I took are posted in my new photo section so be sure to take a look (as soon as I link it up).

By the end of the fourth day, both Barbara and I were pretty exhausted from the action-packed weekend. One visit to CPK, Friday night waltz, Chili's, Cold Stone's, Krispe Kreme, In-n-out, a ride on the beach, and many drives, horsies, and movies later, we concluded Barbara's visit with a calm afternoon at the park, sitting together on the grass watching Bailey hop around and nibble at the grass and our toes. It was one of those moments away from the hustle and worry of daily life that I wish could last forever.

So that was my weekend. I promise to write more. When the photos are ready, I'll let you know. Until then, peace, love, and happiness.

Driving in LA

2005-03-27T21:34:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I was driving my family around the downtown area and was remarking how incredibly crazy it was on those freeways. I've been spoiled by suburban freeways where 75 is slow, the lanes are straight, shoulders are flat -- not concrete walls, and drivers aren't insane.

I especially noted the 110 freeway which gave me quite a bit of grief. It pleased me greatly to see this blog post (complete with pictures!). This guy is my hero. I hope it gives those of you who've driven through downtown LA some peace knowing that InstaKarma really does happen:

iriggs.com blog post

One down, one to go

2005-03-18T21:28:00.000-08:00

I began this year with two specific goals in mind: 1) Find a new job and 2) find a girlfriend. Though my friend, Carrie, repeatedly insisted that my priorities were backward and that I should put in nights and weekends toward Goal #2, I decided it was best to take care of item #1 first.

Now, several months later, I can officially announce that I've successfully accomplished Goal #1. All of you who've listened to me bitch about my job for the last two and a half years can now breath a collective sigh of relief. Albert finally got off his ass and quit his job! If you're wondering what the decisive kick in the butt was, it was last August, September, and October when I stopped working 45 hours a week and started working 75 hours a week. All you financial people working 80 hours a week, shut up because at least you're making six digits. And if you're not, you should quit your job too.

In the next few weeks I will be leaving my Systems Engineering position at NVIDIA and transferring to the hardware ASIC design group. The move is more minor than I thought it would be (I'm still in the same company after all -- the same floor even), but it's a decent step in the right direction for me in terms of my career. Instead of debugging boards, I will now actually have a hand in designing the chips. Perks include increased usage of my semi-atrophied brain, the ability to work from home occasionally, and less manual labor.

Unfortunately, in the process of my job search, I had to turn down a very impressive startup, PA Semi. I'm going to kick myself VERY hard when they IPO and make millions of dollars.

As for Goal #2, why do I even need to make this an objective you ask? It can't possibly be that hard right? Unfortunately, this sucker has been the most elusive one of all despite the fact that my friends inform me that I have a lot going for me -- I'm smart, nice, fun, a good listener, not bad looking, dress decently, don't stink, drive a nice car, and I love dancing (the swing/waltz kind especially), singing, dogs, horses, sunset rides along the beach, wearing suits, hanging out with friends, reading, blah blah blah. Oh yeah, and I'm rich, biatch! Okay, not really.

What more could a girl want? A lot apparently. For one, they want someone taller than them (I'm only 5'4"). Perhaps someone with a little more edge? A bad boy? Someone who wouldn't make such a good friend instead? Anyways, as you can see, there's a lot of work to be done there, so we'll see how things go now that Goal #1 is out of the way.

Bush is Not My President

2004-12-08T02:11:00.000-08:00

I'm technically an Independent as my voting record indicates. I did cheer after helping vote Arny in after all. However, after lifting my head out of the sand to find Bush STILL in the Oval Office, I've decided that since I didn't vote for him, he's not my president.

I've already talked about California secession earlier and how California should join the EU. Well, a lot of folks have been talking about becoming Canadian citizens. It makes me wonder if half of America threatened to switch citizenship whether the loss in tax revenue would speak louder than the vote.

Anyhow, here are some great links sent to me by my friend Julie:
www.sorryeverybody.com
www.marryanamerican.ca

Happy Thanksgiving

2004-11-25T02:11:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you're all having a nice warm meal with someone/people you love, or like, or can tolerate. If not then hopefully you're out there helping serve those less fortunate than us. Either way, may the turkey be with you.

No more horsies :(

2004-11-23T02:10:00.000-08:00

My friend, Julie, always greets me with an inquisitive, "How are you?" When most people ask me that, they don't even wait for the answer (which is fine with me). But Julie isn't most people, so I always answer truthfully with anything ranging from "bad" to "alright." Today, I was feeling just okay so when she asked me how I was doing, I answered, "Okay." "Just okay?" she asked. "What? Just okay -- it's better than bad, yeah?" I responded, not sure what she was after. Finally, she said, "I keep hoping one day you'll say, 'I'm great!'"

After telling her not to hold her breath, it occured to me that the reason she never hears that I'm "great!" isn't because I never feel that way, but because she's never asked me, "How are you?" on a Saturday before. Saturday, for those of you who don't know, is my riding day, the one day each week where I wake up, get dressed, and head to the barn where I ride, sit, chat, stand, watch, groom, and sneeze, until the sun goes down. It's my one day of sanity a week and really the only time I'm truly happy.

Unfortunately, due to circumstances out of my control, my wonderful instructor, Laurie, will no longer be teaching at the barn and will move to Stanford instead. With access to Stanford's lesson horses unlikely, it seems I am now left to my own devices and without a horse to ride, meaning I'll be grounded indefinately.

As a few of you have already pointed out, I could always seek a new instructor/barn. However, half the fun of Saturdays are the friends I've found in Laurie's other students. Through some crazy combination of luck, coincidence, and personality interaction, we've bonded into an extremely close group sharing some intangible common bond. I've yet to distill exactly what that bond is, but it's there and it's strong. I don't want to leave it.

As the sun set behind the hills this last Saturday and it became time to depart, I didn't bid my friends a long farewell, throw hugs all around, or give special thanks for a wonderful year and a half. That would be giving into defeat. Instead, I simply waived goodbye and headed to my car just as I'd done every other Saturday in recent memory, confident I was only a week away from another cheerful greeting with green fields, horses, and friendly faces.

Growing Pains

2004-11-13T02:09:00.000-08:00

I've been asking myself this question over the past couple years ever since I left college. You might think it's a strange question to ask oneself, perhaps indicative of a low self-esteem, but it's actually about something completely different.

One of the hallmarks of my college experience, especially that of my freshman year, was the intense, personal, and constant exchange of ideas. Every night was a forum for a new topic about which my dormmates and I would debate, sometimes calmly and deliberately, other times passionately and sensationally, late into the night.

At the time, it was genuinely fun and invigorating. After spending our childhoods cooped up in our homes with parents telling us to do our homework, we could finally open the floodgates and indulge in our curiosity in different ideas and the desire to impress our own views upon others. In retrospect, our nightly debates were excellent practice. The constant push to think thoroughly about difficult topics, to form and express opinions, made me smarter, quicker on my feet, and overall, a more interesting person to talk to. It ties hand in hand with my theory on the source of intelligence. Intelligent people aren't necessarily endowed with more raw brain power (though many are); they've just spent a lot of time thinking about many things so that when a seemingly random topic arises, they have the associated knowledge and/or opinions already at their disposal.

Recently, however, I've noticed that my verbal agility is lacking, my mind wanders about shallow thoughts, and I generally don't have much to say when it comes to anything. It's not that I don't have an opinion -- I just don't care to express or fight for it. In other words, I've become boring.

Additionally, and perhaps most detrimentally, I've found my closest friends' company increasingly abrasive. Of course, everyone knows I love them dearly so this is nothing more than minor annoyance. At the root of the problem is that we all went to Stanford and therefore share the trait of being strongwilled and competitive, competitive not necessarily with each other, but with ourselves. In other words, we're never really good enough and feel compelled to be the best. Put simply, we take some things too seriously, from Halo to poker to Taboo to discussions about politics.

At first, I wasn't sure why this was annoying me so much. After all, I am just as guilty as they are of taking things too seriously. Plus, this behavior never really bothered me before; why was it grating against my nerves now? On top of it all, I feel an overwhelming drive to be absolutely passive and relaxed, to be boring.

After much thought, I came to a reasonable conclusion. I think I'm just growing up. This is not to say my previous behavior was immature, but it was just a different stage in my life. Now all of that competitive energy and analytical drive has been diverted to my job and my career. I spend all day at work exercising those very muscles and by the time I get home, I'm exhausted. All I want is a beer and some passive entertainment, and when all I find is more of the same aggressiveness, I become excessively turned off by it. Basically, my sense of work and sanctuary has polarized into well defined compartments and any spill-over simply irritates me.

The change is probably not as dramatic as I've laid out here; I think being burned out at work has simply exacerbated it. However, I'm glad that it's been blown out of proportion so that I have a chance to recognize and adjust to this newer tweak to my personality.

Welcome Back!

2004-11-07T02:09:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to me if you're reading this page. It means you care so much about me, a month-long "My web page is broken" message didn't disuade you from coming back. Either that, or you were just so insanely bored, you had the slimmest hope that I could relieve you of your monotony. Probably the latter.

On with the celebration. After losing the war of attrition with the log/referral spammers, I'm finally with a professional hosting company, www.hostrocket.com. So far things are going smoothly. Migrating this blog took much more doing than I would've liked (migrating from postgresql to mysql is anything but possible), but it's mostly done. I just need to squish my 2.5GB photo/video gallery into my 1GB quota. Sounds like a task for tomorrow.

It's getting late and my eyes are bleeding from h4x0r-ing Movable Type 3 which is apparently infinitely less free than before (well, not if you use the el-cheapo free [neutered] version like me). To answer your final question, why did I bother reviving a web page with a readership of -5? That month-long hiatus really hit home how much I enjoy having a web site -- my own personal soap box in this big crazy world. I felt suffocated and silenced without it, trapped with no outlet. The need for self-expression finally overpowered the need to keep my wallet closed, so here we are, on 100% bonifide paid-for web server.

Welcome back. Hope you enjoy the many more years of blogging to come!

War against the spammers

2004-10-04T02:08:00.000-07:00

*** Nerd Alert ***
The following should be completely untelligable to fuzzies (non-techies).

Many of you were wondering why my web page was constantly down or really slow last month. I thought it was because people loved me so much that they had to reload my web page five times every second, all day, seven days a week. Actually, I thought it was all those videos I posted in the photo album that was causing my server to run out of memory.

It wasn't until I finally sat down and poured over my server logs did I realized that I was actually under a Denial of Service attack from spammers. For some reason, I became known to the spammers in September and received hundreds of thousands of bogus HTTP requests which took down my server and our internal house network as well. Basically, I was a victim of log/referral spamming where spammers were hitting my website with requests and spoofing the requested page and referring page, replacing legitimate ones with their own URL. All of this just to get a link on my web traffic statistics page which no one ever sees.

My first attempt to stop this was to write a script that would update my server's firewall to block all traffic from the worst offenders. I basically blacklisted the top 100 IP addresses that generated traffic to my site. This cut the traffic down significantly, but my server still crawled slowly and my home network had begun dropping packets everywhere, much to the chagrin of my roommates and I. Suspicious that the two problems were related, I decided it was do or die at this point. I had to completely fix the problem, or pay for professional web hosting.

Finally, I devised an interesting solution with the help of my most wonderful domain name host, www.noip.com. I changed my http port to port 81, blocked port 80 at my router firewall, redirected all web traffic from albertkuo.com to the url home.albertkuo.com:81. It worked like a charm! The second I hit the Save Settings button, my spam traffic dropped to zero and my home network started working at full speed again.

Anyways, I'm sure you all care very much about it, but at the time, I felt empowered having beat the spammers for a week or two hopefully.

England

2004-09-04T02:08:00.000-07:00

I just got back from an incredible trip to England. Some of you may know my obsession with seeing the English countryside. Well, I got plenty of it. My riding instructor, a few fellow students, and I ventured to New Market and then the Yorkshire Riding Centre (in northern Yorkshire) for ten days. We spent most of it riding horses and doing good old-fashioned tourism. By the end of the trip, none of us wanted to leave and we decided we'd be back, possibly as soon as next year.

I've spent a week compiling all the photos and video clips from the trip in the Photos section. Unfortunately, my camera's lense is very slow and couldn't capture sharp images inside the riding arena. As a result, you'll have to wait until I get my fellow student's pictures from her camera for the horseback riding action shots.

Since my upload speed is capped at 256Kb, the pictures and especially videos will take a while to download, so please be patient. I've supplied compressed versions of each video to ease browsing. The full size versions are far superior, so if you see a video you like, spend the time and download the big file.

If you'd like a CD of all pictures and videos, please let me know and I'll happily make one for you. If you have pictures to contribute, I'd also love those as well.

Anyways, enough of the yammering. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Enjoy!

Departures

2004-08-13T02:07:00.000-07:00

I simply hate them. They make me sad, teary-eyed, and otherwise quite miserable for some time. This is one of those traits I've exhibited since the beginning of time. It was rare to find me with dry eyes after leaving any place, person, or thing... or if they left me. I've gotten much better at it. I said goodbye to my relatives from Taiwan, whom I absolutely adore, without much incident. Friends continue to come and go; some have even left without my knowledge. My room is littered with items left behind by those I care about: a signed book here, and stuffed animal there. I've had plenty of practice and simply accepted the comings and goings of people as a small part of life.

Even so, I'd been dreading today for many months, the day when Barbara, one of my closest friends of over three years, would finally move away for good. It reminded me of something I said to someone senior year in highschool. I knew we'd soon part forever and I wanted to take a snapshot of that moment to file away forever in my mind. A couple days ago, I was sitting across from Barbara at Starbucks just looking at her while she studied and had the same thought, that I'd want to save and cherish this moment forever. So I impressed the image of her concentrating face across from me and wrote in my journal, "There was this girl, Barbara, that I used to chat and study with at Starbucks..." Now, a couple days later the tense of that statement is correct and it will be how I come to recall her for future friends.

Let's just say that saying goodbye wasn't easy. In fact, after I handed her my farewell gift and letter, it was everything I could do to hold myself together. That distinctive moment when two lives diverge is so sharp and tangible, yet is infinitely short. At some point, you just know you've looked at someone in that old familiar way for the last time. You know that it will never be the same again.

So all I can do is wish her well on her journey, and that the winds be favorable.

I Loved You

2004-07-22T02:07:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, I think of this poem I read when I took Russian in highschool. I remember being so struck by the simplicity and sincerity of it. It's a poem anyone could write, but took Pushkin to do it.

The poem has stayed with me all these years. Pushkin was my voice again and again. Many times, I wanted so badly to recite this poem aloud, yet never had the courage to. I just thought I'd share with you a part of me:

Я вас любил

Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.

Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам Бог любимой быть другим.
-- Alexander Pushkin

Translation:
I Loved You

I loved you so, perhaps I love you still;
For in my soul love isn't yet extinguished.
But let this give you not one moment's spill:
I'd never want to cause you grief or anguish.

I loved you silently, hopelessly,
To shyness and to jealousy condemned.
I loved you so sincerely, so tenderly,
May God grant you a love like this again.
-- I modified a translation by Douglas Robinson to follow the meaning of the original more closely. It is still a sad approximation of the wonderful work.

You can see now, the poem leaves a great question. Does he still love her? That is always a good question.

The Blue and White

2004-06-30T02:06:00.000-07:00

Let's answer the $64k question first: where in the world have I been and why am I not entertaining you with my "interesting" blog entries? The answer is simple. I'm too busy driving my brand spanking new bimmer!

Now before you let out your sigh of relief that maybe, just maybe I've stopped bombarding everyone with bimmerisms and bimmerfacts, I must regretfully inform you that you will have no such luck. Then again, it is highly likely that you will see much less of me than before since I take a 15 minute detour just about everywhere I go now. That means any former commute is now instantly 15 minutes longer (or more on a good day), easily doubling my commute home from work for example. I've also managed to find an excuse every day to drive somewhere as a break during work. Gone is the foosball, come is the joyride.

Now onto the Ultimate Driving Experience (tm). My baby was delivered on June 22nd, a date that took me by surprise since I wasn't expecting it until a week later. When I showed up at the dealership, I had a difficult time containing my excitement. I wanted to skip down the street and into the entrance, but I decided not to look like a total idiot just yet. My sales associate, noting the stupid grin on my face, welcomed me and led me out the back door to the parking lot where my baby was apparently located. As we stepped out, my eyes leaped back and forth among the cars and settled upon several contenders. Then a silver gray beauty with no plates caught my eye. It was The One. There is really not much that can match the beauty of brand new glossy paint and a blue and white roundel on the silky curves of a fine automobile.

After going over the car with a fine-toothed comb, checking everything from the spare tire to the moon roof to the underside of the front bumper, I went in and signed my life away with a gigantic personal check. I swear there weren't that many digits in the price tag before. Then I drove away in my brand new baby.

Now, 200 miles later, I still have that idiotic grin on my face every time I get in. I took it up Page Mill, a local mountain road, and it was the most phenomenal driving experience of my life. As one who always hated driving (I figured it's was just another way of getting myself killed), I must say this car makes driving a delectable activity.

My mission now is to get past break-in (1250 miles). This car screams for more and it pains me that I can't comply for another 1k miles. No matter, delayed gratification is the best kind.

Seattle

2004-06-03T02:05:00.000-07:00

Just visited my friend Bob in Seattle, land of the green trees, flannel-clad musicians, and rain. It was quite nice to see him as he's been gone in the land of Mordorsoft for the past year. Weird seeing a friend every day (roommate) and then have him disappear off into the misty mountains.

Being a Bob vacation, we did lots of active things like going on hikes and playing frisbee. The hike through the forest was fascinated for a Southern Californian. I decided that real forests were much much better than half-assed forests like we have here, the reason being that real forests have ferns and not much underbrush due to the shade of a real canopy. This makes them easy to walk in and does not restrict your view. Half-assed forests, however, are impossible to walk in as they are 50% trees, 50% bushes. You can almost never see where you're going and you're always scratched up.

In other news, my car comes in three weeks. Having seen the new E90 (or a prototype rendering of it), I realized just how obsolete my car is already and it's not even here! Bastards. But still, I will love it and cherish it for as long as it is under warranty. Then I'll love it and cherish it and curse my repair bills. This wait is pure torture. Must... have... car...

Radioactive Man

2004-05-18T02:05:00.000-07:00

Today I am Radioactive Man!

A little dose of I-131 (radioiodine) and now I glow in the dark. Just kidding. Actually, I only register a measley 5mRads @ 1m, so nothing too impressive.

In case you're wondering why in the world I voluntarily ingested radioactive material, it's for treating my hyperthyroidism. There shouldn't be any major ill effects at the moment; I just might be a little more hyper/A.D.D. than usual these few days. I'm actually quite relieved that I'm finally taking care of this stupid problem after having been on a year-long addrenaline rush. It gets old after a while.

So now I'm just sitting at home (I'm quarantined due to the radioiodine) playing Ico all day long, cleaning my room, and other fun stuff. It feels good to have a nice break.

Thanks to all of you for your warm wishes, wonderful cards, and gifts :). I feel so undeserving; I really appreciate the thought!

Hwi Are Family

2004-05-10T02:04:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the annual Hwimori Spring Show, titled "Hwi Are Family" this year. It came complete with an adorable flyer made by Kim where every member of the group was rendered in cute anime form.

Overall the performance went quite well. Things fell apart here and there occasionally, but I'm really impressed with how the group pulled together at the end to deliver an entire spring show. I was satisfied that I finally got to perform the rather difficult Standing Solchanggo which involves both complicated rhythms, steps, and coordination with three other performers.

Anyways, if you're curious as to what we are or what we look like, you can either check out Hwimori's Homepage or these pictures from our spring show. Enjoy!!!

Glucose?

2004-05-06T02:04:00.000-07:00

Hmm, apparently I'm glucose. Does that make me a sugar-daddy? Which molecule are you?

You are glucose. People feed off of you. You are
sweet, caring, and a source of energy for
everyone around you. You can inspire others
with your creativity and depth, and you can
keep people alive when in times of famine.
People love you...or at least the way you
taste.

Oh the stress

2004-05-05T02:03:00.000-07:00

I've been quite stressed lately. Again, you already know this because I need to learn to keep my mouth shut. Work has been kicking my ass. Funny because there are technically no projects I'm assigned to work on. Therefore, I'm working on all projects because everyone thinks I'm free. I guess it's just hard working for such a lean company sometimes; they're perpetually short of hands. Of course there are always benefits as my Google friends are about to experience. Damn them and their stock options!!!

To add to an already stressful week, Hwimori's (Korean drumming group I'm part of) spring show is this Sunday and I feel grossly underprepared. Not to mention three hour rehearsals after work make me a bit tired.

In other news, my car is now coming the beginning of July. Woohoo!! I had no idea this wait was going to be this much torture. I should've known.

Getting New Car!!!

2004-04-26T02:03:00.000-07:00

If you don't know by now, then I don't know where you've been. Really. Even my friend's friend who lives in LA and visited us a month ago asked me how my car search was going. I notice that I tend to absolutely obsess about purchases and research them to death before even dipping my toes in. This phenominon is magnified exponentially with the price tag involved. For example, when I was looking for a laptop, it took me month of daily website-reading price-comparing insanity before I settled on the model I wanted. Of course such agony pays off in the end with a purchase I am truly happy about, but still.. the agony!

Can you imagine what it must be like shopping for a car worth 20 times that??? It's pure torture, not only for me but for all my friends too. Our conversations go something like this:

"Hey Albert, what's up?"
"Sup ."
"What are you up to tonight? Wanna hang out?"
"Dude, I test drove this bimmer yesterday and it was AWESOME!"
"What?"
"Yeah, also checked out this Audi and Infinity. That Audi's got an AMAZING interior. Man, now I don't know which car to choose. What do you think I should get?"
"Get what you want man... It's your money."
"No really, should I get an SMG or stick with that 330i?"
"Dude, shut up."

Now, everyone, as of today you can officially celebrate a very special day. I prefer to call it, Albert Ordered His Car Day!!!, however friends might prefer Albert Finally Shuts Up about His Car Day!!! Now before you ask for a ride in it or to take it out/steal it for a joy ride, it's not here yet. Otherwise I wouldn't be sitting in front of a computer typing this stuff. I'd be out breaking my new baby in. When does it arrive you ask? Late July. Yes, that's three excruciating months, but well worth the wait. This car is AWESOME and I love every little bit of it. Special thanks to Barbara who actually went out and test drove for me my new baby (not to say it wasn't a fun favor by any means).

Alright, so now you're thinking, "Albert, cut to the chase. What the HELL did you get?"

I always said my next car would be a bimmer right? Of course, at the time, I figured I'd keep my Jeep at least a couple more years and save more money but oh well, everything can't go according to plan. I sucked it up and broke the bank with this one...

BMW Silver Gray Metallic 330i with:
-- Performance Package
-- 6-speed manual
-- Gray leather
-- Moon roof
-- Aluminum Silver Cube trim
-- Xenon headlamps
-- Parking Distance Control

It's not by any means a "fast car" compared to all those Infinity G35's I see running around out there (not even going to talk about the Evo or STi), but definately a gorgeous machine that's both wonderful to look at and exhilarating to drive, and most importantly, it's my dream car (until I get my M5 of course)!

Napa Once Again

2004-04-05T02:02:00.000-07:00

Apologies for all those who actually read my site. I know it must've been a difficult month without me to entertain and assist your procastination. Honestly, I didn't post anything because there wasn't anything good to write about, and I hate writing about stupid stuff.

So the non-stupid stuff that happened was that my family came up to visit me last weekend from Los Angeles. I was really happy to see them and show them around the Bay Area because they don't come too often. We went up to Napa to do some wine tasting, take some tours, and take in the lush green Northern California scenery (LA is brown already this time of year). Hmm, funny, I was just up there...

Our first stop was the Robert Mondavi winery. We took their tour which was quite fun and informative. Of course our favorite part was the wine tasting portion at the very end. They served us some white and red wine. Then the guide served some sweet dessert wine which was really good as far as dessert wine goes. My parents and sister went straight to the store and bought a few bottles. Then they made two more trips back to the store to get some more. By the time we left, we had an entire case of dessert wine. Finally, before we left, I had to show my parents the I Block Fume Blanc which I had last time and really liked. Turns out I have expensive taste ($65 a bottle). We sat down in their well decorated and airy tasting room and passed around a glass. By this time, my mom was drunk and the rest of us were a bit tipsy so we had a good time enjoying the beautiful weather and surroundings with our wine.

After the wine tasting, we drove around Napa, Sonoma, and the outskirts of Santa Rosa, passing the bed and breakfast where Barbara and I stayed. Finally, we had dinner in downtown Sonoma which is even smaller than I realized and went home.

The next day I took my sister out to Half Moon Bay to give her a much belated birthday present: a ride on the beach. We saddled up and went the usual path. We managed to convince the guy to let us go without a guide, but we ended up running into a couple with a guide. No matter how hard we tried, we couldn't shake them because whenever we'd try to run ahead, they'd follow. An hour later, I was so frustrated, I finally gave up and accepted our fate. It wasn't so bad though because our guide didn't restrict us too much. My sister and I could pretty much run as we pleased. However, both of our horses absolutely refused to canter and mine tried to buck me off several times when I tried. I finally decided that a nice run on the beach wasn't worth my life so I settled with trotting down the shore. In then end, my sister really enjoyed it and that's all that really matters. So any of you wanna come riding with me? Just let me know. It's fun (and expensive)!

All Nighter

2004-03-08T02:01:00.000-08:00

You know, there is really nothing like pulling an all-nighter especially after 4 hours of sleep a night the week leading up to it. Smells like dead week doesn't it. I can't even feel my face anymore. Walk straight? Nah. Drive? Sure! Perhaps I should just stay here at work, at 6 in the morning, sleep under my desk, and wake up at 8 bright an early for a days work.

This school while working thing has been quite an experience for me. It's so different not being able to sleep in after working until 5 or 6 or 7 in the morning because you have work the next day. Can't ditch that. Also, you don't even get you usual hour or two of procrastination in. Anyways, I thought I'd have something interesting to post about today but really, I'm just delirious and the not seeing straight thing is bugging me.

Online personality tests

2004-02-26T02:00:00.000-08:00

The internet would be so boring (and half the current size) without these nifty things that help waste you and all your friends' time. Anyways, my friend forwarded the http://www.okcupid.com test to me and it was more fun than doing the project I'm working on so I took it. Here are my results.

What do you think? Does it match? Note the Always Avoid section. That would be my friend. Here're her results. Funny funny.

Alright, next post, Viennese Ball (the last one?) because that's tomorrow and I'm starting to get all nervous. Did I forget something? Do I remember how to dance? Will my Battle Axe be happy?

Post your test results in the Comments section!

Arlene's Website

2004-02-25T01:39:00.000-08:00

Just like Sha Sha did for me, I'm going pop the Google cherry for my friend, Arlene. So I'm going to link her website here: Arlene Gabriana and here: Arlene's Webpage and here: Arlene is cool and here: Arlene is so hot. Check out that cool couch.

Now here's a direct link to her blog: Arlene Gabriana.

Enjoy!