| 26 mar 2001 yikes. so my project at work isn't going so well. after two hours of frustratingly getting nowhere in the lab, i came back looking all dejected. man. if this doesn't work, we can't send out chips out to manufacturing. i told my boss, and he was like, "shit. that's bad." i hope he's not shitting bricks right now crossing his fingers hoping i'm going to work a miracle in the coming week. that's a lot of pressure! i hope i don't have another nervous breakdown. yes, the relentless academic ace known as dardy chang has now become nothing but a wimpy creampuff. this morning i was woken up at 6:30am to the sound of some idiot moron turning on the drying machine. my head is right up against the wall where the washer and dryer are, and people know that, so they should have the decency to not do laundry at ungodly hours of the day. holy shit, dude. 6:30 is a new record in the morning! the latest anyone has done laundry is 3:00am, which is just as bad. i've brought up the issue before, so if people keep insisting on waking me up, then i'm fucking moving outta here. which i am, anyway, in june. i'm moving to palo alto. but if someone asks me why, i'm going to use this laundry inconsideration as _the_ excuse. ha. sheesh. people should know better. that's just RUDE. i realized this morning that i'm so much more into sports than i used to be. i remember playing some hockey game back in college and being amazed that my roommate jason knew the names of some detroit red wings players. what? steve yzerman? who's that? but now, after watching sportscenter for a couple of years, i've accumulated a lot of useless knowledge about various sports and the people who play them. arizona's starting five? why, it's jefferson, arenas, gardner, woods, and wright, of course... i think the fascination with sports is a vicarious existence-type thing. most people aren't very good at playing sports, so they look to their athlete heroes and identify with them to make themselves feel better. it's feels good to align your ego with the accomplishments of a certain player or team, so you have an excuse to cheer and celebrate. unfortunately for me, my team is the dallas cowboys, who just suck ass right now. for me, sports is a hobby that helps me get by times when i'm bored. i noticed that i picked up sportscenter right after i started working; i would come home during the weekdays, and not having anything to do, i just turned on the tv and watched the highlights. i wonder how many guys would agree with me that if we actually had a life on weekdays, we wouldn't watch sports that much. my friend barden took notice this past saturday to the fact that i've like gained over 30 pounds. he put it in perspective when he equated it to absorbing the same mass as two 16-pound bowling balls! holy shit. that kind of shocked me. so to tone up and turn my fat into muscle, diana tells me to work out. but i can't. i equate that with pain, and i am extremely averse to physical pain. i tried it for one month freshman year in college, and i hated it. although i'll admit that i did get stronger. i could tell especially doing those lat pulls... my max went up by about 10 pounds! there's this one douglas coupland novel... _microserfs_? maybe. but anyway, he postulates that someday, some future civilization will dig up the remains of our current age, and find all these machines, like nordic tracks, universals, bowflexes, etc. and they'll come to the conclusion that we were a culture obssessed with torturing ourselves. i find that to be oddly fitting. i got an e-mail from my finnish buddy ilkka. we worked in the same internship that summer in japan. when we first met, he muttered some japanese to me in a very humble manner, and later i found out that he thought i was his boss! ha ha. but we had great times playing video games (virtua cop!) and drinking in tokyo. his english was mainly influenced by watching movies, so he could switch from an american accent to a british one on the fly. i found that to be very impressive. we roomed together when the company interns went travelling. he's funny. even though i was right there, he slept naked. one morning, i rolled over and opened my eyes, and the first thing i saw was his butt staring right at me. i'm having fears that this journal can be potentially alienating. especially since i sort of decided not to use pseudonyms for my subjects. last night, i called up emi so we could watch part of the oscars together. she was pretty quiet, and didn't even respond to some of my attempted jokes. i got pretty worried. the fear that went shooting through my head was that she felt weird by my journal entry last sunday. luckily, it wasn't, but the incident reminded me that even though this journal is about me and my personal thoughts, i have to keep in mind that other people's privacy can be compromised. i must be careful. ok. this was a random one. i had scribbled notes during the day of ideas that just came to my head... "laundry, sports, working out, ilkka, alien nation." now it's time to grub... and guess what? it's indian food! i'm all over that, dude. |