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DARPA tested a rocket last night that made my parents think they saw an UFO. :-P Here are the pics they took...here's the story. My sister says that the white lines are from planes that were flying around. The cause of the whirls and streaks? A "twilight phenomenon" where "unburned fuel particles and water drops in the rocket's contrail freeze in the less dense upper atmosphere and get reflected by sunlight at high altitudes during launches timed just before sunrise or shortly after sunset."

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Upon rewatchng the Chinese martial arts movie "The East is Red", I have to say that it's a lot dumber than whan I saw it as a kid. However, the main theme song is still one of my favorite chinese songs of all time.

From my writing samples for the LSAT and how I look at the prompts, I find that I'm a prosecutor not a defender...I find it easier to pick holes in people's arguments instead of looking for ways to defend a position. Not that I can't see both sides but 1 is easier.

"Tokyo Godfathers" is one of those fine quirky animes coming out of Japan that somehow make it to America. Good stuff though...I had my doubts (What movie stars a drunk bum, a cross-dressing homo, and a runaway...and then puts them up as the 3 Wise Men?) but it truly is a good film.

Overhead in elevator..."don't make it too obvious. just make sure to wear cute jeans..." lol

My EV-DO card came in today. It's like DSL through wireless! Just look at this bandwidth test result!!!

	Connection Type		Connection Speed
	28.8 Kbps		Dial-up 28.8k
	33.6 Kbps		Dial-up 33.6k
	53.3 Kbps		Dial-up 56k
	384.0 Kbps		DSL/Cable 384k
	649.8 Kbps - Me		649.8 kbps
	768.0 Kbps		DSL/Cable 768k
	1500.0 Kbps		Cable/DSL 1.5Mbps
	1544.0 Kbps		Full T1 1.544Mbps
	3000.0 Kbps		N x T1 3.0Mbps
	6000.0 Kbps		T3 6.0Mbps
	15000.0 Kbps		T3 15Mbps
	30000.0 Kbps		T3 30Mbps

Got a Mr. Clean Cleaning kit for the car at Target. Got a buncha emergency supplies with Lih-Chern since we read an article on the disaster preparedness of San Francisco which basically said that at least for 2-3 days, people would have to fend for themselves. Got canned stuff as well as bottled water. That and some Twinkies...hehehe. The cleaning kit worked well even though I still detected a few streaks here and there. It's supposed to dry without needing to wipe.

Angela lives right next to my old dorm. Here's a picture of ol' Cunningham. I lived on the 4th floor. 2nd window from the left.

Surprisingly, Emily's outfit provided camo against a part of Angela's building.

Oops Emily disappeared...Angela searches desperately for her sister.

This circle is found on Sproul Plaza. It says,"This soil and the air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity's jurisdiction" Interesting...

Angela shows Emily how much she loves her. Could she actually get away with murder in that circle? Kinda freaky.

Here we have 2 Berkeley students. lol...

So we were in Berkeley to see the National Ballet of China's production of "Raise the Red Lantern". Download show notes here. Before the show, we went to Thai House. Here we have the Seafood Soup. Actually before the show, we all studied a bit before going out to get drinks.

Angela and Emily obviously didn't like the soup. I dunno...it was pretty authentic sourness. Emily doesn't like lemongrass apparently. On Friday, I had Philipino soup and it was REALLY sour...almost like throw up. I still drank it though.

The pork didn't get good reviews either. They're much pickier meat eaters.

The shrimp curry did better...in any case, we ate everything so it couldn't have been all that bad.

Intermission...there was no way I could take pictures during the performance because I sat right in the middle in the first row. Here's a list of what we liked from the show.

• The part where they did the "rape" scene using shadows cast by the characters backlit on a large white screen was really well done.
• First time I saw old Chinese opera in a ballet. I'd only been to modern dance and the Nutcraker before.
• Liked how there was real destruction of set pieces on stage, like the paper screens...and a bunch of paper lanterns
• Where, the stage dimmed except for the background and the dancers would jump around/doing flips and all you could see was their "sillahoot" as Emily called it. lol
• Ballet involving mahjong tables and the "washing" movement. Hilarious stuff
• Flipping tables to reveal a "hu" mahjong pattern
• The part where the individual sides of a sedan chair box her in and then combine into the chair.
• The beating sequence where they hit a huge white canvas with red sticks leaving behind huge red strokes while the dancers writhed on the ground. Very cool.

After the show, we all went to eat at Old Teahouse for late-night snacks. Got the Aberdeen Seafood Rice which had good reception. Watched a bunch of Jay Chou music videos...too bad they aren't showing films on a regular basis.

awwwww....

I don't know what precipated this...

Nor this...

I like standing in the middle of the street...jk

Crazily decorated car in Berkeley...I've probably seen 3-4 variations of this. Emily took the picture.

Getting ready to chow down at Ryowa Ramen...Emily liked the Shoyu Ramen in Orange County better.

Happy Face

Angry Face

Music Notes

Dragonflies

I have a picture where I caught her giving me her best "seafood" expression. But due to laws against displaying obscene photos without due warning, I'll have to refrain from posting it here.

The people in the back must have thought we were weird....well maybe just Angela. lol

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I had to take Bart for a few days so I ended up trying out Solitaire on the iPod. First off, I'm usually a lame Solitaire player. I choose the "Draw 1" option instead of the "Draw 3" option. Apple must have something against lame Solitaire players because they have no such option available. It's "Draw 3" from the get go. I must have played like 12 games before I finally beat the darn thing.

Here are almost ALL of my t-shirts. Shoot, it took me forever to fold them all. Now, they are all stacked/folded neatly away...almost don't want to touch them. I think I'll still do my socks in little balls though. I don't think I'd get anal enough to start folding socks.

I saw this fence on the way to work. It was near the Transbay Terminal

It stretched all the way down the street.

Pretty good way of getting the message across.

New glasses can make people do funny things...hehehe

Emily does her best Charlie's Angel impression...dunno what Angela is doing...

My aunt and uncle's dog Shortie is going through a lot of pain right now...Shortie used to run and around so that I could chase him around. Now, he's much more sedate. It was good to see him again.

Shortie is such a handsome dog.

We went condo shopping...can you believe that this is a condo?

Such a cool living room.

One of my first impressions of the Bay Area will always be the Blackhawk Plaza in Danville. On one of my first trips up here for CalDay, I had dinner with my aunt and uncle here at one of the restaurants in the plaza. In the background, you can see the Auto Museum.

I love the waterworks here...I've always wanted water in the home. I was really surprised when my dad mentioned that he liked that too. I think it's because in his old childhood home, they had ponds and stuff in the backyard.

Emily...almost always tres chic. :-P

Cathy tries to catch us some dinner...hehehe

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Well as the LSAT looms (Oct 1st), my updates get more and more infrequent. Sorry! I do have another megapost to put up later though.

Went to Land of Medicine Buddha, a buddhist retreat in Santa Cruz a few weekends ago. They have a bunch of large prayer wheels all over the whole complex.

We spun them around quite a few times...hehehe

I like the vibrant colors of the prayer wheels. So the idea of the prayer wheel is that inside them are a bunch of written mantras in microfiche. Each time you spin it around, it sends out a ton of prayers into the world. In Tibet, they have rings of prayer wheels so as you walk the perimeter, you spin them one by one.

They also do the sand mandalas which are paintings done with sand. Usually they are brushed away in a ceremony when completed, but this one escaped that fate somehow. The idea is that when you can wipe away something that you've worked hard at, you'll realize that material posessions are nothing. Something along those lines...obviously I haven't obtained that wisdom entirely.

Future site of a large temple with supposedly 100,000 stupas. That's 1 stupa right there. 99,999 left to go.

It's kinda weird seeing temples in the Santa Cruz mountains. Had no idea a place like this existed.

Look at the color gradient!...you know...during the entire trip, I didn't see one monk. I think they all went somewhere.

Magical Dippin Dots.

We got like 3 different flavors. I can't remember what all of them were...one of them was mint...there was a cookies and cream one too I think. The third must be a mix of all the colors. The person working the stand was pretty patient. :-D

How do they get to be spherical? Apparently, it's a secret. The process was initially used for cow feed. What probably happens is that they take little tiny drops of ice cream liquid and drop them into liquid nitrogen (freezing it crygenically). Since liquid nitrogen is so cold, the droplets freeze super fast and stay in that nice little BB shape. Of course, the ice cream has to be kept super cold until it is eaten so it doesn't melt into a puddle - this is done with dry ice (solid CO2).

Emily's sunglasses are cool

I liked the gondola ride. :-P

Flying through the air...with the greatest of ease...seriously though, after Disneyland...nothing can compare.

Crazy kids

Santa Cruz Aquarium...hehehe, no its just a small one on the pier.

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Did you know that there a city called Fucking in Austria? It's pronounced more like Fooking but still...how come I never visited that town when I was in Austria?!!!

Jelly Fish! At Ma's Restaurant, a place in Milpitas. This restaurant has the same name as a chain in SoCal and has the same type of food but it's not the same. Ma's is a Chinese Muslim place but Darda still seems to be the better of the two.

Emily got Za Chiang Mien which I thought was good but Emily didn't like too much.

Knife Cut Lamb Noodle...soup was good...weird having bean curd in it...more veggies though than Darda which is a good thing.

Last Wednesday, CMR had an outing to Teatro Zinzanni. I'd been there once before like 4-5 years ago so it was nice to see it again.

Tent from the outside...Teatro is located on the Embarcadero.

There's this machine in there that is a whole band. They had a sax, pipes, all kinds of instruments. Don't know if it was roll or computer controlled.

Player band closeup

Reception Area...I like seeing glasses stacked up on top of each other...

Getting ready to eat...I'm not really a cheese person but I ended up having all of it. Good stuff.

The Menu...the Steak was excellent, grilled very well. The dessert was good as well. Soup was interesting but I found it tasty. The herbs really came through on that one.

Inside the tent...sorry...they didn't let me take pics during the show. :-( One of the characters grabbed my hair and wouldn't let go. And when he finally did, he sprinkled paper flakes all over as if he had pulled it from my hair. Sally Kellerman, who played "Hot Lips" in the MASH movie, was the main star of the show.

Had Dim Sum with LC at Golden Mountain on Saturday. Good stuff! :-P On the way back, we happened upon a crew filming a scene for Will Smith's upcoming flick "Pursuit of Happyness" (yes its with a y). Didn't see Will but we did see a blue Mustang parked conspicously on the street. This was near the Bank of America building.

On Saturday night, Emily and I went to the Destiny's Child concert at the Oakland Coliseum. We sat in the 10th row in the first floor section which is pretty close considering where some people ended up sitting. Some people sat way up in the nosebleeds. Opening acts were Amerie and Mario and another girl that I don't know (she only had 2 backup dancers though). This is Amerie, she's known for the "1 Thing" song.

Mario has a couple hits to his name. At one point, a girl with nothing more than lingerie came on. Definitely different from all the other concerts I've been to.

Destiny's Child had a neat stage. Very classy. Urgh...got caught a couple times taking pictures. I need to have spy camera glasses. Those would have been neat for Teatro Zinzanni.

They opened with "Say My Name"

Beyonce...hot in person.

Great lighting

No rain but nice umbrella!

It looked like Beyonce was looking directly at me!

For the song "Cater 2 U", they pulled up 3 guys from the audience. The guy on the right knew all the words AND had hand/head/body gestures to match. Scared Kelly a little I think...gave the guy the mic halfway through the song. hahahahaha...I'm guessing that Kelly putting the guy's face between her boobs did nothing for him.

Afterwards, we went to D&A for dinner. Haven't been there in a LOOOOOONG time. We had Honey Walnut Prawns, Sauteed Seafood in Clay Pot (which turned out to be Sauteed Seafood in Porcelain Dish), and Minced Beef with Spinach. Emily was a little freaked out about being in Oakland for such an extended period of time due to all the reports and stories about Oakland's crime rate but all was well.

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It seems weird, not having written anything about New Orleans. Obviously, I'm not going there anytime soon. So many thoughts about the whole situation there...I really think Bush should have toured the disaster area much earlier instead of waiting 5 days. There are some things that seem to be understandable such as the fact that quite a large portion of the National Guard is over in Iraq which seems to have contributed from the muted relief efforts early on. Still I wonder what was going on in Bush's mind when he heard the news. My first reaction when I heard about the people shooting at the helicopters was utter contempt and disbelief but later on I realized that it's hard to call those actions absurd when I can't even begin to fathom the emotions those people were feeling at the time. How would I handle struggling to stay alive along with your children and family while helicopters seemingly passed you by. New Orleans is next to large bayous and I wouldn't be surprised if a few crocs got in the water along with the sea lion that I saw a pic of getting hosed down in the middle of a street in New Orleans. Body identification seems to be incredibly difficult from what I'm hearing since the water was warm and many of the bodies have been underwater for at least a week now. I've seen pics of empty caskets and of bodies floating in the water. I showed Emily and her family the MSNBC broadcast stream and it was just image after image of utter chaos. So much footage of the convention center where I would have been had the association pushed it up only a few weeks. Just crazy.

Went to Henry's Hunan some time ago...I ordered the Chinese Chicken Salad because I remembered it was so good...in the end, it just wasn't the same. I think they changed the noodles or something. Anyways, I went with Anita, William, and Priscilla and had some of the most interesting discussions that you can only have with people of different cultures. Talked about different countries' policy on dual citizenship. About China/Taiwan and the Korean peninsula. William told me that some Korean places now keep the drizzle from hot pots (you know the fat drippings from cooking the meat?) and use that to make soup. Oh geez...

Orange Chicken along with a messed up Shredded Pork. No idea what the gave us instead.

Pretty good...finished pretty much everything

Went to LA last last weekend. Stopped for restroom and ice cream on the way down...I love twilight. Emily's mom made sushi rolls and we saw this Crunch/Drumstick ice cream machine that used suction to pull up ice cream out of a box. Neat...

Family eating Dum Sum! Yum! We took sticky pics afterwards...dunno about putting those up though.

Sliced Abalone Sashimi...hmm mmm...so sweet...

Buns/Peking Duck

LOL...half asleep.

Emily likes the sauce

Emily's favorite Lamb Chops...she LOVES these...so weird because she doesn't really eat meat.

Emily's bunny socks! :-P so cute

Waiting for food...we went to the old Yaohan which is now part of the whole Mitsuwa chain. They have this food court which has maybe 6-7 restaurants.

Hmmmmm...good Japanese food. We totally pigged out over here...

Bento

Fish eggs over rice

We Shoyu Ramen...shio is salt...shoyu is soy sauce...miso is the one I usually get. Both Emily and I loved the soup. Hmm mmm good! Loved it so much I got another large one to share.

Mom buys some yams.

On the way back to the Bay Area, we stopped by Life Plaza (in Diamond Plaza in Rowland Heights). They did have those sticky cleaners by San-X (lost my Nintendo Link one that I got from E3 two years ago...:-(...) but they weren't "cute" enough. Afterwards, we stopped by Shi Lai Temple. I haven't been there in years...

Gate to Shi Lai Temple

Inner Main Temple

We had a woman take a picture for us. Pic 1...too much shadow...the other pic was off center and Emily said that it was freaky so I'm not putting it up anymore.

Cute little monk statues...

I wonder if the last time I went here was for Grandpa's funeral. It might have been...which reminds me, the next time I go down I should visit Grandpa's grave.

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You gotta check this flash out. I found it highly enjoyable. Supposedly its a song composed entirely of Windows OS wave files.

Housingmaps is a VERY cool site. It merges craigslist ads and google maps together.

This poster is really funny!!!

For more (although not as funny) ads, go to http://www.fatherhood.org.

This is a cool site displaying all the products that won IDEA awards. Except to find this stuff at a local Brookstone/Sharper Image/Ikea....or a Hannspree! I saw the storefront near the Sutter/Stockton garage. Pretty excited since I've seen so many pictures of their Asian stores.

It was funny, my dad saw my picture earlier of that 30" Apple LCD and thought that I had bought it. hehehehe if only....

At a company meeting, William had his laptop out and he was showing Priscilla soemthing. I scooted my chair over and looked at what they were looking at, which turned out to be a spreadsheet. Jessica was moderating this meeting with Brian in Chicago. Jessica saw all 3 of us looking at his laptop and asked us what we were looking at. I said that we were watching a movie. lol...Brian asked what was going on and Jessica told him what we were doing. Funny cause Brian immediately said "Knowing William...it's probably porn." We all laughed at this but then Brian said "And if it was Andy...it'd be Food Network!"

There is this alley that I walk through on the way to the Transbay. It smells like urine. Usually it's not like you see puddles on the ground or anything but I believe that so much urea has soaked into concrete that it's bonded with it thus creating phantom urine smells where no urine actually exists. There are several homeless people living there so the area must be used as a personal bathroom at one point or another. This is also the place where I happened upon a guy peeing (although he was pretty embarrased and did not look homeless) between two cars. Anyways, I've had several names for this alley knocking about but I hadn't really decided on one yet. It's not as scummy as Diagon Alley but it's probably at least smelly. Urine Alley sounds ok. How about Urine-a Smelly Alley? hehehehe

I saw a homeless man pulling his cart around. He had to pull it cause he had just a ton of stuff to take around...including a big long steel pipe. Must have been 6 inches in diameter. What was he planning on using it for?

A guy on the late night F line bus (going back to the East Bay after Teatro Zinzanni which I'll talk about in a later post) was so incredibly smelly. Everyone was making faces as the guy moved to the back of the bus. He had holes on his pants...gah, so nasty...sometimes I wish I lived in boring suburbia (ie back home in Laguna Niguel).

Victor, a friend from idTech, moved up to the Bay Area (actually the same apartment complex) recently. We had lunch at the vietnamese pho place in Chinatown and caught up. Afterwork, we (LC, Victor, and I) went to Costco and got supplies for dinner. Got a salad bag, very expensive looking tomatoes (packaged on the vine), Simpsons DVD Season 6, and steaks. Yes, I broke down and had a steak. I'm assuming once in a very long while isn't too bad. Also got a hot dog. So good and cheap. After we got home, we prepped everything and watched "Cowboy Bebop: The Movie" while we ate. I told Victor about the casual carpooling that goes on in the morning and he actually did it the next day. Hehehehe

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