Bay to Breakers



http://www.baytobreakers.com

Annual race that goes from one side of SF to the other side. 7.46 miles. 12km
I've just announced that I'll do it. Oh crap. Motivation for me to get off my lazy butt and start training. May 21. Less than 3 months. Woohoo! You peeps now have to make sure I'm working hard at this.

random pic : February 24, 2006 : Moorea's earring

We're all ugly!

Thanks a lot to Roy for pointing me to this site: http://www.fluideffect.com/index2.html .
If you click on Portfolio, you'll see tons of pics of celebrities that were touched up, in some cases, significantly. They erase dark circles under eyes, make skin oh so smooth, make eyes clear, make people thinner and even make obviously fake breasts look natural! Duh! Celebs aren't super beautiful over us after all. Well, some are indeed super hot, but in general, they aren't. Anyhoo, thought that was pretty interesting. Now I wonder how much I can pay em to make me super glamourous, hohoho!!

Ice skating in San Francisco
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Dangit, why the heck did Picasa put my pics out of order?? Argh, well, it's up to you, sufficiently smart monkey, to put my pics back in the order I intended. Have fun.

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Look, a green Beetle parked next to where I live (UCLA, November 27, 2001)

Look, a green Beetle parked next to where I live (Berkeley, February 23, 2006)

Corner of College and Durant as seen from my 3rd floor apartment, directly in the middle of the pic is a frat house

Durant Ave facing East

College Ave facing north, one more block and you'll hit the campus

After a series of sabotaging by my body to escape working out, namely a cold, neck injury and abdomen pain, I'm back! Today felt great, despite prior worries that I wouldn't be at the same level I was weeks ago.

Saturday
:: Badminton 1-3:30pm with Allan and Richard

Tuesday
:: Rope Burn 5-5:25pm with Dave
:: Weight room 5:30-6pm

After that, I ate dinner in the dorms with a police officer. We compared Berkeley and UCLA and that made me miss UCLA so much. Berkeley surely is not as gorgeous as UCLA is. As a freshman, I used to sit at the fountain next to Royce and just relax and contemplate life. There is no such central place in Berkeley to do that. Everything is just so spread apart, gloomy and grey. So I gave up a nice environment to be with nice people. I'd say that still is a pretty good tradeoff.

random pic : April 24, 2005 : rose in Berkeley Rose Garden

random pic : November 11, 2001 : Calvin's Cal cup, I can't even remember where he got it, neither of us were going to Cal back then anyhow...

random pic : September 6, 2002 : the lobsters Justin bought for the hangout

random pic : September 11, 2002 : kitchen in Tiverton

random pic : August 19, 2005 : the time Eugenia treated us to dimsum

pic of my dinner tonite, i'm only posting it up so i can send a link to my parents to prove to them that i'm not starving in berkeley, and i'm too lazy to go back to blogger and delete it so woila, i cooked wild salmon with spinach and brown/white rice

An eHarmony commercial just came up, and all I could think of was "they're crap!" They put on supposedly wholesome couples who found the love of their life on their website, when in reality the company cheats people by sending fake matches to their customers. Once you sign up and pay more than any other dating site, they send you exactly 5 "perfect" matches and if you even try to set up meetings with these future loves, they give illogical and stupid excuses to not date you. Duh! Cuz these be fake profiles that the employees make up to keep you a false sense of hope once you sign up. Yep, that's what I think of everytime their silly ads come up.

[and if you were curious, I never joined them or any dating site, this comes from many upset (and probably still single) customers of eHarmony]

Hi to you from the CS dept at Princeton:

I hope that reading my blog didn't scare you. I had no idea you would find the entry about you! I think I would be somewhat freaked out if I was randomly googling a wholy different thing to find someone mentioning you publicly. Anyways, keep on enjoying our pics! I'm actually proud that you keep coming back. I know I haven't gone camera-crazy in awhile, but hopefully soon! Since I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the students last year, I've actually gone and volunteered to be on the recruiting committee this year to welcome the newly admitted students to our dept. That's a great opportunity to scare away the camera-shy ones if ever! Despite our dept being women-scarce, our recruiting committee this year is composed entirely of female grad students: one first year, one second year (moi) and one third year. Win-win situation no? We females will try our best to persuade a lone girl to come this fall and then lure the rest of the guys with our feminine wiles. Hohoho... probably not, as I'm sure you know how that goes, since your department undoubtedly even has a worse male-to-female ratio. So keep a lookout for those pics (March 8-9)!

Thanks for caring!
Frances (as you must have deduced by now...)

p.s. I am entertaining a slight notion that I may have gotten the wrong person, but perhaps you do use both Windows and Linux. If not, then pass this message to your fellow grad student, classmate, professor, student, administrative assistant who happens to have a penchant for lame photos of a stat department in California.

Haha, thanks Floey! This is cute:

Women are like apples on trees. The best ones are at the top of the tree. Most men don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they sometimes take the apples from the ground that aren't as good, but easy. The apples at the top think something is wrong with them, when in reality, they're amazing. They just have to wait for the right man to come along, the one who is brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree.

Share this with women who are good apples, even those who have already been picked.

Now Men... Men are like a fine wine. They begin as grapes, and it's up to women to stomp the sh** out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.

Fitness:
It's like a drug, man. And you need it. Studies show there is a significant DECREASE in self-esteem when people stop exercising. Doing cardiovascular activities or strengthening combined with stretching produce equal INCREASES in self-esteem. And best of all, it's legal.

(I've been on withdrawal; my body has been through too much: cold, neck injury and now abdomen pain; it's sabatoging my efforts to do anything with a clear mind and hopefully I won't die when I start working out again.)

one of my favorite quotes, so here's a reposting:

Carrie: Later that day I got to thinking about relationships. There are those that open you up to something new and exotic, those that are old and familiar, those that bring up lots of questions, those that bring you somewhere unexpected, those that bring you far from where you started, and those that bring you back. But the most exciting, challenging and significant relationship of all is the one you have with yourself. And if you find someone to love the you you love, well, that's just fabulous.

This is the "My bro is the coolest" blog entry.

(in no particular order)
* He got promoted to a new job! He gonna manage 7 computer tech assistants for UCLA Humanities.
* He did my taxes for me in one night! Woo, I gots money coming back!
* He takes care of all my computers and software needs and even my friends'.
* He buys stuff for me and ships stuff to me asap.
* He sends me movies and songs that I like.
* He always finds the best deals on things I need to purchase. Thanks to him, I got Lucy, Caspian, and Aravis at a really good price.
* He puts up with my stupidity about cars.

That's all I can think of for now at almost 1 am in the morning, but I'm sure there's more.
It's weird to me that my younger bro is older than some of the grad students I hang out with. I had always felt like his class of 2000/2004 were young kiddies, but in grad skool, I have no idea how old or young most of the people I see on a daily basis are.

It figures...

I had ordered the dvd "Just Like Heaven" (you know how I like Mark Ruffalo) and a couple of romance novels (that Margaret got me addicted to) from Amazon last week. When I got home, I checked my mail and I received the notice to pick up my package in the mail. Ironically, I won't be able to see or read any of this today (Valentine's Day for all you in the dark) since the office closes at 7pm, and when I found the notice, it was 6:59pm. To be sure, I do realize that this stuff is designed to trick me into thinking this is reality, but who cares? =P

Yep, so I'll just keep on pigging out on ice cream.

woo, i sure like my hair straightener, gone is the puffy clown hair =)

my valentine's day date

Random pic : January 16, 2006 : In light of MIchelle Kwan's departure from the Olympics, here's a gratuitous pic of me jinxing her skating rink in Artesia, CA

Random pic : December 17, 2001 : Santa Anita Ave, Arcadia

Random pic : November 30, 2001 : Kerckhoff Hall

Yellow Fever

Thanks Lien! This video is hilarious. I first saw them in music videos that Cynthie introduced me to. Though it's not believable that Phillip can't get a girl, white or asian.

aaaaaaaaah, pleeeease make the pain go away! :(

My neck hurts.
Really bad.
Hurts even when I'm lying in bed.
Taking a shower wasn't that easy either.
Not sure if this is because of badminton or not.
Yep.
Go Bengay!

Since I murdered my blowdryer the other day, I needed to get up early today to go buy a new one.
I went to bed at 12pm and woke up at 11am. Why is my body sabatoging me in starting a proper full day?

Anyways, badminton today at 1pm, I'll go get one after that or something. Bowling last night and even some fake DDR. No point in practicing to be good at DDR when you can have fun jumping like crazy when Dave picks medium level and the mad onslaught of arrows ensues. I also was the worst in bowling! Woohoo, though I did get two strikes at some point. There was a time when Allan went first, got a strike; Brad went second, got a strike, I went third, got a strike; and then it was Dave's turn. You expected another strike? Nope, though Dave got really good after he figured out that he should keep his eyes on the pins, instead of somewhere else? Guys were all pretty good, though not as good as this little kid in the next lane who was turning in strikes like he was on TV. His dad was just sitting there watching his youngun roll strike after strike. What's this kid gonna grow up to be? Probably not a statistician...

blah
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trinh thinks i'm stuck in a rut in the dept, she wants to take me out to be a different person, what kind of person am i? i have no idea, but i don't think i should go out and pretend to be someone else either, or perhaps i'm being restricted somewhat without even knowing it, some people think they got me all figured out, which is why they keep telling me what to do

anyhoo, there ain't enuf time in the day for me to waste...

I want a hug.

Random pic : August 22, 2005 : Daddy at Yosemite, great fun climbing rocks with Daddy

Random pic : July 7, 2004 : Kim and I at Dockweiler Beach, I'd forgotten about Kim until Nicolas called me last Saturday to tell me that Kim visited him, what's Kim up to nowadays?

Random pic : December 13, 2002 : When Amos was opened... thanks Justin, Amos had been with me constantly, until Caspian took his place

Random pic : January 5, 2003 : I have no idea where I am or what I'm doing

Random pic : August 26, 2004 : Shirt Nicolas sent when he was in Athens

Coming down the stairs from the Terrace today, I noticed a girl sitting on the curb and what seemed to be her butt crack. So I kept checking her out, yep, I did. But on closer examination, it was not what I thought. It was a tattoo of a Chinese character very low on her back. Who can read Chinese? I can't do it very well, but for sure I knew what her tattoo meant.





Yep, she has my last name stamped on her butt. Sigh... some form of branding? Does this mean I get a piece of her now? =P

Damn V-Day, what with all the stupid commercials and the red-pinkness everywhere, I had unfortunately dreamt that I got engaged last night. And the ring was way too big for my finger so it kept swinging around. And the guy didn't actually even ask, he just slipped it on and that was that. So nonchalant and nonbigdeal. I wasn't even happy about it; it was like, okay, there it is, whatevers.

Whatevers.

Tuesday
:: 5-5:25pm : Rope Burn with Dave
:: this time much better, not as tired and oxygen-deprived

Argh!

1st attempt at making eggplant parmesan some while ago resulted in charring and the smoke alarm going off.

2nd attempt at making eggplant parmesan tonite resulted in charring and the smoke alarm going off.

Why oh why is this so hard for me to make? I follow different instructions each time. How hard can it be? Dip eggplant slice into eggs and then flour and then place in the oil. Bam, a few seconds later, no Emeril but just me burning eggplants to oblivion. Is this a situation where those "inspirational" quotes apply to tell me to "never give up"? Or is this just something I should never never ever attempt again? =P

~ For those of you who haven't lived with me in awhile, I'm not that bad at cooking anymore! In fact, I'm turning into one faaabulous baker. ;o) It's just this darn eggplant!

Monday
:: 12-1pm
:: Body Toning
:: abs need work, can't stop shaking

~ It's almost the 4th anniversary of when I finally realized I needed to take better care of my health. --> February 18, 2002: 179.5 pounds, size 14/16, courtesy of inactivity and dorm food

Saturday
:: 1-3:30pm
:: Some rope jumping with Dave
:: Badminton with Allan, Dave, Richard, Shankar, and Trinh (I can serve now!)
:: Walking to Evans and back (I'm counting this because since I was dead tired, that walk is workout-worthy)

And I'm very very tired now...

These dreams go on when I close my eyes
Every second of the night I live another life

Apparently I have been, since I just woke up to find some minor cuts and scratches on my face... what the heck was I doing in my sleep?

Hot dang, I'm getting old...

So after dinner at Sizzler (yes, I wrote that right...), Allan, Brad, Dave and I attempted to catch a bus that we saw was coming our way. Running across the street and almost three blocks straight through almost red lights has been the most strenuous workout I've had in a long time. Seeing that bus pass me fast while I was still on the wrong block was scary. It really shouldn't have been but my mind was too freaked to remember that:

1) the guys would have asked the driver to wait just a little before ditching me (right? =) )
2) even if I was left alone, I could have called Richard to come get me (he got a cell phone for a reason right? hehe...)
3) I could have just called a cab
4) it shouldn't have been a problem waiting for the next bus, except I had no idea where to stop...

At any rate, my sympathetic nervous system kicked in, and I ran for my life. After dinner. With a heavy backpack. While I was still recovering from a cold and persistent cough. Yep. Chasing after the three guys and having it seem like they had robbed me and ran, I made it onto the bus at the last second, but had to take awhile to recover. Haven't yet though, my knees are continuing to let me know what I just did.

Dang, so perhaps we should schedule regular workouts as such. We figure out the bus schedule and make a habit of chasing after em. We deliberately pick the routes that come by infrequently, that can't be substituted for any other line and are in the middle of nowhere in a crime-infested part of the neighborhood. Now there's your motivation for fast running...

Just a thought: Y'all know how to get all of the songs I've been playing right? If you wanted to... just like Julius has been doing. ;o)

Tea in the mail! Thanks a bunch of bags Abe!
I just tried the Yamamotoyama one, not bad... =)
You were right, the tea is right on time for some sore throat healing still...

I'm alive! and in need of some ice cream!

[and the song playing reminds of Tammy (good luck on your tests), and Tammy-knows-who-else...]

I was going to have this song The Roots - You Got Me be next; however it's very slow, so if you gots time, get it yourself. =) Great song, I was listening to the better version with Erykah Badu as I walked around campus last Sunday.

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I'm ...

officially sick.

I probably shouldn't have gone to Rope Burn yesterday.

Anyhoo, I'll be ...

in bed.