ah, the power of cheese

First Live Performance!

2009-05-15T15:40:00.000-07:00

So, our band's first official live performance is tomorrow evening. Looks like about 75 people are planning on attending - that's a bigger crowd than I expected... We're mostly ready, though. We sure aren't perfect, but I don't think we're going to get much better without devoting much more time to this. Especially me... I seem to be unable to hit certain notes reliably - it's always the same damn notes that I hit flat. Ah well, perhaps the energy of the performance will make it less noticeable :)

For equipment, I've got my Shure SM75 mic, a POD X3, my crappy-but-I-like-it Epiphone Special II guitar (hey, it was cheap!), and a borrowed Gibson amp (not sure what the model is). Been spending quite a bit of money on equipment, but I hope to be able to continue this as a side hobby for a while longer. Once I get my macbook from work, I'll start messing around with recordings at home, too. After this performance is done, we're talking about getting more serious with the original stuff and moving away from covers. Who knows what style we'll end up with. Personally, I think my voice is much better suited either for a more folky sound or a more bluesy/funky sound. Straight up rock is definitely a stretch for me, but I think I've gotten a little better at it.

But, for tomorrow's performance, here's the set list:

Interstate Love Song by STP
Maybe Tomorrow by Stereophonics
Plush by STP
Sweet Surrender (original instrumental)
Hurt by Nine Inch Nails
Alive by Pearl Jam (acoustic arrangement)
Tears in Rain (original, guitar solo)
Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden
Creep by Radiohead
Say It Ain't So by Weezer

That's a whole lotta Rock Band songs :P

Car Dilemma

2008-09-11T22:35:00.000-07:00

So, I just dropped my car off at the shop because it was getting to the point where I couldn't ignore the problems anymore (mainly the fact that my brakes were starting to go). I hadn't brought it in in years because, well, I stopped really driving much about 2 years ago, and even back then it was overdue.

While the various issues are of varying importance (the brakes being the most important, with other issues like needing a clutch replacement, new belts, new struts, etc etc.), the total for all the repairs is $4600. Now, my car is a 95 Civic hatcback, probably worth less than that. Other than the current mechanical issues, the car is in apparently good shape (no structural issues, no problems with the engine itself, etc). So, my current dilemma is this: do I pay for the repairs? Or do I just pay for the really critical stuff so I can drive it home and then buy a new car?

Currently, my running favorite is the Honda Fit (sorry eingy and Seppo :P). It's cheap, it's got good fuel economy, and it is apparently actually fun to drive. But even that is about $14K~$15K. I can certainly afford it (though it puts a dent in my downpayment for a house...), but the question is - do I *need* a new car. On one hand, my Civic will likely last for another few more years. On the other hand, the car is 14 years old and has put in its time. Should I donate the old girl and get a new one? Or should I just stick with it?

Inconsequential Conspiracry Theory part 247

2008-09-10T09:55:00.000-07:00

So, I've been using one of those Gillette Fusion razors (you know, the one that vibrates and has 5 friggin' blades) that I got as a stocking stuffer present last Christmas. To be honest, it's not *that* much of an improvement over the Mach 3, but the vibrating blade does make it feel like it's doing more...

But that's not the point of this post. Since it has a rotor inside, it does, of course, require batteries. Or, a battery, I should say. A single AAA battery is used to power the thing and it even has a little battery power indicator light built into the side to let you know when it's running low on juice. But that's where my little conspiracy theory comes into play.

After using it for a few months, the battery indicator light started flashing. A couple weeks after that, in the middle of usage, the razor started to slow down, then eventually died. Well, I was in the middle of shaving and was in the shower (I have sensitive skin, so shave in the shower) so I couldn't very well just walk out of the shower just to replace the battery. So, instead, I decided to try and take the battery out and put it back in, just for the hell of it. Weird thing happened - despite the fact that the razor had actually *died* on me, it sprang back to life and the indicator light stopped flashing.

And the razor worked without a battery replacement for another 2 months. Just the other day, it happened again - the razor slowed down, then eventually stopped. I tried the same trick again. It sprang back to life and has been fine ever since.

I could understand if the indicator light was simply meant to start flashing when it felt a significant enough drop in power from the battery or whatever, but what really weirded me out was the fact that it actually slowed down as if it was running out of power, then would stop working until I opened it up, and went through the motions of replacing the battery. Maybe Gillette has some deal with the battery companies to help boost AAA battery sales... o_O

Since Everyone Loves Lists

2008-08-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

Hapacheese's List of Top 10 Overrated Movies (IMO) That I've Ever Seen. Oh, and spoilers, duh.

Donnie Darko:
Had some great imagery. A great song (Gary Jules' rendition of "Mad World" is even better than the original). Solid acting. But I simply didn't connect with the story. I had heard from so many people how great the story was, how deep and moving it was, how it made you think, etc, but after watching it, all I could think was, "Okay, he was schizophrenic. How sad." I know I'm missing something, but it didn't intrigue me enough to go back and rewatch it to figure it out.

Titanic:
I even waited until all the hype died down to watch this. I refused to watch it amidst all the fervor, feeling that it would taint my opinion. Yes, the sets were epic. But the story was so predictable and the characters so run of the mill (and despite the fact that I think Decaprio is actually a decent actor, *anyone* could have done that role) that I couldn't find anything that elevated this movie above every other bodice-ripper equivalent. What was it about this movie, other than the simple cultural momentum it gained through marketing, that made it so successful? The mind boggles.

Grease:
Heresy! I know. But I've attempted to watch this movie at *least* 5 times, but have been bored out of my mind every time. I actually like musicals (hell, I've even been in one). I loved Moulin Rouge (though I'm sure there are others out there who would put it on their own list of overrated movies). But I found the characters vapid (I know that was intentional to a degree), I didn't really enjoy the music, and that pretty much kills my interest in it. Sorry eingy :P

Gone With the Wind:
This one's a little odd, I suppose. I probably don't have the proper context to actually understand the significance of this movie. I watched it and didn't find it terribly entertaining. On the other hand, I've watched other classic movies and been greatly entertained - this one, not so much. I know it is meant to capture the lives of individuals, but the movie, for me, feels too clausterphobic (it's hard to describe it). It never feels like the events in the movie matter, perhaps because I never really grew to care for the characters.

Raiders of the Lost Ark:
I know this is heresy for geeks. I'm not saying it's not a good movie - just not sure this is the be all end all of action/adventure movies. There are parts of the movie that feel disjointed, and overall, the movie feels very uneven, quality-wise. A lot of people like it more than Last Crusade, perhaps because Last Crusade feels more Hollywood and less pulpy, but I enjoyed it much more. It had all the elements of Raiders - mythology, adventure, romance, Nazis - but in a much tigher package.

Little Miss Sunshine:
Perhaps this was just a case of unfortunate timing on my part. See, there was a little known movie released a little bit before called "Everything is Illuminated." It was a beautifully quirky, funny, and gut-wrenchingly sad movie. The trailer featured the song "How it Ends," by the Devotchkas, which really captured the feel of the movie. It wasn't actually used *in* the movie, but having seen the trailer, I downloaded it on iTunes. When I went to watch Little Miss Sunshine, having heard all the hype, it didn't help that the opening theme was the exact same song. So, I expected the same sort of emotional rollercoaster... which never really materialized for me. It was a charming road movie, but it never went beyond that for me. Had I been in a different mindset (maybe this one warrants watching again, if I ever get around to it), I may have had a different opinion, but I remembered finishing this movie and being extremely disappointed.

Mystic River:
Right after I finished watching this movie, I remembered thinking it was great. Yet those feelings quickly slipped away over the following days and then I realized that I could hardly even remember what the movie was even *about*. But that seems to be the case with most people. It was extremely hyped when it came out, then it seemed to completely disappear from the collective conscience.

Scream:
Quit possibly the most crystal clear experience I've had with dealing with an overrated movie. Everyone around me would not stop praising this movie - talking about how great and scary it was. I broke down and watched it finally. See, for better or worse, I've been watching slasher flicks and horror flicks for as long as I can remember. Since I was at least 5 or so. I also grew up listening to, reading, and watching Japanese gothic horror - stuff that is on a completely different level of f'ed up. So when I watched Scream, I could appreciate the satirical nature of it, but it felt like the movie couldn't decide if it wanted to be ironically self-acknowledging and campy, or if it wanted to be scary. In the end, it didn't do either.

A Beautiful Mind:
On one hand, this movie is par for the course with November/December Hollywood releases. That's "We're Shooting for an Oscar" territory. So, when you go in with the understanding that you'll get some overacting, you'll get someone who is mentally challenged, etc, it's not a horrible movie. It's just, well, so very average. Yet, it won a ton of Oscars. I like Russell Crowe as an actor when he's used properly. I love Jennifer Connelly (and any guy who says otherwise needs to turn in their Man Card). Yet, there was no chemistry between them whatsoever. None. It's a very polished and well-made movie, but it feels as if it has no soul.

Shrek:
This one is pretty much for Shrek 1 and 2 combined. The first Shrek was... entertaining. It was the first non-Pixar CG movie that I think was at least half-decent, but the acting was horrible and a lot of the jokes fall flat. Shrek 2 was saved *only* by Puss in Boots - you couldn't help but feel that Antonio Banderas was actually having fun playing that character. Take him out, and you've got a relatively bland movie with maybe one or two decent jokes. Again, since this is a list of movies that are overrated and not necessarily movies that sucked, while I was mildly entertained by the first one, the fact that it's one of the highest grossing CG movies of all times is mind boggling.

Dear GOD, American airline companies suck

2008-07-24T22:16:00.001-07:00

Okay, rant time (followed by some doom and gloom speculation...)

So, I've had a streak of bad luck with airlines lately. On my way back from Europe on US Airways (a Star Alliance airline), I was faced with a 3.5 hour delay in Philly (which started off as less than a 2 hour delay, then continually got delayed by 20 minute increments for the next 1.5 hours), my luggage ended up getting completely covered in olive oil from someone else's luggage (which wouldn't have happened if they had actually checked my baggage as priority baggage as they were supposed to, since I'm a Gold Member, but the lady at the check-in counter was on the phone the entire time we were checking in and missed it), etc etc.

Last Friday, I decided to reserve a ticket down to LA from San Francisco using a voucher I got from United (also Star Alliance). I did the entire transaction on the phone since their online system wouldn't allow me to use the voucher. At the end of the conversation, the ticketing person tells me that I then had 24 hours to get to SFO to hand in my voucher in person, otherwise the hold on my tickets would be released and I would lose them. There was no way for him to redeem my voucher via the phone. And this was at 10pm on Thursday - too late for me to take the morning off. I still managed to make it before the ticket counter closed and thought everything was fine.

And this evening at 9pm, less than 24 hours before my flight is supposed to leave, I get a message telling me that my flight is canceled, and that they have automatically put me on the next available flight - leaving at 10pm. Problem is that I had already made dinner plans and whatnot. I called up their customer service to make them do *something* about it. Their only other suggestion was to offer me a 2pm flight. And no matter how many times I told them that I have to work, they didn't seem to understand. *I* finally suggested allowing me to fly (at their cost) on a different airline (and they quickly claimed there were none available), after which point I suggested leaving from a different airport. That worked.

However, when I requested that my *return* flight *also* be changed to return to the same airport (since I would be leaving my car at the parking lot), they told me that I would have to pay a $100 change fee, since it is a "voluntary" change. I explained 4 times very slowly that it was not a voluntary change - I had made plans based on the fact that I was going to arrive in LA before 8pm, and could not change them. And since it would cost me $90 to take a taxi from SFO to San Jose airport to get my car (not to mention I had a late flight and it would mean I wouldn't get home until 1am on Monday morning), it was ridiculous for them to expect me to pay that out of pocket.

I requested to speak to a manager and was told that the manager would tell me the same thing. I asked again and again and told them that I was not going to get off the phone until someone helped me, she finally put me on hold and then changed my return flight for free.

The whole transaction took over an hour.

What the hell is up with this? And they wonder why American airline companies are having so much trouble making money?? It's because nobody expects them to actually live up to any of their promises and their customer service is crap. Which means nobody will pay anything more than bargain prices.

But that sort of brings me to my next question: what's going to happen to the airlines? I've read numerous articles that say American airline companies (except for Southwest) cannot actually turn a profit unless oil is <$80 a barrel (last time it was this cheap was apparently last summer.) Even Richard Branson, head of Virgin Group, says that there will be tons of top airlines closing their doors in the next 12 months. What's going to happen if that comes to pass? That means significantly less business travel, significantly less tourist travel, etc. I don't even want to think about the economic consequences that this would have.

This just makes the fuel issue in the US even more frustrating. There are still people who refuse to accept the fact that we have to change our consumption habits. There are *very* reasonable alternatives to cars in the US; airplanes, not so much.

Ah, Paris

2008-07-15T11:05:00.000-07:00

It's strange. Of all the beautiful places we visited during our romp through Europe, of all the wonderful sights we saw, I find myself missing Paris the most. It's not that I had the most *fun* in Paris - no, each place we visited was wonderful in its own way and I was immensely glad to have gone to each and every place. But there was just something about the first days of our trip that have left an impression on me.

When we arrived in Paris in the morning, I was extremely stressed. It was the first 2 week vacation I had ever taken, so I was naturally worried about work. I had convinced myself to leave my Blackberry off until I was confident I could ignore it unless I needed to email someone (since I didn't have regular wi-fi access to use my iPod) but it was much like riding a bike for the first time without training wheels. I haven't been addicted to my Blackberry in a long time, but the idea of not checking work email for so long was scary.

On top of that, it was my first time in many, many years being in a country where I wasn't fluent in the native language. The only exception to that was my brief jaunt in China 2 years ago, but even then I was so insulated from everything around me (having spent 95% of my time trapped in the office or being shuttled from location to location) that it hardly mattered that I didn't speak Chinese. But this was Paris. I'd heard horror stories (and other stories that contradicted those stories, to be sure) about how Parisians reacted to Americans, particularly those that didn't speak French.

The final straw was simply the utter lack of sleep I was suffering by the time of my arrival. I have a chronic problem of being unable to sleep on planes, so by the time I arrived in Paris, I was running on 24 hours of no sleep (not to mention feeling utterly nasty from the recycled air of the airplane).

So, with phrasebook nervously clutched in hand, we set out to find the Eurorail information booth to get our passes validated. The experience did not go so well. He did not speak much English and I could hardly understand what he said. We made it to Paris unscathed, but had to transfer to another train to get to our exit. Having been spoiled by the Japanese transit system, I was utterly shocked at how difficult it was to find any sign that indicated where we were supposed to go. After asking around, we finally found our line and made it with little incident (except we didn't realize we could just walk out of the station without inserting our ticket into a machine, so we stood at the exit looking for a place to insert the ticket... the attendant just came out and opened the door for us.)

The rest of the day was equally exhausting, but increasingly exciting. I found that my pronunciation of French was good enough for people to understand with little problem (though I still couldn't understand a word of anything anyone was saying) and I could tangibly feel my confidence rising. By the time we got back to our hotel and crashed for the night (I use the word "night" here loosely, since it was only about 7:30 when we went to sleep...), I was immensely satisfied with the way things had gone.

Fast forward to the next morning, and having slept nearly 11 hours, I was fully rested and ready to take on the city. The first item on our agenda was the Eiffel Tower, so we hopped back on the subway and made our way there. We found a quaint little cafe (that looked like it got its fair share of tourists, given that the menus were all available in English) that sat in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, across the street from what looked to be a schoolyard.

It was that moment that I miss. The stresses of the previous day made me completely forget about work and my level of confidence had risen to the point where I was little worried about the rest of the trip. Instead, I chose to relax and take in the atmosphere and revel in the fact that we were there. The breakfast (seen in this picture)we had was extremely simple - a croissant (which was delicious), half a baguette with jam and honey, a large cup of cafe creme, and a glass of orange juice. Quite possibly due to its simplicity, it was thoroughly enjoyable. We were in no rush to get anywhere (since we could see the Eiffel Tower was only about 10 minutes away on foot) so we took our time and enjoyed the beginning of our first full day of vacation.

Of course, by the end of our trip, we were thoroughly exhausted and couldn't wait to get back home to our furry-ridden sanctuary, looking back on it all, that morning in Paris was *exactly* what I was hoping this vacation to be.

Meme-y

2008-06-16T13:23:00.000-07:00

Step forward one step if:

Father went to college
Father finished college
Mother went to college
Mother finished college
Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers
Had more than 50 books in your childhood home
Had more than 500 books in your childhood home
Were read children's books by a parent
Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18
Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18
The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively
Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18
Had or will have less than $5000 in student loans when you graduate
Had or will have no student loans when you graduate
Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs*
Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs*
Went to a private high school
Went to summer camp
Had a private tutor before you turned 18
Family vacations involved staying at hotels
Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18
Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them
There was original art in your house when you were a child
Had a phone in your room before you turned 18
You and your family lived in a single family house
Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home
You had your own room as a child
Participated in an SAT/ACT prep course
Had your own TV in your room in High School
Owned a mutual fund or IRA in High School or College
Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16
Went on a cruise with your family
Went on more than one cruise with your family
Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up
You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family

A couple of caveats/explanations:
- My great grandfather was a physician, but passed away before I was born. Not sure if that counts.
- I'm actually not sure what percentage of college my parents paid for. My first year and a half at college were heavily subsidized by my parents, and the VA paid for a big chunk of my tuition. But after my parents fell on hard times (divorce, etc), I paid for most of it by myself, with the occasional help. Not sure how that breaks down.
- I had a car in high school that wasn't a hand-me-down from my parents, but a hand-me-down from my brother... And it was bought for like $2K. Ended up costing me 3 times that much in upkeep over the next few years, though. So, the fact that my brother went through multiple cars makes me think I should bold that one, but not sure.

We were relatively well off for a good portion of my younger life, but it was also partially because my father liked to live beyond his means. It eventually caught up with us and made things difficult, but I can't honestly say I've ever *truly* been poor, though I've been through some pretty desolate times.

I think my children will be able to mark off a few more things than I have on the list, but who knows.

Gas Con't

2008-06-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but felt I had to continue.

Gas price at local Chevron as of Friday, June 13: $4.55/gallon

So, within the span of 18 days, gas prices have jumped $0.43/gallon. A 10.4% increase in the span of less than a month. How lovely.

In other news, been cleaning out my cubicle at work in preparation for the big move (we're changing buildings). I finally decided to toss all those years old documents that served no purpose other than "just in case" and for nostalgia's sake. It's amazing how much crap you can accumulate over the years. But of course, the day that I decide to tear through all my confidential paperwork, the shredder bins are missing. So I'm left with a giant mound of papers sitting on the floor in my cubicle. Fun.

Gas

2008-06-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

I should really start keeping track of this via my blog.

Price of gasoline per gallon at the local Chevron near my place...

Last Monday (5/26): $4.12/gallon
Last Friday (5/30): $4.30/gallon
Yesterday (6/4): $4.45/gallon

Seriously? And this is just supposed to be due to supply/demand restrictions? Is *anyone* buying this?

Cheese - The World Tour

2008-05-28T15:28:00.000-07:00

Just laid down the final bits of our plans for our European Vacation! It's coming with a very, very hefty price tag (in fact, biggest chunk of cash I've ever spent in my life at once), but I'm hoping it will be very worth it. Here's the plan in a nutshell (starting in late, late June):

Arrive in Paris, spend 2.5 days (2 nights).
Leave via train to Geneva to visit and stay with friend in Geneva for 2 nights.
Again on the train, this time down to Venice for 2 nights.
Then hop over to Rome, where we stay for (gasp!) 3 whole nights.
Hop on a plane over to Athens for (again) 2 nights. Meeting a friend there who has graciously volunteered to be our full time guide :)
And then back to Rome for a night (didn't realize we'd be going to Greece when we got the tickets, otherwise would have returned home from Athens).

It's a crazy hectic schedule, but we wanted to get a taste of little bit of everything, and maybe find a place we'd like to spend more time at next time we go (whenever that will be).

There will be plenty of pictures of me making mockeries of some of the world's most famous locations and treasures, to be certain. And I plan to come home fat, tired, and happy!

Mass Effect

2008-03-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

I couldn't think of a clever pun for the title of this post. So sue me.

So, I've gotten through several games in the last couple of weeks. Primarily, I finished Bioshock and Halo 3. Everything they say about both games is true.

Bioshock is videogames as art personified. It has its flaws (pacing in some of the sections is spotty, most of the audio diaries don't make sense until much later in the game, and the last hour of the game or so feels a little out of place), but completely satisfying in every way. I've enjoyed pouring over the game's nuances in my head after the fact, picking apart the message buried within, and it's tremendous fun. There have only been a handful of games that have managed to pull this off effectively (weaving deeper themes and philosophies throughout the narrative) without resorting to beating the player over the head with heavy-handed symbolism and imagery. Well, I suppose it could be argued that Bioshock was *extremely* heavy-handed in its imagery and naming and whatnot, but they made it work, given the overall setting.

Halo 3 is, well, Halo 3. The story is nonsensical unless you've followed the "offline" fiction (books, etc) and some of the levels are *extremely* tedious... But overall, the game is still one of the best *feeling* FPS games on console to date. While some people complained that the graphics were subpar, I disagree - I think the human facial models and the shadows were poorly done, but the lighting was amazing. Some of the most realistic, subtle lighting engines I've seen, and it really added to the overall atmosphere. This game shines, of course, with online play... which I can't seem to get the hang of. I was fairly decent on Halo 1 multiplayer... and started off okay on Halo 2, but my skills have since drastically deteriorated :(

However, now I have moved on to play Mass Effect. I must first add the caveat that I loves me some Bioware. There is something in the style of the dialog and the presentation of their worlds that grips me someplace deep, so I am usually blind to many of the flaws of their games.

That being said, I *love* Mass Effect. Sure, there are huge swaths of the game that are tedious (why on earth would you make players randomly wander around nearly barren maps looking for random objects that don't appear on the minimaps... and have them do it over nearly vertical mountains?), but the presentation is amazing. Great characters, great world fiction... And while I'm only a small portion of the way into the main storyline, I'm enthralled by the detail put into the entire galaxy. I actually find myself reading the descriptions of each planet - even the ones you can't explore.

The combat... takes some getting used to. Just when I thought I was getting the hang of things, I encountered a boss battle. The enemies are introduced via cutscene, but literally within 1 second of the cutscene ending, I was dead. All I had time to do was to move the camera 45 degrees or so to look for cover, and I died. That wasn't fun at all. Next attempt went much more smoothly (though the fight was still difficult).

And while we're on the subject of pain in the ass parts of the game - why is the player required to go all the way back to the Normandy to switch party members? You'll often find downed probes on the surface of planets and unless you've got the Quarian with you (Tali?), it will usually tell you you don't have enough Tech skill to examine it. So, I inevitably have to return to the Normandy after each mission, trade her into my party, and then trek all the way back to the probe. This could be resolved by simply adding her into the party from the beginning, but I've already invested in playing as the 3 humans...

In addition, I've encountered *many* show-stopping bugs. I examined ore deposits on 2 separate occasions. After you successfully examine them, a little yellow pillar appears next to it, showing that you've claimed the ore. However, the collision detection on the pillar is extremely buggy - on the above-mentioned 2 occasions, the pillar actually spawned on *top* of me, effectively locking me in place. Nothing I could do would shake me free. On one of the occasions, it was actually on a hazardous planet, so I could either load my save game or wait to die slowly.

On another occasion, I encountered a group of geth assaulting a facility. I took out a couple snipers, but then high tailed it out of there to let my shields replenish. When I came back, that section of the map was empty. I thought it was strange, so I exited the MAKO, and suddenly the structures and enemies all spawned on top of me, causing me to get stuck inside the building's geometry. Fun.

And yet *another* time, I was speaking with one of the crew members on the Normandy. I accidentally exited the conversation (another complaint - why the hell does the cursor default to ending the conversation???? I've accidentally exited out of at least 5 conversations), and immediately clicked on the person again... For some reason, even though they weren't in my party at the time, it took me to that character's equipment screen, and wouldn't let me exit. I could pull up the start menu (which was overlayed over the character screen for some odd reason), so I was able to load my game.

And there's a lot of minor gripes, too. Like the above-mentioned cursor default during conversations. You can speed through conversations by pressing the X button, but if you do it one too many times, you'll exit the conversation. Or the fact that buying equipment from the requisitions officer on the Normandy only allows you to compare stats on the equipment the main character has - you can't look at anyone else's stuff. Or the fact that to access the section of the ship where most of your party hangs out, you have to go through an elevator that takes 25 seconds to reach its destination.

All that being said, it's still one of the more interesting RPGs out there. From the Blade Runner-esque synth background music used on the title screen to the *crazy* detail in the Codex, if you're a fan of sci-fi and/or RPGs, it's hard to go wrong with this one.

Healthiness...

2008-02-22T11:57:00.000-08:00

...I has it!

We just had a "health and wellness fair" at work and they had a dude measuring body fat. I've been doing pretty good with my weight loss and exercise (well, that last part's only kinda true - hadn't exercised all year up until this last week, but have exercised 3 out of the last 5 days). Got measured and I came in at 13.1%!! Not bad, considering I was thinking I'd come in around 18~20%.

Though, for the first time in my life, I have high blood pressure :( 141/84. Not sure what to do about it, though. I don't use a whole lot of salt, drink a lot of water, have a few glasses of red wine now and then... More exercise, perhaps?

Speaking of which, I tried bikram yoga for the first time last night. It goes without saying, but GAWDDAMN it's hot in there. Nearly passed out during the first 30 minutes because all we were doing was standing poses. Once we hit the mats, I was fine, though. I bought a 2 week pass, so I'm going to try to go as many times as possible in the next couple of weeks and see if I feel any difference. After the session last night, I was tired, but I felt surprisingly refreshed. I wasn't nauseous or drained - just pleasantly relaxed and felt like I could just slip into a nice, deep sleep.

Into the new year...

2008-01-03T10:08:00.000-08:00

2008. My how time flies. It was funny when it turned 2001 and seeing how far away from the reality depicted in the movie "2001" we were, but now we're a mere 2 years from its sequel. Incredible.

The holidays were fairly uneventful, but good. Spent a bit of time catching up with old friends, meeting new friends, and just chilling with family. Played a helluva lot of Wii Sports (still is by far the most perfect game on Wii - several of my mom's friends are now considering buy a Wii *just* for Wii Sports), Guitar Hero 2, and wailing on my new Epiphone Les Paul! It's a fairly solid, but bare-bones guitar, but I realize more and more how much I enjoy just even practicing scales. Between my friend asking me to do vocals for him at a local cafe and Seppo wanting to put together a band, I'm really excited about actually doing some music! Though, I'm not nearly good enough to actually be able to play guitar in a band, so I'll be stuck either doing vocals or wailing on a cowbell :D

Back in the office now, and I need to get myself in gear. One of my goals over the next year is to finally make Director, which means I need to prove myself as a manager. No more messing around. I don't intend to be a hard-as-nails type of slave driver (hell, I don't think I could be even if I tried), but I definitely need to step up. I'm getting sick of just going through the motions every week. I need to accomplish something.

Another goal for myself this year is to either take some serious steps towards buying a house/townhouse/condo, or get married. We've been putting off the wedding for many different reasons, and the house is the current one. But if that goal isn't realistically going to happen within the next year or so, I say screw it. We're not getting any younger, and we're financially stable enough to be able to realistically start a family (though I'm not sure we could realistically start a family *and* save up for a house...). One of my step-dad's friends that came over for New Years is actually a real estate agent down in LA, and has a lot of contacts up here, and said he'd hook me up with names and info. We'll see how that goes.

Turns out my Xbox got repaired much faster than I expected! It is apparently waiting for me at the Fedex office as I type. They tried delivering it on 12/31, but being down in LA, I wasn't there to receive it. Kudos to MS for having repairs done over the holidays, but boo on MS for having faulty designs to begin with. Still, the process for getting my Xbox replaced was about as painless as one could expect. I spent a total of 10 minutes on the phone with customer service and they were efficient, polite, and knowledgeable. While I hope people never have to deal with a broken Xbox (I've been going through withdrawals), if you do, at least MS takes care of you properly.

But, while my Xbox was out of commission, the stack-o-games has piled up. I wasn't intending on purchasing more games, but all the good stuff just kept going on sale! Picked up COD4 ($39 at Target), Assassin's Creed ($39 at Best Buy), and Zak and Wiki for Wii (not on sale, but figure this is a game that's not going to be on shelves for long). Will pick up Mass Effect at some point, as that was the game I was looking forward to the most, but not until after I finish Bioshock :P

Cheap Wine!

2007-11-07T16:00:00.000-08:00

We stopped by Trader Joe's for the first time in a long time on our way home from the gym, and I figured I should take a chance with one of their cheap wines. It's easy to find a good, expensive wine, but to find a wine under $10 that is decent? Not so easy.

Ended up picking up a bottle of Bear's Lair Cabernet Sauvignon. It was only $4! I was a bit hesitant, but figured for $4, it was worth a shot. Took it home, opened it up, and let it breathe just for a bit. I poured myself a little taste and I have to admit I was surprised! Not a whole lot of depth to the flavor and a little dry (lots of tannins) for some people, but for an everyday sort of wine, you could do much, much worse. It doesn't have nearly as much body as, say, a Stag's Leap cab (at $40 a bottle, it better be good), but it's hard to justify drinking a $40 bottle of wine with any sort of regularity. At 1/10 the price, I'd say the Bear's Lair was a bargain. Thumbs up :)

RROD'ed!!

2007-11-05T11:37:00.000-08:00

Aaaaaand the X360 has gone kaput. Utterly randomly, too, I might add. It's more saddening than anything, really. I am a huge proponent of the X360 because of how great the library is and how well-done XBL is. But the hardware issues are unbelievable. I think there's maaaaybe one or two people that I know who haven't had to replace their Xboxes (that have had them for over a year). Unbelievable, really. Mine literally just gave out randomly. I was playing Bioshock for about an hour or two, turned it off to eat lunch, then went back to playing when I noticed all the texturing was wrong. Within 5-10 minutes, I got the red-checkered crash, and then games stopped working for longer than 5 minutes a run. I gave it a week rest or so, then my next try at playing resulted in the red ring. Booo-urns.

Challenge

2007-10-31T14:12:00.000-07:00

Hm. I was challenged with listing 5 of my favorite songs and why they mean so much to me. Given that I love music as much as I do, this is proving to be hard - picking 5 and only 5? So many different songs have meant so many different things to me over the years... So, I'm going to cheat. These aren't necessarily my *favorite* songs - these are 5 songs that have some of the most powerful memories attached to them (that I can think of right now).

With or Without You, U2 - I know, I'm a sucker for cheese (duh). But this is possibly my favorite ballad. It really gained meaning to me in high school, when I began dating this girl that I became obsessed over, regardless of the pain that it was causing. She took me for granted, but it was my fault for letting her do it to me, time and time again. That was the start of several bad relationships and it took me another 6 years to finally find stable ground again. While this song gained meaning in that first relationship, it pretty much defined every single one I had after that.

This House is Empty Now, Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach - Another depressing tune. My parents got divorced when I was in college, and suffice it to say it was a *very* messy divorce. While my brother absorbed the brunt of the damage (living near my parents and all), at the same time, it was frustrating being so far away. I felt powerless over the immature feuding that ensued. It was my mom's decision and I supported her in it, but I couldn't stop feeling sorry for my father. She had every right to divorce him and I'm glad she did, but he's so caught up in his own world that I still don't think he understands exactly what happened and why. I was watching the Conan O'Brien show late one night at my mom's new apartment when I went down to visit some time right after the divorce, and Elvis Costello came on to sing this song. I held it back at first, but when I went to bed that night, the tears wouldn't stop.

Moon Over Bourbon Street, Sting - Technically, it's not this specific song, but the entire album (I just chose this song because it's one of the songs I enjoy singing in the shower). My brother and I used to travel to Japan - just the 2 of us - during summer vacation. My parents would pack us onto a plane and get rid of us for 2 months a year when we were kids (until I hit 5th grade). It was *awesome*. We spent a lot of time at our grandparents' house and our aunt & uncle's house. While they did make us study some Japanese almost every day for a short period each day before we were allowed to play, but once we were, the three of us (including my cousin, who is exactly 1 year younger than me) would go and do everything we could - build plastic robot models bought from the nearby model shop, go playing in the parks and have little adventures, collect bugs, go to matsuri, eat lots of great food, etc. During one particularly memorable trip through the mountains to go to the beach, we listened to the Dream of the Blue Turtles album for quite a long time. It always takes me back...

I, F-blood - It's a Japanese song by one of the artists I was fairly into back in college named Fujii Fumiya. He and his brother did a little side project that they dubbed "F-blood" (since they shared the "Fujii blood"). On that album is this song. The song does a few plays on the English word "I" and the Japanese word "ai" (love), and the song is about the fact that he had almost lost his way and was hitting rock bottom when he met a girl, and that because he met her at that specific time in his life, it changed everything. It means a lot to me because I was going through something extremely similar. I was at the tail end of the above-mentioned 6 years of instability and was hitting rock bottom after having lived with a suicidal, bipolar girl for a year. Having just gotten through that and coming out alive on the other side, I had managed to get over a lot of my old hangups and issues. It was that specific timing that allowed me to be who I am today, and to actually make my current relationship work the way it has.

Passage, Yamazaki Masayoshi - Another Japanese song. Heavily folk-influenced (my dad listened to a lot of folk when I was little... probably has a little to do with why I like this guy's sound). I listed this particular song because it was the first song that I really felt described me *personally*. While that feeling has certainly died down a bit (it's a fairly melodramatic song), it still makes me think back on the feelings I experienced at various stages in my life. I won't go into horrendous detail, but the song is about reflection - he thinks on the people that have come and gone in his life, the promises that were left unfulfilled, but in the end, he talks of redemption and holding onto one's dreams.

There's my bit of melodrama for the day :)

My Meme. Let me show you it.

2007-10-03T09:55:00.000-07:00

Stolen from eingy and Seppo (who subsequently stole it from Niralth)...

20 years ago, I...
1) moved from Diamond Bar, CA to Walnut, CA to avoid going to the really bad high school in the area.
2) most contact with all friends and was fairly lonely for a while, being as shy as I used to be.
3) finally started getting a deeper understanding of martial arts.

15 years ago, I...
1) had finally come out of my shell and become extroverted (growing 7-8 inches in a year will do that)
2) was in the middle of my first long-term relationship... and lost my virginity (too early, perhaps)
3) took part in my first theater production (first and only musical I ever did, too... Though, I also did a version of "Fame," but I didn't sing in that one.)

10 years ago, I...
1) had just ended one of the most unstable relationships of my life and soon after, met the woman I would spend the rest of my life with.
2) had made the decision to quit my bio major and to study Japanese literature.
3) met the circle of friends that would become my surrogate family.

5 years ago, I...
1) had made the decision not to go back to school for my PhD in literature and to see where this career would take me.
2) finally got myself on track financially by paying off the first of many loans.
3) lost my first friend to an unfortunate disease.

2 years ago, I...
1) lost my American grandfather, the first relative I had ever lost.
2) changed departments within the company, causing my career direction to shift considerably.
3) made a commitment to man-up and stick by my woman to help her find her calling in life.

1 year ago, I...
1) achieved the financial goal I had previously assumed I would reach at age 35.
2) lost my second grandfather, whom I had at least had the opportunity to spend more time with, due to all my work travel.
3) lost my best friend of 11 years (my cat) who was the first pet I'd ever raised entirely by myself... but soon after, met the 2 new rascals that would continue to terrorize me for the next year.

Yesterday, I...
1) discovered that one of said rascals has discovered that he can actually get on top of the kitchen counter, making for all new levels of disaster.
2) made the definitive decision that I would make director by next year, dammit.
3) finished setting up my iPod Touch that I got for my birthday and marveled at how far techology had come in such a short period of time.

Today, I...
1) was late for a meeting that was moved up *while* I was driving to work, and by the time I got to work, the meeting was already finished.
2) will kick HR in the but to make sure they're actually moving forward with the hiring a new assistant thing.
3) will cook dinner and do some cleaning when I get home, because it sounded like the woman was a little stressed out over the phone a little earlier.

Tomorrow, I'll...
1) try to get around to playing at least one of the games in the stack of games I picked up over the weekend.
2) turn in my damn expense reports.
3) call both of my grandmas.

In 5 years, I'll...
1) finally be married and hopefully have 1 or 2 kids.
2) hopefully have made senior director or VP at this company, or another one.
3) finally have a place I can call "home," not just a rental that I move out of after a year or two.

Being 30...

2007-10-01T09:21:00.000-07:00

...feels suspiciously just like being 29, except I keep expecting to turn a corner, fall down, and break my hip or something :P

In all seriousness, it's actually sorta interesting. I'm in the best shape I've been in in over 6 years, I'm in a good place in my career, I've got a good fiance... and despite having 2 mildly mentally handicapped cats, things are good. I think it's been a bigger shock for my mom than for me (since I'm "the baby" of the family).

I think I'll celebrate with a nice bottle of cabernet tonight that I'd been saving for a while. That sounds nice :)

Cheese! Glorious Cheese!

2007-09-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

As you could probably tell from my previous beer purchases, I've been hitting the local Whole Foods market quite often. There is one right across the street from the train station I take to work, which makes it easy to stop by on my way home and pick up a few veggies, cheeses, and whatnot. The first cheese I've picked up is this:

Coastal English cheddar (from Ford Farm in Dorset, England)! They had a few wedges out on display and the texture and smell just oozed delicious, so I picked up a small wedge. It's a very mature cheddar that has quite a kick to it, but the most notable thing for me was the fact that it had little bits of crunchy goodness in it! I originally thought this was salt (as the cheese is fairly salty), but apparently it is calcium crystals - an alleged unique property of this cheese.

Very crumbly compared to your garden variety chedder, but the taste has much more impact. It was almost a little too "stinky" for the fiance, so I got to enjoy it mostly on my own (and it went perfectly with a glass of bitter or sauvignon blanc). Out of the cheeses that I've bought myself, it's one of the best I can recall (as I've bought some very crappy cheeses before... other people always seemed to have much better luck than me). Highly recommended if you like the cheddar.

Moscato d'Asti and another beer

2007-09-10T21:53:00.001-07:00

So, one of our favorite drinks of late is Moscato d'Asti - it's a carbonated white muscat wine, most suitable for dessert. It's very sweet, though not as syrupy as its carbonation-less cousin. With 7% alcohol, it's about as strong as a strong beer, but given its sweetness (and the relatively small bottles it tends to come in) you'll rarely ever drink enough to get more than a slight buzz (which are both the reasons why my fiance likes it).

We picked up a bottle of Nivole Moscato d'Asti from (yet again) the local Whole Foods market and it was very satisfying. It has a clear muscat flavor that isn't overwhelmingly sweet and the flavor is crisp with only a soft aftertaste. While I generally don't like many dessert wines, I'm finding that the Moscato d'Asti is what wine coolers want to be when they grow up.

In addition to the Moscato d'Asti, there was a bottle of beer that caught my attention, simply because the label claimed it was "The World's Oldest Brewery." I picked up the bottle of Weihenstaphaner (Hefeweissbier Dunkel - it comes in a lighter version, too) and took it home. Lo and behold, according to Wikipedia, it *is* indeed the world's oldest operating brewery. Brewed at Weihenstephan Abbey (established in 1040!!! ...although there are some indications that brewing started as early as 768), it is a Bavarian beer (I'll have to ask my German friend to see what the locals think of it). Personally, I enjoyed it. It wasn't as distinctive as the Franziskaner in my opinion, but was definitely smoother - sweet going in, but leaves a slightly bitter aftertaste. Given that it's a dark hefeweiss beer, it's a bit on the heavy side, so a single bottle will likely weigh you down if you are drinking it with heavy foods.

A Close Call - Beer-related

2007-08-27T10:07:00.001-07:00

Speaking of beer, I went out for dinner on Friday night with the lady and had a single beer. Just a little something to relax and enjoy my meal with. We took our time eating, went for a little bit of a stroll after dinner (well, more like a walk to Beard Papa's and then a walk to the parking structure) and by the time we got back to the car, what little effect the beer had had on me had worn off. I decided to drive us back to our place (only about 2 miles away) and took the usual route home. We got on the main road and suddenly, we hit traffic. The local police had set up a sobriety checkpoint!

Now, I wasn't worried because 1) I'd only had a single beer about 2 hours prior and 2) I'm no lightweight to begin with (and I felt absolutely lucid). That being said, I *was* worried because I get that goddamn Asian blush thing going the moment my lips touch alcohol. But, as we sat in line, I saw them waving cars through by the handful, so I figured we were going to be on our merry way. No dice. For whatever reason (my usual bad luck, karma, whatnot), we are randomly selected from the group and get pulled off to the side (it wasn't because I was pink or anything because they waved us down from *really* far away). I pull up to the stop sign, the cop greets us, and I offer my driver's license and the biggest smile I can muster, "Good evening, officer." He shines the light in my face and probably sees the pinkness. My heart skips a beat. The fiance has tensed up in a manner not quite unlike Han Solo frozen in carbonite. The cop asks me a series of questions and then makes me follow his finger around with just my eyes. Luckily, he smiles, hands me back my license, then tells me I can go on ahead.

As I pulled away, I get a sudden head rush as my heart finally started beating again. Now, I know drinking and driving is no laughing matter and should be taken very seriously. Had I had *any* doubts about my ability to drive, I would have passed on the keys to my fiance (as I usually do). Nevertheless, a harrowing experience to say the least.

Beer!

2007-08-24T10:32:00.000-07:00

Since foomfoom is feenin' for some beer, I'll go ahead and kick this thing off with 2 reviews of beers I've recently tried.

First up:

Franziskaner - Made in Germany, it's an import beer that you can find at some major supermarkets (I've found it at Safeway on occasion, as well as Whole Foods), though they only seem to carry the hefeweisse. Being an unfiltered wheat bear, it's a very heavy beer, but given the full flavor and sweetness of these types of beers, it's one of my favorites. This beer in particular has a thick, sweet taste (almost honey-like) with just a hint of bitterness at the end. Given that it's an import, it probably has its fair share of preservatives in it (which might account for the bitter aftertaste... or I might just be on crack) - but I hear that there are some local bars that have this on tap!

Until now, I'd primarily been drinking the Widmer and/or Pyramid hefeweizens (both solid beers), but I've found that the Franziskaner has a much deeper flavor. This one gets two thumbs up!

Next up:

Grolsch - I picked up this beer (Dutch import) just based on the cool bottle design. It has a pop top that can be opened without a bottle opener, and can be resealed. Pretty nifty. That being said, it's a pilsner beer (a pale lager) that has quite a bit more body than most pale lagers found in the US. Even my not-much-of-a-beer-fan fiance took a taste and could taste the different layers to the flavor (the initial bitterness, followed by a light wheaty flavor, which ends with a really sweet finish). It was a pleasant surprise and while it doesn't have the same impact as a good hefeweizen, it was much lighter and more suited to drinking alongside a meal (whereas a hefeweizen can be a meal in itself o_O).

One and a half thumbs up! Not quite as rich as, say, a Yebisu lager IMO, but one of the better lagers I've tried in the US.

Note to Self

2007-08-22T10:06:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving this as a marker for myself to start blogging about the various wines, beers, and other drinks that I try over the years. I realized that I've been trying a lot of different drinks, but rarely remember the ones that I really like. So, I figured I should just start blogging about it all and add a few labels for easy finding.

I've recently tried a couple of red wines, 2 new beers, and a moscato d'asti, but I don't remember the names right now. I'll grab the corks (and bottle) tonight and write up a couple of reviews!

Points of View

2007-08-06T17:00:00.000-07:00

So, I've been posting on this chat forum that is for hapas. I came across it by chance and I've ended up meeting a few of the members - they've all been extremely nice people and I'm glad I met them.

But, there's been an interesting bit of drama on the boards. Two of the members met with another one and told her that she had "an endearing Japanese accent" (or something similar). She was born and raised in England, so she was annoyed at the comment, but they tried to clarify by saying, "No, it's cute, really." That simply infuriated her more. Also, these two other members began talking on the boards (I don't know if it's intentional or what) in a mock-Japanese accent by replacing their Rs with Ls, so the other girl got pissed and left.

She came back recently and explained why she left, and how she was even further annoyed that several other unrelated members took to posting in the mock Japanese accent. I stuck my head into the conversation (perhaps where it didn't belong) and explained that while I don't know/understand the start of the drama, I was pretty sure that most of the other people were doing it simply because of the irony/humor. Many of the hapas on the boards grew up in western countries speaking both languages, and several of them have encountered some discrimination because they look Asian. I explained that much like how the term "hapa" was reclaimed by people of mixed heritage to be a source of pride, perhaps these others were using the fake accent to simply be ironic (in that they are perceived as being Asian and expected to speak that way, so they are hamming it up).

She responded by saying that it is offensive to hapas that grew up in Japan who don't speak English well, despite the fact that to full-Japanese people, they look foreign and therefore should speak perfect English. No matter how I tried to explain that we all have different experiences and people cope in different ways (and despite the fact that I said that I know that it isn't necessarily the intent of an action, but rather the result that is most important), she still claims that other people don't have a right to make light of the situation...

I understand that some people have more baggage than others. But does that mean nobody should be able to poke fun at themselves? I understand the struggle, but perhaps it is my own lack of serious baggage (or my willingness to make fun of myself so often) that I simply can't understand why she gets upset about people making fun of themselves. The initial issue - sure, I can understand her being upset. It was patronizing. But the other situations? That'd be like someone telling me I can't make fun of my own thumbs or my huge noggin because they had issues dealing with it growing up.

Maybe some things just aren't reconcilable.

Harry Potter and the Experience of a Lifetime

2007-07-24T14:48:00.000-07:00

I will keep this post spoiler free!

So, I picked up the book on late Sunday afternoon and finished reading at around 7:00 pm on Monday evening. (Shh... I was reading at work! What? It was a slow day! Leave me alone!) Without going into any detail, I was duly impressed with the finale. More than anything, though, the weirdest part was the fact that it was the first time I had finished reading a Potter book without feeling the need to go and blab about it to someone, *anyone*. No more mysteries. No more wondering who is going to die next and who is actually good/evil and what do all the hints mean. It's done. And it was a helluva ride.

Sure, there are much more eloquently written books out there of much greater consequence. Sure, it's popcorn entertainment... but it was immensely satisfying. How often does a phenomenon like this come along where an entire nation... no, most of the modern world gets swept up along with you? While I can understand being upset at just how fevered the hype had grown around the latest book, what with all the stuff happening in the world, on a personal level, I had invested so much time and energy in following the series that I was so happy it had finally come to a close.

30 years ago, we had Star Wars. Harry Potter really was the next big thing to come along in the same way (actually, bigger). When is the next time something like this will happen? In another 30 years? 50 years? Who knows? I suppose that's part of the fun - geeking out with fellow fans, picking apart the characters and events afterwards, etc. While it's satisfying doing the same for other books, there are very few books that have "launch events" (god, I hate that term) like HP did for all the later books. Much like an online videogame, there is simply much more to do and talk about when you pick it up early and you know everyone is at the same place, experience-wise, as you are. You get to analyze it together, form your own theories, etc. before you get influenced by more well-established ideas. (I was correct on most of my theories in Half Blood Prince, but was maybe 50/50 for the last book...)

I'd personally like to meet JK Rowling and shake her hand on a job well done. She's no Shakespeare, but she certainly knows what she's doing. Hell, Lucas couldn't even write his third movie without screwing up details. Harry may be an insufferable twit most of the time, but the world she created was just so *perfect* for what it was created for. She knew what she wanted to say, she knew what her audience wanted, and walked that line quite carefully.

I think I'll go back and read all 7 books just for the hell of it.

Ratatouille - My thoughts

2007-07-03T11:15:00.000-07:00

Warning! Some *very* small spoilers for Incredibles and Ratatouille...

Warmth - it's the one word that all of Brad Bird's movies (Iron Giant, Incredibles, and now, Ratatouille) have in common. He has an easiness about his writing that invites warmth without sappiness, and always keeps the primary themes of the stories front and center without losing himself in the usual writer's trap of sugar-coating everything until the story has lost any edge it had to begin with.

In the case of The Incredibles, Brad Bird tackled the clichés of the superhero genre with a dash of Nietzschean philosophy, sprinkled with a touch of family drama. The struggle of the protagonists was always front and center, and their problems as superheroes and as simple members of a nuclear family were interwoven so skillfully that the audience is not forced to over-focus on one aspect or the other - they are meant to take in the characters as wholes, rather than a sum of various clichéd parts. The marital issues the Parrs are faced with are never toned down as Mr. Incredible deals with his mid-life crisis (to an almost pitiful level at times) and Elastigirl is torn in agony over the question of her husband's fidelity. These are meant to be real people. This strong element of reality, despite the surreal context, is what helps keep the movie relevant and interesting to the audience.

Ratatouille is no different. The concept is absurd - a rat who aspires to be something more... a cook, no less! He has grandiose dreams of someday overcoming the trash-delving habits of his brethren and enjoying true cuisine. In the hands of any other writer or director, this would likely have turned into any other saccharine-sweet child's flick, full of cheap gags and not-so-subtle innuendo jokes aimed to keep the parents entertained. While there are certainly plenty of caricatures portrayed in the movie, the focus is never on any single shtick. There is no Robin Williams to keep the children over-stimulated (I love the guy as a comedian, though). Instead, we get a wonderful examination of the art and joy of cooking and of chasing one's dreams. The movie is never dumbed down and never resorts to cheap pop-culture references instead of good writing. While the story operates on multiple levels, there is no distinct "child level" and "parent level" - it is all one and the same, something completely unique to Brad Bird and Pixar these days.

And the animation! There is simply no other company in the entire industry that comes within miles of Pixar's level of craft. From their technological accomplishments (oh god, the lighting!) to their subtlety in presentation, every moment of the movie is visually perfect. Painstaking care has been poured into everything from the selection of colors for each scene to eerily realistic textures used on the foods. Above and beyond the simple visual appeal of the CG, Pixar's animators have once again proven that nobody is anywhere near them. Despite Shrek's monetary success, their characters remain wooden and stiff. Pixar has managed to make CG truly organic.

At the movie's climax, there is a scene that comes so suddenly and so elegantly that for anyone who has ever had a meal so beautiful, so *perfect* that it has brought tears to your eyes will have trouble fighting back tears once again. You will feel a rush that will call to mind every memorable meal you have had and will cause tears to well up not out of sadness or out of joy, but simply out of release - as if you yourself had been the one to take the bite out of that perfect meal. But, then again, that may be because I simply enjoy my food - and Brad Bird - a little too much.

An Unexpected Twist

2007-07-03T09:29:00.000-07:00

So, the fiance and I went to see Ratatouille last night for her birthday... And I will post my review of the movie a little later. But on the way home, while we were reliving moments from the movie and discussing our opinions on the details, we pulled up slowly to an intersection to make a left turn when a plump woman slowly ran across the road (we weren't at the intersection yet, and she wasn't at a crosswalk). Since we had a red left arrow, we were already going slow, so I just slowed down a little more to make sure she was out of the way, but a car coming the other direction (he had a green light) obviously wasn't paying attention. Neither was she.

It all happened in slow motion... most likely because the guy was only going about 25-30mph, and she was running at a slow jog. Every nanosecond that passed, I expected one or the other to stop. I kept thinking to myself, "Do I honk? No, one of them has to notice the other... They're not *that* oblivious*. But what happens if I *don't* honk? But what if I honk and the lady looks at me, *then* gets hit by the other..." And then I had my answer. She was up on the hood, then on the street, moaning in pain.

I jumped out of my car and was about to dial 911 when luckily a cop drove by. I flagged him down and he immediately called for an ambulance. There wasn't any blood and she was certainly conscious (and the guy was driving slowly enough), so I don't think there was any immediate threat to her life, though I don't doubt she was in incredible pain. But still! How could neither one have seen the other? The guy should have been paying attention and had ample time to stop. The lady shouldn't have been crossing the road against a red light (and outside the crosswalk) in the middle of the night *and* she should have seen the car coming. I mean he had his headlights on, the engine was loud, etc.

Luckily, I didn't get dragged in to be a witness or anything, so I just got back in my car and drove off. She's lucky she's alive, but I can't help but think that both people involved are just idiots.

Ridiculous Mundane Purchase

2007-05-29T14:08:00.000-07:00

This week, I made a ridiculous, yet mundane purchase. I went out and got me a Dyson vacuum. Set me back about $400 after all was said and done (sticker price was $399, but it was on sale for $379, and had a 10% off coupon, along with $10 in gift certificates), but man... I love it.

So, we had a fairly powerful bagless vacuum before this one. It had done its duty for a good, I dunno, 4 years or so? The other day, it just stopped sucking up stuff. Luckily, we had a spare (both vacuums were gifts from my dad) that just simply sucked... err... didn't suck enough... whatever.

We needed to vacuum the apartment because it was simply a mess. We managed to fill up the entire (small) cannister on the old vacuum with dust and cat hair, but I could still see balls of fur stuck to the carpet that no matter how hard I tried, simply couldn't get the vacuum to pick up.

Frustrated, we went to Best Buy the next day with coupons in hand, and picked up a Dyson DC07. As soon as I got home, I fired it up and proceeded to clean the house again. Despite only being 24 hours after vacuuming the first time, I managed to fill up the entire (gigantic) cannister on the Dyson. There was enough fur to make a whole new cat, and not to mention a layer of dust about an inch thick at the bottom. Scary.

The vacuum also came with a 5 year warranty, so hopefully my investment will last me a good long while - I don't plan on buying another $400 vacuum any time soon. While it is ridiculously expensive, I think I will be getting my money's worth with this thing...

A Special Kind of Dumb

2007-05-21T16:56:00.000-07:00

I am, of course, referring to my cute little kitties. Butter, to be specific. We took the cats (all 3) to the vet on Saturday because it'd been a while, and Peaches (the old one) had been losing weight recently. We weren't sure if it was because of the new kittens chasing her around, the fact that we switched food brands, or if she had developed a kidney disease like her brother.

As always, it was an adventure and a half getting them into their respective cages (wish Ryuhi was there... he makes it so easy), but once they were in, we were off to the vet!

Out comes Butter first. He's the special one. Doctor puts him on the table and weighs him in... 15.8 lbs! Impressive. Doctor is not so impressed, though, and gives him a tsk tsk tsk. After a little anal probing and ear checking, he's good to go! So off the table he goes. Peaches, in the meantime, has been whisked away to the back room to collect blood and urine for tests...

Next up is Bacon. But, as we get him out and onto the table, we hear this scraping sound coming from somewhere below. I look down to see Butter pushing his kitty carrier across the room. "Odd," I thought to myself. I look at the vet and she looks back and says, "I think he's trying to get back into the cage... Maybe." She was trying to suppress a smile. I look back at Butter and realize why. He was pushing his nose into the little air holes on the side of the cage, desperately trying to get back in through a hole that was about 1.5 inches wide. I nearly lost the will to live. We have a dumb cat. Yay. I stop him for a second, then show him the other side of kitty carrier where the door is, and he lets out a happy meow and waltzes in. Poor, sweet Butter.

Bacon weighed in at 16.8 lbs, at which point the doctor warned us the cats needed to go on a diet. They're only 1 year old!!! We have failed as parents :( Ah well, they seem to like their new diet food better than the old stuff, anyway.

Peaches was brought back looking oh-so-unhappy, having gone through the trauma of having her blood taken and being manhandled by the assistants. We tried to get her back in her cage, but she just froze in place. I didn't realize what was going on, but the fiance looked over and said to the assistant, "Oh my god, I think she's peeing on you." Sure enough, she was letting out a nice, long stream of kitty urine all over the assistant's leg. "Revenge is mine!" is probably what was going through her head.

I'm sure they love us at the vet now.

Regrets

2007-05-15T16:31:00.000-07:00

My biggest regret from this last trip to Japan was that I didn't bring my camera. At the Shinagawa train station, I walked by a man that I swear looked *exactly* like Beaker from the Muppets. I reached into my bag to get my camera and realized that I didn't bring it with me.

It made me sad.

In other news, I took a tour around Tokyo with one of the producers that came along for the trip, and met up with one of her friends who is living in Yokohama teaching English. Both super geeks. The girl living in Yokohama has the entire lineup of Pokemon creatures memorized in both English and Japanese. Impressive.

Geek girls rock :D

Back in the USA

2007-04-24T13:17:00.000-07:00

Back from another trip to Japan. This time was a mixture of work and vacation, though primarily the latter. Worked for a day and a half, then had a little over a week to spend with family and friends.

My mom and step-dad were also in Japan, as we were there to "celebrate" the 1 year anniversary of my grandfather's death. He actually died in February of last year, but my grandma decided that February was too cold to ask everyone to come to Tokyo, so we waited until April. It was still pretty cold (in the low 50s when it's normally in the high 70s to low 80s) and raining, but better than snowing, I suppose.

After work ended, I spent a day taking a friend and her roommate around Tokyo. Y'all remember the half-Chinese girl I met on the airplane back in January? Well, she happened to be in Tokyo (though our trips only overlapped by a day or so) for the first time, so I offered to take her and her roommate around to see anything they hadn't gotten around to. So, we headed over to Asakusa (PGR fans should know what it looks like). We spent some time looking around the bazaar and bought lots of rice crackers and knick knacks for friends, then headed over to the docks to take a ferry over to Odaiba. We ended up taking the Himiko ferry, which looks like this:

It was supposedly inspired by Japanese anime. It was pretty nifty, but there wasn't really much to see from the ferry, so we just chatted the whole way. After we arrived in Odaiba, we realized that there really wasn't much to do other than go shopping (which they had already done), go to the giant Sega arcade "Sega Joypolis" (which we really didn't have time for), or go on the ferris wheel (ditto). So, we headed toward the train station and made our way back to Shinjuku.

After heading to the top of Tocho (Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building) to get a view of the Tokyo sprawl, we hiked all the way over to Harajuku, through Omotesando, then over to Aoyama in search for this supposedly famous vegetarian restaurant listed in the roommate's guidebook. She was vegan, which when translated into Japanese means "s/he who does not eat," so it was proving to be a challenge to find places where we could all find something to munch on. After walking around for about an hour and getting no help from the locals, we stopped by an AM/PM to ask if anyone in there had heard of the restaurant. Luckily, someone had heard of it, and told us it was right around the corner (which was on a *different* corner than the guide book had it listed on). We had just walked by that corner and didn't see anything... which was curious.

We headed back and took a good look at the little billboard outside that listed all the names of the restaurants hidden inside. There it was on the 1st floor. A quick look around the first floor revealed a Thai restaurant, a grill, a bar, and an empty room. Wait a second. I went into the bar and asked the bartender what happened to the vegetarian restaurant and sure enough, it had moved to the other side of Tokyo the month prior. Crap.

We ended up going over to an Italian restaurant and told the roommate "you're eating cheese pizza, dammit." The dinner was nice, but not amazing (though the funniest moment was when we tried to explain to the roommate that yes, Caesar Salad has anchovies in it, which she apparently didn't know). We moved on to a British pub in Shibuya and drank beers until about 3 am. Since all the trains stop at 1 am or so in Japan, we had no choice but to cab it back to our respective hotels. We headed over to the taxi stand next to the station and saw the enormous line of people waiting in the rain. We took up our place in line (since I've found that taxi lines in Japan tend to move at a decent pace), but after 30 minutes of waiting, we had only moved about 5 feet (there were still 40 people ahead of us). However, to keep things interesting, the drunken salary-man behind us decided to play out his dream of living out a Japanese drama and began to slam his umbrella against the sidewalk, all the while cursing his girlfriend. She tried to get him to stop, but he reached up and grabbed her by the collar and said, "Don't you tell me what to do!" She responded by grabbing his tie and pulling him up to her and said, "Who the hell do you think you're talking to?!" They of course stormed off in a heated argument, but at some point, he decided he didn't want to sleep on the couch and started trying to sweet talk her. She wasn't having any of that and last I saw, he was still begging and pleading as they rounded the corner.

Moments later, I noticed that there were plenty of empty taxis driving by the main road about 100 yards away, but none of them were turning into the taxi stand area. Funny. I ran up, flagged one down, and called my friends over. Took us all of 2 seconds to get a cab. Despite us shouting and laughing and making a big deal of it, *nobody* else left the line to come do the same. Damn Japanese and their standing in line.

Dinner with the extended family on the day of the grandfather-death-celebration thing was very pleasant. My grandma's siblings and their families all gathered, along with my grandpa's cousins. In fact, one of his cousins came that nobody had seen in close to 50 years. He told us the story of his life - everything that happened since they last saw him. He was a great storyteller, so it was amazing to hear: he had gone to war (WW2) and lead a squad whose motto was "nobody kills, nobody dies," he married into another family and inherited the family business (he was the 3rd son in his family and stood to inherit nothing), and made a name for himself in the field of architecture, etc. The most amazing part was how much he looked like my grandpa - they could have been brothers.

That evening, I went home with my mom's aunt to go see my baby cousin, who had just started school so was unable to come to the gathering. She was so excited to see me again (I had seen her on the Saturday before, where I gave her a belated birthday present - a custom Hello Kitty from the Build-a-Bear Workshop) that she couldn't sit still. After making it clear to her that I wouldn't talk to her until she finished her homework and practiced her piano for at least 15 minutes, she diligently went to work, after which point we spent the entire evening playing with little knick knacks and making up stories about epic battles between marbles and bottle caps.

Also had dinner with my mom's old high school volleyball team. It was great seeing my mom in that light... I could imagine what she was like back in her teenage years, just by watching her interact with her old friends. Even one of the assistant coaches showed up at the gathering. Despite being an older Japanese man, he was about 6'4 and had hands that dwarfed even mine (though my thumbs were longer, of course).

All in all, nothing super exciting about this trip, but on the other hand, it was fairly relaxing. Lots of eating, lots of drinking, and *lots* of walking. Fun times, but I suppose the fact that I'm there so often lessens the feeling that it's something special when I'm there.

Unspecific Randomness

2007-04-04T15:45:00.000-07:00

I'm heading back to Japan (surprise!) next week, but this time I'll be staying for an extra week to chill with la familia. My mom and step dad are going to be there, and it looks like the step dad and I will be having a run of the town one night while my mom, aunt, and grandma go pamper themselves at a hot spring.

He expressed interest in hitting up some of the locales in Lost in Translation (he loved the movie), and through some searching (i.e. I googled it), I found the karaoke place and the club that they went to (the club with all the white globes with movies being projected onto them, not the strip club). Turns out that the karaoke place is just a generic karaoke box that's part of a chain of stores, but this one just happens to have a nice view of the city. I thought it was some upscale place, but shows what I know.

Sounds like my baby cousin just started her first year of school! Which means I won't have as much time to play with her, but hopefully she can still come out on the weekends and whatnot. I missed her birthday, so I will be bringing gifts this time around.

On a completely random note, this is very likely the most epic movie theme evar!!1!

Conan the Barbarian!!!!1!

While the movie certainly feels old nowadays, I still think it's one of the best (if not *the* best) fantasy movies of the time. Ahnuld's acting was lacking, as can be expected, but thankfully he was only given a handful of lines to say... which is what makes the director's cut of the movie a little more painful to watch. But still, that opening theme, plus a few others ("Theocracy" is one of my favorites... it's the one that plays when Conan and Subatai are running across the plains) really get me pumped up. Too bad the composer passed away, because I'd have loved to see him score a few video games.

Alas.

So, NiGHTS 2 and Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games have been announced. Interesting times. Mario and Sonic in a game together? Weird. Very, very weird. Personally, I'd have loved to see a Sega vs Nintendo all-out brawl instead of a sports game, but this will have to do. Still, some fairly big announcements from Sega. We'll see if the legendary status of NiGHTS has the ability to carry the sequel to success, despite having only had a very limited release the first time around.

Also, the fact that Rock Band can utilize the X360 guitar controllers for GH2 is cool, but unfortunately I have 2 PS2 guitar controllers. What's a gamer to do? I suppose I can just have friends get the other instruments, and I'll pick up the mic :D

Wii have liftoff!

2007-04-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

Seppo's Wii has finally arrived! A big thanks to the boys and girls at Nintendo for hooking it up ;)

On a side note, I spent some time playing with another friend's Wii. Played a bit of Medal of Honor, then Wario Ware. Medal of Honor was... odd. Decently made, but the graphical difference between MoH Wii and, say, GRAW2 was painfully obvious. In fact, the fiance refuses to watch me play GRAW2 because it's too realistic, but MoH Wii was fake enough that it was enjoyable. However, as far as the gameplay goes, I can definitely see the pros and cons of the Wiimote. It was interesting to play Wario Ware (which was hilariously fun, by the by) because you actually get a kick out of doing the weird things with the controller. But with MoH, it grew increasingly frustrating. Every time my nose itched and I went to scratch it, my camera would go flying off screen. I would try to reload by flicking the nunchuck to the right, but it would spin me around 180 degrees (which is done by flicking to the left). Every once in a while, the camera would start to jump all over the place, likely the result of a bad signal from the controller, but it would always take a few seconds to recalibrate and figure out what happened.

All in all, I think the Wii has a lot of promise, once developers figure out a "visual language" to communicate feedback to the player, but as it stands, it's not that good as a straight replacement for a regular controller. Games like Wario Ware certainly take advantage of making the player do things that weren't possible before, but it has yet to be seen how far they can take that.

Shopping Spree

2007-03-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

So, in order to get the most out of my brand new TV (which I'm loving), I've gone out and purchased a few things.

X360 VGA Adapter - Now, games were looking quite fine with the stock component cables (good move on MS' part to include those in the box), but I was still getting 480p resolution on DVDs. My DVD player is about 6 years old and isn't capable of any form of upscaling, so I got the VGA cables for my X360 in order to get the purdy DVD resolution upscaling. Maybe it's just my eyes tricking me into thinking I made a good purchase (only $40 anyway), but the difference was immediately noticeable. The only thing that was a bit weird was having to readjust all the lighting levels, but I've got it set just right now.

HD Antenna - Haven't had a chance to check this out yet, but that's my goal for this evening. eingy and Seppo came over on Sunday (though the ever-present cat hair soon defeated Seppo) and recommended we pick one up. Seeing as we don't have cable and we get all of 2 channels on our cheap-ass antenna right now, I figured it couldn't hurt.

Speaking of Seppo any eingy... we ended up going out for a round of mini-golf. Now, I'm not afraid to admit that I generally suck at the mini-golf. My fiance has always been the one to carry us to victory every time we've played, but this time was different. As I stepped out onto the (fake) green, the shell of doubt and shroud of past defeats were cast from my shoulders, like a worn and tattered garment. I valiantly clasped my club in my hands knowing, nay - certain - that the gods shined down upon me that day. My aim was steady, and my heart was true. I was victorious! (been watching too much LOTR lately)

Okay, so my fiance still scored better than me, but I beat Seppo and eingy.
Oh glorious day!

A Deeper Connection

2007-03-20T13:56:00.000-07:00

So, my brother and his girlfriend came up from LA over the weekend to just chill. We went to my mom's cousin's house for lunch on Saturday (he's actually closer to us in age, and we actually work at the same company), as we hadn't seen his little kid in about a year. She's about to turn 2. Adorable little moppet.

I was a little worried that she would have forgotten me, not having seen her in so long. But the moment we walked up to the house, she smiled and came right over when I called her. From that moment on, we just bonded. She would mimic everything I did, would drag me away from the table to come sit on the living room floor and draw with her. I spent the entire afternoon making scribbles on her notepad in the various colors that she demanded.

At one point, I stuck out my fist and said, "Respect knuckles." She looked at me curiously. I took her hand, and put her fist against mine. I put my hand down, then lifted it again, "Respect knuckles." This time, she raise her hand and gave me a hearty thump on the knuckles. She knew what to do. I continued to test this out all afternoon, and unfailingly, every time I raised up my hand, she greeted me with respect knuckles. Her dad was sad he had never tried that. I was victorious.

I even got her to do the chest thumping "peace out" thing.

In other news, I officially past the 20 lbs mark this morning. So, I am at -20.6 lbs from my starting point back on January 1st, which puts me at 190.7 lbs. While I may have lost the bet with Seppo, I'm not letting up on my diet. My new goal is now 185... maybe even 180. We'll see.

But I think I'm going to have to start calling all the local shops on a daily basis to find a goddamn Wii. I stop by stores in the evening every few days to see if shipments have arrived, and unfailingly, whenever they *do* get shipments in, they are all sold out by the time I get there. It's ridiculous. Don't worry, Seppo! I will have your Wii!

Daddy's got a brand new TV!

2007-03-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

I finally did it... I got myself an HDTV!!!

It's a 37" LCD from Sharp (Aquos). Has 2 HDMI inputs, a VGA input, 2 component inputs, etc. It's got a great backlight that really makes the image pop, and the blacks are deeeeeep. It fits *perfectly* into my current entertainment stand and is a great size for the distance that we usually watch TV at. Given that we don't have cable, the already fuzzy image of regular TV comes in even fuzzier, but given the upscaling capabilities of the X360, DVDs look fantastic.

And all for the great price of $1,000!

In other news, just a bit of a work conundrum. So, we sell product, and one of the parts of the process for selling said product is the forecasting of sales. Guessing how much we will sell of a given product is a mixture of scientific observation, guesswork, and Voodoo. Naturally, sales and marketing guys want to stick to safe numbers. If the numbers are safe, it makes it easier for them to hit. On the other side, the finance guys want us to score *huge* on everything we do. This naturally creates a problem.

On one hand, market data shows that any given type of product generally can only sell so much. If all the data shows that X-type of product has never sold more than Y, it's hard to justify saying that we're going to sell more. On the flip side, if you don't *strive* to sell more than Y, you never, ever will. So, which is right? Should we be shooting for the moon, given that we have a very aggressive corporate goal to achieve in the next 3 years? Or do we keep things realistic, and hope that every one of our product sells as much as we think and our business continues to grow that way.

This came up during a forecasting meeting yesterday, when faced with certain products. Our forecasts were already somewhat aggressive - everyone felt happy that those figures were achievable. Not *easy*, per se, but achievable. On the flip side, should we be settling for that? If we have aggressive corporate goals, shouldn't we be saying, "We know we can sell X, but what can we do to sell Y?"

It was the cause of much heated debate yesterday (mainly targeted at me, since I was the one trying to get everyone to stop being so timid), so it's really been bothering me. It makes me wonder how the discussions at the upper levels at a company like Apple went when initially discussing the iPod. Did they *know* it was going to be such a huge success? Or did they try to plan *how* to make it a huge success? Granted, they certainly had the right product at the right time, but they did a lot to make the timing work for them.

When you're faced with hard numbers, it's hard to argue with anything other than, "But we have to be trying to do *better*." And when you're a manager trying to tell that to VPs who are almost twice your age, it makes it even harder. I'm at a loss...

Homeless Dude Fixed My Car

2007-03-08T18:12:00.000-08:00

So, many years ago, I got into a small accident in college. I was driving down the street when the driver next to me (on a 1-way street) saw a parking spot on my side of the street and decided to go after it... ignoring the fact that I was between her and the spot. Unfortunately, I was in the middle of a move and despite having gotten her contact info, driver's license number, insurance number, etc, I didn't call the cops (was in a rush to get to a class), and then promptly lost all that info during the move. *sigh*

I've been stuck with the damage for a good... 7 or 8 years? Then suddenly on Tuesday night, as I'm filling up at the gas station down the street from work, a homeless guy walked up to my car with a tool kit and just starts going to work. He popped out the dent (mostly - it's not perfect... it's a dent that can't really be fixed) and then reattached the part where the bumper had come lose (I had tried to do it before, but couldn't get the clips to hold... he just put the clips in backwards and it worked o_O). While it's not perfect, it looks much better.

The man looked pretty wild and he was wielding a metal bar, so I wasn't sure what to do at first. But, it was still pretty busy around the area and lots of people were around, so I didn't think he'd try mugging me or anything. It took him about 10 minutes and I was a little leery at first, so tried to tell him that he didn't need to do that, but he just kept going and going and eventually got it fixed. I ended up giving him $5 because it was all the cash I had on me... I would have given him a $20 otherwise.

Thanks, anonymous homeless dude!

Bangladesh!

2007-03-05T13:03:00.000-08:00

So, for Christmas, our neighbors introduced us to the interesting www.destinationdinners.com by way of a Christmas gift from said website. As you can see on the site, it's a gift site where you can purchase recipe packs of meals from various nations. We received the Bangladeshi pack and it comes with everything but the fresh ingredients. All the spices were included in cute little plastic boxes, neatly labeled, as was the long-grain rice. We supplied the veggies (peas, onions, and cauliflower), the chicken (all 3 pounds of it), and of all things - the ketchup.

As far as we could tell, the dish was fairly authentic. It smelled authentic, at least. The chicken had to simmer for about a total of 40-50 minutes, and with all the spices is was simmering in, the meat just began to fall apart. Good stuff.

I would have taken pictures, but since we were drinking wine the entire time we were cooking, by the time the food was ready, I was already too drunk to think of it :)

The website only has a limited selection of foods, but if you're looking for an interesting gift, well, there you go.

FTD = F*ck This Dreck?

2007-03-02T16:37:00.000-08:00

So, I was in Japan over Valentine's Day. Sucked. The fiance was, of course, not overly joyed, but work called and there was about $40M at stake, so I had to go. Knowing I had to go, though, allowed me to make some preparations in advance. I purchased a card to leave for her the day I left (I left on Feb 13) so she would get it the evening before, and had made arrangements through FTD.com to have a very nice bouquet of flowers delivered to her at work on Valentine's Day. I know there are people who despise that day and say, "Why can't we show our love for each other every day?" I agree, but I also enjoy having *another* excuse to do a little extra sumpin' sumpin'.

I was taken in by the Vera Wang bouquet they were advertising - pink roses, and were arranged with a simple elegance. They were pricey, though. I figured I make enough money so I went for it and selected the option to have them delivered on February 14th.

So, I kept that all a secret from her and she didn't have a clue. I stay up late into the night and track the shipment to make sure it arrived on Feb 14th. According to UPS, the package arrived at the local distribution center at 8am that morning and it was mere miles from my fiance's work, so I went to sleep knowing that the flowers had arrived.

Or had they? When I woke up the next morning, I called her with a smile, expecting her to gush with joy over the beautiful flowers. She answers the phone, "Hello?" "Hey..." I say, nonchalantly. "What time is it over there?" she asks. Hm... doesn't sound very excited, "Uh... like 8:30 am. Hey wait, you don't sound very excited." "Why?" Not a good sign.

After some talking, I had to just let her in on it because it became painfully obvious that the flowers had not arrived yet. So, she waited at her work until around 6 pm, and nothing ever arrived. The flowers were, indeed, at the distribution center, but never left.

It wasn't until the following day at some point in the middle of the afternoon that the flowers arrived, slightly wilted. Having spent a pretty penny for those flowers, I was, naturally, upset that they were not delivered for the sole reason they were ordered. I wrote a polite email and expected a reasonable response. I received (what was likely) an automated response that assured me they would try to get back to me within 24 hours. I had had great experiences with FTD before, so I figured it would be no problem.

More than a week and several reminder emails later, I finally get a happy and bubbly response letting me know that they would be refunding me 20% of my purchase, which comes out to $14. I was not satisfied. And I was even less satisfied when I went to FTD.com to look up the customer service line and noticed that the same bouquet of flowers was *now* selling for $11 less than what I paid. That pretty much means I was receiving a $3 discount for a botched order. I responded politely, but sternly that I was offended and would be taking it up with a manager.

Haven't had a chance to call yet, but that simply is ridiculous. Will update when I hear back.

Nine Whole Years

2007-02-26T23:02:00.000-08:00

So, today marks our nine year anniversary of being together. Nine whole years, and we're still not married! :D In all seriousness, it doesn't feel that long, but that's a very large chunk of our lives that we've shared. I feel that I have become a better man for it.

But, naturally, she completely forgot. I had anticipated this and didn't say anything leading up to today. I had an off-site meeting today, and knew I would get home early, thinking that I would be able to cook up something fancy and surprise her. Sure enough, despite having gotten home early, the moment I opened up my email, I got lassoed into putting out 3,000 different fires. By the time I managed to get out of the house to go shopping for ingredients, the lady was already on her way home.

We ended up eating at around nine o'clock, so it was a little late, but still managed to cook a decent meal. I had hoped to be able to do a nice presentation, but gave up on that idea. Since we had gotten started fairly late and she had realized why I was cooking so much food, she decided to come and help me prepare the meal. We ended up having a clam and 4-mushroom pasta with homemade cream sauce for the main dish. On the side, I made a simple stewed pork dish that Emeril made (we didn't have enough time to really let it soften up, so we ate it as a sort of hearty soup-y thing), and a simple salad with a balsamic/olive oil dressing. For drinks, I picked up a nice bottle of Stag's Leap chardonnay. While not the fanciest or prettiest meal I've ever cooked, it was tasty and very satisfying.

Nerdier than thou

2007-02-23T17:01:00.000-08:00

So, my brother and I got into a virtual pissing contest to see who could dig up the most obscure/awesome clips from various Japanese anime/sentai shows that we used to watch as kids. The deeper I went down that rabbit hole, the more memories crept into my mind. Images of my childhood spent playing with mountains of Japanese robots and action figures, hours spent in front of the TV watching awesomely-cheesy shows, playing Nintendo years before it came out in America...

Although pretty much nobody who reads this blog will recognize *any* of these, I felt that I needed to post them for my own sake. Here they are in all their cheesy glory:

Sentai Smrogasborg:
Space Detective Gaban
Electric Warriors Denji-man
(Denji-man version 2)
Goggle 5

Goggle 5 and Denji-man were the predecessors to the Power Rangers. There was also Sanbarukan, Bio-man, Change-man, etc. All awesome stuff. Gaban was part of a different series that was more similar to VR Troopers. It was more about single transforming badass - Shariban, Gekkou Kamen, etc. There's plenty of Ultraman and Kamen Rider stuff I could post, but there'd be no end to it.

Robots!!!
Voltes 5
Gatcha-man (aka Battle of the Planets)
Dagram
Space Warrior Baldeos

Voltes 5 (also spelled Voltes V) was one of my favorites as a kid. It didn't really have an ending, since I think the series stopped at episode 40 with a cliffhanger ending... I think the series was cancelled, so they decided to end it on that note. But still, I had the series all on VHS, and watched it over and over. Was most impressed back in high school when I found out that the girl I had a crush on (2 years older, captain of the dance team...) could sing the theme song in Japanese. Melted my geeky little heart :)

And here's a random video that has nothing to do with anything else on this post, and serves only to annoy you.

Montgomery! Flea Market!

Meme-y

2007-02-21T11:05:00.000-08:00

From Seppo and eingy...

RULES: Each player of this game starts off with 10 weird things/habits/little known facts about yourself. People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 10 weird habits/things/little known facts as well as state this rule clearly. At the end you need to choose 10 people to be tagged and list their names. No tag backs.

10) Nothing stresses me out more than thinking/knowing that there is friction between me and someone else. I don't actively think that I need everyone to love me, but I like things being in harmony (perhaps because of having such turbulence in my life in my younger years?). Knowing that I've pissed someone off or have caused someone to think ill of me leaves me all out of whack.

9) I talk to myself in the car. But not really myself... I have conversations with people I know, but just by myself. I think maybe it's how I sort out issues in my head; sort of like using other people's personalities as a soundboard to bounce ideas and thoughts off of. Sort of like how in Star Trek, they conjure up Einstein in the Holodeck, only not nearly as cool.

8) I'm a horrible public speaker when I'm speaking as myself. Give me a character to act as, and all the fear and anxiety goes away. I think it gives me a mask to hide behind, but when it comes to presenting data and whatnot, I can get the job done, but I don't really know how to make it interesting. Considering my current position, that's probably a bad thing :P

7) There are quite a few really minor, inconsequential things that I have said and done that I remember, and for some reason, they bother me. Like one time in 7th grade, a friend of mine was claiming that he could only cut his toenails after taking a shower because they were too hard otherwise, and I said, "Me, too." That was, of course, not true, but I just felt like agreeing with him. And for no goddamn reason, it still bothers me to this day that I said that. I have issues :D

6) My personality changes fairly drastically, depending on who I am talking to/hanging out with. Well, that's not 100% accurate - the parts of my personality that show greatly depend on who I'm with at that moment. I'm very sensitive to other people's personalities, so depending on how they act and/or what they expect of me, I become more aggressive/passive, extroverted/introverted, etc. Around family and some work people, I'm the happy-go-lucky clown. Around some friends, I'm the snarky, cocky guy. Around others, I become really shy.

5) Speaking of which - I think most people know me as an all-out extrovert. However, what a lot of people don't know is that I actually lack confidence. It's fairly masked because of my usually-over-the-top personality, but I often doubt myself to a fault. Which also affects my ability to be assertive at work when I need to be.

4) I'm selectively OCD. Once I notice something, it bothers me until I fix it. For example, a pillow that's not arranged right, a stack of papers that isn't lined up properly. But, it's not always "on." Like my desk at work - utter chaos. Most of my house is fairly messy. It's just some things that I happen to notice. I've never been able to figure out what triggers it.

3) My armpits caused my brother's girlfriend back in high school to have a pregnancy scare. Seriously. She stopped by the dojo one Saturday morning to say hi, and she started being "saucy" (she was my classmate, and we were friends before she started dating my brother, so we were close). Being all sweaty and smelly, I decided to get her in a headlock and sweat on her... I guess the hormones/pheromones/whatever in my armpit sweat caused her hormones to go all out of whack, and she missed a period. They ended up telling her parents and my parents and got a pregnancy test and everything... and the doctor started asking questions, and it got narrowed down to the most likely culprit being my armpit sweat. Recognize.

2) I hate creepy-crawlies. It's not like I can't look at them or that I cringe if I see a picture of a spider, for example... I just hate touching them. Maybe it comes from the fact that my dad used to have a pet tarantula that he used to try to get me to hold when I was like 2 or 3 years old. Thing was bigger than my hand (I don't really remember, but we have plenty of pictures). So, when I have to get rid of a big spider in the house, I get a tissue and kill it/grab it as quickly as possible. Caterpillars, ladybugs, etc don't bother me. It's primarily spiders or anything similar.

1) I have a scent fetish. Nothing gets to me more than the way a girl smells. I used to sit next to this girl I had a huge crush on back in school, and she smelled *wonderful*. Except, it was always a dilemma: do I take in the scent full on, knowing that I'd grow acclimated to it more quickly? Or do I only try to smell it a little at a time? Oh my god, I'm a pervert. :D

Horrid Discovery

2007-02-10T21:23:00.000-08:00

Just got back from going shopping with the lady, and during the course of our meandering, I came across what is possibly the most horrid thing I have ever seen: the man-thong. We were walking through the men's section at Macy's when we came across a thong. "Huh... This must be in the wrong section," she said to me. Then, I noticed an entire row of them. And another... yes, ladies and gentlemen, they have an entire section for man-thongs. When did this happen? Who are these for? Why do they exist?!? These questions are entirely rhetorical, as I'm not sure I really want to know.

On a completely different note, I'm usually not that picky about book-to-movie translations. I ignore a lot of the changes (both minor and major) that the movie undergoes, but there's been a recent trailer playing over and over on the TV lately that just annoys the hell out of me. Since when was "Bridge to Terrabithia" an epic fantasy adventure? And why are critics calling it a"heart-warming" movie? The writers/producers/etc for the movie have taken all the meaning and impact out of the book, and replaced it with some generic attempt at cashing in on the fantasy movie craze (or so it seems). I'm tempted to go see the movie just to see how much they butchered it, but then again, I don't want to give them any money.

Speaking of movies, though, just went to see Children of Men last night. Intense, intense movie. Alfonso Cuaron is quickly becoming one of my favorite directors. He has a great feeling for pacing, and the movie keeps you on edge both emotionally and with all the action. Though some may have differing opinions of the abrupt ending, I found it satisfying overall. I think it's doubly enjoyable if you're a gamer, as the similarities in the setting to Half-Life 2 will be immediately apparent.

Not much going on

2007-02-09T11:34:00.000-08:00

Made little progress on the weight loss thing this week... Only lost a little over 1 pound this week. Which is still good, but progress definitely feels like it's slowing.

Starting weight: 211.3
Current weight: 197.6
7-day average: 198.8
Goal: 191.3

Spending next week in Japan, which may put a bit of a dent in my overall plans, but during the last trip to Japan, I still managed to lose 2 lbs. We'll see.

Last week, I missed my little cousin's birthday. She turned 6. She had told me that I better be there, and I told her I didn't think I'd be able to make it... but I actually had a trip to Japan planned for business then, so was hoping that I would. Turns out I'm lucky I didn't make any promises, as the trip was delayed to next week.

Not much else going on... Bacon jumped into the toilet again last weekend. Have no idea what that cat's obsession with the toilet is. Also realized that Butter looks like he's constantly wearing a giant furry helmet. Overall, he's a long-haired cat. Except his shoulders. For some reason, the fur all around his shoulders is really short, making him look like Darth Helmet from Space Balls. My brother says my cats are defective. I prefer to call them "special."

Oh joyous day

2007-01-29T10:05:00.000-08:00

I'd just like to share the fact that I am officially the lightest I've been in about 5-6 years. While I'm not the skinniest, as last January my waist was definitely smaller than it is now, I am definitely the lightest. It's the first time since about 2001 or so that I got on the scale and the first number was a "1" and not a "2." Yes, ladies and gentlemen: I broke the 200 lbs barrier! Granted, it was by 0.2 lbs, but still! This morning I weighed in at 199.8, despite having pigged out on beef, pork, chicken, rice, and beer on Saturday.

That's 11.5 lbs for me. Still 8.5 more to go!

No point, really.

2007-01-26T15:46:00.000-08:00

Looks like I'm off to Japan again in just over a week's time. I had realized that my upgrade coupons were going to expire in March, so I decided to try and use them. Unfortunately, it appears that they are only valid on full-priced fares (which would just about double the cost of my ticket, which I likely wouldn't get approved). And the only other use I have for them is to access ANA's Lounge at SFO and Narita, but unfortunately (fortunately?), I just received my Platinum Mileage card, which gives me free, unfettered access to the lounges, anyway. So in other words, I just wasted a good, free upgrade to business class (one way only, though). Well, at least with my Platinum card, I get priority for free upgrades to Premium Economy, anyway. Still, nowhere nearly the same thing.

I've been keeping up the diet fairly well. Haven't managed to exercise nearly as much as Seppo, but considering I've been sick twice and traveled to Japan since the start of the bet, I don't think I'm doing too bad. Need to be doing better (3 lbs better, to be exact), but I'm sitting at a fairly comfortable 9.9 lbs lost since January 1. Not too shabby. All I've done so far is cut out all sodas, and nearly all juices from my diet (I have a glass of orange juice on occasion). I've cut down my coffee intake to 1 cup (sometimes 2, but only lightly sweetened) a day. And I stop eating whenever I start to feel full (instead of stuffing myself stupid). As a result, I've still been able to enjoy foods that I love, and my stomach has certainly calmed down a lot. I'm at the same weight I was at this point last year, but with noticeably more fat (and a lot less muscle). Still, I'm headed in a good direction now. Maybe it'll be the first time in about 5 years where I dip below the 200 lbs mark?

Random video: I probably would have peed my pants.

And because karaoke twice in one week isn't quite enough, heading out again this weekend with eingy, Seppo, and potentially a few other friends. Should be quite interesting as this is my first "official" time going to karaoke with a lot of them. And this will be the first time going with eingy and Seppo since they "discovered" the fun of karaoke. Should I bombard them with my Rick Astley impersonation? Or should I just throw the manly throttle into full gear (*cough*) and bust out some George Michael? Oh the choices.

$50 for iTunes

2007-01-24T13:19:00.000-08:00

So, as part of a very, very late Xmas present from the SO, I got a $50 gift certificate for iTunes. No idea what I want to buy, though. Usually on iTunes, I end up buying a bunch of old tunes that I used to have on tape or whatnot, but even though it's only $1 per song, I never seem to be brave enough to try anything new (other than Devotchkas and Matisyahu). I'm still pissed about the version of "Forever Young" that I grabbed off iTunes... I listened to the preview and it sounded fine, and it turned out to be a live version that isn't quite as good as the recording (the audience sings parts of the song). Ah well.

Maybe with this free money, I'll try a few things. Maybe a couple more Zero 7 songs? Or maybe I'll just load up Pandora.com for a bit and just take some notes... Problem is that I have no idea what sort of music I'm in the mood for nowadays. One day, I'm listening to upbeat, poppy music like "Such Great Heights" and "Destiny," and the next, I'm listening to Japanese jazz/hip hop.

Train Man

2007-01-23T19:13:00.000-08:00

Not sure if I talked about this movie before, but I have to pimp it:

Densha Otoko (aka Train Man)

It's not the deepest movie in the world, and I'm sure a fair share of people out there would find it fairly cheesy. But, I can almost guarantee that this will be the next movie imported/localized from Japan to the US market. It's almost like "You've Got Mail," but not as sucky and actually based on a true story.

So, the story is as such: an otaku almost accidentally meets a beautiful, upper-class woman on a train. He does something (almost unintentionally) to get her attention and she offers to send him a gift, so he gives her his address. He is instantly smitten by her and runs home to post about the incident on 2chan, Japan's biggest message board. He is egged on by various posters about what to do and not do, and the story follows this shy otaku as he does everything he can to win her over.

The best part about it is that a lot of the dialog, though voiced over, takes place via chat logs. These chat logs have supposedly been taken directly from the original 2chan logs, with typos and everything. The scenes other than the scenes where Train Man is meeting with the girl all take place in his room and the camera shifts back and forth between him and the other posters as they have conversations across the intarwebs, showing that people from all walks of life can learn from each other... and that in many cases, we are connected to each other in more ways than we think.

It's a warmhearted story that, though cheesy at times, is less about the larger picture of what love means and all that, and more about simply how one man's world changes because of this girl, and the people he talks to on the internet.

If you've spent any time on message boards (*ehem*), then chances are you can at least relate to this story in some degree.

Back Home

2007-01-22T15:11:00.000-08:00

I just got back from my 10th trip to Japan in the last 12 months. Given my bet with Seppo, I was worried that the land of fried foods and beer would put a significant dent in my progress, but lo! I weighed myself after I got back and it turns out I had lost about a pound and a half while in Japan, *despite* drinking beer and shochu just about every night. Ladies and gentlemen, I think I have discovered a new diet!

In all seriousness, I think it was the fact that in Japan, you just do so much walking all the time. Probably average about 1-2 miles of walking every day, most of which is done carrying about 10-12 lbs of stuff slung over my shoulder. While I didn't have much choice in the kinds of food I ate, I did try to control the amount, which seems to have made all the difference. Thank god.

Was an interesting trip, though nothing spectacularly odd happened this time 'round (see previous entries for reference). Spent some time with a coworker that I had only really chatted with on occasion around the office... turns out we had a lot more in common than we realized. Since it was her first time at headquarters in Japan (though she had been to Tokyo several times before), she was a bit out of her element. I took her around and introduced her to various people at the company and we had dinner with a few groups of people that I'm relatively close to. Again, nothing absurd, but just good, all around fun. I think in total, however, we did about 9 hours of karaoke for the week. And by "week" I mean "over a period of 2 days."

Grandma is doing well, though she is starting to slow down. Given that she's 83, it's more than understandable. She has a hard time carrying heavy groceries and whatnot, but well, what can you expect? She still cleans her house (2 stories!) by herself, cooks every day, and goes to church every weekend. She even goes out to have dinner with friends regularly and attends concerts and whatnot. Considering that I see a lot of 80-somethings that have trouble even walking, I'm more than happy to see how she's doing. I'm glad I get a chance to check up on her just about every month, but I feel bad that it also means that I have to all but ignore my other grandma. Truth of the matter is that I am closer with my Japanese grandma than my American one, simply because I used to spend my childhood summers in Japan. My father wasn't close with his parents, and they lived on the East Coast (which we visited once when I was a child), so I suppose it's sort of understandable. Doesn't make me feel any better about it, though.

Here's a random question: why do some women feel the need to talk about their breasts to complete strangers? I mean, it's not like a man will just start talking about his wang to every woman he comes across (no pun intended). So, I sat next to this attractive girl on the plane on the way to Japan, and we started talking. Halfway through the conversation, *she* switches the conversation to her rather... um... ample "assets." Being half-Chinese (but looking nearly full) and having spent a year in Shanghai, she just started talking about how everyone would stare at her chest as they talked. Or how one time in London, some 10 year old kid just ran up to her and grabbed a full two handfuls before taking off down the street. What is the proper response to that sort of subject? Do I look and say, "Yeah, I can see why"? Or do I just nod thoughtfully and stare off into space, pretending that I'm pondering man's existence? Either way, it was entertaining company on an otherwise dull trip (god, I hate United international), but it simply made me think.

Meme

2007-01-11T10:28:00.000-08:00

It's been so long since I last posted that posting something new was becoming almost daunting. So, I'm going to take the cheesy way out and post a meme stolen from Seppo and eingy!

Your senior year in High School is supposed to be "the best year of your life." Let's see how much you remember. I know for some it might be hard for you to go back that far!

Year :: 1995

1. Who was your best friend?
Hmm... Probably Noel and/or Ho

2. What sports did you play?
Karate, though not at the high school.

3. What kind of car did you drive?
A crappy old 1983 BMW 320i. Everyone always says, "But it was a Beemer!" Yeah, but the thing sucked and cost us several times more in repairs over the 3-4 years that I had it than it was actually worth.

4. It's Friday night, where were you?
Usually either at karate, working at Disneyland, hanging out at Disneyland, or hanging out at home with friends.

5. Were you a party animal?
Not really. We threw a couple of parties when my parents were out of town, but they were always fairly tame, and I never drank or smoked.

6. Were you in the "In Crowd"?
Not really, but I was "accepted" by the in crowd. We had our own little thing going on...

7. Ever skip school?
No, but I've been late and forged permission slips from my parents :P

8. Ever smoke?
Never.

9. Were you a nerd?
Yeah, but I was a cool nerd! :P

10. Did you get suspened/expelled?
No, but plenty of detentions.

11. Can you sing the Alma Mater?
Oh dear god no.

12. Who was your favorite teacher?
Hm... My English teacher Mr. Holmes, maybe? Had a lot of cool teachers throughout high school, but I think he may have been the coolest that year.

13. Favorite class?
A tie between English AP and Cooking :D

14. What was your school's full name?
Walnut High School

15. School mascot?
Naeemah... but that was the person inside the suit. No idea what the mascot's name was (it was a horse).

16. Did you go to Prom?
Yep.

17. If you could go back and do it over, would you?
Nope. It was a much better year than junior year, but I like where I am now much better.

18. What do you remember most about graduation?
Not much, really. It was a pretty standard graduation. The closest thing to being a good memory that stands out was actually the love fest during lunch of the last day of school. All the seniors closed in on the patio area and everyone was crying, hugging, and whatnot. I ended up carrying one female friend in my arms, while giving another a piggyback ride and ran around :D

19. Favorite memory of your Senior Year?
Getting my second degree black belt?

20. Were you ever posted up on the senior wall?
Is this like the hall of fame or something? If so, then yeah, for theater.

21. Did you have a job your senior year?
Taught martial arts and worked at Disneyland.

22. Who did you date?
Char on-and-off. Also casually dated Monique, then right after graduation, Katie and then Christina.

23. Where did you go most often for lunch?
We had a closed campus, so... the tree by Mr. Root's room. :P

24. Have you gained weight since then?
Oh dear god yes. I weighed about 165-170 back then. So... about 40lbs?

25. What did you do after graduation?
Continued to work at Disneyland, then moved to Oakland!

Hoops

2006-09-29T13:46:00.000-07:00

So, some guys at work started a weekly b-ball game at one of the local rec centers. Through word of mouth, I got invited, and played four 4-on-4 games last Wednesday during lunch. Though I was able to keep my lunch down through sheer force of will, after the first 5 minutes, my lungs felt like they were on fire, and my legs felt as if the bones had been removed from them. To top it off, I stupidly go too caught up in the moment and threw myself off the court in an attempt to save an errant ball (which I did), but landed sideways on my ankle.

Now, the injury was hardly anything (I was able to continue to play 2 more games afterward) and it's hardly sore now, but I realized something - it was the first sort of non-chronic-injury-related pain I'd felt in a long time, and it felt *good*. Not saying I'm masochistic or anything, but it's a lot like how after you lift weights for the first time in years and your muscles are sore to the very core of your being, but you feel good about it. It's that sort of good. Back in middle school, high school, and college, I was spraining fingers or pulling muscles at least once or twice a month from some sort of sport. I just shook it off and kept going. I noticed that as I got older, and more out of shape, I became more and more afraid of injury. Rightfully so, since it's harder to bounce back from those injuries, but it's good to know that I can still "hang."

We played again today, since there was a truckload of trashtalk being thrown around the office after Wednesday, but this time it was full court (we played full court last time, but they were only about 3/4 the size of regulation courts), and it was on asphalt this time. Knees and ankles are definitely more sore from the lack of cushioning, but I'm not gasping for air like an asthmatic stuck in the smoking car on a bullet train to Tokyo.

Games = Art?

2006-09-18T18:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a great interview by the creator of the "Columbine Massacre RPG" game in regards to how violent videogames affect people. Well-spoken, logical, and never gives the interviewers any reason to have a knee-jerk reaction. We need more people like that in the news.

Lagging Behind

2006-09-18T10:59:00.000-07:00

Couple of random things today, no rhyme or reason.

Friday night, the missus, a coworker and his wife, and I went to see the Dave Brubeck Quartet at a local venue. Which is strange, in and of itself, because the city where I live ain't necessarily the most happenin' place in the Bay Area. It's a decent neighborhood - don't get me wrong. But it doesn't seem like the kind of place a big name like Dave Brubeck would be playing at. Was quite a big theater, surprisingly, and looked like there was a good 1,000 people or so. Nevertheless, it was one of the best live performances I'd ever seen, regardless of the fact that Dave Brubeck is now officially older than dirt.

The man could hardly stand up with holding onto the mic when he was talking, and needed constant back support. But it didn't take away from his playing. Oh sweet baby jeebus, that man can play. But for me, the highlight of the evening was Bobby Militello on the sax. It's a shame that the legendary Paul Desmond (original sax player for the quartet) isn't around anymore, but Bobby Militello has to be *the* best sax player I've ever heard live. The man looked like he weighed about 400 pounds and had to sit down in between songs, but the music that came out of that man's pipes was astounding. And regardless of how hard he played, he was never breathing heavy, despite being that large. Simply amazing.

I believe it was Jack Six on the double bass and Randy Jones on drums (who was great, as well). But for their closing set ("Take Five," of course), they invited Dave's son, Chris Brubeck (trombone), Madcat (harmonica), and Joel Brown (guitar) onto the stage to play with them. The presence of the extra instruments made the song much more festive-sounding and it was a good closing number, but personally, I would have preferred to just have had the sax playing during the "hook" (not sure what the part of the song is called). When each of the instruments had their solos, it was amazing, but the sax was just drowned out during the rest of the song...

The only disappointment of the night was the fact that the performance was in a classic theater type venue, rather than a jazz bar, because I was really jonesing for a glass of scotch. I just wanted to sit back and relax and take in the music...

In other news, had a conversation with Seppo on Sunday morning that was actually then later repeated at a barbeque at a friend's place: I don't really cook anymore. Back in college and the early days of working, I cooked all the time. In fact, I was pretty decent at it. Not to say that I'm *bad* at it now, but I certainly don't have the skills I used to have. I can work my way around a recipe and can even improvise anything that needs to taste remotely Japanese-y, but my cutting speed has slowed down dramatically, and I've forgotten how to make quite a few dishes. I simply don't have the will power to cook that often anymore. I really should, seeing as how eating out so much has affected my weight/health, but both my fiance and I are drained by the time we get home from work and we just want to relax. Need to figure out a way to make it easier to cook and clean up afterwards, otherwise we're going to be stuck in this pattern for a long time...

Picked up Loco Roco about a week ago, and finally popped it into my PSP on Saturday night. It's not necessarily a really fun game, but playing it makes me inexplicably happy. The music, the art, the animations - they're all just absurdly cute. It's a very well-made game and exactly what the PSP needed, but I'm afraid it might not be enough to get the kind of momentum that, say, Katamari was able to produce. If you have a PSP, though, and are looking for something a little different, quirky, and so cute that it will make you want to devour small children to satiate the lack of cuteness in your system every time you are away from the game, this is the game for you.

The Big Litterbox in the Sky

2006-09-08T12:45:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've written on this blog, though not from a lack of things to write about. I've moved apartments, my fiance has started her new teaching job, took a week off from work for the first time in god knows how long, etc. But for whatever reason, I simply haven't felt motivated to write about any of that. Well, this week's events have motivated me.

Tuesday morning of this week, after a busy but fruitful 3-day weekend, I woke up as usual to get ready for work. Well, actually, I was awakened by a startling sound, but it was generally around the time I usually get up. I looked over the edge of the bed to see what had caused the commotion, only to find my two cats sitting there. I'd figured they'd gotten into a tussle or somesuch and was about to go back to sleep for that all-important extra five minutes of snooze-button-sleep, when I noticed that the cat who is usually being chased wasn't running away. In fact, she was staring at the other cat with a great deal of confusion and concern (as far as I could tell by her rabid sniffing and dilated eyes). My attention was immediately drawn to my other cat, Pampers, who looked more panicked than I had ever seen him. And rightfully so - he could apparently only walk backwards.

I called him and he somehow managed to jump up onto the bed, only to fall back off as he stepped backwards off the edge. Given his pre-existing kidney disease (he has kidney dysfunction) and the possibility of poisoning, I rushed out of the house and brought him to the nearest hospital. The doctor immediately took him in and put him on fluids to try and stabilize him while they waited for the results of the bloodwork and urinalysis. I stayed at home, working, so that I could be close by in case the need should I arrise... I had a very bad feeling about what was going to happen.

The doctor told me that I would need to come back and pick him up at 5 pm. So, when the time rolled around, I got the little guy from the doctor's and brought him straight home. The doctor told me that so far, the tests had been inconclusive, but they were still waiting on more results. It was still too early to tell whether or not he was in any immediate danger... He was looking better. His eyes were no longer dilated and he was able to move around normally, for the most part. He was still having trouble turning - he would try backing up a little bit first - but was able to balance on his hind quarters. Thinking (or hoping) that the worst had passed, I gave him a great big hug and proceeded to feed him some of his favorite foods: cold cut ham slices and fried chicken. My fiance came home and was relieved to see that he was doing alright, and we showered him with love.

Later that evening, my subordinate called me to scream at me about how I was irresponsible for taking the day off "just because my cat was sick," and got into another heated, 2 hour long argument. In the end, she apologized for overstepping her bounds and it ended amiably, but the whole time, Pampers had been staring at me from the doorway of the bedroom. About 15 minutes from the end of the conversation, he disappeared, and I heard him meow a few times, and knew that he was in distress. After I hung up the phone, I found him cowering in the corner of the bathroom, trying to hide himself from everyone. Cats prefer to die in dark secluded areas, so I knew that this wasn't a good sign.

I brought him with me into the living room and put him on my lap, trying to encourage him to sit up and move. I caressed him, talked to him, and generally tried to get him to play with his toys (read: the twisty things you use to tie cables together) and eat some more ham. Nothing worked. He started to not be able to support himself on his legs and became increasingly lethargic. I stood him upright, but his paws remained in the same position as they were, rather than trying to correct himself to balance. I grabbed a bunch of towels, padded the kitty carrier, and rushed him to the emergency vet clinic in Palo Alto.

The doctor there was alarmed at his rapid degradation, and put him on a diluted fluid drip overnight, as for some reason, his sodium had skyrocketed to unbelievable heights. The doctor said that there was a large potential for lasting brain damage, so they needed to balance him out, but doing it too quickly could potentially result in an edema, which would be equally damaging. There was nothing we could do but wait. (I'd asked the doctor if the ham or chicken could have caused it, but he said that it was very highly unlikely, as I'd only given him less than a single bite of each.) We put him into the vet's cage, pet him and told him soothing words, and gave him a kiss goodnight. That would be the last time my fiance saw him alive.

We got home at 2am, exhausted. I was to go back to the clinic to pick him up and return him to the original vet, as the emergency place closed at 8 am and they offered no 24 hour care. I lied in bed thinking about him and hoping that he would pull out of whatever it was that was hurting him. I slept maybe an hour...

When I picked him up in the morning, he had faded even more. He hardly had the strength to react to anything. The night before, when they inserted the catheder into him, he screamed like a banshee and fought with all his might. This morning, however, he barely picked his head up to greet me as they brought him out to me. My cat... the cat who *never* failed to greet me at the door every day when I would come home from work... the cat who *always* came when I called... looked as if he didn't recognize me. I fought back the tears and raced down the highway to bring him to the vet.

They immediately put him back on fluids and told me they would call me as soon as they got the rest of the lab results or if anything definitive happened. At 11 am, as I sat in my cube at work, they called me to tell me that I needed to bring him to the clinic in San Mateo where they had on-site lab equipment and internists who could help him. He was fading fast and they couldn't figure out why. He had pretty much gone completely comatose. I rushed out of the office to transfer him yet again. After picking him up, I got stuck in traffic, but thinking back, I'm glad I did. At the time I was worried about him being away from the doctors for so long, but it gave me an extra 15 minutes to talk to him, sooth him, and pet him. I poured my heart out to him, thanking him for all the years we had together, and talked to him about all the times we rode in my car together (despite being a cat, he actually enjoys car rides). I sang him a few songs, put a towel over his cage to keep the sun out of his eyes (he couldn't blink anymore), and stroked his cheeks and neck, as I had done nearly every day for the last 11 years.

I arrived at the specialist clinic, and was immediately greeted by nurses who took the cage and ran him into the back. I shouted out, "Hang in there buddy!!" as they took him into the intensive care area. I never saw him again.

The doctor sat me down to explain all the things they planned to try before giving up hope. Part of me wanted to just let him go, but I owed him this much. He wasn't in pain as far as the doctors could tell, so I needed to try. Despite the looming $4000 bill, I needed to do everything I could to save my little buddy.

I went back to the office and tried to keep my mind off him. But, at 5:08 pm on Wednesday evening, the doctor called to tell me the bad news. He had siezed and stopped breathing. He went quickly and quietly, under the watchful care of 3 nurses and the doctor. I lamented the fact that I wasn't there when it happened, but I was happy he wasn't alone. He's always hated vets, but I'm hoping he made an exception this time.

I had raised Pampers since the day he was born. His mother followed me home one day from school in my last year of high school, and she gave birth to 4 kittens in our garage. I selected Pampers from the litter and took him with me to Cal, when I left for college. When we were in the moving van, I had put him in a cage to keep him from getting in trouble, but he screamed the whole time. I let him out so he could explore and calm down, but he climbed up onto my shoulder and fell fast asleep. Since that day, my shoulder became his favorite place to relax.

I'd never single-handedly raised a pet from birth to death until Pampers, and it drastically increased the pain I felt when I lost him. He got me through some of the hardest years of my life... The time I was living with my ex who was bipolar - she had gone through an exceptionally bad episode, right before my father called me long distance to tell me he was going to commit suicide because my mother had left him... I couldn't handle it. As I laid there, curled up on the floor crying to myself, Pampers had walked up to me and sniffed my face. He began rubbing his face on mine, and in the process, left several huge streaks of some of the smelliest drool I'd ever experienced. Then he showed me his ass. I sat up, hugged him, and told him that he had the stankiest breath I'd ever known.

I owe a lot of who I have become, as an adult, to that cat, as strange as it may sound. He had been my best friend for the majority of my adult life, and it had become impossible to imagine a day when he wouldn't be there anymore. I know a lot of this sounds melodramatic, but it is sincerely how I feel.

Well, it's been nearly 2 days since he passed away, and a day since I said my final goodbyes (we decided to have him cremated), but it still hasn't completely sunk in. There is a gaping hole in my life right now, and the apartment feels empty. While I can certainly function and even still laugh and smile when I need to, if left to my own devices, I find myself blankly staring into space, not thinking about anything at all. I know it will pass... I know I will move on and will have many other great pets in the future, but I don't know if any will change my life in the same way he did.

He was just a cat, but he was the best damn cat I'd ever known. Here's to you, buddy, and thanks for everything you did for me. I hope that you felt the same way about me.

Ten of Life's Simplest Pleasures

2006-07-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

Since everyone is doing it and I really need to remember these right now...

(In no particular order)
1) Being moved by *something* (book, movie, game, conversation, whatever)
2) The middle of a great meal with a nice glass of wine, surrounded by great company.
3) When creative ideas from various people or things suddenly click.
4) Having one of my cats just jump on my chest when I'm on the couch, and curl up against my chin with their face pressed against my cheek.
5) Laughing uncontrollably about something stupid with my fiance.
6) Having my baby cousin (second cousin, actually) throw her arms around me and talk incessantly about random stuff as I carry her around.
7) Visiting my mom and brother and just veg'ing out in front of the TV on a warm LA day, with a cold beer, a good movie/game, and a pile of snacks/food/whatever in front of me as the dog stares at me from aside the couch, drooling.
8) Really nailing a song at karaoke ;)
9) Being drenched in sweat after a hard workout, taking a shower, then taking a nice afternoon nap.
10) Having a moment to sit still and do nothing but simply enjoy the moment.

My, What a Large Monitor You Have!

2006-06-15T10:17:00.000-07:00

I have secretly replaced my crappy old TV and my 17" CRT monitor with a new Samsung 23" HDTV monitor. Let's see if I notice...

It's really cool to have such a huge monitor, but the fact that the resolution isn't quite up to monitor specs, I can't get the resolution up to what I normally have it at, which means the letters are *huge* when I type... and given the size of the thing, I have to keep the new TV about 2 feet away from me.

Just for reference, here's what it looks like:

For the curious, the model number is LN-S2341W.

Not Sure What to Call This Post

2006-06-01T10:29:00.000-07:00

Random stuff today.

Picked up a 360!!! I really, really hesitated making the purchase, as I just happened to be at Best Buy and asked the clerk just out of curiosity if they had any... and sure enough, they just had a new shipment arrive that day. I had received a fairly large bonus from work a few weeks back, so after debating with myself (and my fiance) for about 20 minutes, I gave in and picked it up along with Oblivion. I figured that I already had 6 other games, it was about time I picked one up.

I'm loving it. The X360 menu system/HUD and XBL are by far one of the best things to happen to consoles. It makes navigating through everything extremely easy, I can access all my Live info at the touch of a button, and it's actually encouraging me to play online more and more. Well played, MS.

So far, I've spent most of my time in Oblivion, but just cracked open Full Auto and Fight Night 3. GodDAMN FN3 is good fun. Nothing quite like pounding on Seppo's left eye until it looks like raw hamburger :D And Oblivion... man, that game is good. I just joined the Thieves' Guild and things have certainly picked up. Full Auto is good mindless fun. Also have Perfect Dark, Condemned, Cameo, and PGR3, but haven't had much of a chance to play any of them.

Picked up Brain Age while I was in North Carolina visiting my father. Surprisingly entertaining. And it includes Sudoku, which I have been addicted to recently (and have gotten quite good at). My Brain Age stays between 20~28 (my real age), so I guess I'm doing okay in the brain pan. Though stress has a very distinct effect on my ability to play that game. On days that I am super busy or stressed out, my scores are noticeably lower.

But, speaking of visiting my father, I have to admit... my father is a stronger man than I thought. Despite the recent surgery, he was in surprisingly good spirits. He joked around about his missing leg. (when an acquaintance asked him what happened, he said, "We went to an expensive restaurant, and they wanted to charge an arm and a leg! Turns out they only needed the leg.") He's still not taking good care of himself, but nothing I do is going to change that (believe me... I've tried). Overall, it was a pleasant weekend, despite the rank odor of smoke, dog urine, and the smelliest well water I've ever come in contact with. And let me tell you... in the middle of Nowhere, North Carolina, WalMart is a *happenin'* place.

But, both going to NC and coming back, we ended up getting stuck in the layover airports for 3 hours each way (Chicago on the way out, Nashville on the way back). Sucked big time.

Oh, and lastly, while I was gone over the weekend, someone decided to steal the stereo out of my car, which was parked *within* my apartment complex's gated parking area, underneath a street lamp, in front of the pool/playground/next to the front office. And to top it off, it was a birthday gift from my fiance (and an expensive one, too) 2 years ago, and they used my own goddamn tools (which were in my trunk) to pry the thing out of the dashboard.

The bastages.

Playing Ketchup

2006-05-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

It's been a crazy couple of weeks, let me tell you. In the last month or so, I've been to London, got through E3, and went to Tokyo for a combination business trip/burial for my grandfather. And this week (tomorrow, actually), I leave for North Carolina to go see my father, who just got out of the hospital from his big surgery.

E3 was even more exhausting this year than usual, though I'm not entirely sure why. The show itself was a bit of a disappointment, to be honest. There were a few surprises ($600?! Tilt functionality?!), but overall, people showed what everyone knew they were going to show, and most of it looked and played like everyone expected.

A few standouts:

- Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft): I'm a bit miffed that this appears to be a PS3 exclusive, but I really enjoy the premise of this game. From what I've heard, it's looking absolutely stunning. Can't wait to get my hands on this one. (Just found out that this got IGN's overall action game of show.)

- Splinter Cell: Double Agent (Ubisoft): Yes, Ubi had a fairly solid lineup this year. Splinter Cell seems to be changing the look of the game and is going for a more "Hollywood-esque" look and style. Should be entertaining.

- Resistance: Fall of Man (SCEA): A shooter by the guys at Insomniac, this game is *pretty*. Didn't get a chance to play it at all, but Insomniac is no slouch when it comes to gameplay (though whether or not they can pull off an FPS remains to be seen). Seeing as it is supposed to be a launch title, this could be one of the must-have titles for the PS3 launch.

- Heavenly Sword (SCEA): Or otherwise known as "Goddess of War." Essentially, a next gen version of God of War, with a female lead character, and mythology that looks like it's loosely based on Chinese mythology/Wu Xia movies.

- Bioshock (2K Games): Didn't get to see this one (was behind closed doors), but heard it was extremely impressive. I believe IGN gave it X360 game of show... It's the spiritual successor to System Shock, so there's a lot of hardcore anticipation behind this one.

Not Quite Sure Category:

- Wii: Still don't know what to make of the controller. When used properly, it can be fun, but the sensitivity is still an issue. And frankly, do I *want* to have to stand up and position myself in specific orientations to play certain games? Do I want to be concerned what angle my hands are at when lying down on my couch to relax? Still yet to be seen.

- PS3 Price Point: Who is this game console for? The only electronic/entertainment thing I've ever spent more than $500 on in my life is a PC. And that's because I needed one for college.

- Dead Rising: Capcom's new "Dawn of the Dead" style game for X360. It looks vastly improved over the movie they showed at last year's E3, but I'm still not sure if it's worth picking up. Sure, there are moments of sheer awesomeness (like taking a zombie's head off with a bowling ball), but it might get a bit repetitive after a while.

- Too Human: Looks like it could potentially be fun, but I've never understood why there was *so* much hype for this game before anything was really ever available for it. The version that they showed at E3 looked like it shouldn't have been shown, but I'm going to guess that a lot of the issues the game was suffering from were linked to Unreal Engine 3 and whatever camera AI they were using.

- Viva Pinata: Really, really cute, but will it actually be any fun? And is it really a good idea to link kids to XBL Marketplace where they can buy random crap??

- Nintey-Nine Nights: Looks pretty, but how is it any different from, say, Dynasty Warriors?

- Saint's Row: Another GTA clone, but this one is actually fairly good-looking. Considering the size and scope of the game, the graphics are good, the gameplay feels all right (though the driving is floaty), but the one thing it's missing is style. It feels a bit too generic right now, which might prevent people from caring too much.

The WTF Category:

- Shadowrun: Okay, I used to GM a Shadowrun campaign. I loved the game world, the gameplay, etc. WTF is this new game??? They took an extremely deep RPG and turned it into a half-assed FPS?

- MGS4: Why is everyone so excited about this game? They showed a 15 minute trailer that was unbelievably badly written (how many times can you repeat "War has changed" without it actually meaning anything in context of what is being said?), although the action sequences were pretty cool. The story has completely lost any interest for me, so I suppose that's why I care so little, but man. It was mind-boggling.

Overloaded:

- RTS games: Oh dear GOD, there were a lot of RTS games at the show. Supreme Commander, Company of Heroes, Medieval 2, Battle for Middle Earth 2, Civ 4 expansion, Rise of Legends, etc etc. I like RTS games as much as the next guy, but dayumn.

- Comic book games: The Darkness, Marvel Ultimate Alliance, X-men 3: The Official Game, X-men Legends 2, Dragon Ball Z, Naruto (like, 3 of them!), One Piece, etc. I know comics are "in" now, but this is overkill.

- Squeenix Brands: 14 SKUs based on 3 brands (FF, DQ, Mana). You know it's getting ridiculous when a specific *sequel* in a series becomes its own *brand*. There are about 3 or 4 Final Fantasy 7 products in development right now. And I believe there are 3 Final Fantasy 13s.

Okay. That was a lot more than I had originally intended to post.

Elektric!

2006-05-22T12:43:00.000-07:00

Wasn't able to post "from the show floor" like I said I would in my last post, but I will give an update at a later date. Too much catching up to do.

But, I spent last week in Japan (after spending a whole day at home after E3!!!) giving presentations and whatnot, but on Saturday, I attended the burial of my grandfather. He actually died back in February, but we've kept him on ice since then, as the planet alignment wasn't quite right for a proper burial (just kidding... he was cremated, and it takes a while to get through all the paperwork and whatnot to go through with the actual burial in Japan, despite the fact that my grandfather had actually purchased a plot of land over 30 years ago).

Since most of the grieving happened back when he actually died, while the ceremony was certainly somber, it wasn't depressing. In fact, it was actually quite pleasant. I got to see family that I hadn't seen since I was in grade school, and a few family members that I used to be really close with that I hadn't seen in close to 10 years. While tears were not scarce during the actual burial, afterwards, people were smiling, laughing, and sharing stories about my grandfather. I think he would have been very happy to see people remembering him so fondly...

Now, onto the subject title! My mom's cousin (who is only 36, so she's closer to my age than my mom's) had moved to Kyushuu a while back, got married to a half-Japanese guy, and had a daughter about 5 years ago. The last time I saw her was about 8 years ago, so seeing her on Saturday was a pleasant surprise, as we used to be fairly close. She brought her little girl, Hana, who was the most adorable little ball of energy I ever met. Strangely, she came running up to me (despite never having met her before) and began talking to me like I'd known her since she was born. She held my hand, followed me everywhere, and even demanded to sit on my lap when we got into the car to go to the restaurant where we were having lunch. Her mom thought it was cute the way we got along and she asked Hana why she liked me so much, and her response was, "Because he's so handsome and I want to marry him!" So adorable! She even asked her mom to marry me so we could all go home together. Maki (my mom's cousin) tried to explain the whole "incest" thing without being too straight forward, but I think it was lost on the poor girl.

However, during lunch, Hana started talking about her father... then began saying how much I looked like her father and how she wished I was her father. Poor thing. Her father left the family for another woman, which is why they moved back to Tokyo, and I'm sure she misses her father dearly. I felt compelled to protect her, but at the same time, I didn't want to overstep my boundaries and make things more difficult for her mom. Though, I did promise her that I would take her out for lunch and to the park next time I'm in Tokyo.

(And she drew a picture for me! Her mom faxed it to me the next morning... it's on my refrigerator door now. I'm such a sap... I guess that's why I'm The Cheese, though.)

Unto the Breach

2006-05-05T19:15:00.000-07:00

And so, today marks the last day of normal work for at least a week, as starting Monday, I descend into the cesspit of over-stimulation, poor bodily hygiene, and booze that is E3.

Seeing as it will be Microsoft's second (calendar) year on the X360, hopes are high for quality content to be forthcoming. But, more importantly, most people want to know wtf is going on with the PS3 and the Wii (*chuckle*).

Checking the pre-E3 lists, most companies are keeping their cards close to their vests, but the major announcements will have hit by the time I set foot on the show floor.

Next week's venues:

Tuesday - Nintendo press event/party. Last year, they had Maroon 5 playing... which was fairly disappointing, considering that Microsoft had both the Killers and the Chemical Brothers playing (which was all the more sweetened by attending that portion of the show in the company of Tetsuya Mizuguchi).

Wednesday - Who knows? Trying to organize a casual dinner with friends, but could very well get sucked into attending a dinner with the execs.

Thursday - Sony party @ the Dogder's stadium. Going to be running late to that one, as I have a dinner with some developers overlapping by about an hour.

No Microsoft party for me this year =
More news to follow from the show floor!

Racism in London

2006-05-01T14:04:00.000-07:00

I was surprised to hear from someone that racism in England was likely as bad as the worse parts of America. Being from California, it's relatively tolerant out here, at least in comparison to the rural areas.

But this last weekend, while in London, I encountered a bloke that really, really seemed like he wanted to know what 12 years of karate could do to his person. I was being taken around town by a lovely young Japanese lady (whom I have known for a while), when we boarded the Underground after having dinner. We stopped at one of the stations on our way out, and some drunken chav (is that the correct use of the term?) got on and started singing horrible drinking songs. Something about shooting German planes down, sung to the tune of "She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain."

Soon, the lyrics began to change, and next thing I know, he's saying, "I bet you don't have a passport, you Chinese c*nt... No you don't have a passport you Chinese c*nt," etc.

I realized that he was looking straight at my companion, and my blood began to boil. Just as I was about to stand up and show him what we mean by shock and awe in America, she pulled me off the train, and we simply got on the next one. I could see him laughing as the train pulled away...

She then told me that she's used to it, and she's had eggs thrown at her and whatnot. I couldn't believe it. A country that is supposed to be as liberal as England, and there's this much racial animosity? It perplexes the mind.

Non sequitur: According to my hotel's menu, French for "assortment of breads" is "assortiment de pain."

Crysis

2006-04-19T21:14:00.000-07:00

IGN.com posted some screens from Crysis, the new game by Crytek, published by EA.

Is it just me, or does the girl look like a lifeless, soulless Zhang Ziyi?

Suck

2006-03-27T13:08:00.000-08:00

It really doesn't stop, does it?

Just moments before I left Japan, I got a phone call telling me that my dad was hospitalized with pneumonia. Given how damaged his lungs are from 50 years of smoking, any sort of lung sickness is potentially lethal, but I soon found out that he would be all right.

*Until*, that is, they decided to give him a look over and found out that his diabetes had caught up with him and his left leg was starting to turn necrotic/gangrenous. On Wednesday night, the night before my big meeting, they amputated his left leg. They're keeping an eye on his right leg to make sure it's all right.

This is turning into one hell of a year.

Uh... Mom?

2006-03-19T23:48:00.000-08:00

Okay. So, my mom spent the month in Japan with me back in January, and she went back for a month when my grandfather was hospitalized and finally passed away. She's back now.

...so, should I be disturbed that she emailed me pictures of my grandfather in his coffin? To my work email address, no less???

The Gods are Pleased

2006-03-13T10:21:00.000-08:00

...for I have brought the Rock unto the people, and they said it was good.

An Appropriate Level of Mourning and the Greatest Will to Live

2006-02-23T14:30:00.000-08:00

I find it hard to put into words my state of mind as of late. Over the course of the last few weeks, I've had enormous amounts of responsibility/pressure dropped upon my shoulders, I've had my heart broken (in a weird sense), I watched a man die, and I haven't really slept since it all started. I figure my blog is as good a way to cleanse my brain as any, so here goes.

Last week, I had several visitors from our Tokyo office here on business... One of which was someone I wasn't quite ready to see just yet. She has a way of simply making me lose direction. The entire time, I was trying to keep my balance, metaphorically, when over dinner on Wednesday night, my cell phone rang. I ignored it at first, but after the caller left a message, I decided to excuse myself and listen to it. It was my brother, and his only words were, "Hapacheese, grandpa's in a coma. Give me a call."

Not something I had expected to hear over dinner. Nevertheless, some of the visitors were extremely important clients, so I had to keep it together until the end of dinner. I think I was expecting to receive that call at some point in the near future, but it certainly wasn't then. Doing my best impression of a person enjoying dinner, I finished up business, dropped them off at the hotel... I call my brother immediately and find out that my grandfather's illness had finally caught up to him and his weakened immune system made him unable to fight off the pneumonia that was attacking his system. That and the fact that cancerous blood cells now equated about 80% of his total blood...

Still reeling from the conversation I had had with the lady friend mentioned above (intentionally omitted), it was a double-punch that nearly sent me to the floor. Particularly since I had already booked a ticket to head to London for extremely important business the following Tuesday through Sunday (where I am currently). My mother was heading to Japan on Friday morning with my stepfather (who had thrown out his back so badly he had to be hospitalized earlier that week... what a trooper). My cousin was having visa issues and couldn't leave the country, and my brother had to stay home to take care of the pets and whatnot while my mom and stepdad were gone. I was the only option, as far as grandkids went. I scoured the internet and finally found a ticket that wasn't $5000 that left out of San Jose airport on Saturday morning.

I arrived Sunday afternoon, and after stopping by my grandparent's house simply to drop off my bag, I zoomed off to the hospital. Surprisingly enough, my grandfather was actually conscious, but fairly incoherent. My mom, in her panic, had told my brother that he was in a coma, when in fact he had been pronounced in critical condition (not that that's much better, really). My mom had told him the day before that I would be coming, and apparently he kept shouting, "Mago wa? Mago!!" ("Where's my grandson? Grandson!!") When I heard that, I couldn't help but smile and choke back a tear...

I knelt down next to his bed and held his hand. He couldn't really look at me, but he ever so gently squeezed my hand in return. I leaned over and whispered into his ear, "I promised that I'd see you again... So here I am. You taught me to be a man of my words, so here I am." He smile and let out a sound that perhaps was a cry of joy or simply an attempt to say something profound, but the meaning was lost on me. I held his hand for a half hour, telling him all the things we grandchildren had learned from him over the years, and how much he meant to us.

His lucidity ebbed and flowed for the better part of my trip. When someone new would enter the room, he would snap into consciousness for a moment, and say a few words that would make us all laugh. He even told the doctor that he loved him, he called my grandma his "beautiful bride," my aunt an idiot, and sneered at my mom for constantly being in his face and asking him the same questions 5 times each.

Strange thing was that his heart was extremely strong. He had never experienced any heart trouble, and it was showing. Despite the drop in his oxygen intake, his irregular breathing, and overall weakness, his heart kept beating at a steady 73-75 bpm. It was impressive to watch. Having stabilized, most of us decided to call it a night and go home.

Seeing as I had to return to San Francisco that Tuesday, I spent the better part of Monday afternoon going to buy my bus ticket to the airport, exchanging dollars for yen for my mother, etc. Once again, that evening, I returned to the hospital to check up on my grandfather, and my mother and her childhood friend were there. They both told me about how they thought he would pass on while I was running errands, as he started showing extreme signs of pain. He would writhe on the bed and moaned out loud. Yet, just before I arrived, he began stabilizing and reverted back to normal. His blood pressure when from 65/30 back to 90/50. Nobody knew what was going on. However, we all knew he wasn't going to make it, so we asked the doctor to give him a slow morphine drip to let him sleep... though the doctor told us that it was likely he would never wake again. We all said our farewells, kissed him gently, and waited for him to be at ease.

Seeing as how I had to leave for the airport the next day, I resigned myself to the fact that I would neither be able to attend my grandfather's funeral, nor would I be able to see him off... However, on Tuesday morning as I was packing my bags and getting ready to take a shower, the phone rang. It was my mother... panicked. The doctor had told her that my grandfather had but moments before he would pass. Forgoing the shower, I threw my bags into my aunt's car, and we zoomed over to the hospital... only to find that my grandfather had *once again* stabilized. We joked with the doctor, who was genuinely perplexed, that he didn't know how stubborn my grandfather could be. We all sat around his bed, half wishing that he would simply let go and find peace... but ended up talking about his various misadventures.

I had found out that during World War II, while in the Japanese navy, the boat that he was captain on had been sunk, and he clung to a piece of wood for over 2 days, waiting to be found. He was picked up by the US Navy, held captive, but eventually released. We all recalled how he had been diagnosed with stomach cancer at age 75, and survived it, without recurrance, for over 13 years. More stories of his near misses with death began to crop up and it dawned on me simply how strong his life force was, for a lack of better term. He was a fighter... and he fought until the end.

I boarded my plane back to San Jose (which was nearly 2 hours late), raced back home to take a shower once I arrived back in the Bay Area, then raced over to SFO to get on a plane to go to London (3 continents in a single day!). Once I got off the plane, a message was waiting for me on my cell phone... and I knew exactly what it meant. On Wednesday morning, at 3 am Japan time, my grandfather passed away.

And yet... I don't know how to feel. How many people get a chance to spend their last moments of relative health surrounded by family, going out to eat, playing mahjong, and generally enjoying life? How many people get that last chance to say their goodbyes, especially to family members living in different countries? When thinking of that, it makes me happy. Very happy. I can't help but question, "Is this an appropriate level of mourning?" Because frankly, I simply want to get out and drink, dance, do whatever. Anything but sit here and be depressed over a life well-lived.

But, I miss him. I miss both my grandfathers. They were both good, honest men. But, they both died at very old ages (89 and 88) and were both happy as far as I could tell. In the end, what more can you ask for?

Around the World in 4 Days

2006-02-17T13:33:00.000-08:00

Assuming I can find a ticket that doesn't require 5 stopovers and is cheaper than the $3000 that I'm being quoted, I'll be heading to Japan tomorrow morning... only to have to come back on Tuesday, shower, then hop on another plan to London, where I will be for the rest of next week.

Turns out my grandfather's health took a turn for the worse two days ago, and had to be hospitalized. His immune system is no long working, so he has come down with pneumonia, and has now slipped into a coma. The doctor has placed him in critical condition, and he's not expected to survive the weekend. My mom has asked me to go to Japan on behalf of all the grandkids, in case he passes away in the next day and they get a funeral arranged by Monday. If not, I'll be doing a lot of sitting around and making sure my mom doesn't freak out or something.

So, there's that, plus the ungodly amount of work that is continuously being dumped on my lap. I was just going through our new processes (which I will be in charge of) and realized that there were several mentions of a "Publishing Director" made throughout. Hm... If I'm supposed to be the head of Publishing... I can only guess that to mean one thing :) Hopefully my workload will become manageable once I hire my two goons.

In addition, I finally resolved a long-standing issue with a close friend of mine. Progress is definitely good, but there's no feeling quite like getting your heart ripped out of your chest and watching someone play a few rounds of badminton with it. It still smarts something fierce. The pain will pass, and the rest of my life will be the richer for it.

I just have to make sure that I don't friggin' lose it in the next two weeks, and I think I'll be all right.

New Hairstyle

2006-02-13T00:53:00.000-08:00

Trying out a new hairstyle. My fro had grown too long, but figured it was a good opportunity to try something new. Not sure how I feel about it... it's distinctly European-ish, and certainly makes me look like I'm playing for the other team. And it's harder to hide the fact that I'm thinning up there :D

Changes Galore

2006-02-07T18:20:00.000-08:00

Apparently, my role at work is being slightly redefined... again. With the changes come a lot more responsibility (read: work), and I was told that the position was "being elevated," which to me, sounds a lot like "we're going to give you more money." Let's see if that is actually the case.

The scary part, though, is the deeper I move into the corporate side of things, the more and more I feel the need to study business/finance. And I *hate* that sort of stuff. But, this is where my career decisions have lead me, and it's not like I didn't know what I was getting myself into, so I have to learn to deal with it. And if I'm being groomed for it, I might as well accept it. Now it's simply time to step up and see if I can play the game.

24 - The Spoilers

2006-02-06T10:06:00.000-08:00

This post is NOTHING BUT SPOILERS!!!1!

You have been warned.

Okay, I just finished walking with dinosaurs and watched the last episode of 24 Season 1. Awesome stuff. My fiance had watched it while I was in Japan, but she wanted to watch it again to see how I would react. It pissed her off because I guessed most of the big twists:

"That's not Alan York. She's screwed."
"Jaymee is dead."
"Drazen's alive. Just watch."
"There's a bomb in the phone."
"I'd been debating whether or not it was Mason or Myers that was the bad guy. We're still at the beginning of the second to last episode. It's still too early to give away the real second mole. It's gotta be Nina."
etc.

It didn't ruin it for me, but actually made it fun to watch for little clues or hints. But, the one problem I had with the ending was the fact that it was Nina. I mean, how long had she been in CTU? Everyone talked about her like she'd been there for years, and that she'd worked her way up, but sacrficed everything because of Jack. And besides, you figure they'd have a pretty thorough background check for their employees. It's not like she turned suddenly... she was a plant from the beginning (different name, hidden past, etc). How'd they justify that?

Well, time to move on to Season 2, I suppose.

OTML CKY?

2006-02-03T16:13:00.000-08:00

Blech

2006-01-27T13:44:00.000-08:00

So I managed to catch some sort of bug in Japan. Not sure what it is, but it feels uncomfortably similar to walking pneumonia (hacking cough with lots of phlegm, dizziness, stomach cramps, etc). Despite taking tons of Airborne and vitamin C while in Japan, I suppose being surrounded by 4-5 sick people really didn't help. I just hope I didn't give it to my grandpa before I left (my mom is sick now, too).

But man, the sickness combined with the severe jetlag, combined with the general tumulous state of mind that I'm in really isn't a good combination. My head is in a fog and I have no sense of space or time (not particularly a good time to be driving, I suppose).

Have you ever thought that your life would be so much easier if you could simply read other people's minds? Or maybe life would be that much harder knowing the ulterior motives of everyone surrounding you? I consider myself fairly skilled at reading the motives of other men, but with women... I don't think women understand other women. At our core, I think men and women essentially want the same thing, but we simply approach things from completely different vectors. It's cause for all sorts of confusion and miscommunication. I suppose that's why it's refreshing to meet people who simply speak their mind, but not in a way that puts you on the spot or places any sort of unwanted pressures on you.

On a side note, finally sat down to start watching the first season of 24 from the beginning. I bought the DVD box set for seasons 1 and 2 on the Black Day sale at Best Buy for $20 a season, but haven't had the time to watch them since. Pretty awesome stuff so far (I'm only 3 episodes into the first season). Jack Bauer really *is* the man.

Time for a Bit of a Change

2006-01-24T15:31:00.000-08:00

Having spent a little time away from home and having helped furiously clean my grandparents' house, I have made up my mind to do the same thing at my own home: get rid of all the junk I've collected.

I'm as much of a pack rat as anyone. I keep all the boxes to all my electronics, I've never sold a single videogame back to the store in my life, and I have odd knick knacks that serve absolutely no purpose, other than simple nostalgia value. As far as the videogames go, I always held onto them for library purposes (i.e. just in case I needed them for reviewing or whatever), but there are clearly games in my library that will never serve any purpose other than to collect dust, and possible act as a frisbee in the near future. I figure that with as many games as I have (nearly 200 DC games, and nearly 250 games between PS2/Xbox/GC... I think), there's gotta be at least 50-100 games that I will never *ever* touch again for the rest of my life. If I can get $3-5 for each of those games, that's a sizeable chunk of change. And if anything, there has *got* to be a better way for me to store all my enormous peripherals like the maracas controllers or the Steel Battalion... thing.

And what the hell do I need 4 different sets of plates and bowls for? It's nice to have extras for when company comes over, but that's maybe, what... once every 4-6 months?

That's it. I'm cleaning house. At least if I do, I'll have less stuff to move when the time comes.

Back

2006-01-23T11:29:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm back in the US of A. Been a long trip. A real long trip. I'm mentally and physically exhausted.

My grandfather was in good spirits when I left, and I made him promise me that he'd keep breathing until I got back to Japan in a couple of months, or at least until he's thought up names for all of my future children. :)

But man, what a whirlwind of a trip. I'll have to take the time to sort through everything and then post about it later. The parts that I *can* post, at least.

And no, I didn't go back to that bar. Sickos.

Update

2006-01-15T00:46:00.000-08:00

My grandfather's blood transfusion isn't lasting as long as we had hoped. The first time he had it done was at the beginning of December, and he was doing well until the beginning of January. He had another transfusion done around the 6th of January, and we were hoping it'd last for a month again, but since yesterday, he has been getting worse.

Well, "worse" makes it sound much more horrible than it is. He talks nonsense a lot of the time, but he always talks about how good he feels. Maybe he's lightheaded or something, but man, I can only be hope to be that euphoric when I'm that close to death. I think he can't tell the difference between his dreams and reality, and he's said that he's gone horseback riding, drank the best sake he's ever had, and something about dolphins and afros (not sure about that last one).

He's got a great appetite, though, despite missing 2/3 of his stomach (removed due to stomach cancer). He's constantly craving food and eating and talking about how great it tastes. It's saddening to see him slip away, but at the same time, it's a relief to see that he's peaceful.

If Gatorade Were Really Made from Gators...

2006-01-14T05:30:00.000-08:00

...it'd taste a lot like chicken soup, I've learned.

Yes. I ate gator. Deep fried gator. Deep fried gator nuggets to be exact. And they tasted a lot like chicken. Well, the texture was slightly different, but it was suprisingly normal.

Kangaroo was on the menu as well, but that was all sold out. I guess they eat them some kangaroo here in Japan.

There's one more animal on my list of "animals that I never thought I'd end up eating, but did" list.

Hello from abroad

2006-01-11T00:59:00.000-08:00

I'm still alive.

Things are all right here. Grandfather is hanging on, due to the blood transfusions, but each transfusion is having less and less effect on him. While we originally heard he would only last a month, he's been given a few more months. He isn't in any pain, and has been surrounded by family, so he told us that he was happy and ready to go whenever the time came. I don't suppose you could ask for much more.

My mom came down with the stomach flu, leaving the rest of us to take care of *two* sickly people. Yeesh. At first, we thought it was something contageous, so we were all walking around wearing Michael Jackson-style masks so as not to infect my grandfather, but turns out they weren't necessary.

Did the usual temple-visiting on New Years, and went to a club with my brother and cousin where we danced the night away with some of my cousin's friends. It's been pretty tame otherwise, aside from the occasional night out with my friends, but it's been good. First long vacation I've had since I've started working.

On a side note, turns out my father *doesn't* have lung cancer. He's got some weird growths in his lungs, but a specialist told him they weren't cancerous, but needed to be watched. Whew.

Now I'm back at work at our Japanese office, and will be here until the 23rd. I suppose I come here too often, as people I know keep coming by and asking, "What are you doing here?" And when I answer, they simply say, "Oh. All right... see you later." I suppose the shock of seeing me sitting at one of their tiny desks has worn off.

Met up with foomfoom for the first time in years earlier this month. It was unfortunately brief, but it was good to see him. I have a video message from him for the folks back home, which I will be sure to play for everyone when I return. I've got plenty of interesting pics of my trip, too.

That's enough time screwing around at work... I'll post more details sometime later.

I'm Such a Follower

2005-12-28T02:01:00.000-08:00

Four jobs you've had in your life: Martial arts instructor, ride operator at Disneyland, the guy who restocks the shelves at night at Office Max, and bank teller.

Four movies you could watch over and over: Gladiator, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Incredibles, and The Matrix

Four places you've lived: Hong Kong, LA, SF Bay Area... and those are the only places I've really lived, so for the fourth one, I'll put Tokyo, since I've spent a total of well over a year there.

Four TV shows you love to watch: Assuming they have to actually be on TV *right now*, my options are pretty limited, as I only have 2 channels that come in clearly o_O Sooooo, that means Lost, Boston Legal, Desperate Housewives, and Grey's Anatomy.

Four places you've been on vacation: Jamaica, Tokyo, Philippines, and Charleston, South Carolina :)

Four websites you visit daily: Something Positive, Questionable Content, Fark, and... Penny Arcade, maybe?

Four of your favorite foods: Pasta (any kind, but the Rigatoni alla Norcina at Steps of Rome in SF is quite possibly my favorite), ice cream, Korean BBQ, and sushi.

Four places you'd rather be: Tokyo, at my mom's, Bali, or London.

Four albums you can't live without: Joshua Tree by U2, Ten by Pearl Jam, self-titled Sugar Soul, Best of by Yamazaki Masayoshi.

Oh, and I'm going to Japan for about a month starting tomorrow :) Wish me luck!

Memories

2005-12-15T18:00:00.000-08:00

Meme time!

Most of my childhood summers were spent with relatives in Japan. It was always interesting as my cousin was a year younger than me, so it was always like we had an extra brother for 2 months out of the year. My grandparents and aunt and uncle would take us to all sorts of cool places, and we spent much of our time building plastic Gundam models, playing Famicom games, reading manga, and biking to the nearby parks and recreation centers.

But the highlight of every trip? The Obon Festival. It's a festival that takes place in japan in August, and it is celebrated with an outdoor bazaar of sorts, lined with games, food carts, and general mayhem. In the center, there was always a large tower with a man in a loin cloth banging away on a large taiko drum. Around the base of the tower, people dressed in yukatas (sort of like casual kimonos) would do traditional folk dances in a circle around it.

My aunt would give us each a small amount of money to spend that evening. My cousin and I would sit there and plot how we would maximize the fun-value of our money, examine all the booths, and make sure we had enough money to go to the "kingyo sukui" (translated: "goldfish saving") booth at the end of the evening. I'll get back to that later.

My brother, on the other hand, would almost always blow his entire purse on a single item (BB gun, massive amounts of food, or whatever). And, of course, he'd usually come around to see if he could bum money off of me or my cousin, but we usually stood strong.

We'd head to the toy carts where you they had a bundle of ropes all mixed up, then run through a mesh, and on the other end, each rope is attached to a dangling toy. You would pay money and then pull a rope... whatever toy raised was the one you got. It was always a thrill, trying to figure out what rope connected to what, or simply not knowing what you'd get...

Or there were the bizarre rice cracker booths. You could pay money to eat a plain rice cracker (really good ones, though), or you could pay to spin THE WHEEL OF DOOM!!! Essentially, it was a bonus thing you could do to have a random condiment added to your cracker... and some of them were fairly bizarre. They had chocolate, spices, etc. Fun.

And, of course, the kingyo sukui. You are given a little magnifying glass-shaped scooper with thin paper where the glass should be. You have to use that to scoop as many goldfish out of a giant tub as you can. Of course, the scooper being made of paper makes it fairly difficult... but if you're good, you can get quite a few. In addition to goldfish, there were also tadpoles. Most kids kept the goldfish, but I always traded mine for tadpoles. Simply because I knew I'd only be in Japan for so long, and by the time it was time to leave, they would grow legs and jump out of the little bowl we would keep them in in the backyard...

Simply a great time on a hot summer night with friends and family... I miss those festivals.

The Forces of the Universe Conspire Against Me

2005-12-07T13:36:00.000-08:00

My mind is *numb*. It sits in a sac filled of gelatin - and not the tasty, almond-flavored type - cushioned from the impact of everything happening around me. I can't help but think that there is someone pulling the sadistic strings to make me as tired and worn out as possible, or perhaps that the proverbial saying is true: when it rains, it fucking pours.

I won't reiterate the details about my Japanese grandfather; I handled that with my last entry. Little did I know that was simply the tip of the iceberg. Well, most of the events that have happened since then are fairly insignificant in comparison - except one - but when compounded, it makes it feel like getting through a day is not unlike dredging through a muddy marsh, knee deep in, well, mud.

I still hadn't quite figured out how to cope with the possibility of losing another grandfather yesterday afternoon. I was fairly zen-like in my approach, as I feel that I have had a good opporutnity to show him the man that I have become and that I have, perhaps, made him proud. I knew that he had lived a full life, seen and done things many men wouldn't dare speak of, and here at the end, he is surrounded by a loving family. What more can a man ask for?

Yet, as these thoughts turned over in the back of my mind, I received a phone call on my cell phone, in the middle of the work day, no less, from my father. I timidly answered the phone, as I wasn't sure what the unexpected call portended. His voice was shaky - unsure, even - as he began to speak, "I will be going to the hospital in a few minutes for the second time this month." His tears clouded his words, "And I just wanted to say goodbye. I don't think I'm going to make it. I'm tired, and I'm scared..."

I was at a loss for words myself. How do I respond? My father is known for his melodramatic flair. I knew that he had, indeed, been in the hospital recently for pneumonia. Despite his young age of 62, he is aged. He is haggard. And to be honest, he did that to himself with years of steroid abuse, smoking, and excessive drinking. But it doesn't lessen the impact of hearing words like those. I finally gathered myself and asked, "What hospital? Are you going to be alright?"

"I love you," was all that he said in response as he hung up the phone. I tried calling back, but no answer.

I was in a daze for the rest of the day, going through the mechanical motions of working without putting much thought behind anything. It just happened to be that I had to attend focus tests that evening, so was stuck in the office until 11:00 pm. My fiance and I had come to the office together in her car (we work in the same office). We had agreed that she would take the bus home and I would drive home whenever I finished... The one thing I hadn't anticipated was that she assumed I brought the spare key - I assumed she would leave me hers.

So, at around 11:15, I began to wander the streets for a taxi (the buses and trains home had all stopped) and finally found one, and took the $60 cab ride home. Tired and confused, I walked into my apartment, sat down on the couch and tried to distract myself. Nothing worked. My fiance was studying for her finals, so I couldn't dump everything onto her... I figured the best thing would be to go to sleep. So, at about 1:15 in the morning, I crashed...

...only to be awoken at 5:08 by the blaring fire alarm. At first, I thought that perhaps something stupid had set it off. I tried to turn it off, but to no avail. I opened the front door to see everyone else in the building doing the same thing and I quickly surmised that it wasn't just my fire alarm: someone had pulled the alarm. I spent the next 5 minutes gathering the cats - and trust me, they don't like being shoved into duffle bags - ran downstairs to the garage, then threw them in the kitty carrier. After sitting around for another 5 minutes, the ambulance showed up and informed us that it was a false alarm, and that someone had a seizure. Their partner or whatever, in a panic, thought that the best way to get medical help would be to pull the fire alarm. Great.

So, we all shuffled back into our apartments and waited for the fire department to show up to turn off the main switch. And waited. And waited. My already numb brain was simply beginning to melt by this point. And finally, 45 minutes after the alarms had first been set off, the blaring noise stops.

And so, here I am - tired, worn, numb - trying to figure out how I can cram 3 weeks worth of work in by Friday, while attempting to shove everything into the back of my mind to let more primitive parts of my brain deal with the raw emotion.

And really, all I need is some goddamn sleep.

I Guess I'm Just Getting to that Age...

2005-11-29T20:01:00.000-08:00

So, the first relative I ever lost was my grandfather on my American side, earlier this year. He died of a disease (I forget the name) that causes his body to produce too many white blood cells, thus thinning out his blood. He lived with the disease for a while and survived a good while longer than expected. His eventual death was somewhat expected, though it did little to ease the pain of his passing.

Just minutes ago, I received a phone call from my brother that my grandfather on my Japanese side was just diagnosed with the same disease. I don't know how advanced the disease is at this stage, and am waiting for word on his life expectancy. The man is 87 years old, so I suppose he's already on borrowed time, but I hope that they caught it early.

Due to my father having issues with his parents, I rarely got to see my American grandparents. We wrote letters to each other every so often, but when my grandfather died, I hadn't seen him in 10 years. My Japanese grandparents, on the other hand, I saw every summer of my youth, as my parents would send me to Japan every year for summer vacation. And as an adult, I've had the advantage of having a job that sends me to Japan multiple times a year (7 times this year alone o_O), allowing me to spend as much time with them as possible. But that also means that I'm much closer to my Japanese grandpa, and his eventual passing will likely hit me much harder.

Update: The doctor says he has about a month. Looks like I'm heading out to Japan.

The Big Boss

2005-11-18T16:16:00.000-08:00

...and I'm not referring to MGS3.

So, the big boss (the chairman of the entire corporate umbrella) and his son came to visit the office today. I just found out they were coming *yesterday*. I was originally told the son was coming (and that he would be working for me, but that's changed a bit... more on that in a second), but not the dad.

They came by my desk on a tour of the offices, and I was dressed fairly well. Made my introductions and generally didn't make an ass of myself, I don't think. Then they all went into their big corporate meeting and I figured it'd be a good chance for me to take my lunch break and head to the gym.

So, naturally, I go to the bathroom to get changed into my t-shirt and sweats, and who do I run into on the way out? The big wig entourage. Lovely. So, they see me in my sneakers and sweats and t-shirt... but I quickly duck out of the way and hope they didn't recognize me. *sigh*

Only ran into them a few more times throughout the day, so overall, I think everything is fine, but all the middle-aged ladies in the office are abuzz with excitement (the son is a decent-looking young man whose father is worth *millions*). I was originally supposed to be his boss, but due to some changes, he will be doing *some* work for me, but reporting to a VP. Which is strange, because apparently his title is EVP (executive vice president). It must be good to be the king.

Oh, and when I say "work for me," I really meant "sit there and watch what I do." It's unclear as to whether or not he will actually help me out with anything, but I figure it's a good way to get to know him, as he's likely to be the next big boss of the company.

Guess who's getting drunk next? :D

What's in my machines now...

2005-11-14T13:57:00.000-08:00

So... Been trying to get caught up on my gaming lately, now that I've tentatively kicked my World of Warcraft habit (still haven't managed to cancel my account, though). I've got a ton of current gen stuff to get through, and the next gen is literally just around the corner. If I'm to stay up to date on my gaming, I've gotta get my ass in gear!

Now then, I've recently made my way through Indigo Prophecy, Dungeons & Dragons Heroes, and Jade Empire. A mixed bag of experiences overall, for sure.

Let's start with Jade Empire. I can see what BioWare was trying to do, but it didn't quite meet my expectations. You could tell that they (likely) modelled the characters after real life Asians, but there was simply something about their design (clothing, weapons, etc) that made it seem like they played a little too much Mortal Kombat at some point. The similarities between, say, Kitana and Silk Fox, or Kung Lao and the shirtless main character model are uncanny.

I enjoyed, though, the sort of "parallel universe China" aspect of the story, though. The Great Wall, the legends told throughout the game, etc all were nice, but given the fact that you only see a very limited part of the world, it never really feels realized. I wanted to see more of the countryside and I wanted to feel like I was actually on some epic journey, rather than jumping from location to location.

The cast of characters also did not feel quite up to their usual quality. Many of the characters seemed like they were added simply to fill up the roster. In the KOTOR games or in the Baldur's Gate series, the NPCs had more interesting and consequential dialog, and you had more reason to interact with them. It may have had to do with the fact that I played as an Open Palm kind of guy, and therefore generally avoided conflict, though. A friend of mine was Closed Fist and encountered, seemingly, a lot more interesting interactions between the characters. A design flaw, really, as the experience should be equally interesting, regardless of what branch you pick.

There was a plethora of kung fu styles, most of which I simply ignored. All I really needed was Spirit Thief... the rest were interchangeable (though I preferred my sword). The combat system was incredible simplistic with a lack of actual wire-fu, surpising for a game that is supposed to emulate a Wu Xia movie. In addition, the battles were either extremely easy, or like the last battle, a complete toss up of whether or not you'd win (my first battle with the last boss resulted in him essentially patterning me while holding me in slow motion... which resulted in me dying in about 4 seconds).

Overall, though, the experience was fun, as the setting was a breath of fresh air from the usual fantasy or Star Wars fare. However, given it was the first real foray into the world of Wu Xia in an RPG, I was hoping for more.

Now, onto Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes. What can you expect from a Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance clone, really? It features an isometric view, a few generic character classes, and a bit of hacking, and a little bit of slashing. The graphics are inferior to its predecessors, which is a bit strange, and the character/monster design is certainly lacking in creativity. In addition, the story is nearly non-existant.

But, action RPGs of this variety are more about the action and loot than anything else, and this game does surprisingly well in that respect (at least as the Warrior class). For me, the area where BG:DA succeeded (to a limited degree) was that it retained some of the reward balancing that Diablo had. BG:DA2 and Champions of Norrath seemed to have lost touch with that aspect and the designers appeared to think that the fun of the game was in the mind-numbing button pressing itself, which I don't believe is the case. While certainly not a great game by any means, it has a proper ramping up of loot and skills that creates a desire to push forward, though I wish there was a little more thought put into the skills. The advantage that Diablo 2 has in this area is the skill tree itself. It causes the player to make strategic decisions when building characters, and forces players to examine their loot to see if their loot compliments their character builds appropriately. Most console action RPGs lack those aspects. Overall, though, a decent, albeit mindless, game.

Now, the most interesting of the group: Indigo Prophecy. A bit over-hyped, if anything, but an excellent "experience," nonetheless. The opening scene is fantastic... it's a revival of the adventure game in a way that I could never have imagined. It's so immediate and visceral... It's a shame that the second half of the game devolves into a series of Simon Says games overlayed on top of Matrix Revolutions. What starts off as a great sort of CSI/Law & Order-esque set up quickly becomes a mixed up story about magic and technology and fate and squirrels (okay, maybe not). There's a lot of stuff that's introduced that feels unnecessary or simply has no meaning (the ravens???). A lot of the mechanics are interesting at times, but end up being either too long or force the player to watch the button sequences rather than the actual action that's happening on the screen.

It's a glorious attempt at bringing more cinematic storytelling to games, but in the end, I think it ran out of inspiration and steam and limped over the finish line. A pity, really.

Next up: Dark Cloud 2 and Disgaea (yes, I'm digging way back into my collection before moving onto bigger and better things). So far, Dark Cloud 2 has been fairly infuriating (is there any way to save the invention ideas you find on various notes?), plus the fact that I died after about an hour of playing and forgot to save my game. I decided to take a little break and played Disgaea. Interesting set up, and fairly solid gameplay... but with all these turn-based strategy games, I'm starting to wonder how many more I can play. The mechanics are all derivatives of other turn-based strategy games, and it tends to get a little tired. But, it's been a while since I've played one, so it's not bothering me as much as I thought, so I'll likely make it through.

After this, will probably throw in Shadow of the Colossus and maybe Paper Mario.

Busy as Hell

2005-11-04T10:37:00.000-08:00

London two weeks ago, South Carolina last week, then Tokyo this week. Almost had to go back to Tokyo next week, but that's been delayed until December. May have to go to London between now and then, though. I'm not sure how much more sitting in airplanes my ass can take.

London was great: had my fish and chips, spent an evening on a dinner boat cruising down the Thames River (complete with a few rounds of drunken karaoke), a drive through the countryside, etc. Highlight of the trip, though, was definitely having roast beef with Yorkshire pudding in a private room in a nice restaurant, with a plasma TV wheeled in so we could see the England vs Poland soccer match. Not too big of a soccer fan, but when you're surrounded by Brits and it's the last match before the World Cup starts, you tend to get sucked in.

South Carolina was surprisingly pleasant. My brother and I went to see my grandma for the first time since my grandfather passed away. Out of sheer coincidence, my aunt was visiting as well... who I hadn't seen in about 15 years (she doesn't get along with my father, so they're essentially estranged). But, it was extremely pleasant out there and we did a considerable amount of sightseeing. Lots of history out that way. Despite the horrible plane trip to and from, the stay was one of the most relaxing experiences I've had in a long while. Grandma and aunt were doing quite well, thankfully.

Tokyo was short. Only there for a couple of days. And despite my efforts to try and spend some time with friends and/or family, my night plans were all thwarted by my boss, and I quickly found myself nearly having to spend all night with Mr. Childhood Hero again. Luckily, my boss crapped out halfway through the night and we were able to head back home without further incident.

All this travel, though, is putting a bit of wear and tear on my iPod. Particularly the headphones. I got a set of Apple earbuds for Christmas last year, but they're already falling apart. I had similar problems with the stock headphones, but the rubber insulation around the wires is separating from the base, and one of the actual speakers of one of the earpieces has fallen off. I don't know if I abuse my iPod, or if the quality is just shoddy. If it's the former, I need to find a better way of carrying around my iPod, then. I always wrap the headphones around the iPod and shove it into my pocket. I don't really know what else to do with it...

Oh, and I haven't written a single word this month yet :( I'm only 4 days into NaNoWriMo, and I'm already behind...

*sigh*

Old Age

2005-10-19T17:12:00.000-07:00

So, one thing I've noticed increasingly in my increasing old age is that joints simply hurt. I've been doing some aerobics for cardio and every time, my lower back suffers. It's feels like a grinding pain that goes away by the end of the day, but it bothers me enough to be worried. Same thing goes for my knees (though not from cardio... just in general).

As a result, I picked up a big thing of "joint juice" from Costco (you know, one of those glucosamine supplements). Not sure if it works, but figured it'd be worth a shot. Anyone have any knowledge/experience with that stuff? I know we gave my dog glucosamine shots for her bad hips and it worked wonders...

Serenity!!!

2005-09-30T15:49:00.000-07:00

Today's mood: Bendy

Today is the day I see Serenity. I was introduced to this series really out of the blue when I was down in LA once, visiting my brother and his girlfriend. His girlfriend was actually the one that discovered this gem and forced me to watch it. I was half-playing WoW when they turned it on, but halfway through the first episode, I logged off and was enthralled. I hadn't seen TV that good in... well... *ever*, I think.

I remember seeing the advertisements for the show when it was on the air. All the usual suspects (i.e. internet geeks) were saying that the show was good, but to me, by looking at the commercials, for some strange reason, it reminded me of a TV version of The Last Starfighter. That being said, I was saddened to know that I did nothing to help support this show when it was on the air, but I did the right thing and bought the DVD (and introduced Seppo and several others to the show), which I am sure had a fairly good impact on sales.

I hope tonight's movie does not wrap up the series, but rather, sets up a nice universe in which new stories can grow. More Firefly/Serenity can never be a bad thing.

Since everyone else is doing it...

2005-09-30T12:40:00.000-07:00

Here's my political stance:

You are a
Social Liberal
(78% permissive)

and an...
Economic Liberal
(33% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Democrat

Link: The Politics Test on Ok Cupid
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

The Stupidest Genius There Ever Was

2005-09-26T19:18:00.000-07:00

So, I had this friend in college. Certifiable genius. The man was a piano prodigy who apparently played the piano in a concert with Yoyo Ma when he was 14 (...my friend, not Yoyo Ma). He got into Cal at age 16, and dropped out by age 19 because "he wasn't learning anything." He could do anything... music, computers, athletics. It all came naturally to him.

But he was obsessed with "having fun." Despite being a hardcore raver in college, after leaving, he said that he "really wanted to party because of all the fun he missed out on while in school." He never settled down anywhere and when he wasn't working, he was out getting toasted on whatever cocktails he could throw together. He was talking about buying a boat to live on so he could simply go from port to port and find work and travel and whatever.

Well, the party ended on September 19th, 2005. He was found dead by a friend after they had shot up black tar heroin. The rest of us just found out today. He was a good friend, but I'm having a hard time mourning. I can't get past the feeling of disappointment and anger. All that talent... all that potential, wasted. He was a total dweeb, but I loved the guy. He was a friend.

I hope it was worth it, Hiroshi.

Note to self:

2005-08-04T20:22:00.000-07:00

Do not argue on the intarwebs about politics with people you do not know. Particularly those with names like "ChainsawGutsF*ck."

Here's an actual quote:

"I actually support bush, his actions show interest for the u.s., as in he cares about our country, and not what the brits or the french say about us. yeah he may be a christian and you all know im not a very big fan of christianity, but at least this guy cant be bribed off with a blowjob from a pudgy chick like clinton was."

When countered with the fact that he was successfully bribed by Eli Lily pharmaceutical and the rider was added to the Patriot Act to excuse them from all liability of the lawsuits they were involved in (link: http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Homeland-Security-Act).

His response?

"Everybody can be bribed, its human. Im just saying he wont be bribed by something as stupid as a blowjob from a pudgy chick. but anyway, I feel safer under Bush than I would under Kerry. Kerry would offer up the U.S. on a plate to the rest of the world, and call it tolerance."

I think he just won the internet.

Hamster Fierceness

2005-08-03T16:11:00.000-07:00

A GIS of "with the fierceness" has resulted in this picture:

With the fierceness indeed.

Hawt Coffee

2005-07-29T16:25:00.000-07:00

Okay, so there's this "Hot Coffee" scandal that is rocking the game industry and is the topic du jour on the daily news. Let's break it down.

1) GTA: San Andreas is the software in question. It contains gratuitous violence (beating/shooting innocent people, carjacking, cop killing, etc), vulgar language, and just about every vice imaginable. It is rated M, which means that supposedly, children under 17 cannot purchase this game.

2) There was a section of the game nicknamed "Hot Coffee" that was supposedly removed from the game, but it turns out that the flags that activate the scene were simply disabled (or disabled via some other means, but that's irrelevant). This scene featured female nudity, lewd acts, but no direct sexual contact (simulated, but no actual sex). All controlled via in-game interface.

3) Hackers hacked the PC version of the game to access the content, and word spread. Soon, the PS2 version was similarly cracked using the Action Replay device. At first, Rockstar claimed it was a mod made by haxxx0rz. After the PS2 version was cracked, they waffled.

4) The media got wind of this, and several legislators made it their crusade to bring Rockstar to justice (omgwtfpwnz0r!!1!). After applying pressure to the ESRB, the ESRB buckled, and reassigned GTA:SA a new rating of AO (Adults Only), the first game ever to receive the rating.

Now, this issue breaks down into two different arguments. The moral argument, and the technical argument. Let's start with the technical.

This is not quite as clear cut as it may seem, from either side. Proponents of the game industry are saying that the developer did what they needed to prevent normal access to the content. It is not accessible via any normal means. Many in the industry are afraid of the "slippery slope" that it could potentially crush the mod scene, or have other such negative effects. Are publishers now responsible if, say, some hacker decides to take the skin texture on the models in DOA3 and extrapolate it all over their body, effectively making them look nude?

On the other hand, the ESRB had to take a stand. To *not* have done so could have potentially even worse effects on the industry. There are already groups appealing to have an external (possibly governmnet-controlled) group to censor videogames. The option to assign the AO rating to GTA:SA was possibly the best option. The ESRB essentially said, "If it's on the disk, the developer is liable." If you're going to draw a line, that's about as fair as you can get, I think. But we come back to the DOA3 question posed above. What then?

And now, as a result, a lot of retailers are dropping GTA from their shelves until Rockstar can rerelease it without the Hot Coffee content. I understand that they have a threshhold and that they refuse to carry AO content. But is it really that different than it was before?

The moral discussion is the more interesting, in my opinion. Do we really feel that a scene of simulated sex is worse than all that violence mentioned above? And why are all these parents in such a tizzy when they find out the game that they bought for their 14 year old contains *gasp!* sexual content?? Did they not look at the box when they bought it? And is that new content really enough to warrant an AO (essentially an "X" rating) over what was in the game originally?

It boggles the mind.

Now, to change the subject...

...I do wish there were more games for adults (not in that way). Games with storylines for more... ehem... "sophisticated" tastes. And if there is to be a love story included, make it believable. The only games I've seen come close were Panzer Dragoon Saga and Ico. It's strange... a lot of people talk about the great stories in games, but the games that I feel have had the strongest stories are often the ones with the least amount of actual writing. Strange, that.

OMG DO YOU KNOW WHO DIES?!?

2005-07-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

Ehem. No, this post will not contain any Harry Potter spoilers, but I just wanted to say I finished reading it. Although I didn't guess who the Half Blood Prince was, I was right about the other big plot point. Anyone who knows anything about Hero Stories could have guessed it, I suppose.

Nevertheless, my respect for J K Rowling has increased even more as she continues to prove that she knows what she's doing. It may not be world-changing literature (though, I suppose her books have such an effect on pop culture, that can be debated), but it is simple and pure fun. No other book(s) make me remember what it was like to be a child reading some fantastic adventure again. I'd really love someday to just pick her brain to see how much studying and research went into the whole thing.

Stuff Other Than Japan

2005-07-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

Before I continue on about my adventures in Japan, I simply wanted to do a brain dump of all the happenings since last November.

Let's see... There are two really big items, I suppose. The rest is filler.

First off, I lost my first close relative. My grandfather, to be more specific, on my American side. Given that my father was never really close with his parents, he formed a sort of barrier between us, preventing us from ever really, truly being close. That, coupled with the fact that they live on the opposite coast, meant that we rarely ever saw each other. In fact, that last time I saw my American grandparents was over 10 years ago. Sure, I talked to them on the phone every Christmas/Thanksgiving or so, wrote the occasional letter to let them know how I was, etc but I never went to visit them. And now it's too late to see my grandfather, Lord of the Thumbz. He was 89 years old and died a relatively painless death, so I guess that's all really one can ask for at the end of things. In fact, I consider myself lucky that I hadn't lost anyone until now. I simply wish I knew more about him than what my father has told me.

It was a bit numbing, at first, when I heard about my grandfather's passing. It was a matter of days before I had to head out to another trip to Japan, so I spent a good portion of that trip in a bit of a daze. Might've been the beer, but I'm pretty sure that wasn't it.

To that end, my brother and I will likely be heading out to South Carolina to see our grandmother sometime next month. She's alone now, and I just want to make sure she's doing okay. She's in good health, which is good, but I don't think she'd be willing to move out to the west coast, where the majority of our family is, simply because she's old fashioned. I hope everything is alright with her.

I've dealt with that and sorted out my feelings on that whole incident, so I'd rather not dwell. Now, onto better things! I got promoted! Sorta hinted at it in the last post with the mentioning of my new boss, but I've been moved into the corporate department of my company, and I believe my official title is "CEO's Bitch." I swear, I'm his garbage disposal. Anything he doesn't know what to do with, he throws at me. But, I get to travel to more areas now (London!!) and make a lot more money, and am involved in a lot more areas of the company, so it's a good thing. Spreading myself a little too thin, though. Not sure how much longer I can keep that up. Figure I better do it while I'm young!

That's all for today. A bit busy, so yeah. Ciao.

Japan: Almost like Earth

2005-07-21T13:34:00.000-07:00

Man, this time it really has been a while since I last wrote. So much stuff has happened since then. Where to start... I guess I'll start with recent developments, since they're still fresh in my mind.

So, as with my last post, I write this upon returning from a trip to Japan. As always, it was a whirlwind of a business trip, filled with everything from the mundane to the downright bizarre. A friend of mine put it best after coming back to the States after his first visit to Nippon: "The Japanese come from a world that's not entirely unlike Earth."

So, I arrive on a Monday and check into the usual hotel. I swear, that place is going to ruin my vacationing habits. It's not good to get used to staying for a week in a 5 star hotel on a monthly basis... So, I'm greeted by the usual staff ("So nice to see you again, Hapacheese-san!") and check in. They usually assign someone to take my baggage up to my room and make small talk the whole way, but this time, I insisted on doing it myself. I just feel so bad that the guy has to carry my heavy-ass luggage all the way to my room, and yet I don't get to tip him. And besides... it can sometimes get downright awkward.

Case in point: the "Head Butler" (don't look at me, that's what his business card says) has, for whatever reason, taken a personal interest in my "comfort level" while staying at the hotel. One day, after having helped me with my bags, asked me if I was "interested in having breakfast." Now, where I'm from, that really only means one thing, so I wormed my way around that one as quickly as possible. But, he quickly clarified, "Oh, I was talking about free breakfast vouchers for the morning buffet." Score. Well, I mean... scored free brea... nevermind.

But, back to my last trip. I plopped down in my room, showered to scrub off the 14+ hours of grime off my body from the trip there, and get ready to do some work.

I was supposed to meet up with my new boss that night to prepare some last minute documentation before our big meeting the following day. So, I called his room, but he had already essentially finished up and was making plans for dinner. I deftly maneuvered out of those plans as I had received an email on my cell phone from a friend, asking if I was in Japan yet and if I wanted to have dinner. Hm... Awkward dinner with executives that would likely lead to too much drinking and a hangover for the first day of meetings? Or a casual dinner with friends, who also happen to be really attractive women?

I was out of the door in a matter of minutes.

It was a casual affair: dinner with a couple good friends and a few acquaintances from work. It was relatively late, but we polished off a few glasses of beer and went on our separate ways. Next day. Meetings all day long, but i'm used to that stuff. Surprisingly, there was no arguing. For the first time in 6 years, we had an international meeting without a single name-calling or red-in-the-face argument. I was disappointed at the lack of opportunity to use my newly found Gaijin Smash powers (term liberally borrowed from another blogger). Alas. I moved on.

So, I met up with a fellow gaijin friend of mine (he's German!) for beers one last time. He's moving back to Germany in 2 weeks, so it was a bitter sweet thing. He's a really cool guy and we get along great... and he loves beer more than I do (gasp!!!). He was (understandably) suffering during his stay in Japan, as is too much a gentlemen to unleash the full fury of his Gaijin Smash on his surroundings. Return, my friend, to the Motherland and learn to master your Gaijin Strength!

Now... it's the next day that proved to be the most interesting. Okay, so picture this: your life has taken a few twists and turns, and through a sheer stroke of luck, you land a job that most guys would give their left nut for. So, you recognize the opportunity, work your ass off, and next thing you know, you're doin' all right. You've climbed up the corporate ladder and things are looking fine. So, you find yourself making small talk over nice drinks with one of your childhood heroes, and he says to you and the small group you're with, "I've got an idea: Let's go to a transvestite club!"

Okay. So, you've known for a while that your childhood hero isn't quite the guy you thought he was and he got moved down a few notches on your "This Guy is a Cool Dude" scale. Then, the dude busts out his cell phone and DIALS THE NUMBER FOR THE TRANSVESTITE CLUB THAT IS STORED IN HIS PHONE'S MEMORY. While this certainly did not affect his position on the TGiaCD scale, he skyrocketed on the This Dude is Funky scale. Next thing you know, the one girl in your group gets really excited about the notion, and before you have time to make an excuse, you get whisked into a taxi cab, and are on your way. (Okay, that's only partially true... at the elevator, I politely bowed and said I had work to do, which was true, but I received a look of such pure evil, so vile and unfiltered, that I was sure Mr. Childhood Hero was getting ready to put a pox on my family, or at least kamehameha my ass out of the company.)

So, there I am, heading out of the hotel with *two* company executives, and two coworkers from America. Despite being the largest of the group, I was stuck in the front seat of the cab. (The cab driver even commented, "You're the biggest one and you got stuck up here! You've got the body of a gaijin!" Well, Detective Conan, I'm not sure if you noticed the big ass gaijin head to match the big gaijin body.) As we drove to the destination, I looked out the window and thought, "Hm... That's Tokyo Tower... and wait... I know this place." Then the evil stench of Roppongi raced into my nostrils, and I knew I had to be on guard the rest of the night.

Okay, so the next point that night I realized things had gone horribly awry was when we arrived at the bar. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, but it surely wasn't a 2 ft tall penis doorhandle. I froze at the door, like a deer caught in giant penis headlights. A more stalwart soul pushed open the door, and the lights nearly blinded me. I staggered into the room, bewildered and dazed, and looked up. I just got all kindsa... bendy. Sitting at the table directly in front of me was obviously a gay man in drag: the stubble certainly did not go well with his eye shadow and lipstick drawn beyond the lines of his lips. And the leotard was certainly not flattering.

So, we were led further into the den, and asked to sit huddled around two tiny tables that could hold *maybe* 3 coasters total, and we were promptly joined by two men/women, one of which was Stubbleman from the table in front. The other was about 5'10", and about as skinny as Paris Hilton. With the lack of adam's apple and long hair, I didn't believe she was actually a he until he talked. It's quite disconcerting to see someone look like that, and talk with a really deep, low voice.

The night continued, and suddenly, the room went dark, and all the companions scuttled away behind a curtain that had ninja'd in from nowhere. The entertainment was about to begin. Despite the show's name ("Natsu da! Matsuri da! Kintama da!!!" - roughly translated: "Summer time! Festival time! Testicle time!!!"), it started off tame enough. A couple of the guys on stage doing a song and dance number (lip synched, of course), and a few samba dances ensued. Then the show hit maximum wtf-overdrive. Four of them came out dressed like high school girls in PE outfits, and they were carrying a volleyball. They got into an argument over something, and they needed Coach to resolve the issue. Being in Roppongi (The Sleaziest Place on Earth), filled with copious amounts of alcohol, and surrounded by transvestites severely clouded my Oh Shit radar, but I knew something was up. I knew that shit wasn't right.

They began going from guy to guy in the audience saying, "Are you Coach???" and then taunting them with various verbal assaults to their masculinity or pretending to felate them. Everyone but me. And the tiny hairs on your arm, you know when they stand up? That's them. (/Sixth Sense)

Suddenly, I was grabbed by 4 pairs of (actual) man-hands, and there were screams of "Coach!!! Coach!!!" Now, if these were actual women, I could've picked them up, tossed 'em over my shoulder Tarzan-style, and been done with business, but you try that with 4 men. Next thing I know, they're feeling my forhead and thighs claiming, "Oh noes! Coach is so hot! He's got a fever!!! Where's the doctor?!" And then the "OMG" hit the fan, got and got torn the fuck up, and became more of an O M G.

The largest one of the group (with beer belly and everything) comes out in a lab coat... with lingerie underneath. After a sad attempt at a sexy dance, he straddles a little stool on wheels thing that was whisked in by Stubbleman (who was now standing behind him) and they're both looking straight at me. There was fire in their eyes. A determination. They sensed fear.

Suddenly, Chubby Doctor threw his legs open to reveal a giant. black. strapon. I kid you not. I move to get up, but I am held down now by no less 5 pairs of man-hands. They've multiplied! I'm thrown into a hospital smock that's three sizes too small, and the interrogation begins. I don't even remember the goddamn questions. Someone was whispering the answers in my ear and the mic into my face. They were all along the lines of "Which okama (gay) is the one who is worried about such-and-such?" And the answer was always the same: Stubbleman. And every time I answered the question, the dildo-on-wheels would come ever so closer... until it was about 2 feet from my face. And then the final question got asked, and before the words even escaped my mouth, Chubby Doctor jumps on my lap, Stubbleman rushes behind us, and I see someone holding a camera. Well, shiat, folks. What's a man supposed to do? I strain out the best grin I can, and deal.

The show continued on its quick spiral downward into the fiery depths even after I was returned (thankfully, unmolested... relatively) to my seat. I sat there, head in my hands like a man broken, when I look up to see Mr. Childhood Hero crying, tears streaming down his face. He would reveal later that it was he, in fact, that set me up. Unbeknownst to me, he had engaged in shady dealings backstage. There was an exchange of money (or favors... he was unclear) and I was marked as the victim for the night. That's another 2 notches on the TGiaCD scale. The bastage.

I regained my composure now that the worst was over, settled back with my shochu drink, and decided to ride the wave the rest of the night. But, nothing short of Navy SEAL training and 48 hours in a sensory deprivation tank could prepare me for what came next. The lights went dim again, and I saw the feathery outline of more dancers waiting in the wings behind the ninja curtains. The base line starts. Bm bm bm bm bm. The hihat kicks in. Bm bm bm tsh bm tsh bm bm bm... And the curtain flies open! The first thought to cross my mind was, "Guh?!"

Five of the man-ladies waltzed in with the fierceness, single file, dressed like Vegas dancers. Topless. With boobs. And I don't mean man-boobs (though, technically, I guess they are man-boobs, no matter how you slice it). I did not know men could build such things (/Gladiator).

As some higher power was trying mightily to wrench my conscious mind from my body, I turned to the girl in our group with a blank expression, expecting to be met with laughter. Her visage was dark. She leaned to my ear, and through the deafening music, spake unto me, "I am a failure as a woman." Though, I suppose being man-made, one should expect nothing less than that. But having seen enough poorly done boob jobs in American porn, it was simply amazing to see what skilled surgeons and a strict diet of hormones could do to a man's body.

Thankfully, after the jiggling stopped, the rest of the night was nowhere nearly as eventful (other than one of the dudes telling me, "I know something in English!" "Oh dear God, do I even want to..." "Fuck me!" "..." and other such splendid conversations), in the end, it was actually quite entertaining in a "You know somewhere, at some point in your life, things took an interesting turn when you end up... here" kind of way. We left a little while later, laughed the entire way out, had a bowl of some of the best goddamn ramen in existence, and headed back to the hotel.

And the best part about it? I didn't pay a dime.

Been A While...

2004-11-11T14:35:00.000-08:00

Just over 3 months to be exact. Haven't been very diligent about this whole blogging thing. I've tried writing an entry on a couple of occasions, but every time, I deleted it. The things I was writing about didn't feel "profound" enough to bother posting them on the net. Hell, they weren't even important enough for me to even remember what I was thinking the next day... why should anyone reading this blog care, either?

So... what's happened since August? A lot, I suppose. Trip to Japan, started kung fu, girlfriend got hired at the same company I work at, and we have a new dicta... I mean president. Let's start with Japan.

It was an action-packed trip, that's for sure. I went over to Japan for business reasons; for some meetings with all of our global partners, and to check out the convention in Japan. I was there for about 10 days or so, but from about two weeks in advance, my schedule was *packed*. I had dinners planned with so many goddamn people, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to see my (aging) grandparents. Luckily, I managed to be able to stay for an extra couple of days without extra cost, so I stayed with my grandparents and spent some quality time with them. Grandpa's getting on, and he was hospitalized shortly after I left Japan with pneumonia, but according to my grandma, he's doing much better now.

I spent a lot of time with a new group of friends in Japan, this time. They all work for the same company as I do, but I hadn't met most of them simply because they work in areas that I don't usually interact with. But, one of my good friends introduced me to them, and we drank several nights away. It was a blast. I'm really looking forward to heading back to Japan simply to spend some more time with them. Great group.

Not so sure how I feel about this whole simultaneous-translation-for-seven-hour-long-meetings-by-myself deal that I seem to have landed, though. According to my coworkers, most places that use simultaneous translators pay a lot of money, and they only translate for 10 minutes at a time before switching. Sure, I'm more familiar with the material that they're talking about in these meetings, but I have no formal training in simultaneous translation, and frankly, seven hours is a bit long. By the end, I could hardly even speak, my brain was so fried.

But, that brings me to my next point: do I really want to be known as the translation guy? I mean, for the last several years, I've been trying making great progress in working my way into a much more general field, but recently, I've been feeling like I'm being pushed back into the role of translation monkey. My boss was the other resident translation monkey, but being an executive now and all, it's not really a great use of his time to be translating at meetings. And our other bilingual is intelligent, but not nearly a native speaker. I doubt he could hang. That leaves me. So, I feel a bit trapped. If I leave this department/company/position/whatever, it puts them in a world of hurt. But is it really my business to care? Damn my twisted sense of loyalty! This last meeting, they paired me up with a new girl from our Japanese branch (rather pretty too), but she froze when she was put on the spotlight. (She can probably do it, but I think she has a bit of stage fright. We went out to dinner later to just chill, since my grandparents live near her house, we were going in the same direction anyway.) Hopefully, if she can do better next time, I won't have to handle it all by me onesy.

So what do I do? Do I just get up and walk, despite the fact that my boss takes good care of me, even though I might not be doing exactly what I want? Do I stick it out, and continue to try to prove myself? Tough call, really. I don't plan on shutting my eyes to the world, though.

Crap. I'm rambling now. Back on topic!

So, yeah. Enough of Japan. I started kung fu!

I managed to lose about 10 pounds over the last couple of months, but I've been having trouble losing more. And frankly, 40 minutes of exercise 4 times a week wasn't cutting it. While the treadmill is definitely better than nothing, it doesn't compare to the full body workout you get with martial arts.

So, on my first day, we stretched for an hour. And I'm not talking pansy-ass, I-just-wanna-get-my-blood-pumping stretches... these were *intense*. I was sweating harder than I've sweat in a long time. In fact, I didn't even make it to the kung fu portion of the class, I was so exhausted. I don't know if the sifu was just being nice, but he said everyone dies in their first couple of classes, and told me to just observe. It was awesome, though. Of course, I was in pain for about 4 days afterwards (actually, today is the 4th day... and my second class), but it felt good to hit those core muscles. I hope things will be a little easier for me today. It feels good to be getting back in shape, that's for sure. And I'm doing it learning Shaolin kung fu!!!

As for the election, well, there's nothing about the election that I can say that already hasn't been said in every blog, every newspaper, every forum in America. But, I will say that even moreso than the decision to re-elect monkeyboy, I'm extremely disappointed in the 11 states that banned gay marriage. "Disappointed" is a bit too soft of a word... how about "extremely fucking pissed"? That's a little closer. Repeat after me, people: equal rights. E. Q. U. A. L. R. I. G. H. T. S. Can you say it? I thought so. Dicks.

Inspired by a few friends, I'm debating whether or not I want to take part in this whole "write a novel month" ordeal. I had started writing a few stories a while back, but got busy and never had a chance to pick them up again. But, given my workload, kung fu, guitar, *cough, cough*worldofwarcraftbeta*cough, cough*, etc., it's hard to find the time, to be honest. Though, it'd be nice to finally finish a work that's longer than 10 pages.

Hm... I really need to be a little more concise in my blog. I tend to just ramble a bit, without really much to say. Maybe if I did it more often, I'd get more used to the whole thing.

Well, there you have it. several pages of almost absolutely no content. I hope you enjoyed it :P

The Agony and Naivete of Youth

2004-08-03T15:34:00.000-07:00

I recently had a discussion with a friend about the movie "The Last Samurai." Being half Japanese, I immediately identified with a lot of the struggles in the movie, as well as the emotional overtones of the characters. Aside from the blatantly Hollywood ending, and the improbably sharing of affections between Tom Cruise and Koyuki, I thought it was a fantastic movie.

But, that's not what this post is about. It got me to thinking... There is a feeling of melancholy throughout the entire film, one that causes me to be on the verge of tears throughout its entirety. I felt the same sensation when watching "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," and very nearly when watching "Spirited Away." What was that feeling?

I still haven't quite figured it out, but I have a theory. When we are younger, and we don't have as much emotional experience, everything we do, everything we feel has an almost amplified sense of importance. Every argument you have with a friend is the end of the world, every crush you have is the beginning of the end. Because of it all, we almost always feel like we are nearly fighting for our very lives. We are passionate as teenagers... which would explain why so many people remember so fondly or hate so passionately their high school years.

The thing is, though, as you get older, you grow more experienced, more capable of dealing with emotions while maintaining balance. You grow to realize how little most of your actions affect the world, or how little most things affect your life in the long run. You grow apathetic. It's exhausting to keep up that sense of emotional dedication to *everything*.

But, movies like those mentioned above, and songs like "A Lack of Color" by Death Cab for Cutie, remind me of those emotions. Remind me of that heart-wrenching feeling you get when you first fall in love, first get heart-broken, or those times you poured everything you had into something because you were sure that you wanted to dedicate your life to it.

Is that level of emotion healthy? Perhaps not all the time. But, it doesn't hurt to hang onto some of that passion.

Hurling and Hoochies

2004-07-20T20:03:00.000-07:00

I have no idea why, but after having dinner with a college friend last night, I threw up. Twice. I don't think it was food poisoning (I don't have a fever... I think), and just have a general vague feeling of nausea. My past experiences with food poisoning were much, much worse.

The dinner with my friend, however, was interesting. He's rather rich... and he brought his female companion with him. Never before has the world seen such hoochiness. I don't want to give away her name, so let's just call her Hoochie Prime. Okay, so Hoochie Prime has a classic case of I-don't-wanna-work-by-myself-itis, so has naturally attached her leech-like, money-sucking, grubby little stubs for hands onto my friend. Who is, apparently, either too horny, too rich, or too stupid to care or notice. *sigh* He has to be the dumbest genius I have ever met.

To start...

2004-07-15T10:30:00.000-07:00

Well, I've never had a blog before, but figured it was about time. Never was good about keeping a diary and such, and I fail to see how this is any different, but it's worth a shot.

Where to start? Well, I suppose I'll start with a recent letter I wrote to our dear Senator Feinstein on the topic du jour: gay marriage.

Senator Feinstein,

I am not in the habit of writing to government officials. I have always felt that a single voice (particularly my own) would do very little in the way of swaying the opinions of someone whose job entails hearing thousands of voices each day. However, recent events in Congress have moved me to write to you to express my feelings over the gay marriage issue. I feel it is my duty to my dear friends who are so greatly affected by this subject, and to let you know that I appreciate your support in working towards equal rights.

It always amazes me how people fail to see the parallels in the arguments used against gay rights to those that were used not 50 years ago when the issue of equal rights for blacks was in question. Is it possible that we as Americans have already forgotten the lessons learned? If we are to believe what our schoolbooks teach us, America is supposed to stand for equal rights of the people, regardless of color, creed, or even what breakfast cereal we eat in the morning. Everyone is supposed to be on equal footing, yet gays are constantly told to sit in the back of the proverbial bus. I'm very happy to see that there are those in Congress who would stand up against that.

There is no solid argument against gay rights, that I have seen at least, other than those based on religious beliefs. Such beliefs should not be a part of the way the people are governed. Passing laws or amendments based upon the beliefs of a single religion would show favortism to that religion... a direct violation of the 2nd Amendment. And if those who are against having the relgious sanctity of marriage "violated" (and to those who would claim that, I ask, "Why isn't divorce outlawed?") remain adamant, then change the wording. Let those who want to be "married" do so in the church of their choice. Let the government lawbooks only reflect legal unions of people, whether it be man-woman, man-man, or woman-woman.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but on this particular issue, I felt that I needed my voice to be heard. I support you in your decisions, and hope you continue to work towards equal rights for *all*.

Thank you,

hapacheese

I had actually written something much more in depth and much more eloquent (if I do say so myself), but in a flash of brilliance, I hit the "Reset Form" button (why do they put it next to the "Send" button?!). Being too lazy to rewrite the entirety of the letter, I hit the major points, and sent it on its way. Not that it will likely do much, but this is an important issue to many friends that are dear to me, so I felt it needed to be done. There's so much wrong in the world today, I guess we have to start with the things closest to home.