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My, word travels fast!

Last night, I end up going up to San Francisco to attend the opening gala of the SF International Asian American Film Festival. I missed the opening movie, Americanese due to overwhemling traffic... (1.5 hours from Palo Alto, and then another 45 minutes trying to find parking before giving up.)

So I was one of the lucky 50 people who made it onto Ben Wan's VIP list, and was mingling with the actors and actresses of the movie, sans Kelly Hu and Joan Chen. So on the way to the VIP room, Ben mentioned that he had heard that I had left AsiaTech, and all these other details about my leaving the company... and he knew all of this only one day after I had quit... I thought it was pretty amazing how quickly word travels, especially since I haven't seen Ben in months, although we do have a lot of mutual friends I guess. But still, it was pretty amazing that he knew about this so quickly, not to mention a lot of other personal details of my departure and what I plan to do next...

Hot stuff

So today, Kevin and I were having lunch at St. John's Bar & Grill, and I noticed that they added a new "Beg For Mercy" menu item for cheeseburger, philly cheesesteak sandwich, and chicken sandwich. I had to try the cheeseburger version. So it's your ordinary cheeseburger, but they add some chipotle sauce and roasted peppers, and the cheese was some kind of spicy cheese. After the first two bites, I was feeling alright. But then it started to sink in... Next thing I know, my head is a bit warm. By the time I'm done eating it, I realize that I'm sweating... WOW!

I've always had this fascination with peppers and spicy foods for some reason. When I was a kid, I hated spicy food, but somewhere down the line, I started appreciating it more. I remember reading somewhere once that when eating spicy foods, it isn't supposed to show how tough you are based on how spicy a food is, but it is to open up your tastebuds a bit so that you can get the full flavors of other foods. I prefer to look at it that way so I won't look so weak when compared to Indians and Koreans (although Kuldip and Park both don't seem to take spicy foods too well).

So in May, I will be attending Stacy's wedding in Maui, so I decided to take a gander at what other foods are good in Hawaii other than the essentials: LocoMoco, Spam Musubi, Saimin, and Kalua pig, and came across this blog entry for Chili Pepper Water... not sauce, but water... Can't wait to douse my LocoMoco with this stuff!!! :D

Cheezy VC pick-up lines

I was starting to get worried since I hadn't seen Sand Hill Slave post a new entry for an entire week, but glad to see that she's back after a computer malfunction.

Now she's back up and running, and the latest post, "He puts the Ass in Associate-" had me in stitches when I read it. I think one of my biggest gripes when returning to the Silicon Valley after 5+ years in Tokyo and Taipei was the amount of arrogance you saw in people at the height of the dot-com boom. It was apparent in the way people behaved, talked, drove, and yes, even in the way that picked up on each other.

We've all heard the stories of graduates of prestigious universities such as Harvard, carrying around their student IDs after graduation to prove that they had attended the university, and somehow, you would think that to be smart enough to get into these school, they would know better than to think that it's some kind of magical ticket to getting them laid.

Sand Hill Slave definitely knows how to put these kinds of people into their place, and she does it with the wannabe VC types... namely, the people who typically rank above my lowly "analyst" title, who claim to be "VCs" when they are not really a partner. Just for the record, I usually tell people that I work in venture capital, and not that I am a venture capitalist, but that's more because I kind of fell into VC work, and still consider myself a sales or biz dev person over a VC type. But if I ever did meet Slave Girl, put on the moves, and told her that I was a VC, and she caught me in the lie when I pull out the not-so-impressive AsiaTech Management card that says I am an analyst, I just fear what she would say: "You're an ANALyst???!!! HA HA HA! Get it? an ANAL-LIST!"

Interestingly enough, right before reading this entry, I was watching an episode of a Korean drama called "My Name is Sam Soon Kim", in which the main character, after embarassing herself throughly at a company that she wanted to work for, hailed a cab to go home, and this guy from the company came running after her. After much debate, he gets into the cab with her, and they start talking, and he passes his biz card to her, but she refuses it. He keeps trying to give it to her, but she keeps refusing until he squeezes her arm and forces the card into her hand. After that, he tells her that now that she has the card, she may as well read it. She refuses. Again, he squeezes her arm, and tilts her head to force her to look at the card to see that he is the President of the company. Interesting that right after watching the show, I see this post from the Sand Hill Slave site! he he he Which lead me to think what if Sand Hill Slave was an angry Korean? (oops... a bit of a redundant phrase there... "angry" and "Korean") *shudder* what a scary thought...

Are you cut out to be an entrepreneur?

According to Guy Kawasaki, I obviously am not... but maybe that explains why I'm on the other side of the table talking to entrpreneurs instead.

On his blog site, Guy Kawasaki has an entry entitled "What's Your EQ? (Entrepreneurial Quotient)" that asks 22 multiple choice questions to assess whether you are entrepreneurial material or not. Although some of the answers are controversial, as admitted by himself, I tend to agree with most of the answers given. Yes, for #10, I do believe that the Executive Summary is the most important part of the business plan, because as a person working in venture capital, I see a million BPs cross my desk, and having a good executive summary is my starting point to see whether it is worth my time to continue looking into the case, and if so, now I can continue to read the BP with an idea of what to expect. There are times that I do run into some very poorly written documents though, where the Executive Summary ends up being 10 pages, and there is no business plan attached, or in one extreme case, I have no idea how the Executive Summary ended up being longer than the actual business plan itself. I should have read it backwards instead I guess.

So I ended up taking the online version of the test and scored 69% or below... oh well... guess it's back to the drawing board for me.

Sunday walkers

On Sundays, I typically take my note PC with me, and go to one of the independent coffee shops to sip on a coffee while browsing the Internet. This past Sunday, I decided to go to the Coffee Society in Cupertino.

So I was just killing some time there this past weekend waiting for a call from Miwa, who was picking up Meg from the airport, and then we were all going to get some dim sum, so I get the call, and start to take off for Cupertino Village. Next to the Coffee Society, there's Hobee's, which I guess a lot of people like to go to for brunch as well.

I get in my car, back out of the parking space, and start moving forward. Good thing I was driving slowly... like 2 mph slow, because this old man just popped out of nowhere and was pretty oblivious to anything around him (probably because he was looking behind him as he was walking through the parking lot to get to Hobee's), and crosses my path. I stop my car, and the guy is still walking, totally oblivious to the fact that I am right there. I don't know how he couldn't have realized that I was right there, but maybe he left his hearing aid at home or something. He is still walking, and is about to walk right into my car, so I honk the horn a few times to alert him to the fact. I think I almost gave him a heart attack though because he stops, looks at my car, and then clutches his chest. I motion for him to proceed, but I think he was still in shock, and he motioned for me to continue, so I did.

The worst part of this whole incident is that now I look like the bad guy because this geriatric idiot didn't have the sense to look both ways to cross the pathway of where the cars will be driving through, and thinks that I am an asshole for not yielding right of way to him, whereas I completely stopped my car, and just honked at him to warn him not to walk directly into my car...

Sheesh! There needs to be a re-education for these senile people on how to cross the road since I am sure that it has been at least 50-60 years for this guy since he was last in kindergarten where they taught us to look left-right-left before crossing the road.

Live-action Simpsons

This is an interesting video from the UK that has been viral around the Internet of a live-action version of the opening sequence of "The Simpsons", as reported in The Sun Online. It is a pretty faithful reproduction, and it's funny to see the Bart Simpson on the skateboard since he can't seem to catch up in certain parts... :D Enjoy!

Hungry???!!!

So I guess by adding a link on the side bar to my friends' blogsites does actually have some merit! :D Several friends have told me how much they enjoy the "Travelling Hungry Boy" blog site of my friend, Bryan. I can say that for myself, whenever I need to get hungry, all I have to do is look at a few entries on his blog, and all of a sudden, I am starving. Much like myself and other local friends, Bryan is definitely a food slut, and it shows on his site... he he he... When Bryan was out here in California, for the last 6 or 7 months before he moved to Singapore, we both believe that we are the sole reason for the Japanese izakaya, Tanto, for having enough money to expand and open up two other locations in the Bay Area. During his last visit here in the Silicon Valley, I took him to "Gochi", which is another izakaya that was started by the now, ex-chef of Tanto. You can see the results of our meal here. Another place that Bryan and I frequented was a completely different type of place, and it is amazing for the number of times we visited the place, it never has really expanded. In fact, the night we went to Gochi, Bryan was careful not to order too much food there, and it was then, when he made his famous declaration at the restaurant: That's all we ordered, right? 'Coz we gotta save room for Bravo!"

Yes... the famous Taco Bravo, which Bryan also wrote about here.

So if you ever feel the need to make yourself, hungry, make sure to check out Bryan's website!

Bowling in Style

Weblog Luxist has an entry about a private bowling hall in the UK that is looking pretty metro. Apparently, there is a similar type of place out here in the US called "Lucky Strike" (which sounds like a brand of cigs to me), and it looks like they are getting ready to build new ones in San Jose and San Francisco. Woo hoo!!! I think we now have somewhere that will replace The Lanes!!! OH YEAH...

Angry and feisty food

You got your kimchee in my pizza! You got your pizza in my kimchee!

I'm trying to imagine an argument between an angry Korean and a feisty Italian to come up with this kimchee pizza that is reported in the slashfood blog.

I can't say that I have tried kimchee pizza before, but I guess I'd be lying if I said that I have never thought about it before. Especially not after going with Frankie to Za Zang's pizza and noodles.

Interesting... what is it about these Korean/Italian mashups in cuisine? Are the people of both countries really long, lost, cousins or something? They both share the angry trait I guess...

Who does Peter look more like?

A comment made by CK in the entry about Peter Looks Like Everyone, prompted me to make an informal survey of which person Peter looks like. Review the four picture sets below, and make your vote now!

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As Yao-Ming:

Peter Ming	Yao Ming

As Yao Ming and William Hung:

Peter Ming and William Hung	Yao Ming and Peter Hung	Yao Ming and William Hung

As Takuya Kimura:

Peter Kimura	Takuya Kimura

As Tom Cruise:

Yellow Fever

Here is a funny video that Kevin forwarded to me about one Asian guy's quest to find out what it is that white guys have that attracts Asian women....

I have always been a person who could care less about interracial mixing, so this video was fun for me since it was kind of making fun of that whole school of thought of Asian girl/white guy vs. Asian guy/white girl. Most Asians that I know of have this double standard where they look down upon the Asian girl/white guy couples, but think it's cool to see an Asian guy/white girl couple. To me, it's the same thing: an interracial couple between an Asian and a white. No one seems to have anything for or against homosexual couples though, or at least none that I have heard, but then again, I don't spend a lot of time in the gay community either, so if anyone knows what the general sentiment of this all is, I'd be interested in knowing. Actually, Asian lesbian couples would be really hot, but on the other hand, lesbians in general tend to be hot (assuming that they are the porn-star type lesbians)

But I digress... I think too many Asians, especially Asian guys, get too hung up on the whole Asian girl/white guy couples, and to me, it just looks like they're making an excuse for themselves for why they can't get a girl (Asian or otherwise), so they tend to use that as an excuse. I guess my point of view is way more selfish though. For me, I could care less about white guys picking up asian girls, asian guys picking up white girls, etc., so long as a white guy, or any other guy regardless of race, isn't picking up on my girl. If another girl is picking up on my girl, I'll probably have a problem with it, but I'm willing to share... :D