誕生日

いっぱい話して笑って食べて飲みました 大満足!

I had a very good birthday yesterday. My high school friend came up from LA for business but decided to show up at my door with a present! We have not seen each other for over 5 years! Despite the fact that I had a Chinese banquet and a Sunday brunch for my wedding in LA last October... (I did not have her new cell phone or work phone or home phone number since all of those changed. And her email address also no longer works since la.com went belly up.) Well, she called me at work and we are connected again. I was very happy to see her. We went out for dinner and we all ordered something we seldom order from a Chinese restaurant (like sweet and sour fish, veggies wrapped in bean curd wraps tied in a knot, pot stickers, mongolian lamb, more veggies, etc) and then went to the Elephant Bar to chat more till after 11pm. (It's really quite rare for our quiet lives on weekdays in the Sillicon Valley).
Even though we went to the same elementary all the way to high school in HK back then, we were really only classmates and not so much friends. I was too focus on my studies and her on her sports and gal-chasing. But despite our differences, there are a lot we admire each other about. I like the fact that she can take anything that got thrown at her and she can still smile about it. (I remember the teachers used to give her a very tough time in school). She is very open-minded to everything and she is not disappointed at failures. (She always managed to find other options.) She is now very prompt and take her work very seriously regardless whether she meant to keep the job for long or not. She is also very motivated to better her career and exploring other opportunities. I see the things I lack when I look at her and I like to be reminded of that.
Though she is not a person with much savings, she enjoys life generously and is planning a trip to Peru with her friends! It's always great to hang out with people and friends that are a complete opposite of yourself. You will get to know yourself better along with the good times.

Oh, yes. And I sold my house and got the money right on my birthday! How cool is that!

比べ

I watched these 2 movies over the weekend.


One got many nominations and awards, the other one did $10 million better at the box office. One is quite entertaining, the other is long but kept you thinking a lot afterwards.

See it for yourself.

I have been looking into getting an X3, but after seeing all the problems BMW owners are complaining on the web, I get scared. They all talk about transmission, gear engagement delay, defective steptronics, power windows and some other electronics related problems which the BMW service department simply provided a fix through a software upgrade or reprogramming. Their cars are at the dealership often and all the hassles they have to deal with on the constant service backlog. Now I see why we have so many courtesy X3s at our work parking lot. That's also why I got the chance to ride the latest X3, twice!

Growing up, my dad had owned the Alfa Romeo Spider 1600, then the BMW 2000, then the BMW 2002 Turbo, then the BMW 320, then a Volvo, then another Volvo... He called a couple of times and told me not to get a BMW because of their notorious electronics problems and weak A/C. He said get a Lexus with that money. :-( Why can't BMW get it right after all these years???

Some new Kanji today:
精一杯
With all one's might
せいいっぱい

冷奴
Cold tofu
ひややっこ

総統

We were advised to work from home on April 21 with the President of United States coming and the roads will be closed so we won't be able to park near where Bush will be having the conference. With that announcement, we pretty much gain a day off since a lot of our work needs to be done near our equipment. But it's a Friday afterall, so I guess the impact is really not that big.

So I watched a few movies at home till 3:30am! :-)

I really like the movie, Hitch. Will Smith is one of the actors I always enjoy watching. This movie is light and funny, no car crash or action. :-) Good entertainment.

Also watched both Transporter 1 and 2. I am not sure if I like it that much, but at least I did not fall asleep. :-D

総統
President
そうとう

悪戯

I saw these pictures on a blog today. Someone did this to his co-worker while he is on honeymoon. (See that wedding picture that stays unwrapped? I guess that's the victim right there.) I couldn't help laughing out loud at work. Some people are really into pranks like no others. :-) Or does work life at a cube drive people nut?

悪戯
いたずら (あくぎ)
Prank

*George W. Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger will be here tomorrow so our original cross-team lunch plan got postponed. That was the good news this morning. I dislike group lunch over 8 people!

罠

I have not come across a Kanji I don't recognize for a long time, until today.
I have never seen this Kanji (or word) before.

The material I was reading says:
セグメンテーションの罠
Segmentation trap

罠
わな
Trap

E.g.
甘い言葉の罠



While on the subject of trap, I saw the movie The Jacket, recently. It's quite entertaining at the beginning and in the middle. But the ending, like the link says, it will leave you with questions. So it's best you just go to bed very tired after watching the movie. :-)

It will be showing in Japan on May 20th, 2006!
http://www.jacket-movie.jp/

昨今

I was reading a book's 内容紹介 when I came across this word. I figured it probably meant "these days" but had to look it up anyway to confirm. Yup.

昨今
さっこん
Nowadays, recently.

優秀なエンジニア

Yesterday, I worked with an engineer from Ohio whom I have been speaking with through email for the past 2 and a half years. It's great to work with someone with the same passion on the same technology and with the same work ethic and style. We were working inside an enclosed chamber from 10:30am to about 7:30pm with another 2 engineers. I don't know why I enjoyed working with him so much given that our company has over 10,000 engineers who are supposed to be all very good... After work, we went for dinner and chatted more about things outside work. We are 2 people with really very few things in common aside from work, yet the conversation was just GREAT! I kept thinking why there aren't many engineers like him in the Valley...

Watched this show on TV the other night. It's a pretty good show.

不適切な治療

昨夜、このプログラムを見ました。
The Boy in the Bubble
見た後に、心が痛くなりました。
悲しくて涙が出てきた。
悩みました。

甥っ子

木曜日の夜から(日曜日の夜まで)、姉と甥っ子が私の家に泊まリました。
一緒に暮らしは楽しかったけど、少し疲れました。
甥っ子は非常に遊び好きの可愛い子です。でも擾乱されないで映画とテレビ番組を見終えることができません。
甥っ子が 姉の結婚指輪を取って、ごみ箱に投げ捨てた。 電灯をつけ消すとドアを開け閉めすることは 大好き。それと、いつも家の猫を追いかけた。
私たちは (猫を含んでいた) 、多くの休憩が必要だね。:-)

スターバックス

Maybe I have not been to Hong Kong for too long. Today I was reading some blog and 星巴克 was being mentioned. Immediately, I thought I know what it meant...could it be Starbucks? So I did a quick search and yes, it is. Whoever came up with this translation is quite a genius, I thought. But again, my concern was more about the fact that I have not been to Asia (excluding Japan) for a long time! The last time I was in Hong Kong, I think there were only very few Starbucks. The only one I had been was the one in Causeway Bay near the old Lee Theatre. There I bumped into my old high school friend who is also my neighbor in Hong Kong. She had turned more lesbian than ever except this time she has a real girlfriend. She is a converted lesbian because her facial features look a bit man, but those who grew up with her know she really wanted to be a gal and with boyfriend(s). It was sad seeing her trying to be what she isn't, and all those talks we had when we were young about her not having to act macho just because she does not look feminine had all gone to waste. When we saw each other at 星巴克, it was like seeing a stranger... we have nothing to say to each other except a simple, Hi! Oh, well...

ジョギング

After 30+ days of rain out of the last 35 days, today the sun was finally out for a short period of time. It's usually dark by the time I walk to my car at the work parking lot, but today I got off from work early. Something I have not done this year, not to mention still seeing the sun while I was driving home. So I decided to go for a jog at the high school near my house.

It's very relaxing to do this after work...

I should definitely do it more often and start playing some tennis or go swimming soon.

汚い言葉

Recently, I have been reading a blog written by an IT guy in Hong Kong. His words are crude and full of foul Cantonese slangs. Even though it's written that way, I get a lot of what's going on these days in HK. Not only do I get a glimpse of how guys talk in Cantonese and how work life is like in Hong Kong in general, but also the type of things they do there. There are many posts about human interactions such as getting a table at the restaurant, customer complaints, working with the evils in the company, boy-girl relationship, interactions between friends, etc. It's quite interesting to read. I went to college for a year in Hong Kong and did not have a good time since there were a bunch of these similar smart but foul mouth people which I have no knowledge that they existed before attending the college. It's tough to get acquianted with them but now reading blogs written by them actually helps me understand the current way of life in Hong Kong. Though I have no plan to move back to there, I still like to stay informed through reading.

無人運転

If you know me, you will know I rarely talk about cars. But over the weekend, I came across this program on PBS, The Great Robot Race, which is basically a competition to challenge people to design a car that will drive itself for over 130 miles of obstacles-filled desert terrain without any human control. The people in the competition has no knowledge of how the path is going to look like or the type of obstacles that will be placed. The route map was handed to them 2 hours before the competition for them to program it in to the car's control system they designed. They still have no ideas whether the path is narrow or what obstacles are along the way coming into the competition. They have to be ready for anything! Once the programming time is up, all they can do is to let the car drives itself and sit back and watch it on the screen, for the first time. I think some 30 teams qualified for the final real run but in the end, it was really a competition between the Blue (Stanford) and the Red (Carnegie Mellon) teams. It's so amazing to watch especially when one car passed the other towards 2/3 of the route. From the program, no only do you see how different teams approached the challenge and what ideas they came up with, but what impresses me most is how the different leadership style between the Blue and Red team (oh, and the guy who decided to enter the competition using a motor bike that can self-balance and make sharp turns). I am sure there were equally brilliant minds in both teams but when under very different leadership style, the work behavior and outcome can be very different. I can see I am more like the leader in the Red Team but it's really the leadership in the Blue team that is more superior and opened my eyes.

Try to catch this program if you get a chance. I promise it will not make you fall asleep. :-)

*You can actually watch the clips here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/program.html