Aug 24 2008
Ariel + Chee Seng, Dennis + Anita all visited me (or rather, New York) this weekend. It’s pretty awesome having part of the family hangout here.
The last picture is to demonstrate how we’re a skinny family that can together fit on one bench outside of that dinky tako yaki shop.
Aug 21 2008
Imagine this: you have a problematic neighbor who never mows his lawn. He’s a fine person otherwise, but the uncontrolled grassy front yard really bothers you and other nearby families. You’ve complained to him about this several times, but he’s made it clear that his property isn’t really your business. One day, this neighbor decides to throw a big barbecue party and invites the entire neighborhood. You suspect that he’s only trying to show off his big house, but it is nevertheless the awesomest BBQ you’ve ever been to - USDA Select quality steaks, massive burgers seasoned just right, a wide variety of chilled beers and top shelf liquors, complete with ESPN on a 72″ HDTV.
Question: now that the entire neighborhood is here, is it time to announce your criticism against his lack of yard work?
Especially right after he says to you, “let’s not talk about the grass today”?
That’s exactly what these Americans are doing in Beijing - Free Tibet and other sorts of protests. Many were arrested immediately, most have been deported, and there are more underground demonstrations under way.
These so-called activists mastermind plans to break the laws - so do the terrorists. The Chinese government employs a crazy number of law enforcement units to keep both of them off the streets. These activists simply fail to understand how their childish behavior is damaging the American image, and they wonder why American tourists aren’t welcome in half of the world?
American media make this story sound like an outrageous violation of the First Amendment; but hello, its jurisdiction is kind of limited to our own continent. Reminds me of when the American kid got canned in Singapore, and it become such an uproar that even President Clinton had to intervene repeatedly. To us, those foreign laws may seem unreasonable and harsh; but to them who take rules more seriously, we are an uncivilized country that knows no respect.
Not that I don’t think the human rights or regional political issues should be discussed, but for everything there’s an appropriate time and place. In ancient Greece, people talked at the public forums, and the Olympics was meant for sports.
Aug 11 2008
Have you seen smelled a cup and a half of boiling butter?
I made this Shan brand of Malay Chicken Biryani for dinner. Once again, nothing from this brand could be cooked in under two hours, but it’s all good because each batch is enough to feed a small country’s Olympics team.
The problem with cooking a cuisine that you’re not familiar with is that you have to buy a lot of random ingredients just to be used once. That increases the cost of the meal significantly. Yeah I still have bags of wheat and barley and chana dal sitting around. To finish them I’ll have to cook enough Haleem Masala to fill an Olympics swimming pool. Pictured below are garlic paste, ginger paste, tamarind concentrate, and ghee.
Pictured below are ghee, chicken, onions, chilis, and curry leaves. The great thing about living in New York is that you could indeed find stuff like ghee… the awesome purified butter. The whole jar went into the cooking.
Here’s the final product! Served with mango juice.
Aug 10 2008
Put my computer together and now it’s up and running…
This machine is super quiet… even with more fan than ever before (cpu, psu, video card, and 4 case fans), it’s nearly silent. I could almost not tell that it’s on when my eyes are closed… but yeah, those flashy lights do keep my room bright at night and are harder to ignore.
Installed Vista on this new machine and have so far been pretty happy with it. There are definitely a number of drawbacks, and Aero which is the coolest thing about Vista is actually pretty useless. However, this new operating system looks great and… yeah, looks great!
Aug 09 2008
This movie was awesome:
I had seen the first Batman movie many times as a kid where he battled the Joker. This remake is nothing the original could compare to (pretty dark and scary too).
Aug 08 2008
Just watched the Olympics opening ceremony at Hong’s neighbor’s house, and got two words to describe it. Freaking awesome. The compliment goes to the performances, the spirit, and the neighbor’s gigantic HDTV.
It was truly fantastic. Not sure whether the powerful choreography, the flashy technology, or the enormous budget was more impressive, but I was amazed by the huge number of performers involved. At first I thought they just went on the Tiananmen Square, grabbed a few thousand volunteers and trained them for a couple of weeks. But when the martial arts group did 2008 synchronized flying twist kicks, I realized that these weren’t just random average people… but then again, it’s China, aren’t we all kung fu masters? 
Those on the luckier side of Earth got to watch it on TV real time. The rest of us watched the “replay” 12 hours later. Everyone that I knew had religiously watched the whole thing and engaged themselves in the passion. I had never cared about any of the Olympics games; but now I’m a fan.
You can find more of these high quality photos at boston.com. There’s also a blog dedicated to the Beijing Olympics. Of course, let’s not forget the official website of the Beijing Olympics.
Aug 07 2008
The second of our three interns ended her summer yesterday. She and the last guy bought me a bag of Godiva assortments:
I’m not a huge chocolate person but it was nonetheless a very sweet and heart warming gift. I’m going to enjoy a lighter load of responsibilities after my supervisees leave, but it’s still kind of sad.
Aug 05 2008
For the second year in a row, I attended the Monster DLP as a sponsor.
It was an extremely exhausting, but fun and rewarding weekend. We lead a group of 46 college students on the Mercer team, did various activities from spontaneous dancing to career preparation. Our students created a Mercer chant and screamed it out of the top of their lungs. The team bounding energy made me so proud of my company, that, I was embarrassed to return to the office and say that I was so proud of my company. The high spirit at the event topped every football game I’ve been to. Seriously.
Growing up in America is about tons and tons of self discovery lessons, leadership workshops, and team building activities. However, I haven’t seen any teacher or camp leader able to carry it out and get the audience to buy in as much as DLP. It was awesome being able to lead, follow, teach, learn, and play at the same time.
The cool (math, actuarial science, accounting, finance) kids
The cooler (and just slightly older) kids
Mercer and Mercer scholarship recipients
The only drawback to Monster DLP was, that it was 25+ hours of physically demanding work over one weekend, following an entire work week, followed by another 15-hour work day on Monday… gosh I need some sleep…
Aug 01 2008
I got a new computer.
It’s amazing how fast NewEgg sends out its orders. Even with the cheapest shipping method, the stuff arrived at my door after only one full business day. Maybe it helps to live one hour away from their warehouse in Edison, NJ.
So this was the first time in over four years that I played with computer parts. I spent a lot of time doing research before the purchase. It’s amazing how technology changes over time… I’m not only talking about the quadrupled harddrive space or the dual-core processor that doubles in register size, but also the total replacement of most interfaces. Where did IDE and AGP go? Where did PCI Express and SATA come from? This sure was an experience bringing me back to see how fast things are moving. It’s really easy to become ignorant when you no longer hangout with geeks.
The fanciest case I’ve ever had:
The CPU looks so insignificant as usual, but the RAM gets more badass than ever before.
I thought they were joking when I received this CPU fan. It’s freaking 2.5x larger than my current CPU fan! Funny how the chip got smaller but the cooling unit grew to be this enormous. In fact, this heatsink is so ridiculously big that it clashes with the air duct on my case window, so I have to do some mod about it.
Really cheap graphics card and a pretty good TV tuner card.
The shiniest power supply I’ve ever had. Check out the reflections!
I’m still waiting for two little parts to arrive before I’ll put the whole thing together. Expect more pictures in a few days!