May 2006
May 2, 2006
I haven’t had a real post in over a week again, so maybe I’ll talk about last night.
So after work yesterday, I found myself up at Stanford again, but this time, it was because David had a summer job interview and he needed a ride. I got there around 6:30 and his thing was at 7 in Menlo Park, so of course you can imagine my surprise when I found him still in a t-shirt and badly in need of a shower. "David! What are you doing? Okay you have five minutes starting now. Go!" Impressively, he came back within that time and got dressed and all in another five, outfitted in a very snazzy dark orange dress shirt, black pants, and his shaggy mane. But as we were about to head out, I commented again, "Wait what? You’re going empty-handed? There’s no way I’m letting you do that! At least carry a portfolio or something in your hand so you look semi-professional." Thus I reached into my workbag that I happened to have on me and pulled out my J&J portfolio and handed it him. "You don’t actually need to open it up. Just hold on to it." At that moment, I don’t know how to describe it, but I felt very big brotherly.
Knowing I had an hour to kill, I headed straight back to campus for two reasons: to try out the wireless software that I had just installed on my work laptop and to order a chicken crepe from the CoHo (with David’s card, of course.. hey, I never said my services are free!). Unfortunately, I had forgotten that the school locks out wireless access to foreign MAC addresses, so I spent the better part of that hour at various locations -- CoHo, Tressider, and even Meyer -- aimlessly (pun!) trying it out so I can read my emails. No such luck, argh, and my crepe had gotten cold.
A bit frustrated, I walked around White Plaza and thankfully, David called me to pick him up so I wouldn’t go insane. When he finally got into my car, I asked, "So, how did it go?" to which he responded, "Uhm.. pretty well, I think. They hired me on the spot and they want me to become some sort of a field manager." I’m like, "WHAT?! A manager? Do they know that you’re only 18? Dude, you can’t even manage your own hair; why are they going to let you manage people?" We bantered back and forth for another five minutes to figure out what just happened, and within that dialogue, I’m sure there were at least a couple more snide comments from me about his hippie-hairstyle.
Anyway, I don’t think I say this enough or at all, because a lot of times I feel that maybe it’s unnecessary. I mean, my critical (and sometimes hypocritical) words and actions are enough, no? Ha, yeah right! Well, sometimes I get through and sometimes I don’t, but in any case, you guys should know this: 哥哥 is very proud of ya both! :-)
May 3, 2006
May 6, 2006
Welp. That officially makes it 24 hours since I've been awake. That was fun, but now it's time to crash. :-p
May 8, 2006
I never thought I'd see the day where I would actually be able to WoW from the airport. This is amazing! Thanks for the free wireless, McCarran! :-D Oh, this reminds me of that random post that I did a while back at the former Monster Park with Brian's laptop.
Hmm, not quite 1000 words, but I'll get there.
May 9, 2006
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Obviously, these people do not read my blog, because if they did, they would tell me that my 1000-word posts have been pretty lame. Don’t fret, however, because Felix just spent the weekend home in Las Vegas, and that should be worth some nine hundred fifty words, at the very least. And if not, I’ll just start posting song lyrics till I get there. Deal? Okay, no deal.
Soon after I left you with the awesomeness that is the Big Dance 2006 photo (by the way, I am in the bottom left corner of that picture and if you need a reference point, look for the bright orange that is Yves and I’m at his 7 o’clock), I went home to sleep. A short four hours later, I was up again and getting ready to leave for SJC. The short flight was a little choppier than I would have liked, and I actually got a little motion sickness from it. It also did not help that I barely got any sleep and oh, did I mention that the girl sitting next to me threw up in her doggie bag of vomit? Yeah, not a very pleasant way to start off a trip, but as soon as I deplaned and actually got to walk around McCarran Airport, I was fine. Ah, slot machines galore in the terminals. Home sweet home!
Mary picked me up in her brand new Toyota Corolla (our third in the family -- we also have an '88 and a '99), and we headed over to her place first because she wanted to drop off some shelves and keys and whatnot. Then we headed back to our parents’, where Lucky greeted us somewhat enthusiastically. My mom was out shopping for food, I think, but as soon as she got back, I said a quick hello and then crashed again till yes, dinnertime! Mmm, home-cooked meal number one.
I don’t remember what else I did that night. Wait, no! I remember chatting on the phone with Carrie for a bit (mostly in Chinese, no less, go us!), and then it was time for me to head out. By this time, it was 12:30, but I had promised Greg that I would go see him, so I stopped by his apartment. We did not end up wanting to do much, so we ended up watching the movie Gone in 60 Seconds. There were two reasons for this: 1) This is his favorite movie, one that he claims to have memorized because he has watched it more times than anyone he knows, which comes out to something like ten times a year on average since it came out and 2) I was told by one of my coworkers that there was a drug-making scene at the beginning that debuted one of the equipment that we have over in the pilot plant and I was so convinced that this would be a cool thing to see on screen. Anyway, I did not see this press or anything remotely close, but it was a pretty cool movie nonetheless. I mean, what part of stealing fast, expensive cars is there not to like?
Day two began with a family sans David dim sum trip out to our favorite place on Sahara. My dad’s pretty funny, because earlier in the day he had seen David’s IM to me that read “DAVID WANTS DIM SUM, frowney face†and so he called him on his cell phone while we were eating and was like, “Oooh ha gow so good. Mmm, cha siew bao, wish you were here!†Roughly around this time, my mom told me this story about how a coworker of hers wanted to set me up with one of her son-in-law’s sister or something because she had heard all these good things about me being a good son and all, and so my mom was like, “Uhm, yeah no -- I try to stay away from my son’s personal affairs.†Haha, good job, Mom! Man, Diana was right; what’s wrong with these old Asian people? This is like their favorite hobby or something.
Later, we went food shopping for that night’s feast, as we are wont to do after every dim sum outing. See, one thing I noticed on my short trip home was that I was always given food, no matter what time of day it was or whether I was actually hungry or not. If it is not yum tong ah (have some soup), then it is here, sick dee san guo ah (here’s a pear). Geez, I must have gained ten pounds over those 48 hours. So for dinner, we had: lobster, roast duck, baked salmon, some sort of soy sauce chicken, bok choy, and two kinds of soup and yes this was for four people and not a small African nation. One of these days, I’m going to make them move up here.
There isn’t much else left to say except that on my way back to the Bay Area, I found out that the Las Vegas airport offers free wireless access, so I was able to play WoW for a good fifteen minutes while I was waiting for my flight. It kind of makes me wish that the San Jose airport would do the same too instead of making you pay for it because if anything, it is that population that would probably need it more for business purposes and whatnot.
Overall, I think it was a good trip. The two days were just long enough to not make me go crazy, but I guess I did spend the majority of that time sleeping because of the Big Dance-induced same time zone jetlag. I did not get to do what I originally went down there for, but I did get to see my family and my good friend, and like I said, I ate nonstop. What more can I ask for?
May 10, 2006
Hockey. What a wacky sport, what with the people beating on each other with their big sticks. Okay, so those of you who know me would probably know that this is my least favorite out of the four big sports (for future reference, I like the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL in that order -- and actually, I would throw gymnastics or ladies figure skating in there before the NHL, but alas, those are not team-organized professional sports). Anyway, here are five reasons why I don’t like it. There might be more, but these are just the ones that I can come up with off the top of my head.
1. The playoffs this year: I know of no other sport that would tolerate the underdog consistently winning a best-of-seven series. Sure baseball has a wildcard making it once in a while, but these teams go through 162 games a year and they only take the top FOUR from each league so if you even make it into the playoffs, you deserve to be there. Also, football is pretty much sudden death, plus usually by the later rounds, the top dogs prevail. And for basketball? Well, it just doesn’t happen that often -- read the recent Lakers vs. Suns series. If you look at the Western Conference of the NHL this year, seeds five through eight made it into the second round. That’s right, that means one through four either had a really bad week, or there’s just a lot of parity in the sport. Regardless, this is just unacceptable.
2. The fighting: Who encourages fights in sporting events? Guys, if you want to be allowed to fight, there’s this one other sport that is pretty popular where they put these two guys in a box, or is it a ring.. box-ring? Oh wait no, that’s right, boxing! And get this, in any other sport, when you fight with someone, you get suspended for at least a game; they just don’t allow that crap to happen. What do they do in hockey? They slap you on the wrist with five minutes in the penalty box. Now you know where that band named Five For Fighting came from.
3. Three periods: Are you kidding me? Periods? Periods!?! In sports, there should only be one interval of time: quarters. Okay, now if and only if you can’t count up to four, we’ll make things simpler for you and make up these things called halves like they do in college ball. Under no circumstances should this time frame be called the same thing as a girl’s monthly miracle. Period.
4. Power plays: Because of number two and various other silly penalties, one team always has more players on the ice than the other team. I don’t know about you, but that just doesn’t seem fair to me. Imagine five on four basketball. “Well, I don’t want to guard Shaq.†“Uh, neither do I!†“No no, it’s okay guys, we’ll just leave him open!†Disastrous, I tell you. Oh but get this, sometimes the team with the fewer players can score too instead of playing defense; it’s what they call a short-handed goal. Gah!
5. Canadians: Dude, I know it’s cold up there and all, but seriously, you guys need to find something better to do. Good job, Steve Nash.
May 12, 2006
So what’s new, you ask? Why, it’s c over lambda!
I overheard this one in the break room as I was heading into the office this morning. It made me chuckle and that is wonderful. It’s always good to start off the morning with a little humor. But then I thought about it some more and was like, wow, that is pretty nerdy. In fact, I am pretty nerdy to have gotten that. Well, nerdy in a good way.
It’s sad, but I don’t think I use half the stuff that I have learned in class, or at least it isn’t apparent to me. Other than the more hands-on, practical lessons like chemistry lab where you learn about the different chemicals and what to stay away from and what not to drink, I have applied none of the knowledge to my job that I have acquired from my other academic courses. Seriously, why would I ever use quantum mechanics to make drugs? These topics are merely reserved for cocktail party conversations at best, and even that is somewhat dubious. How would you bring it up? “Yeah, that Heisenberg fella and his uncertainty principle, what a joker!†Uh, I’d much rather talk about baseball instead.
Quantum chemistry, or Chem 173 as the cool kids called it, did excite me though. I don’t remember exactly how I did, but I do remember really liking it at the time even though it probably kicked my butt and kept me awake most nights in the confines of Mirrielees, where we held most our problem set sessions my junior year. There is just something about staring at a page full of Greek symbols and feverishly writing out numbers and reciting constants from memory that is rather satisfying. I miss it a lot, I really do. At the end of the day, when all had been said and done, you can be like: whoa, I know quantum! Powerful, powerful stuff, this education business.
May 15, 2006
Farewell, Flutie!
Aside from his illustrious football career in which he won the Heisman Trophy at Boston College and confused many opposing defenses with his scrambling and unconventional quarterbacking style, my main man Doug Flutie has to be most renowned for get this: helping me with my luggage as we were deplaning at Logan Airport! Haha, I love telling this story because David always makes fun of me for it. It is kind of lame though, so beware!
Anyway, this must have been more than five years ago when I still had reason to make the nonstop Las Vegas to Boston trip on America West (yes, the same flight that those punk MIT kids took in Bringing Down the House). It was spring break, and they had delayed my flight for an entire day due to some mechanical failure. Thus, Felix, being the impatient one that he is, bitched and moaned to the ticketing agents about his inconvenienced schedule (it was actually not that inconvenient, since I lived there in Vegas, so to me it was just an extra day of vacation!), and voila, my lowly coach seat got an automatic upgrade to first class on the next available red-eye flight out.
The actual five-hour flight there was rather uneventful, which I suppose is a good thing. No news is good news, right -- well, when it comes to being at thirty-some-odd thousand feet in the air? During that entire trip, I was trying to get some sleep, but these two guys behind me kept talking about football! Now being the football guy that I am, I didn’t really mind all that much. I even eavesdropped for a bit, and overheard something about being excited to be playing for San Diego and making a trip back home to see his family in Boston. At that point, I didn’t really consider the possibility of who that could have been. In fact, I just figured it was some college kid on spring break (like me!) playing ball for some university down in the SD area and who is originally from the Commonwealth State. But alas, it was late and I probably had class the next day, so I succumbed to the wide, comfortable leather upholstery that only the free-alcoholic-drink cabin can offer and fell into a deep slumber.
As my flight was landing the next day (er well, this was probably still 3 am Pacific time), I woke up to a rising sun that spanned across a seemingly endless horizon, reaching as far as the eye can see. We touched down and slowly taxied to the gate and when we finally came to a complete stop, I got up and had to reach across three people just to get to my luggage. Seeing me struggling with my short arms to reach for my duffel bag, Doug got up and gave me a hand so I wouldn’t accidentally drop it on some poor old lady’s head. I remember the exact moment in which I was like, whoa, I know who you are -- his long hippie hair was a dead giveaway! There were no asking for autographs, or making a big scene about recognizing him, but more like just a nod and a “thanks, man!â€
And from that day on, I drafted him on every single one of my fantasy football teams! Okay, so maybe that’s not true, but it sure would have been funny.
May 17, 2006
Sung to the tune of Part of Your World..
In case you haven't gotten to the article, I'll give you the Reader's Digest version of it. So in the last week or so, there had been two gunpoint robberies on the Stanford campus -- one by Toyon (the parking lot) and one by Castano (on the corner of Escondido and Campus Drive) -- and I don't know about you, but it hits a little closer to home than I would have liked. I freakin' lived there for two years and in EV for one, so I've passed by those various places more times than I can remember, and in the past, you just don't even think about it. Stanford is, no.. was synonymous with safe. Not anymore.
You know what annoys me more than anything? Stupid people. It's not their fault they're stupid, oh wait no, actually, yes it is. Gosh, if you're going to rob someone, why would you pick possibly the poorest demographic that you can find? So you got three quarters and a gum wrapper by brandishing your weapon, good for you; you're the big man on campus now. I am not impressed. You know what else I'm not impressed with? The fact that I have a to walk a little faster to my car at nights, but that's not even the problem. It's that now there's a possibility that people dear to me, like my brother and my close friends who live and work there, can get mugged by one of you morons, and that is more than just annoying. It fucking pisses me off.
May 19, 2006
I started this one post about Greg Maddux and my old middle school gym teacher and how he was an inspiration to me to excel at sports, despite being known at the time mostly for being the smarty-pants-Asian-band-geek-kid, but just two paragraphs in, I ran out of words to describe what I was feeling.
Also, I am not sure why I have been thinking about this lately, but those three years between 1993 and 1996 had to have been the most fun that I had as a kid. Within that short span of time, I shaved my head, crashed into a tree with my friend’s car in his backyard, had an axe flown at and hit my leg, almost set someone’s house on fire, fell into a swimming pool and scraped up the entire right side of my ribcage, and got introduced to video games. Oh man, what a childhood!
May 22, 2006
Here is a shout out to the following people: Anonymous (AB), Carrie, Tiffany, Will, Yves, Trang, Melisa, Tina, and David for helping out in a variety of ways that allowed me to participate in yesterday’s Tour de Cure Bike Ride for Diabetes. With your help, I was able to raise over $300 for the American Diabetes Association (not counting my company’s matching contribution) to fund for research towards a cure. Anyway, if you do not yet know how much your gesture means to me, let me make this clear now. It deeply touched me that you guys would come together for something that means so much to me personally. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
So let me tell you a little about the ride and the events leading up to it. As you may or may not know, ever since I signed up for the event, I’ve been training for it by riding on a stationary bike in my company’s gym after work on Mondays and Thursdays, gradually increasing the distance week by week. It was kind of fun, especially since I had my iPod and TVs to distract me there, but I always felt like I needed to be on an actual bike to simulate the real thing. Thus, I drove up to Stanford the day before to prep my brother’s bike, which also happened to be the same bike that I have ridden since my sophomore year at Stanford, you know -- inflating the tires, adjusting the seat height, testing the brakes, etc. At this point, I still did not know what I was getting myself into (heck, my longest ride at this point was from EV to the Clark Center), but alas, I was ready for the big ride.
The big day came and I got there promptly at 9:30 am for registration. It was actually really lively. Parents were there with their kids, who all looked really cute with their tiny helmets, companies were trying to show each other up by cheering louder than each other to see which one is the most spirited, and all around the starting line, you would see teams clumped together, donning their colored jerseys (J&J’s was bright red), anticipating to be the first ones to take off. There were photos and cowbells, people young and old of all shapes and sizes, and bikes that ranged from those costing a couple grand to my cheapo one from Walmart that’s so rusted to the point where I was actually surprised it ran. We were all there for the same cause, and everyone had one goal in mind, and that is to ride to the finish because this was something they believed in. It was beyond overwhelming; it was invigorating!
As you can see, the 25K started off at the HP building on Hanover and Page Mill and ran a little bit through Stanford and around residential Palo Alto. Right from the get-go, the pack phase-separated (for a lack of a better word to describe it), with the really athletic people storming ahead, leaving me in the dust, but even I was ahead of what I like to call the casuals, or people who seemed more like they were out on a leisure Sunday morning ride than a pseudo-race. I was definitely within the Top 5 most of the time for J&J, since for me, the first four-fifths of the ride was no problem. And it was not until I got to riding uphill on Los Robles and Miranda that I felt a bit of a struggle. In fact, I think I might have swallowed a bug at some point because my throat got all itchy and I started choking, but it was nothing that a little pulling over to the side and some water could not fix. In doing so, I lost a couple of places to my fellow teammates and ended up finishing in what I think was Top 10 within my company and probably Top 40 or 50 overall (there were some really crazy bikers from this company called Novo Nordisk). It was a valiant effort, nonetheless, and not bad for a race of about 300 people.
As I crossed the finish line, I thought about what this event had meant to me and how it was possibly one of the best things I have ever done, not only for the cause, but also for myself. Well, no actually, as I was finishing, my first thought was “thank God I did not kill myself or that girl waving the flag†because I took the turn a little too fast towards the finish line to avoid hitting oncoming traffic, since I was on a downhill slope and I had questionable brakes. It was encouraging to know that I am still capable of being driven and can do almost anything if I really put my mind to it, even post-college. Of course, all this was made possible by my wonderful friends and family who gave me the support that I needed, so thank you, again. And lastly, a special thanks goes out to my dad, who is the reason I did this in the first place. Thank you for inspiring me!
May 23, 2006
What's this, you ask? Well, Felix, with his minimal HTML programming skills, has decided to put up a sidebar so you too can enjoy some of his favorite sites that he visits almost daily! Enjoy!
Hmm, why do I always refer to myself in the third person?
May 25, 2006
Inspired from reading this CNN article about the National Geography Bee, I decided to test my own geographic knowledge by giving myself five minutes to name all fifty state capitals. End result? 38/50. Sadness! I used to be able to do all fifty.
What I missed:
Alabama - Montgomery (said Birmingham, because I saw UAB in action in March)
Kentucky - Frankfort (said Frankfurt, the German city, it’s close enough but eh)
Missouri - Jefferson City (said St. Louis, knew it wasn’t Kansas City, so good guess)
New Hampshire - Concord (BLANK, should have known this)
New Mexico - Santa Fe (BLANK, really should have known this)
North Dakota - Bismarck (said Fargo, at least I could name one city in this state)
Oregon - Salem (BLANK, even Carrie knew this, and she said it was from watching soap operas!)
Pennsylvania - Harrisburg (BLANK, knew it wasn’t Pitt or Philly, bah)
South Carolina - Columbia (said Charleston, whoops)
South Dakota - Pierre (BLANK, I couldn’t even name one city here)
Virginia - Richmond (BLANK, should have known this but the only city I thought of was Reston)
West Virginia - Charleston (BLANK, got mixed up with SC)
May 30, 2006
I probably won’t do a full weekend update, since I’m sure my roommate will be all over that, so here’s a couple of random tidbits from the past week or so.
1. Congratulations, IONSYS! This is a huge deal, as you can imagine, especially in pharma. Woot! Party next week!
2. Will’s iPod playlist is pretty darn good, or at least good enough to put me to sleep for most of the trip down to SoCal. Actually, this is a compliment, because only good music can do that to me. I will have to go to him for song recommendations from now on. Also, Rob Thomas has a damn sexy voice.
3. I bought a digital keyboard recently and I started to teach myself how to play! It’s good to finally see it happen since I have been talking about learning the piano for so long.
4. Over the weekend, I realized that my favorite type of Chinese food is done Cantonese style with a western pizzazz, kind of like me! You are what you eat, as they say.
5. As you know, I, when given the choice, like to hang out with my friends one-on-one because I just interact differently with them (read: I talk more), but I have been told that I only do that with my female friends. I don’t know why this is the case. I don’t know if I need to change this.
6. Man, three hours of sleep is not nearly enough.
7. Is anyone else as excited about the World Cup as I am?
I haven’t had a real post in over a week again, so maybe I’ll talk about last night.
So after work yesterday, I found myself up at Stanford again, but this time, it was because David had a summer job interview and he needed a ride. I got there around 6:30 and his thing was at 7 in Menlo Park, so of course you can imagine my surprise when I found him still in a t-shirt and badly in need of a shower. "David! What are you doing? Okay you have five minutes starting now. Go!" Impressively, he came back within that time and got dressed and all in another five, outfitted in a very snazzy dark orange dress shirt, black pants, and his shaggy mane. But as we were about to head out, I commented again, "Wait what? You’re going empty-handed? There’s no way I’m letting you do that! At least carry a portfolio or something in your hand so you look semi-professional." Thus I reached into my workbag that I happened to have on me and pulled out my J&J portfolio and handed it him. "You don’t actually need to open it up. Just hold on to it." At that moment, I don’t know how to describe it, but I felt very big brotherly.
Knowing I had an hour to kill, I headed straight back to campus for two reasons: to try out the wireless software that I had just installed on my work laptop and to order a chicken crepe from the CoHo (with David’s card, of course.. hey, I never said my services are free!). Unfortunately, I had forgotten that the school locks out wireless access to foreign MAC addresses, so I spent the better part of that hour at various locations -- CoHo, Tressider, and even Meyer -- aimlessly (pun!) trying it out so I can read my emails. No such luck, argh, and my crepe had gotten cold.
A bit frustrated, I walked around White Plaza and thankfully, David called me to pick him up so I wouldn’t go insane. When he finally got into my car, I asked, "So, how did it go?" to which he responded, "Uhm.. pretty well, I think. They hired me on the spot and they want me to become some sort of a field manager." I’m like, "WHAT?! A manager? Do they know that you’re only 18? Dude, you can’t even manage your own hair; why are they going to let you manage people?" We bantered back and forth for another five minutes to figure out what just happened, and within that dialogue, I’m sure there were at least a couple more snide comments from me about his hippie-hairstyle.
Anyway, I don’t think I say this enough or at all, because a lot of times I feel that maybe it’s unnecessary. I mean, my critical (and sometimes hypocritical) words and actions are enough, no? Ha, yeah right! Well, sometimes I get through and sometimes I don’t, but in any case, you guys should know this: 哥哥 is very proud of ya both! :-)
May 3, 2006
That was Big Dance from last year.. 9 pm - 6 am, baby! And I'm gonna try to do the same this year. Excellent! Oh and I forgot, there's a new twist this year, which is that I have a flight home to Vegas around noon. It's gonna be one hell of a weekend, but then again, that's why I'm taking Monday off! Woot.
May 6, 2006
Welp. That officially makes it 24 hours since I've been awake. That was fun, but now it's time to crash. :-p
Edit: Posted the new pic for a little comparison. Where's Felix?
May 8, 2006
I never thought I'd see the day where I would actually be able to WoW from the airport. This is amazing! Thanks for the free wireless, McCarran! :-D Oh, this reminds me of that random post that I did a while back at the former Monster Park with Brian's laptop.
Hmm, not quite 1000 words, but I'll get there.
May 9, 2006
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Obviously, these people do not read my blog, because if they did, they would tell me that my 1000-word posts have been pretty lame. Don’t fret, however, because Felix just spent the weekend home in Las Vegas, and that should be worth some nine hundred fifty words, at the very least. And if not, I’ll just start posting song lyrics till I get there. Deal? Okay, no deal.
Soon after I left you with the awesomeness that is the Big Dance 2006 photo (by the way, I am in the bottom left corner of that picture and if you need a reference point, look for the bright orange that is Yves and I’m at his 7 o’clock), I went home to sleep. A short four hours later, I was up again and getting ready to leave for SJC. The short flight was a little choppier than I would have liked, and I actually got a little motion sickness from it. It also did not help that I barely got any sleep and oh, did I mention that the girl sitting next to me threw up in her doggie bag of vomit? Yeah, not a very pleasant way to start off a trip, but as soon as I deplaned and actually got to walk around McCarran Airport, I was fine. Ah, slot machines galore in the terminals. Home sweet home!
Mary picked me up in her brand new Toyota Corolla (our third in the family -- we also have an '88 and a '99), and we headed over to her place first because she wanted to drop off some shelves and keys and whatnot. Then we headed back to our parents’, where Lucky greeted us somewhat enthusiastically. My mom was out shopping for food, I think, but as soon as she got back, I said a quick hello and then crashed again till yes, dinnertime! Mmm, home-cooked meal number one.
I don’t remember what else I did that night. Wait, no! I remember chatting on the phone with Carrie for a bit (mostly in Chinese, no less, go us!), and then it was time for me to head out. By this time, it was 12:30, but I had promised Greg that I would go see him, so I stopped by his apartment. We did not end up wanting to do much, so we ended up watching the movie Gone in 60 Seconds. There were two reasons for this: 1) This is his favorite movie, one that he claims to have memorized because he has watched it more times than anyone he knows, which comes out to something like ten times a year on average since it came out and 2) I was told by one of my coworkers that there was a drug-making scene at the beginning that debuted one of the equipment that we have over in the pilot plant and I was so convinced that this would be a cool thing to see on screen. Anyway, I did not see this press or anything remotely close, but it was a pretty cool movie nonetheless. I mean, what part of stealing fast, expensive cars is there not to like?
Day two began with a family sans David dim sum trip out to our favorite place on Sahara. My dad’s pretty funny, because earlier in the day he had seen David’s IM to me that read “DAVID WANTS DIM SUM, frowney face†and so he called him on his cell phone while we were eating and was like, “Oooh ha gow so good. Mmm, cha siew bao, wish you were here!†Roughly around this time, my mom told me this story about how a coworker of hers wanted to set me up with one of her son-in-law’s sister or something because she had heard all these good things about me being a good son and all, and so my mom was like, “Uhm, yeah no -- I try to stay away from my son’s personal affairs.†Haha, good job, Mom! Man, Diana was right; what’s wrong with these old Asian people? This is like their favorite hobby or something.
Later, we went food shopping for that night’s feast, as we are wont to do after every dim sum outing. See, one thing I noticed on my short trip home was that I was always given food, no matter what time of day it was or whether I was actually hungry or not. If it is not yum tong ah (have some soup), then it is here, sick dee san guo ah (here’s a pear). Geez, I must have gained ten pounds over those 48 hours. So for dinner, we had: lobster, roast duck, baked salmon, some sort of soy sauce chicken, bok choy, and two kinds of soup and yes this was for four people and not a small African nation. One of these days, I’m going to make them move up here.
There isn’t much else left to say except that on my way back to the Bay Area, I found out that the Las Vegas airport offers free wireless access, so I was able to play WoW for a good fifteen minutes while I was waiting for my flight. It kind of makes me wish that the San Jose airport would do the same too instead of making you pay for it because if anything, it is that population that would probably need it more for business purposes and whatnot.
Overall, I think it was a good trip. The two days were just long enough to not make me go crazy, but I guess I did spend the majority of that time sleeping because of the Big Dance-induced same time zone jetlag. I did not get to do what I originally went down there for, but I did get to see my family and my good friend, and like I said, I ate nonstop. What more can I ask for?
May 10, 2006
Hockey. What a wacky sport, what with the people beating on each other with their big sticks. Okay, so those of you who know me would probably know that this is my least favorite out of the four big sports (for future reference, I like the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL in that order -- and actually, I would throw gymnastics or ladies figure skating in there before the NHL, but alas, those are not team-organized professional sports). Anyway, here are five reasons why I don’t like it. There might be more, but these are just the ones that I can come up with off the top of my head.
1. The playoffs this year: I know of no other sport that would tolerate the underdog consistently winning a best-of-seven series. Sure baseball has a wildcard making it once in a while, but these teams go through 162 games a year and they only take the top FOUR from each league so if you even make it into the playoffs, you deserve to be there. Also, football is pretty much sudden death, plus usually by the later rounds, the top dogs prevail. And for basketball? Well, it just doesn’t happen that often -- read the recent Lakers vs. Suns series. If you look at the Western Conference of the NHL this year, seeds five through eight made it into the second round. That’s right, that means one through four either had a really bad week, or there’s just a lot of parity in the sport. Regardless, this is just unacceptable.
2. The fighting: Who encourages fights in sporting events? Guys, if you want to be allowed to fight, there’s this one other sport that is pretty popular where they put these two guys in a box, or is it a ring.. box-ring? Oh wait no, that’s right, boxing! And get this, in any other sport, when you fight with someone, you get suspended for at least a game; they just don’t allow that crap to happen. What do they do in hockey? They slap you on the wrist with five minutes in the penalty box. Now you know where that band named Five For Fighting came from.
3. Three periods: Are you kidding me? Periods? Periods!?! In sports, there should only be one interval of time: quarters. Okay, now if and only if you can’t count up to four, we’ll make things simpler for you and make up these things called halves like they do in college ball. Under no circumstances should this time frame be called the same thing as a girl’s monthly miracle. Period.
4. Power plays: Because of number two and various other silly penalties, one team always has more players on the ice than the other team. I don’t know about you, but that just doesn’t seem fair to me. Imagine five on four basketball. “Well, I don’t want to guard Shaq.†“Uh, neither do I!†“No no, it’s okay guys, we’ll just leave him open!†Disastrous, I tell you. Oh but get this, sometimes the team with the fewer players can score too instead of playing defense; it’s what they call a short-handed goal. Gah!
5. Canadians: Dude, I know it’s cold up there and all, but seriously, you guys need to find something better to do. Good job, Steve Nash.
May 12, 2006
So what’s new, you ask? Why, it’s c over lambda!
I overheard this one in the break room as I was heading into the office this morning. It made me chuckle and that is wonderful. It’s always good to start off the morning with a little humor. But then I thought about it some more and was like, wow, that is pretty nerdy. In fact, I am pretty nerdy to have gotten that. Well, nerdy in a good way.
It’s sad, but I don’t think I use half the stuff that I have learned in class, or at least it isn’t apparent to me. Other than the more hands-on, practical lessons like chemistry lab where you learn about the different chemicals and what to stay away from and what not to drink, I have applied none of the knowledge to my job that I have acquired from my other academic courses. Seriously, why would I ever use quantum mechanics to make drugs? These topics are merely reserved for cocktail party conversations at best, and even that is somewhat dubious. How would you bring it up? “Yeah, that Heisenberg fella and his uncertainty principle, what a joker!†Uh, I’d much rather talk about baseball instead.
Quantum chemistry, or Chem 173 as the cool kids called it, did excite me though. I don’t remember exactly how I did, but I do remember really liking it at the time even though it probably kicked my butt and kept me awake most nights in the confines of Mirrielees, where we held most our problem set sessions my junior year. There is just something about staring at a page full of Greek symbols and feverishly writing out numbers and reciting constants from memory that is rather satisfying. I miss it a lot, I really do. At the end of the day, when all had been said and done, you can be like: whoa, I know quantum! Powerful, powerful stuff, this education business.
May 15, 2006
Farewell, Flutie!
Aside from his illustrious football career in which he won the Heisman Trophy at Boston College and confused many opposing defenses with his scrambling and unconventional quarterbacking style, my main man Doug Flutie has to be most renowned for get this: helping me with my luggage as we were deplaning at Logan Airport! Haha, I love telling this story because David always makes fun of me for it. It is kind of lame though, so beware!
Anyway, this must have been more than five years ago when I still had reason to make the nonstop Las Vegas to Boston trip on America West (yes, the same flight that those punk MIT kids took in Bringing Down the House). It was spring break, and they had delayed my flight for an entire day due to some mechanical failure. Thus, Felix, being the impatient one that he is, bitched and moaned to the ticketing agents about his inconvenienced schedule (it was actually not that inconvenient, since I lived there in Vegas, so to me it was just an extra day of vacation!), and voila, my lowly coach seat got an automatic upgrade to first class on the next available red-eye flight out.
The actual five-hour flight there was rather uneventful, which I suppose is a good thing. No news is good news, right -- well, when it comes to being at thirty-some-odd thousand feet in the air? During that entire trip, I was trying to get some sleep, but these two guys behind me kept talking about football! Now being the football guy that I am, I didn’t really mind all that much. I even eavesdropped for a bit, and overheard something about being excited to be playing for San Diego and making a trip back home to see his family in Boston. At that point, I didn’t really consider the possibility of who that could have been. In fact, I just figured it was some college kid on spring break (like me!) playing ball for some university down in the SD area and who is originally from the Commonwealth State. But alas, it was late and I probably had class the next day, so I succumbed to the wide, comfortable leather upholstery that only the free-alcoholic-drink cabin can offer and fell into a deep slumber.
As my flight was landing the next day (er well, this was probably still 3 am Pacific time), I woke up to a rising sun that spanned across a seemingly endless horizon, reaching as far as the eye can see. We touched down and slowly taxied to the gate and when we finally came to a complete stop, I got up and had to reach across three people just to get to my luggage. Seeing me struggling with my short arms to reach for my duffel bag, Doug got up and gave me a hand so I wouldn’t accidentally drop it on some poor old lady’s head. I remember the exact moment in which I was like, whoa, I know who you are -- his long hippie hair was a dead giveaway! There were no asking for autographs, or making a big scene about recognizing him, but more like just a nod and a “thanks, man!â€
And from that day on, I drafted him on every single one of my fantasy football teams! Okay, so maybe that’s not true, but it sure would have been funny.
May 17, 2006
Sung to the tune of Part of Your World..
Now for a related article: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/education/14599211.htm
In case you haven't gotten to the article, I'll give you the Reader's Digest version of it. So in the last week or so, there had been two gunpoint robberies on the Stanford campus -- one by Toyon (the parking lot) and one by Castano (on the corner of Escondido and Campus Drive) -- and I don't know about you, but it hits a little closer to home than I would have liked. I freakin' lived there for two years and in EV for one, so I've passed by those various places more times than I can remember, and in the past, you just don't even think about it. Stanford is, no.. was synonymous with safe. Not anymore.
You know what annoys me more than anything? Stupid people. It's not their fault they're stupid, oh wait no, actually, yes it is. Gosh, if you're going to rob someone, why would you pick possibly the poorest demographic that you can find? So you got three quarters and a gum wrapper by brandishing your weapon, good for you; you're the big man on campus now. I am not impressed. You know what else I'm not impressed with? The fact that I have a to walk a little faster to my car at nights, but that's not even the problem. It's that now there's a possibility that people dear to me, like my brother and my close friends who live and work there, can get mugged by one of you morons, and that is more than just annoying. It fucking pisses me off.
May 19, 2006
I started this one post about Greg Maddux and my old middle school gym teacher and how he was an inspiration to me to excel at sports, despite being known at the time mostly for being the smarty-pants-Asian-band-geek-kid, but just two paragraphs in, I ran out of words to describe what I was feeling.
Also, I am not sure why I have been thinking about this lately, but those three years between 1993 and 1996 had to have been the most fun that I had as a kid. Within that short span of time, I shaved my head, crashed into a tree with my friend’s car in his backyard, had an axe flown at and hit my leg, almost set someone’s house on fire, fell into a swimming pool and scraped up the entire right side of my ribcage, and got introduced to video games. Oh man, what a childhood!
May 22, 2006
Here is a shout out to the following people: Anonymous (AB), Carrie, Tiffany, Will, Yves, Trang, Melisa, Tina, and David for helping out in a variety of ways that allowed me to participate in yesterday’s Tour de Cure Bike Ride for Diabetes. With your help, I was able to raise over $300 for the American Diabetes Association (not counting my company’s matching contribution) to fund for research towards a cure. Anyway, if you do not yet know how much your gesture means to me, let me make this clear now. It deeply touched me that you guys would come together for something that means so much to me personally. For that, I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
So let me tell you a little about the ride and the events leading up to it. As you may or may not know, ever since I signed up for the event, I’ve been training for it by riding on a stationary bike in my company’s gym after work on Mondays and Thursdays, gradually increasing the distance week by week. It was kind of fun, especially since I had my iPod and TVs to distract me there, but I always felt like I needed to be on an actual bike to simulate the real thing. Thus, I drove up to Stanford the day before to prep my brother’s bike, which also happened to be the same bike that I have ridden since my sophomore year at Stanford, you know -- inflating the tires, adjusting the seat height, testing the brakes, etc. At this point, I still did not know what I was getting myself into (heck, my longest ride at this point was from EV to the Clark Center), but alas, I was ready for the big ride.
The big day came and I got there promptly at 9:30 am for registration. It was actually really lively. Parents were there with their kids, who all looked really cute with their tiny helmets, companies were trying to show each other up by cheering louder than each other to see which one is the most spirited, and all around the starting line, you would see teams clumped together, donning their colored jerseys (J&J’s was bright red), anticipating to be the first ones to take off. There were photos and cowbells, people young and old of all shapes and sizes, and bikes that ranged from those costing a couple grand to my cheapo one from Walmart that’s so rusted to the point where I was actually surprised it ran. We were all there for the same cause, and everyone had one goal in mind, and that is to ride to the finish because this was something they believed in. It was beyond overwhelming; it was invigorating!
As you can see, the 25K started off at the HP building on Hanover and Page Mill and ran a little bit through Stanford and around residential Palo Alto. Right from the get-go, the pack phase-separated (for a lack of a better word to describe it), with the really athletic people storming ahead, leaving me in the dust, but even I was ahead of what I like to call the casuals, or people who seemed more like they were out on a leisure Sunday morning ride than a pseudo-race. I was definitely within the Top 5 most of the time for J&J, since for me, the first four-fifths of the ride was no problem. And it was not until I got to riding uphill on Los Robles and Miranda that I felt a bit of a struggle. In fact, I think I might have swallowed a bug at some point because my throat got all itchy and I started choking, but it was nothing that a little pulling over to the side and some water could not fix. In doing so, I lost a couple of places to my fellow teammates and ended up finishing in what I think was Top 10 within my company and probably Top 40 or 50 overall (there were some really crazy bikers from this company called Novo Nordisk). It was a valiant effort, nonetheless, and not bad for a race of about 300 people.
As I crossed the finish line, I thought about what this event had meant to me and how it was possibly one of the best things I have ever done, not only for the cause, but also for myself. Well, no actually, as I was finishing, my first thought was “thank God I did not kill myself or that girl waving the flag†because I took the turn a little too fast towards the finish line to avoid hitting oncoming traffic, since I was on a downhill slope and I had questionable brakes. It was encouraging to know that I am still capable of being driven and can do almost anything if I really put my mind to it, even post-college. Of course, all this was made possible by my wonderful friends and family who gave me the support that I needed, so thank you, again. And lastly, a special thanks goes out to my dad, who is the reason I did this in the first place. Thank you for inspiring me!
May 23, 2006
What's this, you ask? Well, Felix, with his minimal HTML programming skills, has decided to put up a sidebar so you too can enjoy some of his favorite sites that he visits almost daily! Enjoy!
Hmm, why do I always refer to myself in the third person?
May 25, 2006
Inspired from reading this CNN article about the National Geography Bee, I decided to test my own geographic knowledge by giving myself five minutes to name all fifty state capitals. End result? 38/50. Sadness! I used to be able to do all fifty.
What I missed:
Alabama - Montgomery (said Birmingham, because I saw UAB in action in March)
Kentucky - Frankfort (said Frankfurt, the German city, it’s close enough but eh)
Missouri - Jefferson City (said St. Louis, knew it wasn’t Kansas City, so good guess)
New Hampshire - Concord (BLANK, should have known this)
New Mexico - Santa Fe (BLANK, really should have known this)
North Dakota - Bismarck (said Fargo, at least I could name one city in this state)
Oregon - Salem (BLANK, even Carrie knew this, and she said it was from watching soap operas!)
Pennsylvania - Harrisburg (BLANK, knew it wasn’t Pitt or Philly, bah)
South Carolina - Columbia (said Charleston, whoops)
South Dakota - Pierre (BLANK, I couldn’t even name one city here)
Virginia - Richmond (BLANK, should have known this but the only city I thought of was Reston)
West Virginia - Charleston (BLANK, got mixed up with SC)
May 30, 2006
I probably won’t do a full weekend update, since I’m sure my roommate will be all over that, so here’s a couple of random tidbits from the past week or so.
1. Congratulations, IONSYS! This is a huge deal, as you can imagine, especially in pharma. Woot! Party next week!
2. Will’s iPod playlist is pretty darn good, or at least good enough to put me to sleep for most of the trip down to SoCal. Actually, this is a compliment, because only good music can do that to me. I will have to go to him for song recommendations from now on. Also, Rob Thomas has a damn sexy voice.
3. I bought a digital keyboard recently and I started to teach myself how to play! It’s good to finally see it happen since I have been talking about learning the piano for so long.
4. Over the weekend, I realized that my favorite type of Chinese food is done Cantonese style with a western pizzazz, kind of like me! You are what you eat, as they say.
5. As you know, I, when given the choice, like to hang out with my friends one-on-one because I just interact differently with them (read: I talk more), but I have been told that I only do that with my female friends. I don’t know why this is the case. I don’t know if I need to change this.
6. Man, three hours of sleep is not nearly enough.
7. Is anyone else as excited about the World Cup as I am?
