blog.mchiu.com

An Interesting Comment

Thought this was a pretty funny comment to my blog entry on "Why Chinks Suck..."

Anonymous said...

u r a fuckin' piece of white dog shit that has been festering inside yo mama's cunt for at least two months. u talk about chinks,? i'd like to c u fight 1 u racist cock licker. go fuck yo sister in da ass,and let her lick her shit off of yo little prick. ok motherfucker. u want a race war, BRING IT ON YOU LITTLE BOY. sincerely a mean BITCH.

It looks like a mean BITCH wants to start a war... he he he... interesting... wonder if BITCH will ever return to this blog that it warrants a response though? hmm...

So...

a mean BITCH... show yourself as anything but anonymous, and let the games begin, chink!!! :D

Another sad death

With all the sadness and trauma going on in the world
at the moment, it is worth reflecting on the death of
a very important person, which almost went unnoticed last
week.

Larry LaPrise, the man who wrote "The Hokey Pokey,"
died peacefully at age 93. The most traumatic part for
his family was getting him into the coffin.

They put his left leg in. And then the trouble
started.

Response Roundup

So sometimes people leave comments on my blogs, but I don't know how often people read my responses to them... For now, I guess I will just respond to several at once in one big blog! :D

"Why Chinks suck..."

Carrera said...

That really is a shame. The lack of respect for others when they know that we all have to co-exist happily in this world.

8:13 AM

It is a shame... It goes beyond a lack of respect, but also the fact that chinks are cheap, and for the scratch that was left in my car, they figure that it's not something worth paying for... especially since it's not their car. My other theory is that it might be a chink that has overstayed their visa, so they really can't get into trouble because they might get their ass deported... No matter what though, these chinks are just plain selfish... Lack of respect is just too eloquent a word to describe these fuckers.

"My Terrible Days"

Carrera said...

Think positive my friend and your misfortunes will lead to great fortunes. I myself have been going through some turbulent times but we gotta be strong!

3:56 PM

That they did... I wouldn't say that misfortunes lead to great fortunes per se, but great fortune did come later in the week in Vegas... :D

"Justice is served... Part 2"

Carrera said...

Justice is nice when is serves its purpose. I only wish that it continues to serve its purpose and not for personal interest or greed.

2:36 PM

Oh... it's definitely for my personal interest... there are way too many idiotic and asshole drivers out there that piss me off everyday that they definitely need to get served, and it is purely for my personal interest...

"Vegas Lag..."

Anonymous said...

When you tell your story, always be sure to remind us that it was like this one time, at band camp...

You're my personal hero because you have to hold the world record for 1) bachelor parties, 2) trips to Vegas, and 3)bachelor parties in Vegas. Just watch out for those very bad weddings. muhahaha

7:11 PM

Well, Mr. Anonymous Stacy, I must say that there was this one time, at band camp... :D

It is not uncommon for people to say that I am their personal hero. I am a personal hero to many peoples. Many, many, many peoples... In fact, a friend of mine came up to me the other day and said, "Hey mchiu! You're my personal hero!" Just like that!

It is also not uncommon for me to make visits down to Las Vegas. and especially for bachelor parties... not my own of course, but I guess that when it comes down time for me to have a bachelor's party, it better be down in Vegas, there better be plenty of alcohol to go around, and there damn well better be strippers all over the place!!!

Come to think of it, I don't think I have ever been to a bachelor's party outside of Vegas. I posed this question to the Judes once, but I guess another popular destination seems to be New Orleans. But for those of us out here on the West Coast, I guess nothing beats Vegas, baby, VEGAS!!!!!

"Rapid phone numbers"

Anonymous said...

But does she got hoes in different area codes?

five oh foh, sen sen too, I send small cities and states IOU's!

7:18 PM

So if you want to dial-a-fart, make sure to dial "foh-oh-ate, tree-tree-oh, nai-tree-six-six, extension tree-six-wahn"

An interesting idea for tailgaters

So as I was driving to work today, I was stopped at the light behind some rice boy, and I started to feel noxious because of the fumes emitting from his car. (no, he wasn't farting) After the light changed and he pulled away from me, I noticed that he not only had a fat (or is that phat?) tailpipe coming out of his car, but the idiot had it installed upside down so that the exhaust was pointing upwards.

Pretty annoying, and I wonder if there are laws against that? hmm... Anyway... soon afterwards, this asshole was tailgating me, even though I was 15mph over the speed limit already, and the light ahead had just turned red. (In other words, my foot was off the gas pedal, and covering the brake)

That's when a thought ocurred to me. When I was behind that stinky riceboy car, it was a little further than the distance this tailgating asshole was behind me. What if I could flick a switch, and have my tailpipe rotate around so that it would point upwards, and fill the guy's car up with exhaust fumes? That should get him to pull back a bit...

Hmm... I wonder how feasible that would be? Hmm....

Inefficient computer users

So to continue my rants on my idiotic co-workers...

One of the partners asked me for help on the formatting of a Word document. I have no idea what he did, but he got the entire numbering system screwed up, and it took us about an hour to get through it.

Now, I don't think it was so much the numbering thing that took us a long time to figure out, although it did take some time, but I think a lot of it had to do with the inefficient use of the computer by the partner.

So as we were going through the document, we would make a change somewhere, only to realize that it was wrong, or after several steps to make a change, we realize that we did something wrong. The document was somehow in the mode for tracking changes, so that made it very slow, and so if we had to do an "undo", it would take several seconds before it would register. To make matters worse, he doesn't seem to like to use keyboard shortcuts, so instead of hitting "ctrl-z", he would go to the "Edit" menu, highlight the "undo" item, and do this repeatedly until we got back to where we started. Even more annoying is that he uses a notebook PC as the main work PC. Like any of the other mobile PC workers in the office, you would think that he would think about investing at least $15 to get a mouse, but this guy is beyond cheap that he just uses the glide pad on his note. How anyone can work like this long-term is beyond me. So, instead of hitting the "ctrl-z" combo a few times, I had to sit and wait for this guy to point and click his way back to the beginning point... in some cases, a 10 second operation took close to a minute.

He typically works late into the night, but I'm not sure if it's because of his inefficient use of the computer that keeps him there, or the fact that he is too cheap to get broadband in his house that he uses the connection at work. He always jokes around to me that the only reason to have Internet is for porn, so sometimes I feel that it might be a bit disgusting to be stepping around his desk.

Rapid phone numbers

Not sure what it is that causes people to do this, but one thing I hate about people leaving me their phone number through voice mail is that they say it too fast. It's annoying because I have very little warning that a phone number is coming, and I should pull out a pen and paper, or gear my mind up to memorize the number, and then, all of a sudden, the number gets blurted out in machine-gun rapid succession, and I have no idea what the number is. Where it gets even more annoying is that the person is always speaking in a very normal, slow, pace, and sometimes, before they say the number, they've been talking for 2-3 minutes... which means, once they break new records in saying 10 non-sequential numbers in under 2 seconds flat, and don't bother to say it again, I have to start the message over again, listen to them drone on for a few minutes, and hope that I can catch the first few numbers, and then start the message again, listen for a few minutes again, and hope I can catch the next set of numbers, etc.

Last week, one friend, whom I haven't heard from in ages, left me a message, and did the same thing, but prefacing it with "Oh... you know my number, but here it is again..." and said it so fast that I think she was able to get out 7 numbers in less than 2 seconds! Since I haven't heard from her in over a year, and since I had lost my phone less than a year ago, of course, I didn't have her number on me, so I had to spend precious airtime to listen to my voicemail over and over again until I got the number.

It gets even worse when I have to listen to my farting co-worker leave a message for people, and repeat her number with a bad Chinese accent.... She has a lot of "trees" and "foes" in her number... he he he

Vegas Lag...

Spent the weekend at a Bachelor's Party in Las Vegas... Although Vegas is in the same time zone as San Jose, I am feeling like I have jet lag.... I think I'm going to just call this "Vegas Lag"... I seriously can't stay awake, and this is after getting a good night's rest, and being at work for a few hours when I found myself nodding off to sleep... Guess I should go and get coffee or something.

Anyway... not sure what I'll blog on about the weekend at Vegas, but trying to figure out something interesting... afterall, you know the rules... "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas"

Justice is served... Part 2

In the mornings, I usually don't take the freeway since I don't need to use them to get to work. This morning, I had a golf lesson, so I had to get onto to the 85 to get up to the Palo Alto Hills Country Club. The thing I hate about the Saratoga Ave. entrance onto the 85 is that the on-ramp is always backed up, and since I had to make a left turn, I nearly got caught in gridlock (I didn't cross over to the other side, but the asshole behind me wouldn't back it up, so I was stuck a little in the intersection, but people could manuveur around me). It also doesn't help that they have a metering light up there.

In any case, there I am, stuck behind 10 cars in the right lane, and an empty commuter lane (or HOV lane for you non-Californians) on my left. For the 5 minutes I spent in that lane, I noticed that at least 30% of the people using the commuter lane were single riders, and kept grumbling to myself "losers"... and then a cop shows up, and even he is a single rider!

Finally, I make it up to the light. I'm waiting for the light to turn green, but some single rider asshole shows up in the commuter lane next to me, missed his light by about a full second, and just as my light turns green, he overtakes me and goes ahead, and I had to brake and wait for the next green.

So I wait for the next light, start going forward, and just around the bend, there's the cop, who just pointed at the dude that ran the light, signalling for the guy to go into reverse, so he could give that guy a ticket... OH YEAH... glad to see the cops are still on my side for now... :D

Must suck to be that guy though... Single rider in the commuter lane, plus, he ran a red light... Hopefully the cop will find something else to take that asshole down... he he he...

My Terrible Days

So I guess I just have not been myself lately... Murphy's Law seems to be getting the better of me... First, the cashier at the store forgot to give me back my credit card, and I keep forgetting to go back there to pick it up... Then, I get my car scratched in the chinky parking lot... Then, I lost balance while walking one day when my foot happened to step on an uneven part of a floor, causing my ankle to twist to a side before regaining balance, but I had a difficult time walking for a few days... Yesterday, on my mad rush out the door, I forgot to take my cell phone out with me, and by the time I got back home at lunch time, had already missed several phone calls and texts... Thinking not much worse could happen, I stop by and get lunch on the way back to the office, and stupid me, I left my phone at the restaurant. When I got back to the office, I realized it was missing again, and had to run back to the office to grab it. Nothing else could go wrong, right? WRONG... I'm getting ready to deliver a package at FedEx, and I load everything into the trunk of my car, and... as I was closing the trunk door, it was almost like in slow-motion as I watched the door close shut, and I was saying out loud, "My keys!!!!" Had to wait 2 hours for the locksmith to come out and open the door for me... which meant that the FedEx didn't go out, and I didn't get a chance to run to the store to grab my credit card.

So I'm off to Vegas this weekend... Hopefully all of my bad luck, bad charma, and bad anything else has all been cleared... we'll see...

Why Chinks suck...

So Saturday night, my friend Frankie and I go to the Duke of Edinburgh before meeting up with my cousin. It's still broad daylight when we get there at 6 pm, and the Duke of Edinburgh is in the Cupertino Village where you have a lot of Chinese restaurants, grocery store, etc. It's 6 pm, and the parking lot isn't really full yet, and I park my car in the parking lot, thinking to myself, "Wow! This is a first... I come out to the Cupertino Village at feeding time, and there's actually parking!" I guess these kinds of things are too good to be true...

About 45 minutes later, as we approach my car, Frankie notices a scratch on my rear left bumper. It's not just some small scratch, but it's a really huge gash on my rear bumper!!! FUCK!!!! Obviously, I was a bit pissed off, but I had this small glimmer of hope in my fellow people when I saw a piece of paper under my windshield... Nope, not a note from anyone but some fucking advertisement for getting you fortune told!!! FUCK FUCK FUCK, fuckity, FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!! FUCKING STUPID ASS CHINKS!!!! FUCK I HATE THESE CHINKS!!!! FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!! CHINKS FUCKING SUCK!!!! FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!!

But I am also a bit pissed off at myself a little because I don't know how many times I have seen the chinks pull this same kind of shit at Cupertino Village, Milpitas Square, and other chinky places... Chinks just have no respect for other people's shit... So from now on, the next time I see something like that, I will definitely make a report if I don't see them leaving a note or anything...

What's also bad is that in that same location, someone had left a nice dent for me there, and I just had it fixed, and now some chinky bastard had to come and mess it all up again...

Nothing I can do but complain, but if I start reporting people for pulling this kind of shit, and also can encourage others to do the same, maybe places like Cupertino Village won't be as dangerous to park in anymore...

To all my friends... let us unite and take these chink bastards down!!!!

I'm Fucking Great!

So a lot of my friends tend to call me by the name of "Mikio", which is a name given to me by my boss when I was working in Japan. The two Chinese characters that make up my name, when translated into Chinese is pronounced like "Gan Shong", and the characters mean "Fuck" and "Great". Interesting how sometimes these Chinese characters get different translations when ported over to another country... Maybe I should ask everyone to start calling me Gan Shon instead... because I AM FUCKING GREAT!!!

Vykarius may have been too early..

As many of you know, my friend Xin and I had started a business a few years ago called Vykarius. The premise of our business was to outsource digital animation for video games out to China. Due to financial constraints and the inability to find enough financing, we were forced to shut the business down...

However, we might have just been too early with the company, as it seems that now, companies such as Lucasfilm, Pixar, and Dreamworks/PDI are expanding their businesses out to China, Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, doing essentially the same thing that we have been doing. This blog from Michael Stroud of the iHollywood Forum seems to sum it up best.

Days away from being complete...

So the final layer of coating and staining has been laid on the flooring of my house... I guess I will need to start figuring out when and how I am going to move in... This house has taken me over a year to remodel, but it's almost done now... Once the final coating dries in another day or so, I guess I am going to have to move in relatively soon... changes, changes, changes... It will be fun, it will be a nightmare... Never had a place to myself before... always rented in the past, and currently sponging off the parentals... Part of me wants to move in right away, part of me wants to stay as-is for now... 2,900 sq. ft. home, and only one person... Not that the city of Saratoga has a high crime rate or anything, but still a bit scary to live in a big house by myself... Could rent a room or two to friends, but that can also be a pain in the ass...

What really irks me now is this article a friend sent to me the other day about how Lynbrook High School, my alma mater, and the public school that is zoned for my house, had kicked several students out of the school because they were using false addresses. There goes my ideas of selling my address to people that want to send their kids to Lynbrook High...

---

Posted: April 4, 2005 at 6:47 p.m.

SUNNYVALE (KRON) -- Some 300 students heading into one of the five high schools in the Fremont Union High School district were sent home early and for good Monday.

"We asked them to come to the office, we called their parents and told them they don't go to school here anymore," said Superintendent Steve Rowley.

The school district is enforcing a policy that limits enrollment to only those students who can prove that they live in the district.

In the past, looser enforcement has allowed parents from as far away as Milpitas, Fremont, and South San Jose to do whatever they could to enroll their kids in the district. Many of them are drawn to the academic excellence of the district's five schools.

"We've heard of parents renting apartments for two months, moving clothes into other people's homes, renting post office boxes for $500 a month," Rowley said.

But the school district says it now has a budget crisis and can no longer handle the extra students.

Parents who do live in the district support the district's actions.

"The people who are supposed to be here are getting deprived of the education they are supposed to have," said Ronald Dews.

One Lynbrook High School student says his friend was kicked out of school Monday after the school discovered he did not live where he said he lived.

"My friend lives far away but lists his mom's address. The district found out and he was kicked out," said Khoa Dinh.

But some students say there must be another alternative.

"I think there should be a way how people not in the district can pay and still go to this school," said Lynbrook High School student Tony Perez.

High school seniors are exempt from the new enforcement policy. Those students who do have to leave will be able to transfer their credit to other schools.

(Copyright 2005, KRON 4. All rights reserved.)

Chinky Aerobics

So my mom got this new Chinese aerobics DVD, so I started doing the DVD with her... thinking that there would be hot Chinese chix in it... which there are not... So it's this one dude and a bunch of backgrounds chix that are very plain looking, so not much to look at. The dude, on the other hand, looks a lot like my friend Paul (aka Kevio's cousin), so it's kinda weird to be doing aerobics with Paul.

It's basically where you stand in place, and you either bounce up and down, or sway your hips side to side, while you move your arms and hands around. It is kind of like the parapara dancing that I watched people do in the discos in Japan. After 15 minutes of doing the Chinky parapara aerobics dance, I'm working up a sweat though... Since I am not used to bouncing up and down on my legs so much, I'm pretty sore...

Not sure if the video is from Taiwan or China, but if it's from China, I wonder if it will get the full Fa Lun Gon (sp?) treatment? He he he... then it will be even more fun to do!

Foodie A-List at BoA's

So we had another Foodie A-List dinner last Friday at BoA's Fine Asian Grill & Korean BBQ. The layout is, more or less, the same as the Hamasushi Restaurant before it, but the ambiance is definitely very different. It kinda has that LA style look for a Korean bar, but it's a restaurant, and it's serving mainly Japanese and Korean fusion. Like, some people ordered steaks, which are Western enough, and then had some Asian style garnishes, but then to make extra-special-Western, they added grated cheese on top.... interesting...

So all of us were wondering why the name "BoA's"? Most people thought that maybe the owner was in love with the singer BoA. My thoughts are that since she is Japan-Korea crossover sensation, maybe since the restaurant serves Japanese and Korean fusion, they decided to use the BoA name to symbolize the crossover... OK... maybe I put a little too much thought into it.

For the few of you reading this blog that missed the Foodie A adventure, you can see some pictures from the dinner, as well as my comments on the pictures.... These pictures are courtesy of Don Ahn... Thanks Don!

Tooning In from 1UP.COM

So I just read this article that brings back some childhood memories of Saturday morning cartoons. I guess video games have had a bit of an influence on my life, especially while growing up, so not sure if these cartoons really shaped my life or not, but still fun to take a stroll down memory lane.

I remember having this conversation with a friend back in Japan who had studied in the US from the time he was 8 or 9 years old, and asking him about what he watched for Saturday morning cartoons, but it must have sucked for him because he never got to watch them since he had to go to Japanese school on Saturday mornings. Luckily for me, Chinese school was on Friday nights, so I was able to make it back home on time to catch Knight Rider and still watch all of my Saturday morning cartoons... :D

Golfing with pops

So yesterday, I spent the afternoon playing 9 holes at the Palo Alto Hills Country Club. I still need a lot of work on my short game, but I am becoming more consistent in hitting consistently. There were times when I would have a streak of really bad shots, but the funny thing is that my dad would tell me that I need to calm down, have patience, and try not to whack the shit out of the ball with my anger, and then when he started to hit the ball, he was also having a streak of really bad shots... he he he...

I still play better on Tiger Woods PGA Tour than I do in real life, but I suck at that game too... but not as badly as I really play. One of these days I will get the swing of it... I hope...

Please bear with me...

So as a result of my shifting servers, there have been a few snags in the process of shifting over, although it is mainly my fault for not really paying a whole lot of attention to what I was doing. To make things even more fun for me, my PC crashed and died, so I have been trying to get it back online, so little by little, I am getting things back on track.

The message boards are down for now, but they should be back up soon, not that it matters to anyone since no one seems to use it anyway... :-p

Changes, Changes, Changes...

So I was looking at the web page for my hosting provider, ipowerweb.com, and realized that they are now offering new subscribers 2GB of space for the same price that I am paying for. Not wanting to miss out on the deal, I called them up and asked for the same deal. Since I am on an older server, the change cannot be made automatically, and they are going to have to re-direct my DNS to the new servers to accomodate me on the new server. Good thing that they are not going to be charging me anything extra to do this, so all is good. At $7.95/mo. for hosting services with them, they're not a bad company to work with, and I was surprised at how responsive they were to my requests.In any case, the switch will occur within the next 24-48 hours, so just wanted to let everyone know that if you are having trouble accessing my site, just be patient, and it will be back online soon.Also, I realized that my constant ramblings on this blog are about everything and anything that comes to my mind, but when I tried to navigate my own blog, it seemed a bit disorganized and a bit overwhelming, so in the next week or so, I am going to do a re-org of the blog site. I am possibly also going to be looking for friends to help out and write some of their ideas, so it might be something fun and entertaining to do.

Justice is served...

So I was driving up the 101 earlier today, and after merging onto the freeway, the lane turned into an "Exit Only" lane. So I move over a lane, but the truck that was ahead of me in the exit only lane also had to merge into my lane, but by that point, I was almost parallel with him. In order to help out, I signal to move over yet another lane, but the impatient bitch behind me in that lane just gunned it, and I was in a bind where I had to keep my car in between the two lanes and speed up to get ahead of the truck to stay in my lane. Luckily, this bitch kept up her attitude on the road, and at the next freeway entrance, CHP and an unmarked patrol car merge onto the freeway in front of me. By this point, the bitch has already made her way into the fast lane and was starting to take off. The CHP in front of me just took off, got behind her car, and within seconds, had its lights going off. It took them forever to pull over though... Stupid bitch first tried to pull to the left side of the road, but the cops tell her to pull to the other side of the road, and slowly she moves over. Now the CHP is in front of me again, slowing down, yelling at her not stop next to those blocks they put on the freeway to prevent people from slipping off the road. This nearly stops all traffic. Finally, they get her off the road.

All this within a span of 2-3 minutes. But for once in my life, a stupid driver that pisses me off finally got caught by the cops.

Go home and play with your kids...

So one of my favorite movies is Glenngary, Glen Ross, and it's mainly because of this one 5 minute scene where Alec Baldwin walks in and bitches out the entire sales office. I often have flashbacks to this scene, and just had one the other day.

So another annoying habit of my farting co-worker is that she always makes this big deal about having to leave early from the office in order to take care of her kids. Now, she's pregnant, so she also gets a lot of preferential treatment for being pregnant, and it has been on-going for the past 6 months that I often times have to do a lot of her dirty work.

So there's this one scene from the movie where Alec Baldwin confronts Ed Harris that gave me the flashback:

"Who are you? What's your name?"
"You see this watch? You see this watch?"
"Yeah"
"That watch costs more than you car. I made $970,000 last year. How much you make? You see pal, that's who I am, and you're nothing. Nice guy, I don't give a shit. Good father, FUCK YOU. Go home and play with your kids. You wanna work here, close. You think this is abuse? You think this is abuse, you cocksucker? You can't take this, how can you take the abuse you get on a sit?"

Of course, in the case of my co-worker, I guess it should be "Good mother, FUCK YOU, Go home and play with your kids"

Anyway... I guess I shouldn't really comment since I don't have kids of my own, but at the same time, I could go on and on about how my farting co-worker's attitude towards those of us in the company that rank beneath her is to treat us like slaves, and now that she's pregnant, we just get more slave-driven. My boss, on the other hand, who seems to have a rep in the Silicon Valley as being a very tough woman, still at least has the decency to ask me in a polite manner to help her out with jobs that are outside the scope of my job (like picking up lunch or going to the post office, etc.) My farting co-worker has the decency to take the orders from my boss and then pass the job on to me, and then takes credit for the job that I perform...

Deaths...

So I was looking at Big Tony's blog earlier, and the most recent entry was about a friend of a friend's daughter who died while skiing in the Swiss Alps. Reading further along, the point that hits me the most is about how short life is, and how we never know how we'll go and when we'll go. That got me to thinking that within the last 3-4 years, I have had to say a final goodbye to at least 3 people, and 1 more this year of a person that I was just starting to get to know.

First, there was a co-worker at HearMe who was the same age as me who was involved in a motorcycle accident. Then, there was the intern who had worked here that jumped off a building in New York. And then, there was a friend of my dad's who died of medical reasons at a very young age. Finally, I was just starting to get to know the owner of the building I work in, who was brutally murdered a few weeks ago.

In any case... now that I look back at everything, my biggest regret has been not keeping in touch with these people. I think one of my biggest problems is that I am pretty bad at keeping up with people that I don't see on a daily basis.

Hopefully I can keep this blog up to let everyone know what I'm doing, but I also hope that people will stay in touch with me! :D I have a message board you can access to on the right, and under every posting, there is a link to post your comments! :D

Looking at logs...

I was looking at the different hits that come to my website, and realized that there was an alarming rate of traffic over the past few months, primarily from the website nanokiero.com. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that a while back, I have left some KPOP and JPOP songs in my server for a friend to download a while back, but I had forgotten to remove them.

My traffic has gone down a bit, but it's now mainly because nanokiero.com probably hasn't removed the links yet, so I'll probably be serving up several more Page Not Found - Error 404 pages for the next few weeks.

But for those of you who are interested in getting JPOP, KPOP, or CPOP music and videos, give nanokiero.com a try.... They have tons of stuff there...

Rockville?

My friend Kevin and I were dining at the luxurious A&J Restaurant in the Cupertino Village the other day, and I came across this sign that looked pretty normal. As I was reading down the list of their locations, it all seemed like normal California names until the last one... Rockville? If I remember correctly, that's the city where my friends Jun and Ken are from, but way out there in Maryland... hmm...

I guess it's just as out of place as this this restaurant I went to once when I was out in Tokyo... The sign read, "Zachary's Pizza" and underneath it, "Oakland, Berkeley, Tokyo"

Frankie's bored

I was bored on Thursday night after attending a boring info session on the MBA program for Carnegie-Mellon at NASA/AMES. I took off a little early and just went up to Alameda to hang out with Frankie who was working at Scobie's. I thought that he would be serving up drinks, but instead, he was just sitting at the door checking IDs that night. I think this picture definitely captures his mood for the night... he he he

Ramen Tour

Back in 1999, when I was living in Taipei, a group of friends and I decided to make a trip to Tokyo to hang out with a bunch of my friends out in Tokyo for about a week. We ended up calling this trip the "Ramen Tour" since we were eating ramen just about every day of the trip. It was mainly nothing more than a bunch of dudes partying every night for about a week, and my friend Duke, kept complaining to me that we didn't do any sightseeing or anything. Of course, the funny thing about it all was that he was the one who couldn't get up before 2 pm everyday, and by the time everyone was ready to go out and do stuff, it would be about 4 pm, and most of the places that we could have gone sightseeing at would have been closed already.

Since then, Kevin and I would make this yearly trips in November to go out to Tokyo to continue the Ramen Tour tradition, but after the last one 2001, when some annoying people were on the tour with us, we decided to stop them altogether.

So it's been 4 years since we had the last one, and friends from all over are bugging us to start them up again, so we're planning its revival for November 2005. A lot of the friends in Tokyo are no longer there, but there should still be plenty for us to do while we are out there to keep us busy for a week. More importantly, after 4 years, I am sure that there are now a new lot of ramen joints for us to explore. :D

So far, I think we have a group of 4-5 dudes who are interested, so I guess Kevin and I will have something to keep us busy for a little while...

Cellphones hurting watch sales

I haven't worn a watch for over a year now since I depend on my cellphone to tell me the time. Apparently, I am not the only person who does this, and the watchmakers are realizing sales of their low-end watches are fall dramatically, although the middle to top-range watches are booming.

Personally, I feel that wearing a watch these days is more of a functional piece of fashion accessory, but in some cases, so is a cell phone. After losing my beloved Nokia 8890 last year, it took me a while to find a worthwile replacement in the Motorola RAZR V3, which doesn't quite have the bling factor as the 8890, but will suffice for now...

Speaking of phones and bling, my friend was telling me the other day how his ex-wife has been constantly changing her phones for the latest and greatest about 3-4 times a year... Yikes! Talk about expensive!!! I had the Nokia 8890 for about 4 years, and had I not lost it, I would still be using it today. Who knows how long I can hold on to my current phone, but I am locked in for 2 years per my contract for now, but like my friend's ex-wife, I might end up just breaking a contract if something similar to the Nokia 8890 comes out in the near future (although I doubt that will happen due to the fact that pre-requisites for phones these days seem to be the fact that they need a color screen and camera)

Anyway... I now carry a fancy timepiece in my pocket that also happens to make phone calls, take pictures, and connect to the Internet. It's no wonder that the watchmakers are shaking in their boots.

My friend's brother

Just a random thought that came to me recently...

So I have these two friends who are brothers... Jerry and Frankie... So Jerry and I have known each other for a long time and hung out quite a bit, but Jerry recently became a family man and settled down and got married, and put out two kids... Basically, a lost a drinking buddy... but then I started hanging out with Frankie more, so he's kind of like the "Jerry replacement"...

So I used to refer to Frankie as "Jerry's brother", but now that I have been hanging out with Frankie more, I have been referring to Jerry as "Frankie's brother"... Interesting how relativity works...

The "White Box" MP3 NAS

Seems like everything in the MP3 world these days has to be iTunes compatible. Like Motorola's announcement of upcoming phones being iTunes compatible, IO Data has come up with its own NAS (Network Attached Storage) device that is iTunes compatible with the very generic name of the "White Box" or "shirobako". With a price point of JPY20,000 (approx. $185), I guess it's not a bad deal, but on the other hand, I'm not really into buying my music online, so following the iTunes camp or the Plays For Sure camp doesn't really affect me... at least not yet. Once the online music stores start serving audio files that are encoded in 256kbps or higher will I start to seriously consider them... Otherwise, they would need to be Sonic Focus/Intel Audio Studio enhanced for me to grab them at the current bitrates in the 128kbps range...

Thoughts on Sin City

So I went with my cousins to see the movie "Sin City" last night at the Century 22 movie theater. Before going, I asked my friend about her thoughts on the movie, since she had gone out to see it the night before, but her main comment was that it is a guy's movie, and that she couldn't quite catch the story of the movie.

After watching the movie, I kinda understood why. In traditional Tarantino fashion, it is a bunch of stories put together that loosely tie together, but not really. You see the same characters again, but they don't really have anything to do with one story to another. The hacking and slashing that went on during the movie was interesting though... I kept thinking Kill Bill...

Anyway... I went into the movie without any real understanding of the movie, other than the fact that it is based off a comic book by Frank Miller called "Sin City", and that when I saw the TV commercials for the movie, I thought I was watching the TV commercial for a video game. I guess game CG and movie CG are about the same quality now.

Another interesting thing to note is that the line for the movie was pretty uneventful... No huge lines, no sold out shows, etc. I guess everyone is still waiting in line for Episode 3, so they don't have time to come out to see such lowly movies as Sin City. Or maybe it's just because we went to the Century 22 movie theater to watch it, and everyone else was out at Mercado or Great Mall watching the flick... I bought my ticket 10 minutes before showtime, and there was still plenty of good seating throughout the theater... hmm...

April Fool's Housewarming Party

So as I mentioned earlier, the biggest joke of last year amongst certain circle of friends has been the move-in date to my new house. I closed escrow on 3/30/05, and still have yet to move into the house due to constant remodeling and updating of the house. The house is over 40 years old, and it looks like it had been untouched since the 70s. The kitchen looked ugly and the appliances all had the old analog controls on them, and then the toilets all looked pretty nasty in the bathrooms, one fireplace had these ugly boulders as it's mantle, and the other was this metal black thing, not to mention the fact that the cabinetry in the house was really old and outdated.

So Mike had told me that it is customary to have a housewarming party within 1 year of buying a house, but he let it slide to 4/1, or 1 year and 2 days since buying a house to have an unofficial housewarming party. Earlier on, Frankie and I had joked around about having my housewarming party on April Fool's Day, and have a big sign that said "Party in the backyard" and see how many people we could gather into my backyard... I think this kind of freaked out some of the friends, as apparently, Mike had sent an e-mail to Corey and Kuldip asking if it were for real or not, even though he was the one that had sent out the original invitation e-mail. hmm...

So thanks to Kuldip, he has posted some pictures online, modeled by his assistant, Sean Oberoi... You can find the pics here.

I spent a good part of Saturday cleaning the place up, so it does look a little cleaner than the pictures, but not by much. After the floors get their final coating, I will come back in do the final cleaning, and it will be ready to move into.... only that I think it will take me a little longer since I won't move in until I get furniture bought and moved in, and have a broadband line up and running.

Good thing that Jake's is down the street from where I live, so after spending time playing hide-and-seek with Sean in my house, we drove down to Jake's (a-la-Swingers) and concluded the party there.