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| 3 may 2002 holy crap man. after lunch today, i had the worst stomachache. after a few minutes of being doubled over, it went away, and when i got back to the office, i had my usual post-lunch smoke. two drags later, it came back with a vengeance. amazing how fast nicotine makes it way into the system. it makes me really scared to try something like heroin. last night, i had dinner with mark (left picture). he's my best friend from elementary school. i have two really distinct memories of him: one of him wearing the signature 80's velour shirts, and another of him scrunching up his lips to they point where they were all wrinkled and white. i think mark's a technical genius. we met up as this semi-swanky restaurant in downtown san mateo called "camranh bay." he said it was vietnamese food, so imagine my surprise when it didn't turn out to be the usual bustling pho haven. there was a live jazz band, with a girl singing some standards. and one table was apparently having a birthday dinner, as i realized when the sax player busted out in the birthday song and started sauntering towards the celebrating women. the food was not spectacular, but they did have this drink menu in this thin brushed aluminum binder (middle picture). ah, my silver fetish! *drool* i included my zippo in the picture because it too is silver, and i thought the flame would make for an interesting effect. well, it didn't turn out that way, though. afterwards, we hit a bar and had a drink. being averse to beer, i ordered my usual jameson on the rocks (right picture). and while i set up my camera to take the picture in twilight+ exposure mode, the bartender waited patiently with this sort of "what is this freak doing?" look on his face. as much as my camera totally sucks in low-light situations, i love using the long exposure mode when i find a way to stabilize the camera. mark is a geek (a good one, mind you). we both love technology. and we've both started our careers in parallel paths, working at startups, he in software, and me in hardware. we're currently tired silicon valley cliches, with mark working in network storage and me working in network processors. i wish i had stayed in contact with him more. after we both left yale elementary, two other friends and i decided to transfer to another junior high school, so i pretty much contact at that point. one day in 1999, i decided to call his parents (i still remembered their phone number) and ask them what mark was up to. i found out he was living in the city, and after that, we met up twice before losing contact again. oh well. i'm wearing one of the new items i bought last week at valley fair. it's this semi-athletic hilfiger long-sleeve, and it's sort of um... meshy. the sleeves are semi-wide mesh, but the body fabric has finer holes. but either way, it's kind of like wearing nothing, because when the wind blows, my upper body definitely feels it. and NO, the shirt does not show off my body. geesh. i don't have the physique to pull off that kind of stunt. :) i just got back from having lunch with some of my ex-teralogic coworkers. if i remember, i'll tell you guys about the pork chop incident (somebody please remind me). but anyways, after we walked out, there was this one girl behind us that was really hot. at least *i* thought she was hot. a little pale, though... she had this pouty high-maintenance look. i had to hit sweetheart cafe, currently the makers of my favorite pearl milk tea, but before i walked in, i saw a bunch of round items hanging on the wall in the adjacent store. i immediately knew what they were: cd cases! i dashed in, noticing one glaringly empty hook, and i asked if that hook was the one where the hamburger cd cases would hang. yup. i was right. i first saw the hamburger in scarf girl's car, and i've been looking for one ever since. the woman working there gave me her card and told me there was a shipment coming in next week. luscious. here's an article on asians in the sporting world. it doesn't really say anything interesting besides "we are asians, we've been slighted, but you can't stop us" blah blah blah. i'm not sure why i'm linking it, but anyways... yao ming. i wonder how he'll do in the NBA. if you haven't heard, he's this 7'5" dude who plays for the team in shanghai. he recently held a workout at loyola university, and he caused a lot of buzz. lots of prominent NBA figures showed up to watch, including jerry west and pat riley to name a few. people are saying that he and duke's jason williams are practically guaranteed to be the top two picks in the upcoming draft. i watched part of the workout on espn, and what impresses me is his sweet shooting stroke. but reports are that he's pretty weak, and a guy like shaq will just abuse him in the paint. the NBA is drooling at yao ming's prospects. because they see him as an opportunity to create new NBA fans in china. and that translates to more revenue. what's disturbing, though, is that they're sort of playing favorites to teams that might want to draft him, trying to steer him to cities with more chinese people, and more importantly, teams that are more popular. that second point kind of makes me sick; why do politics and business have to get in the way of athletics? *sigh* oh... and the chinese government has stated that they are going to take half of the salary he makes. fuckers! earlier today i was rather amused by priggish online peeps. i read this one anecdote by josh about some woman reading _playboy_ on the bus, and people were like, "ooh! that's SO interesting!" and i just got the general feeling that it was some sort of lascivious spectacle. dude. what's the big deal? if you think _playboy_ is bad, i don't think you've been exposed to nearly enough porn. maybe you think i'm a perverted freak or something, but i really don't see what the big deal about porn is. naked people having sex. so what? unless you're going to be a nun or a monk, chances are you're going to be doing what you see in these magazines, so it's not like what you're witnessing is something criminal and wrong. i'm not sure how i got so morally lax. not that it bothers me. but dude, i grew up in conservative texas... i recall that dallas had the highest concentration of churches in the united states. and i briefly flirted with christianity my senior year in high school, and the biggest gripe i had with them was how the elders tried so hard to shelter the kids. i mean, they didn't even want boys and girls to hang out together. i fought with them on that point all the time. i did some stupid things, like wear all black one sunday, and another time i wore a NIN t-shirt that had the word "SIN" emblazoned on my chest. i just don't see how kids can be expected to be mature if they don't learn how to deal with "stuff," you know? in many ways, i think that an overprotected child is much more prone to fuck up when he gets his first exposure to freedom and decadence. i know of a lot of kids who were super-sheltered, and when they hit college (or even late high school), they went fucking berserk. alcohol, drugs, sex, everything. *shrug* i dunno. somehow i'm convinced that making every moral decision for the kids is simply a terrible way to raise them. one of my favorite short books in high school was mark twain's _the man who corrupted hadleyburg_ (complete text here). it's about a small super-righteous god-fearing town that completely self-destructs when getting its first taste of temptation. yes, i do know some righteous kids who aren't fucked up. and i admit that some of them have barely strayed at all. but i think they're the lucky ones. maybe they have a remarkable amount of character. or maybe they simply haven't been truly tested yet. i'm not advocating bombarding the kids with porn and drugs and shit like that. and i haven't quite figured out how to incorporate my views into a method of raising kids. i mean, a certain number of kids are just going to fuck up badly, and i'm not sure how to guarantee that from ever happening. i can completely understand why people would want to shield kids from anything even remotely harmful, but the whole point is that the kids will eventually grow up, and they won't always have someone to make their decisions for them. freedom is a dangerous thing. precious, but dangerous. ok. have a good weekend people. i'll tell you the pork chop story later. |