One of the great things about my job is that I can drum up just about any excuse to check out a car and drive around the Port. Today it was because it had just rained and I was going out to check on a storm drain that I had just had installed. (In reality, no one's checking up on me so I don't really have to have a reason at all.) Anyway, the storm drain was working, mostly, which is to say that it was working about as well as I had expected. But the thing that I really like about drive around durning the middle of the day is that I like to listen to NPR. For some reason the midday NPR programs are much more interesting that the drivetime ones.
Today's topic was juries. I've served on a jury once in my life, for about 5 minutes. After the jury was fully selected, the guilty party made some sort of plea-bargain and we were released. Now I'm all for doing my civic duty, I am after all a civil engineer and to some extent a civil servent, but I am equally frustrated by the financial hardships that jurors have to endure. I think you should be able to write off as taxes paid, any time spent on a jury. But that's just my two cents. I got about a nickel of things to say about the litigious nature of our society and dime or two about the "get as much as I can" attitude that predominates our culture, but a penny saved is a penny earned and I'm saving up for something big.
Thursdays remind me of Thanksgiving. Occasionally I think to be thankful. But as scrambled as my thoughts are these days, those occasions are all too infrequent. I bought a Palm Tungsten E on Ebay. I wish it would get here. I have this foolish belief that it will organize my life. Only I can do that. But I do alright I suppose. Most people do alright, forgetting the occasional thing here and there, living their lives helter skelter. Most people my age I think. The older generation's got the routine down a little better. I need to make a transition. Looking at my niece, I think, "It's her turn now. I need to start growing up."
So much of what we are today is what we did yesterday. There was a day a long time ago when I thought all things were possible. That everyday from today could be lived differently than the day before. But you wake up and you're already late and traffic's just as bad as the day before. The coffee tastes about the same and it's hard to think different thoughts. We're all a little excited ... a little frightened I think when something happens that changes everything. The ordinariness of our lives is the glassy surface of a pond. Drop a rock in it and you can go surfing.
It'll be Friday tomorrow. I like Fridays. I like 'em because they're after Thursdays. And after you've been thankful for a few moments, the day after's pretty good.
Somebody kiss this guy: I definitely need an editor. I preface this by saying that I appreciate all who read my thoughts and, vain as I am, want ever more people to come and stop by. That said, seeing my words quoted somewhere else, scares me. No, not for any privacy reasons or that I'm afraid of plagarism. (Certainly not from my dearest surrogate little sister.) But rather, as I'm sure you've noticed, I don't bother spell checking. Even worse, I don't bother grammer checking either. I got off lucky this time though. I wonder if the iota of eloquence that I am reported to possess is all because I wasn't paying attention in English class or because I'm always leaving things out of sentences.
Maturity is the acceptance for the reality of our dreams. I see my brother bent wearily over the cradle of his new born daughter. Etched on his face -- not an emotion, the moment is too big for that and the hour too late -- the condition of love. Hopes and fears, shock and exhaustion flicker kalidescopically in his eyes. Everything that we dreamed, once upon a time, would perfect, eventually becomes real. And one day we stop fighting slow erosion of our utopias. And that day we give our dreams to another. And that is how dreams endure.
GONG XI FA CAI! XIN NIAN KUAI LE!! Alright, you got me ... I have only the barest of ideas of what I just wrote. But I'm learning, that counts for something doesn't it? The baby was much more communicative yesterday. Her full name is Amelia Cydney Chu (I told you there'd be updates) Stay tuned for her Chinese name, which is still being debated among the sleep deprived.
I nominate Howard Dean to be the next Oski. Grrrr Rah! Grrrr Rah! Grrrr RRRR RRRR RAH! You know that movie Meet the Parents? I hate that movie. It's funny, I'll grant you that. But that's the type of funny that makes me squirm in my seat. That's how I felt when I heard Dean's rant. Oh well, he'd make a good Oski I think.
WMDRPA. Can you decipher this acronym? Spin and counter-spin ... it's making me sick ... and not in a good way. It reminds me of the story that begins A Brief History of Time. An elderly lady confronted Bertrand Russell at the end of his lecture on orbiting planets, saying, "What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." Russell gave a superior smile before asking what the turtle was standing on. "You're very clever young man, very clever," replied the old woman, "but it's turtles all the way down." Alright ... I need to go rotate counter clockwise for awhile.
The days are a blur. I start to measure my life by hers. She doubles in age; she grows exponentially. I'm trapped in amber, feeling the world around moving according to Moore's law.
It'll be the Year of the Monkey soon. A year later and my Mandarin isn't any better (Heck, I can't even remember the swear words that Lily tried to teach me.) A year later and my sense of organization hasn't changed. A year later and my work ethic isn't any better. I'm getting close to a year of entries ... better than I had ever done in my ink and paper diaries. And for all that, it was a great year.
Happy Birthday Amelia Chu! (Name subject to minor revisions) My niece is almost 13 and a half hours old. Imagine that, 21" long, 8' 5oz. Lila, my brave sister-in-law, managed the entire thing without drugs or doctors. *shudder* Well, I'm obliged to say that she's the cutest baby ever. I can't speak from experience, but I hear that for the first couple of days they can be pretty scary looking, but not my niece ... perfect from day one. (Of course I wasn't privy to how she looked right out of the womb, thankfully) Now all I have to do is by a lotto ticket to mark the occasion.
My baby's sitting peacefully in the garage ... I'll be taking her out for a spin soon.
Must focus. Been trying to focus on small things ... posture, breathing. I was doing pretty well with the breathing, but after about a minute, I lose it and it gets shallow and irratic. As I was drifting off in a presentation yesterday, I tried to focus on breathing to wake me up. The sudden increase in oxygen nearly gave me an aneurysm. Decided to stick with the head bobbing, eye flutter approach. Too many things have been on my mind this week. Milestone and trivialities vyed equally for my attention. Anyway, the struggle is over. Sacrifices must be made.
Work looks like it's going to be ramping up. I'd better get my act together. If I'm really lucky, the peak of the work cycle will come just as 20% of my co-workers retire ... wouldn't that be fun? Of course, we have no money to do all this work so they'll probably have to lay off more people on top of that ... w00t! Let the good times roll.
In an effort to be more productive at work, I'll keep this brief. Yesterday I went to the Nissan dealership to talk about the price of one of their shiny 350z roadsters ... I ended up having to get out of there because I realized that I started negotiating too high. Damn, I suck at negotiating. I need to take more trips to Mexico and bargain down some knick knacks or something. Or maybe it's not something that come with practice ... sigh, seems like everyone around me is much better at swinging a deal. Anyway, after a somewhat fitful night of sleep I think I have a new plan of attack. So if you see a guy cruising down the street with his hair dyed to match his car color, that might be me.
Okay, I feel like I need to justify why I'm at work updating this journal and not working. See, I only have one critical task right now and that's to get this stupid piece of paper signed. Last time I saw the piece of paper it was on my supervisor's boss's desk. He told me that he signed it and put it on his boss's desk. I went to his boss, someone 3 levels higher than me, and he said that he hadn't seen it. I'm waiting to ask my boss's boss again since I figure that's the lesser of two evils, but seeing that he's in a meeting right now, I don't think that's prudent. In short, my job is stupid ... which is disappointing because on Friday it was very productive and important ... blah.
Saw three movies this weekend so here's my flagrantly biased review. Hero: As seems to be the case with many Asian movies, the movie is visually stunning. There seems to be a dreamlike quality to it. The story is told in a series of flashbacks which contradict each other as two of the characters discuss how three assassins were dispatched. Full of lush colors and a bevy of hong kong style martial arts, it was a very entertaining movie at first. It seemed to me to be too many revisions though. Drawn out scenes seemed to stretch too long as deceptions are peeled back one after another. Overall I found it enjoyable, if a bit much at times.
Big Fish: Again another visually stunning movie. Similar in some ways to the the aforementioned movie. Told in a series of flashbacks of varying credibility, it seems to me that Tim Burton did his job too well. Like the son in the movie, the audience begins to feel like the stories are told too much, too often, too long. In reality none of the stories are rehashed and each in their own right is just about the right length, but somehow it makes the film seem cumbersome. The ending however is spectacular and for all its faults, it was an enjoyable movie. Or maybe I'm just a sucker for films about dying fathers.
Lost in Translation: Total Immersion. The Toyko skyline is dizzying and so is Sofia Coppola's direction. Disjuncted and confusing, the story of two unlikely lost souls meeting, is all too real. The audience is pulled into this crazy world where everything is said and nothing is communicated. Except between these two people who understand nothing going on around them and even less about what's going on in their individual relationships. It's a strangely attractive movie, in which the audience starts wanting to get out, to make a prision break, at the middle of the movie, but leave everyone in the theater lingering in their seats, wanting some resolution or some sense of meaning.
I managed not to kill myself this weekend. Balanced precariously above my rosebushes, I was determined to hack away the trespassing ivy from my neighbors yard. My lemon tree overhangs the fence and he doesn't complain so I figure I ought to suck it up (though I think he gets the better end of that deal.) Standing on a 4" narrow ledge with a fence that likes to shove you aside is not a good way to go about gardening. After contorting into several tortuous postitions, I was able to do what needed to be done, but I really need to find a long term solution.
I went to the dealership this weekend to test the waters in anticipation of getting my new ride. It's a little wintery to be looking for a convertible, but I figured I'd best give myself sometime, in case I need to settle into some long term negotiating tactics. After all, I don't want to be chasing the sun.
Carol and I heard about this on NPR last night. It's the spoof of a website, which you can get to by clicking on the FAQ in the spoof-site, that was somewhat controversial in the Asian American community. What will people think of next?
Ok, no more entries like the last one ... I promise. Today, I got to thinking about circles and lines. Why? Various reasons really, the most graphically notable being that I've been spending some odd moments here and there doing sketches of my "dream" house. (Notice the quotes, they're there for "effect") Anyway, thinking about circles and lines brought me back to the difference between the archetypical ways that men and women think of time. Namely that men think of time as a line and women think of it as a circle (or cycle if you prefer) And that made me think of change. As the joke goes, men don't want women to change, but they do; women want men to change, but they don't. Does that mean that men are adverse to change and that women aspire to it? Certainly, there are examples of that, especially in clothing. (At least sterotypically speaking.) But contrary examples can also be found say in, technology. I think that it isn't a matter of being adverse or accepting of change, but rather being sensitive to it. Women are more prone to notice when things change and when things don't. Men tend to think of change as inevitable and focus on it only when it suits them. Is there a point to all this? Not really ... I just thought it was time for a change.
With a baby on the way, (no, not mine) I reflect on these momentus things -- choice and name. Simple words, and yet each is at the core of questions and answers that have fascinated philosophers, poets and physics alike. Free will. Schrodinger's Cat. "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." "We can never see past the choices we don't understand." "What's in a name?" "I name you Proginoskes. I fill you with Naming. Be!" With a baby on the way, the choice has already been made. Now comes the hard part. Naming.
On the drive into work today, as usual I flipped to and from NPR until something of interest caught my ear. That happened to be a short interview with the author of The Two Americas, Stanley Greenberg. He breaks America into two groups of people with differing "narratives". 100% America believes that America should be focused on social issues at home and that the primary goal of the government should be the betterment of the lives of all Americans. The Sons of Reagan believe that America should spread a message of faith and work to support that moral ideology domestically and abroad. They further believe that smaller government will lead to better economic health. That's how I heard it anyway. If you want the real scoop I suggest you pick up the book. Not that its likely that I will mind you. I'm already two or three books deep in back log. I think I need to dedicate more time to reading. I had a co-worker ask me (actually I have quite a few people ask me this) what I do with my time. Why do I always feel like that's the same as asking, what makes your life meaningful?
It's been one week since... Thus begins my update on my week long silence ... in a somewhat chron-illogical order. Thanks to Brian for the Karaoke Revolution and thanks to Alvin for setting up the gift exchange. On Saturday I met up with friends for Dim Sum and afterward went back to my place for some games. They managed to put my 57" tv to some good use with two xbox-en and 2 copies of Halo.
The rules of engagement: At last count, I heard about five engagements in the last month. Maybe I should make attending weddings a new year's resolution ... at least I'd know that I'd keep it. I wonder if you still have to buy a Christmas present if you propose on Christmas day ... or if the diamond ring suffices.
Days of Auld Lang Syne: Once again, I was surprised by the number of people who came to my party. I don't have an accurate count this time but my best guess is around fifty. Most notable among my guests was my oldest childhood friend, Mark. We met, by our best reckoning, about 19 years ago. Grew up in the same neighborhood going to the same school and then took very different paths in life. We've lost touch a great many times along the way, but some how our paths have crossed once again. Threads of fate one might say. This year's been full of them. I will remember it as a year of choices. And I guess I made some good one's along the way -- as the ball dropped on 2003, I was standing in my house, surrounded by good friends, new and old, with someone to call my own by my side.