new TV show, new band

I swear, I don't have an obsession with medical TV shows.

I do still watch ER, mostly out of loyalty, and I love Scrubs, but up until recently, I never felt compelled to watch Grey's Anatomy, mostly because the main character seemed so annoying, at least judging from the endless commercials.

Then, I was at my parents' house one weekend, and was flipping through their (newly repaired) Tivo. I wasn't really in the mood for Japanese period dramas or Food Network, so I put on an episode of Grey's Anatomy. It was really good. I think by the end of the weekend I had watched all of the episodes saved on the Tivo.

I still think Meredith is kind of annoying, and has serious issues, but the show is really more of an ensemble piece than anything else, and I like that. Oh, did I mention that almost all of the men are extremely good-looking?

Anyway, I managed to watch most of the second season during the summer when the reruns were on, and then when it got to September, the network started to promote the new season, and I discovered I really, really liked the music in the commercial. A couple days after that, I was watching a rerun of Scrubs, and there it was again, the same song, How to Save a Life by The Fray. Their CD is now in my Amazon shopping cart, waiting for me to spend $15 more to get free shipping.

musical diversity

Today, on the way to work, I was listening to 106.1 KMEL. Apparently they were doing some kind of Tupac Shakur retrospective (I guess he's been dead for ten years today?) so they played "California Love" and "How Do You Want It" back to back. Then, to my surprise, the DJ said that one of Tupac's favorite songs had been from Les Miserables, and he proceeded to play "Do You Hear the People Sing?". He followed that up with "Changes", which is one of my favorite Tupac pieces. Suffice to say, I quite enjoyed the radio this morning.

phonetic alphabet

I've been on the phone a lot recently making final arrangements for our Eastern Europe trip.

As a result, I've found that when I have to read a sequence of letters and numbers to a customer service representative, I'm wildly inconsistent when choosing names to clarify letters. For example, I've recently defined "P" as "P as in Paul", "P as in Peter", and "P as in Patrick". I'm not sure what makes me think of one name over another.

I was especially amused after I told one rep, "C as in Charles, W as in Walter, R as in Richard, B as in Benjamin" and just a few seconds later, she read back "C as in Cathy, W as in Washington, R as in Roger, B as in Brian".

After that, I went looking online to see what the "standard" names are, and found this site which lists the standard NATO and Western Union tables.

mmm...beef

Last year, 10 of us went to Le Cheval, a Vietnamese restaurant in Oakland, to try their 7-course beef menu. We had a good time, and the food was yummy, but the meal was not inexpensive.

Recently, we discovered Anh Hong Saigon, which also serves a 7-course beef menu, so yesterday, 12 of us headed over to Milpitas give it a shot. We ordered only 9 servings for the 12 of us, but added two dishes of beef carpaccio and two dishes of shrimp and rice, which turned out to be the perfect amount of food. The total bill came out to about $20 per person, and the food was just as good, although the restaurant itself is much more casual (it's located in a strip mall).

Le Cheval has other well-known dishes that I do want to try, and it's a nicer dining experience, but next time I're craving Vietnamese-style beef, I think Anh Hong will be the restaurant of choice.

history

I was having a conversation with a friend today, which involved topics ranging from the recent rise of the Chinese economy, to World War II and its aftereffects, the American Civil War, and feudalism in the Middle Ages.

It reminded me of how hard it is to study history; it's a non-linear subject that we often try to fit into a one-dimensional timeline, and you can always find additonal factors that may have affected the course of events.

A thought that occurred to me during that conversation, is that history is what happens when you let human nature run amok. We all know how complicated human nature can be.

chinese cooking update

Over the past couple weeks, I tried out a couple of stir fry recipes that came out so-so, but managed to pull off Mu Shu Pork reasonably well. Next up, stewed pork and eggs. It will be my first attempt at slow cooking, ever.

too many travel plans

I think I'm going to be very sick of travelling in a few months.

So far, my travel plans for the rest of 2006 consist of:
- a 2-week vacation in Eastern Europe, in mid-to-late September
- a 3-day conference in San Diego, followed by a wedding in Los Angeles, in early October
- a weekend trip to Vegas, in early November
- yet undefined Thanksgiving travel plans (likely New York or Houston)
- a week in Taipei visiting family, over the holidays
- a wedding in Honolulu over New Year's, followed by a 1-week vacation in Kauai

Did I mention that I'll be spending a fortune on plane tickets and hotels this year?

Katamari

Two winters ago, when I was in Taipei, my brother bought a game called "Katamari Damashi" which was only available for the Japanese PS2 at that point.

Basically, the goal of the game is to roll a ball around and pick up objects to make the ball bigger. Only objects which are smaller than the ball can be picked up, but as the ball grows, you can pick up larger and larger objects, until you can pick up people and cars and buildings. It sounds like a silly game but is actually horribly addictive.

Anyway, my cousin, my sister and I spent about 8 hours one night and finally beat all of the levels. We had to take turns because we found it was possible to get motion sickness from playing for too long, and because our hands started to cramp up.

Why am I writing about this now?

Last weekend, I was at a wedding, and as the groomsmen were walking down the aisle, I heard some strangely familiar music. It only took me about a minute to realize that it was the theme to one of the early Katamari levels. I think about 20-25% of the audience recognized the music, and perked up. The other 75-80% were probably wondering what was with the tinkly video game music.

Then, this morning, as I was walking through the parking lot at work, I saw a license plate reading KATMARI, with a holder entitled "THIS IS HOW I ROLL". This is probably less funny to other people, but I was very amused.

annual bbq

Last weekend, I invited some friends to my parents' house for a BBQ/pool party and games night sleepover. I've done this every summer for a few years now, and it's not a particularly difficult event, coordination-wise, but it's always nice to plan for something to be fun and then to have it be fun.

Games played (not all by me): Power Grid, Arkam Horror, Puerto Rico, Goa, Deflexion, Settlers, Mastermind, Scrabble, Mario Kart, Super Smash Brothers.

another new project

I sometimes feel like my life is a bit unbalanced. Although I enjoy theatre and music and art, I usually spend most of my time around computers, and I mostly interact with other engineers.

So, I'm going to be attempting another new project (in addition to the Chinese cooking experiment). I will attempt to write actual book reviews of books that I've recently read (or re-read), and I will post them on this blog. We'll see if I can actually remember how to write.

cooking

The cafes at work are really good, so I only cook maybe once or twice a week. When I do, I usually end up cooking Japanese, Italian, American, or other Western cuisine. For some reason I can't seem to do regular Chinese food at all.

I recently dug up an old recipe book that my mom had given me. It's written in Chinese and English with photos, and has instructions for making a bunch of simple Chinese dishes. My new project (starting this week) is to master at least a few of these recipes. So far, I've tried three of them, with varying degrees of success. Anyone know how to properly tenderize meat?

jolie

Yesterday, while some people were over, I was flipping through channels and ran across one of the Lara Croft movies. We only watched it for maybe ten minutes, but even in that short time, I found it interesting, how many people have emphatic opinions about Angelina Jolie.

One person pointed out how she likes to watch Jolie's movies because she feels like indirectly, she's doing something good (1/3 of Jolie's income goes to charity). She mentioned Jolie's hands-on charity work with international refugees, and her adoption of two children from "Third World" countries.

Another person criticized her for having broken up Brad Pitt's marriage to Jennifer Aniston, and for having previously broken up other relationships.

A third person didn't really care about her personal life, but thought she was hot, and a fourth person promptly disagreed and said she was too weird looking.

As for me, I think she's a good actress in some cases (Girl, Interrupted) and bad in others (Gone in Sixty Seconds). I admire what she has done for charity, and how she appears to care very little about public opinion.

Perhaps it's that a strong personality that elicits strong reactions, in which case, I would imagine she is quite happy with her public persona.

it's a go

We just bought tickets for our Eastern Europe trip. We'll fly into Prague, visit Vienna, Budapest, and maybe Bratislava, and then hop over to Istanbul. I'm feeling a little bit broke, but am otherwise psyched.

sexism in the workplace

As a software engineer, one might expect that I'd have to deal with sexism in the workplace. I've read stories where women say they aren't heard in meetings, and I know the statistics (usually 10-15%) for women in computer science.

The thing is, I feel like I don't experience any of it. Maybe my coworkers are really cool, or maybe I'm just loud, so they can't ignore me. Maybe I'm just really used to working with guys, after five years of college and five years of working in technology. I know one thing for sure; these days, it almost feels a little freaky to be in a room full of women. It's like something unnatural has happened, to take all the guys away.

So, I was quite surprised the other day, by a sudden flare-up of apparent sexism at work. Our cubicles are fairly open, so I can see at least two cubes in either direction. I noticed a woman holding a sheaf of paper, walking slowly down the hall, and peering into the rows of cubes. I figured she was one of the people from HR who pass out interview packets, who come by a couple of times a week. Anyway, she stopped at my cube, and asked me if I was an engineer. I replied yes, and she said, "Darn, I was looking for a non-engineer, for a usability study." I told her the product manager cube was in the corner, but it looked like they weren't in at the moment. Anyway, she left in search of a non-engineer.

I'm usually hesistant to declare someone sexist. I looked at my clothes; I was wearing a t-shirt and jeans. I looked at my cube; as far as I could tell it looked like everyone else's cube. One of my cubemate had his headphones in, so it made sense that he was passed over, but there was one other engineer in our cube with no headphones in, and at least ten other engineers in the surrounding area, again sans headphones. I poked my cubemate (the one with the headphones) and explained what happened. His response? "Yeah, she probably went for the girl. Too bad our two GUY product managers aren't around." Grr...

done

It ends at 30. Yay! Now I can do real work.

puzzle

I've just spent the last thirty minutes on this strangely addicting puzzle. In fact, after I got stuck for awhile on 17, I roped my intern into helping me. I'm now on 27, and my only complaint so far is that 13 doesn't make sense in the sequence; it applies to the current number rather than the next number. Must...finish...

Ixtapa & Zihuatanejo

We got back almost a week ago now, but it's been an eventful few days. I was all proud of myself for not getting sick in Mexico, and then precisely 24 hours after landing, I came down with a horrible stomachache that practically paralyzed me for a day.

Things that I noticed:
- In Mexico, kids do real jobs. We rode on these water taxis between Ixtapa Island, Playa Madera, and Playa Las Gatas, and our drivers were usually teenagers. One boy couldn't have been more than 11 or 12 years old.
- There aren't very many American tourists in the Ixtapa/Zihua area, but there are a lot of Mexican tourists. However, I was surprised by the number of people who spoke at least some English, and the staff at our hotel (Las Brisas Ixtapa) in particular spoke excellent English.
- There is a very large difference between sitting in the sun and sitting in the shade. The first full day, we spent a lot of time lounging on the beach under a palapa, and we felt great. The next day, we took a side trip to Petatlan, and we could barely walk three blocks in the sun without stopping for a drink.

Things that happened:
- We went snorkelling and had an accident with a coral reef that involved lots of scrapes, several bruises, and an incident with a sea urchin. Lesson: Don't chase the fish blindly.
- We didn't drink the water, but even so, something in the food in Mexico does not agree with American-bred (or even Asia-bred) stomachs. Either that, or we got sunstroke from our day in Petatlan. Two people threw up, and two other people were mildly sick.
- I got sick of chips and salsa. Never thought that would happen.

Things that I enjoyed:
- We had our first night's dinner on the Playa La Ropa, at a restaurant called La Perla. The food was good, the beach was beautiful, and I discovered a new drink: limonada, or limeade with club soda.
- Part of Zihua does look like the fishing village that I imagined (the other part is a bit more like rural Taiwan than I would have liked). The good part is fairly picturesque, with lots of fishing boats, a market of fishermen selling their day's catch, and many small seafood restaurants by the pier.
- Ixtapa is not as touristy as I had thought it would be. In fact, it's still fairly small by resort standards, and the downtown area is nice to walk around.
- As is our habit, we went to a local supermarket on the first day to stock up on water and snack/breakfast-type foods. The store we went to turned out to be a huge Walmart-like place called Comercial Mexicana which sold everything from clothes to tires to food to beach towels and toiletries. We had a great time people-watching, marveling at the cheap and delicious fruit, eating soft-serve, and buying fresh churros for 10 pesos a bag.
- It was nice having a private beach for our hotel (accessible only by boat for others). Although it wasn't large, there were only a few other guests there, and there were lots of chairs, umbrellas, and towel service. Although it was a bit rough the day we went down there, we made sand castles and had fun wave chasing anyway.
- I had quite a good experience at our hotel. As I mentioned before, the staff spoke excellent English, and they provided great service as well. The front desk actually called a neighboring hotel and had a pair of tweezers sent over, after we requested one. The restaurants were good, and not expensive by American standards (although they were pricey by Mexican standards), and the beach and pool area were both well maintained. The rooms themselves were interesting; not luxurious in the normal way, but creatively decorated with a local flavor, and each with a private balcony and hammock overlooking the water.
- Before and after the coral reef episode, we had a great time snorkelling; there were tons of fish, and the ocean wasn't too crowded. At Ixtapa Island especially, the water was super salty, so it was practically effortless to float.

Overall, it was a good trip, although perhaps a bit more exciting than ideally. It was fun to experience Mexican culture, eat authentic food, and hang out at the beach every other day.

no charger for me

I'm leaving the country Saturday, and for the past two days I've been running around town looking for a replacement battery charger for my Canon SD550.

I've been to Circuit City, Best Buy, Radio Shack, and two different Wolf Camera stores, and discovered that none of them stock any battery chargers at all (only batteries). Wolf says they're back-ordered about three months. I feel like there's an unmet demand here, and if someone supplied the goods, they could make a healthy profit.

Anyway, I finally gave up and bought the charger on Amazon, but I refused to pay the $18 1-day shipping fee, so I guess I'll be rationing my camera use judiciously over the next four or five days.

post of the month

Wow, I've been pretty bad about posting recently. Looks like it's been almost a month. Let's see, what's been going on recently?

Well, I've been seeing an abnormally high number of movies: The DaVinci Code (ugh), MI3 (eh) and X3 (ugh again). I also saw Al Gore's movie, An Inconvenient Truth, which a (Republican) friend calls the "liberal propaganda movie". It was good for a documentary, but I don't particularly enjoy paying $10 to hear a lecture. Maybe I should go back to not watching movies.

The Memorial Day holiday was pretty busy; I had houseguests for a couple of days, and then there was a wedding in Marin and another in Monterey (I chose Marin). I went with my family to Farallon to celebrate my brother's birthday (belatedly) and the food was good, but I'm not a fan of noisy-trendy restaurants.

There were several other birthday parties over the past few weeks, which meant many dinners, as well as a mini-golf outing. I also managed to finish watching the last few episodes of Lost, which means I no longer have to avoid entertainment magazines.

Just yesterday I got back from a wedding in Seattle (first time I've been there since I was about 10). Generally I am not a huge fan of weddings (it's nice to see people, but there seems to be a lot of unnecessary pomp and ceremony), but this one was actually really fun. There was maybe 100 people at the reception; at least 25 were people that I had known in school, most of whom I hadn't seen for about five years. We hung out at Jillian's, caught up at the wedding itself, and spent the day after driving around Seattle, hitting various touristy spots.

Next up, six of us are headed to Ixtapa / Zihuatanejo for the 4th of July. It'll be my first tropical vacation since high school, when my parents took us on a (surprisingly boring) cruise in the Bahamas. I should really write a post about cruises at some point, but suffice to say they don't agree with me. Anyway, I look forward to several days of snorkeling and sand castles!

being cheap

I don't mind spending money when I feel that it's justified (e.g. Tivo, premium orange juice, nice sheets and towels, trying out new restaurants) but I hate discovering that I've paid more than necessary for a particular item/service. So, I research purchases online ad nauseum, check prices on eBay for weeks, and track cash rebate credit cards and savings account rates.

Recently, my Nokia 8265 started to run out of power at an alarming rate. The battery gauge would go from four bars to one during a 15 minute call. Since I've had the same phone for at least three years now, and it's a TDMA model, I thought I'd look into getting a new phone; maybe a quad-band GSM.

I called up Cingular, and asked for deals on new phones, and was told that I qualified for a new phone, but as an old AT&T Wireless customer, I would have to "upgrade" my rate plan in order to get one. By "upgrade", they meant, switch from my current $34.99/month plan (with unlimited incoming text messages) to a new $39.99/month plan (with no text messaging). Apparently, even if I bought a phone from a retailer, in order to activate it, I'd have to "upgrade" my rate plan. I declined, of course.

A week later I bought a new battery off of eBay for $6.96, including shipping and handling.