c0redump

Hats, grass hut, and coffee houses

2008-03-14T17:51:00.000-07:00

I never quite considered my time in Taiwan as 'true bum-dom', per se, and most certainly not the road trip before, nor the backpack trip before that. Those kind of fulfilling, fun, and occasionally life changing trips can only be counted as casual bumming. Amateurish.

Between January 17th 9:00PM, and 8:00PM today (Mar. 14th), though, it was for real. Almost.

In my mind, I've always imagined that a true professional[bum] would go from day to day without a true sense of purpose nor direction, and enjoys himself while doing so. He would be spontaneous and random, visiting friends and places without notice, or stay home the entire day and just play games.

I did do quite a bit during my 2 months of pro bummage, only to discover in the end that, to my dismay, I'm unfit for such intense slacking-off. I was never really bored; most of the frustration was in the form of restlessness: waiting for events that's so tangible yet so far from my control; working on projects that is almost surely to be fruitless or meaningless.

I brought back 80 hat 'samples' from dad's overproduction warehouse in China, I've sold 35 total to date. It wasn't a very fun experiment, but the conclusions, i think, are certainly interesting enough to share. First, ebay retail does NOT work as a side business. Without a barrier of entry, the online auction market is too efficient and too low-margined for a silicon valley engineer. I posted 2 dozen listings(including re-listing) over a course of 3 weeks and made only 3 sales. So that's a 25% success rate for listings costing between 40-90 cents. However, i was able to complete an order of 10 hats outside of the ebay system with one of the ebay buyers, which was good! Unfortunately it was a one time deal. The second conclusion: selling over-production hats directly to retail does not work. I called up all the local mom-n-pop hat shops to try to establish a business relationship with them. Only store in berkeley didn't flatly reject me, and I was able to sell them 20 hats when i drove up there (I must note, though, that the store owners were, uh, unfriendly, to say the least... definitely not the most pleasant experience in my life). Being unable to guarantee quantity nor style, though, was definitely a deal breaker for them (e.g. since they are over-production hats, the shops won't be able to reorder any hats.). Excel says: "今日の実験: FAILED!" (see foot note bonus for a proven e-business idea =)

My grass hut project, on the other hand, was definitely a success! I bought a hut model kit at the Taiwan Miniature museum (which was basically, cut wood, papers, grass, twigs, and a 2-page instruction in japanese).
Note the nickel in front for size reference... This took me about 25 hours over the spam of a month.

I've been trying to [find time to] write a flash game since last august, and during the past two months i finally had no excuse not to work on it =). The product is, of course, still unfinished, so there's not much to say there. But as a side effect, in order to avoid suffocating at home, I went to 15 or so coffee houses w/ free wifi to do my programming. I think i've drank more coffee in the past 2 months than the past 2 years combined. Here are my verdicts:
The shop with the best programming environment is Red Rock Cafe in Mountain View. Its 2nd floor seating is quiet, nicely lid and homey with good ambiance. When I need a break, I stretch and observe the passerby on castro while eavesdropping on the entrepreneurship discussion at the neighboring table. Wifi there unfortunately leaves something to be desired, but Google Wifi was definitely good enough for my use.
The best mocha goes to the Prolific Oven at rivermark! Its small mocha is the perfect 16oz size for me and comes in a glass at the perfect temperature. The chocolate, milk, and coffee is in perfect balance: flavorful but not too sweet, rich but not too creamy, deep but not too bitter.
Chains like Peet's and Starbucks are obviously unacceptable for their lack of plugs and lack of free wifi; The Bean Scene Cafe in sunnyvale was disappointing (yelp rating there is very high), and the 3Bees in San mateo and people's cafe in Berkeley are acceptable. Bacio Cafe in San Mateo and Palo Alto Cafe are quite good =) I think I've spent more than 50 hours on my game so far... writing strategy game in Actionscript is HARD...

Adding up all those activities still doesn't quite cover two month's time, of course. In the voids, I finish all the errands I could have done during the time, played lots of DS, golf, and some tennis, and traveled to LA for a short visit to my grandparents and relatives. Now at long last, I am done waiting and will be officially starting my entrepreneur career on Mar. 17th, 2008.

Adventure awaits!!

------
Bonus!!!
Amazon Used-Book Market HowTo:

Something that *is* worthwhile as a side business, is the Amazon used book market, with great margin and almost no listing effort involved:

1. once every two weeks, go to all the libraries within driving distance with a notepad and a pencil.
2. Go through all books at the for-sale rack and jot down ISBNs for books in good condition.
3. While still at the library, goto their computer terminal and look up the price medium for these books on amazon.
4. Purchase all books with max(100% margin, $5) or better, and sell them on amazon marketplace.
5. Use label/postage printer and usps boxes to save time and money, respectively.
6. profit

Well, you heard it here first folks, be sure to cite your sources when you become rich =)

indecision 2008, or not

2008-02-02T13:55:00.000-08:00

So yesterday I decided to go vote in the presidential primary on super tuesday! It'll be my first time voting ^^ and I plan to leave everything blank except for the democratic candidacy vote!

I'd vote yes on prop 94-97, but i just don't think it'll actually help the California government... maybe it's better to just let the state government go bankrupt and lay off 1/2 of its employees to keep its spending in check. California has the highest GDP (and therefore the highest taxes revenue) in the nation and has the best weather with relatively few natural disasters... how can it possibly have a 38 billion dollar deficit? I mean compare to that number the 250 million per year you get from those propositions are peanuts, i say Arnold should hire Jack Walch and have him black belt the state government, or something ... But i degress.

During the past 7 years, Bush messed the country up so badly, the country will most definitely get better over the next 4 years regardless of who's in the white house. But in order to be *much* better off, the democratic candidate must win this year's presidential election. With a democratic house and senate (by a good margin, too), a democratic president is necessary for a efficient government. And the fact is democrats basically won already, with 2 superstar candidates running (and Bush helped out their campaign a great deal too =)

Up until a week ago, I was neutral between Obama and Clinton, and was not going to vote in the primary.... But yesterday i decided to go and vote for Obama on Tuesday. In addition to the accelerating momentum gathered behind him, I now believe Obama will make a better president. Obama seems like he'll be able to get more bipartisan support and be less influenced by his party or the lobbyists. Or maybe it's simply that Hillary is too forceful on her stands on military issues (what's with the attacking iran stand? US economy's gonna collapse if we continue to spend 10mil a day to attack random people) ... I mean, she's making McCain look more democrat-like than she is!

Or maybe it's just because he's endorsed by the Kennedys =)

China, Palau, Japan, Taiwan

2008-01-23T17:36:00.000-08:00

I'm back in CA at last, getting ready for the kickoff crunch, so to speak. For some reason i STILL have lots of things to take care of here, just like when i was in Taiwan... but first some notes about my trip ;)

I spent a few days in China visiting dad's factory, trying to get an broad overview of the operations while i still can. In the end I'm not sure how much I actually learned about the business, but i took some over-production samples back to the states to see what i can do with them... we'll see =)

My new year weekend was spent in Palau with family and my cousins' family. We spent the days snorkling around sunken warship, coral reefs, tropical fish (they ate bread out of our hands XD), and jellyfish; at night we played cards and watched taiwan new years program on TV =p. It was a great fun! I will be sure to go back there once i get a scuba license =D

I went to Okinawa and Tokyo for 2.5 days each with family and yet another cousin's family. The last time i visited japan was 15 years ago and i didn't remember very many things. The weather was miserable, but visiting cousin i haven't seen for 10 years was pretty exciting. We went to the newly remodeled aquarium with my nieces, featuring the largest underwater observation window in the world. Everything (well ok, many things) in that aquarium is super-sized, everything from huge manta rays and whale sharks to giant lobsters and hermit crabs... and i've really been to alot of aquariums. Did mostly shopping in Tokyo... it was fun walking around akiba, jiyou ga oka and shinjuku while catching up with t.

W finally came to visit a week before i return to CA =) Went to the usual spots like 9fan and danshui and baitou... we went to the miniature museum in Taipei (which was great) and bought this (the 2nd one) model kit in case i don't have enough things to do back in Cali ^^;; and we had some awesome Tonkatsu dinner =) The rest of time in Taiwan was spent taking golf lessons, attending seminars, visiting relatives, hanging out with friends, going to the acupuncturist, making photobook and before i knew it 7 weeks had flied by.

ohoh almost forgot the mention all the interesting food i tried during my trip. I tried the following food for the first time- in china: bee larvae(interesting, but i think it'd taste better if i didn't know what they were =p), blowfish (chewy... this was an non-poisonous species, supposedly), 拉尿蝦 (some sort of lobster like shrimp, pretty good); in Palau: bat soup (i ate some bat too... taste like tasteless chicken); in Japan: fancy tofu cuisine, real okonomiaki, rice cake pancake thingy (forgot the japanese name for it).

yay.

Hualien

2007-12-12T18:51:00.000-08:00

I've been visiting my grandmother in hualien this week. I always enjoy my time here in Hualien... There's something about my grandparents' house (we live in a 3 story concrete house) that makes it very inviting. The first floor is marble and concrete floor, and we all walk around in sandals... since we live in the middle of downtown, you would wear your sandal around in the house, and then walk right out to the main street to go shopping for books, cloths or stationaries. During the day we don't lock the front door (so i never carry a key... not that the crime rate is very low, just that there's nothing to steal in our house's first floor =) ), and neighbors and relatives would hear that we're back and drop by randomly to say hi and play go with my dad... It's all just a very laid back city during the day, and a very lively one at night. Though the economic recession is Taiwan is most noticeable in smaller cities like Hualien. Mom and I went to a slightly older department store in hualien, and found that we were the two of the maybe 5 customer in the 6 story store (with maybe 30 staff members on the floors). I couldn't bear the quietness and the, um, extra attention received from the sales people, and left in a hurry =)

On wednesday we went to 太魯閣... It was extremely pretty. I don't remember much of the last time i went there, probably more than 15 years ago. My parents hadn't been there for a long time as well... The white and gray marble/limestone cliffs, the trickling waterfalls that pour out of the cracks between the stones, the river that runs through the gorge... We stop at various locations to walk around and take pictures, and most places were devoid of tourists. We didn't see the tour buses until the afternoon when we were on our way out of the gorge.

中國政府做生意, 台灣政府搞文革!

2007-12-04T07:34:00.000-08:00

God damnit, my blog template is messed up again... i swear i didn't do nothin =/
----

Today I went to listen to a talk hosted by Business Today (今周刊) titled "The Flow of Wealth in 2008"
(2008 全球錢潮流向... http://www.businesstoday.com.tw/winwinsp/071121speech/).

The speaker was the former Morgan Stanley chief analyst in Asia, and the talk was very informative indeed. Even though he stuttered alot, I still found the speech very engaging. The speaker gave a very clear picture of how the most important countries in the world interact with each other (US and China, of course, but also India, Russia, Japan, etc) and where/why/how the money is flowing.

Essentially, he predicts that the US economy will be going down the drain at least until 2009. A US economic collapse is unlikely but possible... most likely it'll be stagnant at 1 - 1.5% growth (world average is about 2.5% this year) The dollar will continue to weaken until 1. Iraq war ends and 2. housing finishes tanking (apparently this will occur when Warren Buffet buys a housing related stock). China on the other hand is still all about real estate and energy and construction. The Chinese government is hogging the shares of State owned companies, so the stock market is extremely volatile. Real estate remains the single most important thing Chinese ppl invest in (he said, "buy some downtown office suites in major China cities and you can't go wrong"), but foreign luxuries and heavy industries will also be strong in the near future. He predicts that markets worldwide will be slow through the winter, but Beijing Olympics will pick up the Chinese stock exchanges starting February...

One interesting thing he noted was that the US economy is dictated by its current working generation. He felt that until the baby boomers retires from their political and business careers, United States will not make much progress as a whole in terms of productivity and economic growth. As for China, its government is so focused on making money it has lost track of the duties of an administration. Real estate, while strong, would become the cause for instability should the price increase continue to outpace economic growth (Chinese housing bubble). In comparison, Taiwan is facing much bigger problems than housing bubbles. In its current state of political madness, Taiwan is seeing a continuous outflow of people (and the money they carry with them) as businesses migrates to China. The fact that Taiwan economy is so closely tied with US['s slumping economy] doesn't help either. Taiwan is looking at a future of long recession similar to Japan today if the government cannot get its act together, create direct air route to china (三通), and passes policies to encourage foreign investments....

anyway, very interesting and educational stuff =)

flight

2007-11-26T18:00:00.000-08:00

--timestamp modified to when this was written--

It's been a long while since I've written anything... I think i'll start writing again.

For some reason, I always get minor panic attacks when I fly a long distance. There's something about crossing the Pacific that makes me ponder about life, family, relationship... future. Perhaps it's the exciting prospect of change, re-visiting relatives and friends [that i haven't seen for a year] that invigorates me. Perhaps it's the wonderful uncertainty of a new career that taunts me(of course, i only travel to afar when i 1. graduate/winter vacation, 2. change jobs, or 3. threaten to change jobs). Or maybe it's just the confined environment of an Boeing 747-400 that's sending shivers to my heart.

I got a window seat this time. I noted that as we headed west, above the clouds, we enjoyed a beautiful panoramic sunset in slow motion. Over the course of a two and a half hour movie, i glanced out the oval-shaped plexiglass every now and then to see the sky goes from blue, to a gradient of pink, orange, red, purple, brown and then finally blackness, an hour after the movie ended.

I love quitting jobs... maybe i'll make it a hobby (this statement just ensured that i'll never be able to get another proper job o_O hehe) ...No... that's not really true. I love long breaks. Because we all know that we live our lives For these breaks. What I love even more are long breaks packed with 3 times more things to-do than i have time for... And for the most of us (well, ok, at least for me), it's these period of self-incurred responsibilities and self-enforced schedule that allows me to slow down and reflect on where the world is, and where i am in this world. I guess now is one of those periods. Maybe i'll write a post-mortem on my Shutterfly experience (which was great and most certainly extremely educational!)
... we'll see.

But for now, I'll be landing in Taipei in about 9 hours, and I better get some rest.... before the next movie starts ;)

Semi-Annual update!!

2007-10-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time, everyone... anyone?

It seems futile to try to recount all the events for the past 6 months, but it suffices to say that things are moving forward. The valley is exactly as I imagined it'd be: full of opportunities. People I know are moving here almost as fast as they left Pittsburgh... =) I've stayed in California (and some some Nevada visits) since I moved here last August... No long distance travel (not even across US), for over a year, definitely some sort of personal record for me in recent memory (maybe the first time in like, 15 years o_O). The weather here is most definitely taken for granted, and I have long lost that urge to abandon work and run around throwing Frisbees around instead every time it's sunny out. My only gripe about bay area is that it's too spread out, with popular cities evenly distributed over a 25 mile radius.... Still much better than LA, that's for sure =)

A shoutout to w and l... welcome to the valley =) cmu clan is still missing a few members though... no worries, i'm sure you'll all be here soon... you know you want to!

=)

--
edit: want to write this down before i forget ( and never run again in my life ;) )...
I ran in the JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge this year.
3.5 miles, 27:06, 7.73 minute miles =)

hi

2007-03-06T13:16:00.000-08:00

I can't decide whether or not to continue updating my blog... on one hand, blogging has been push so far down the priority list that i cannot realistically expect myself to update regularly... on the other hand, it is scary how easily we forget what happened when we don't write things down...

So after the road trip, i paintballed, river hiked, day hiked, got hired, moved, furnished, attended halloween party, hosted housewarming party, spent thanksgiving with family, played broomball for the first time, went mountain biking, went go kart racing 3 times, traveled to tahoe twice (once for skiing, once for snowshoeing) and to LA for new years, took an entrepreneurship and a finance class at stanford and berkeley, bought a car, built a htpc, got two bikes for free, and bought wii, ddr pads, and gone through a full release cycle at work (about 4 months)

So!
that was the review... here's the preview

I will be: traveling to vegas for PMA conference tomorrow, going go kart racing two more times this month, attending b's wedding in LA next month, trapeze flying, taking a project management class next month, and finishing twilight princess this month =)

5000 miles part two: the actual trip...

2007-03-06T13:15:00.000-08:00

Coninue on... (um... sorry for the [3 month] delay there ;) )

...
august 10th - 11th, winston salem

i had my last meal in pittsburgh with weiting (it was crepes, i think ;) ), and headed south toward k's new place in winston salem, nc. two hours later I was pulled over by the virginia state trooper for speeding (only 60 miles of I77 lies in virginia ... man, i wasn't even going that fast =( )... it's the first ticket i got in 6 years =(((. <-- my insurance didn't go up tho (and still hasn't ;) ). Interestingly it was also k's first day to winston salem, having moved from texas just before =P. In true cmu style, the only items in his apartment were blankets, air mattress, and 1 server, 2 desktops, and 2 laptops. I took my comp out of the car to leech off all the tv series and apps i can carry on my hard drive... that room was 15 degrees warmer than the rest of the house =p

k's Pod(tm) arrive the next morning, and together with his brother 3 of us moved the poorly packed content into the living room =)

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august 11th - 14th, columbia

it was a short 3 hr drive to Columbia, SC, and j took me to a southern seafood place (new item learned... apparently, locals would order 'sweet tea' at all the restaurants they goto...). We played tennis on saturday =) By then i was almost done with 'the World is Flat' (which was 20 CDs long), so i started looking for new listening materials. we spent sunday in charleston, walking around the open market, shopping district, and the beaches. With history dating back to the 1600s, charleston is full of historic landmarks, old colonial and confederate buildings; In contrast to philadelphida tho, the sunny warm weather, small crowds, and the utter lack of tall buildings make charleston a nice and laid back little town.

I spent half of monday fixing j's machine that was built by m's brother (pfftt amateur... it's the n00b mistakes that'll cause you pain and sufferings and lost of data =P ). after two runs to best buy i replaced the hdd and ram, and the machine was back up and running like nothing's happend ;)

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august 14th - 15th, atlanta

I wasn't really planning to stay in georgia overnight, but apparently p assumed that i'd be crashing at her place (i was only gonna grab dinner with her then go). how can i refuse free lodging =). p was spending her last week in us before heading to nippon for a year(semester?). There's supposedly things to do in atlanta, but we ended up just going to a border's and i walked out with Blink! and Guns, Germs and Steel audio books (p had to run an errand in the city)

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august 15th, grand rivers

hmm, where the heck?

grand rivers is a tiny town along I24 in the great state of Kentucky. I specifically looked for a best wester with whirlpool and free internet, and it was perfect after 9 hours of driving. I finished most of Blink! that day... The book discusses the nature of human instinct and our reliance(or lack of reliance) on it for judgement and decision making... Malcolm Gladwell provided many compelling examples to illustrate his points, and you should read the book sometimes =)

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august 16th - 18th, kensas city

I scheduled a phone interview with Google for a PM position on the 16th... so I pulled off the free way 5 minutes before the appointed time, parked on a quiet residential street, and had the interview in the car (writing down notes on paper and using the steering wheel as table =) ... I thought it went well but i was later rejected when i got to bay area=/

I arrived at a&s's place around dinner time. they lived in a nice housing community, and the newly painted houses with similar styling under a cloudless sky is a picture straight out of the neighborhood of Edward Scissorhands o_O (a didn't think so tho =p) We played some friendly pingpong in their basement and had some kansas bbq for dinner. The following day i wondered aimlessly around downtown, trying to understand the city in less than 4 hours. Kansas city is definitely a well maintained town, with parks, fountains, museums and outdoor sculptures around every corner (random trivia, the city's Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art has a large collection of bronze sculptures, including huge badminton shuttlecock sculptures littering the front lawn.) I met up with a&s to play tennis around 5:30 (after they got off work), and had a nice sushi dinner nearby.

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august 18th, avon

[i wrote a journal entry this day, so i'll just copy and paste it ;)]

i think my english is improving quickly by 'reading' so much recently ;) or maybe it just make my blog much longer ^^;;

---
I left Arthur&shuhong's around 10am, central time. After fueling and putting some extra air in my front tires just outside Kansas City, I cruised along the almost perfectly straight highway of I-70 while listening to the abridged version of Diamond's Pulitzer-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel. To my great disappointment, I was appalled by the time i finished listening to the prologue of the book. I felt that the author's tone of writing was presumptuous and patronizing, and the while sentences and paragraphs are eloquently constructed, the book was impersonal and dull. I patiently finished listening to the 6 hr program, and found that I've learned nothing more than a summary of my high school world history (and not even the full semester, just the pre-15th-century part), and the 'insights' the author proudly presented were, well, obvious. I was about 90 minutes away from Denver by the time i finished listening to the book, and the sun was beginning to set behind the sharp, regional and vertically layered cloud to the left of the perfectly straight road. I had entered Colorado from Kansas, from Central to Mountain time zone. Denver sits at the foot of the Rockies, separating the great plains from the misty mountain tops. I popped in the last audio book i had, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins, and it was fascinating and very entertaining for a non-fiction. With a pessimistic and ideological reflections, Perkins wrote about his job of bringing 3rd-world countries to their knees to be forever slaves of the modern democracies and corporations. I'd tell you more, but since 1. i'm still reading it and 2. i don't want to ruin the fun for you, you should just go and get a copy =) I stopped at Idaho Springs for dinner (about 45 minutes west of Denver), and found out with a shiver that the temperature outside was 30 degrees lower than two hours ago on the plains.

It was getting pretty dark by the time i finished dinner around 8:00PM, mountain time, and I continued on the now winding I-70. Rain started showering down, and the two-lane freeway sparkled as headlights are reflected by the slippery wet pavement. I became nervous as the trunks, SUVs and high-beaming sedans around me showed no signs of slowing down. Visibility is poor and I was distinctly aware of my shoulders, tense from concentration. After an hour I knew I can't make it to my target interim destination of Grand Junction, and started looking for lodging. I exited at the resort village of Vail, only to find myself creeped out by the somehow eerie street lighting and the utter lack of hotel signs. There were lights coming out of the windows of what looked like apartment complexes, but with little traffic (for a touristy area) and sidewalks deserted, i just couldn't shake the feeling that i had entered an abadoned little village.

I drove back on to the unilluminated freeway for the next exit, able to stay in lane only by carefully following the white solid shoulder line, visible for only a hundred feet in front before fading into darkness. On the next exit i saw a clear sign with a list of big hotel chains, but as soon as i exited I found myself in the same unnaturally dark lighting of the previous exit. I found my way to a Sheraton on a small hill, and as i stepped out of my car i found my legs shaking slightly, either from fear, fatigue or the cold mountain wind blowing into my T-shirt. The girl at the front desk told me politely that it was a time-share resort and does not take walk-ins, and pointed me to another non-time-share sheraton nearby. Following the seemingly simple directions, I was unable to find the hotel. I wanted to leave Vail as soon as possible to get rid of that chill on my spine, so i abandoned my search and returned to the freeway. The rained had thinned and visibility improved, and soon I was checked into a hotel at the neighboring town of Avon, ending this long day =p
[/end of entry]

...
august 19th - 21th, irvine

At the beginning of the trip, I contemplated the idea of hanging around grand canyon for a few days before reaching the west coast... however, having received no interest from the possible participants, I decided to see if i can drive straight across the canyons and deserts to california.

I believe it took me exactly 13 hours from Avon, Colorado to Irvine, California, passing through Las Vegas where i stopped for dinner (10 am - 11pm). The change of scenery from mountains to canyons to desserts to california cities is quite amazing; it's also interesting to see the change in high way condition from state to state (the road in arizona are fresh and perfectly paved, and nevada is nice and smooth, but as soon as you enter california you see cracks and uneven pavements and random constructions...... state tax dollar at work, i guess)

I spent sunday hanging out with b&m - sleeping in, playing badminton, gaming and reviewing my trip with everyone. As usual, staying with b&m is always relaxing with plenty of engaging conversations. On monday I took my time getting ready and took a short 1 hour drive up to LA.

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august 21th - 23th, l.a.

I spent 2.5 days in LA for even more relaxation; taking care of the kids is always fun, and meeting up with a and c is also good... A took me around USC campus [in order to run some errands, talk to professors or whatnot], and while i don't remember much about the school, i saw the most advanced coke machine in the school parking garage (or maybe it was pepsi)! While the crude traditional vending machines simply drop your beverage about 5 feet from the display rack to the slot at the bottom, risking severe foaming/explosion/shattered glass, the USC uber coke machine has a robotic arm that moves up to retrieve my 20 oz cherry coke on the first row and 2nd column and gracefully returning to the exit slot, rotating it into position for minimal disturbance of liquid within. I was so impressed that if i wasn't a cheapass with no income i'd spend all my spare singles buying cokes from that machine, just to see the amazing technology at work again.

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august 23th, milpitas. final destination

The 5.5 hour drive from LA to Bay area was pleasant enough. Having purchased John Stewart's America, and Jim Colin's Built to Last in irvine, I was definitely entertained/educated on the way over.

So at last, my war-battered black G20 pulls into m's apartment's parking complex around sunset.... the promised land... exciting opportunities awaits!

....
odometer reading:
Starting 115,285mi
part 2 starting 116,654mi
Ending 120,580mi

Part two time: 13 days
Part two distance: 3,926 miles

Total distance: 5,295 miles

5000 miles, part 1: the northeast

2006-10-01T20:03:00.000-07:00

hi, this has been sitting in here as draft for two months, but i didn't get around to completing it until now ^^;; sorry...

Here's the first 3rd of my journey from the atlantic to the pacific (after taiwan =)

...
seattle, jul 15th - 18th

technically not part of the road trip, but it was very enjoyable nontheless...
returned to the states after a month in taiwan...

visited v+l's house and had a nice bbq at the porch =) house is now newly remodeled and fully furnished with rear proj. TV and a plethora of decorations =) they remained very disappointed that i did not get the expedia job =p
bought a pair of sneakers and used it to play tennis with s (and the new shoes shaved a piece of skin of the backof my ankle =( ... ), and had dinner with s+bf and sh at a good pizza place in issaquah =). also had lunch with j, and learned about his path to dentistry o_O
and i met up with p for dinner and actually got to say hi to his family (last time i saw them was like 6 yrs ago). Incidentally, p lives exactly 100 ft from the Expedia headquarters ^^;;

I spent the free time in seattle sorting out mails and watering the house plant (vic said "as a true bum would"... or somethin' close to that)

...
pittsburgh, jul 19th - 26th

Back at the starting point of the journey.
I went back to TerraSim to pick up my last check and to deliver the postcard i got in taiwan =p
ben, good luck ;-)
Spent the week cleaning and packing... turns out it's extremely hard packing everything i own (and w's stuff too!) in to my car... well i knew it'd be hard, but thought a week's ought to be enough to figure everything out =p... end up dumping a bunch of crap at n&p's place for now until i return from my northeast tour...

...
philadelphia, jul 26th - 28th

First time to philly, airport excluded. Hen lives on 2nd and market, a block from Ben Franklin and two block from the liberty bell. The downtown is comprised of buildings with a wide variety of architecture styles, age, and historical context, giving the city a strangely refreshing look and feel. The granite stone city wall sets nicely against the tinted glass buildings around it. This is technically my first stop of this road trip, and each day i took the entire afternoon, walking around aimlessly in the city, browsing book stores, museums/halls/buildings, stores, libraries, but mostly just walking around. h introduced me to the true philly cheesesteak: bun, steak, cheezwiz, lots of grease and nothing else. yum.

...
new york city, jul 28th - 31th

I took the infamous chinatown bus to NYC on friday night...quite interesting, actually, getting tickets on the spot and fighting for the last seat (i was the 2nd to last one before they made cut for the rest wait for the next one an hour later). as usual nyc is about friends and food. met up with w,a,k,j,j,j,a,v and had meals at yakitori totto, gogo dimsum, 'english is italian' italian restaurant, and that korean bbq place; went to the apple glass elevator, fao, and had lots of jumba juice(!!).

...
philadelphia, jul 31st - aug 3rd

Got back to philly late monday afternoon, and did basically the same thing as the previous week for the next 4 days. h took me to Morimoto's on wednesday... Iron chef's modern ambient-light-changing restaurant was surprisingly affordable... sort of. We set at the bar and watched the sushi chefs prepare all the fancy specialties we knew we would not order (we got cod and ramen =)... final bill: $60 for two.

...
princeton, aug 3rd - 5th

R convinced me to visit her for few days ("YOU have no excuse this time!! only 40 minutes from philly!"). It was a pleasant two day stay. I walked around the picture perfect princeton campus friday afternoon, gave direction for 3 different ppl, and picked up a copy of the undergrad application and brochure=) the campus looks like a movie set... it's exactly how you would picture a nice ivy league school with lots of traditions and history, nicely maintained and preserved. At R's place i played katamari all night and got allergic reaction to the cat =(... went to all you can eat sushi with R's nj crew, then met up with a&v to eat at rendang the following night.

...
boston, aug 5th - 8th

At first i didn't really wanna goto boston, being a bit too far out of the way (abou 6.5 hrs out from philly). But H convinced me otherwise.
It was my first time to Boston, and i got there just before the sun sets... around 7pm saturday night. Staying with phil at the experimental housing was an interesting experience.

[thoughts 08/07]

P lives with a very diverse group of young people...
"so when are you going to become a christian?" a young black lady
asked me tonight in the stuffy AC-less living room.
"... I don't know." i smiled politely.
"Well I'll pray for you man... put your name on my wall... next to
Henry's." H visited two months ago.
I chuckled abit and wondered whether B will convert to Christian,
seeing how he goes to church with M a couple times a month.

Perhaps you don't truly understand a religion until you believe in it.
That seems like the only logical explanation why many scientists and
historians are religious. Since from the historic and scientific
standpoints the Christian faith clearly contradicts many evidence and
theories, there must be something significant we as agnostics cannot
perceive. I asked P about how he came to believe in the holy
Father, and he explained that it was a gradual process. His values
were aligned with that of the churches, and as he learned more about
the religion, faith was born naturally.

[/thoughts]

p took me around; we biked around MIT, harvard and downtown boston for 5 hrs on sunday... along the river bank we rode on the dirt trails, on the sidewalks, and on streets, with perfect weather under the warm august sun. Monday night, p&i met up with our other cousin s, who was in town only coincidentally, and had dinner at the beach (jamacan food was excellent, but the location wsa poor<--windy, dark and cold =P ).

...
pittsburgh, aug 8th - 10th

I set out for the 10 hour drive back to Pittsburgh early Tuesday morning... about an hour into the drive i decided it'd be a huge waste of time to just drive and listen to music all day. So I pulled into the first barnes and noble i saw and bought the audio book 'The world is flat'. Turns out, when you're listening to something interesting, you stay awake better, focus more, and the drive is much more pleasant... plus you are learning new things! I was planning to meet up with a in harrisburg for dinner, but she was out of town... (btw, the world is flat is a good book... prob. too long for me to read, but perfect for long cross country drive from boston to california =)

I spent wednesday making sure everything fits in my car, however cramped, and donated everything else... before heading west, leaving pittsburgh forever.

--
Total days including seattle and nyc: 26 days
Total driving distance including local and lost milage: 1410 miles

MBA Application PM

2006-08-07T14:35:00.000-07:00

now that everythin's settled, i'll post some things about the MBA apps =p

As you may know, MBA apps were the main cause of my four months of no free time, no exercise, no go games, and no social life whatsoever (Oct. 05 - Feb. 06). Here are some highly objective and likely inaccurate advices for those of you who are gonna apply for b-school some day...

- choices
I started off listing all schools in NYC, BayArea, and LA that's in the top 20 (together with CMU and Harvard makes 8 total). Then after the GMAT i quickly eliminated the 2 in LA based on my concentration preferences (which are technology, int'l business, entrepreneurship, and entertainment)... then i blew off harvard cuz stanford was taking up way too much time... After finishing Berkeley app, I decided to drop Columbia as well since it didn't have the specialties i was looking for... And since i am not going to CMU regardless of what happens, i really only applied to three schools: stanford, berkeley, and nyu. I think it would have been a good idea to do a bit more research in the beginning so i can finalize the list earlier...

- timeline
while not exactly a spontaneous decision, I made up my mind about mba over the summer, and couldn't start preparing for it until after the china trip, which was already October. I wanted to make sure i exert minimal effort until i've taken my GMAT (to make sure i have a fair chance), which was at end of November. I then spent December writing essays solely for Stanford, my top choice (along with NY trip takin' up one week), leaving about 6 days for each of the remaining 4 schools (deadlines were jan. 4th, 9th, 15th, 20th). All was very last minute, but i think everything will still be pretty rushed regardless of how much time i was given (i'd just keep working on the stanford one until it's due ^^;;). It probably would had been better if i moved everything up 3 months, so i can make the first deadlines (B-schools has 2-4 deadlines... most have 3).

- the GMAT
this thing is way easier than any of the other standard tests... besides Chinese SAT II ;). And this is 100% due to the fact that you can actually study for the verbal section whereas SAT and GRE's vocab requirement makes short-term cramming basically useless. Get a copy of Kaplan's GMAT 800 book and work through it. Then work through all the ones you did wrong, again.... it improved my scores by 60 points. i failed the writing sections miserably (fortunately it was not part of the overall score) ... good thing nobody cares about the writing section since it's graded by a robot =p (even tho schools' websites might say otherwise)

- recommendations
i feel bad for my boss having to write recommendations for me, knowing that he's helping me escape from pittsburgh ^^;;.... in addition to providing your reference the standard materials such as resume, list of projects at work/school/or whatever you did with the person, self-addressed envelops, and a hard copy of the pre-filled forms even if submitting online... it may be a good idea to send him/her a copy of your essay draft, so you and the rec. providers don't end up writing contradictory points. While not quite as painful as essays, the recommendation forms do require a fair bit of time, especially when one need to do 5 of them! I need to treat them to a round of beer =)

- essays
the most annoying part of the process that turns away many of my potential competitors... Last time i written something grammatically correct was in freshmen year's interp. and arg. class, and writing about why i wanna goto b-school and why X school is the perfect school for me was pretty painful... My stanford essay #2 went through 5.1 revisions (essay#1 went through 2.2) and 3 proof readers, and i turned in the application and found a typo 3 minutes later >.< ... for CMU i turned in my first draft and got the interview request a week later XD... for nyu and berkeley, the essays went to 1 proofreader each. Thanks alot to everyone who helped out!!! thnx b,vic,m,n for proofreading and recommendation =) I would say it's a bit tricky getting the essays proofread... MBA app guides recommand at least 3 proofreaders (more the better), but that's obviously impossible, especially when u have to write 15 essays. Since i don't want to overly bug my friends, i planned out who would help with which school ahead of time so i won't bother anyone more than once ;)

- interviews
These are virtually identical to behavioral interviews for companies. Just replace company names with school names and add in the question "what is your short and long term goal after graduation" and there you have it.

-the wait
the second most annoying part of the application process. Like call centers, applications are processed in the order it's received. So submitting the application one day before it's dued means getting a response one day before the deadline schools promise to get back to you.

-the rejection
I knew stanford was basically a guaranteed ding. So no hard feelings when i got group with the rest of the 91% of the applicants... *throws chair across room ballmer style* It was too bad berkeley was also no good... guess the low (relatively speaking) tuition cost was a big incentive for many.

- the acceptance
I admit i was happy to receive the acceptance email from Tepper. The package that came in the mail was much much nicer than any undergrad acceptance package i received years ago ( i guess they're putting that 57mil 'gift' to good use), complete with nice thick plastic folders and lots of information. I turned them down in mid-June.

-the waitlist
Being waitlisted is a good thing, and cutting things close is my specialty =) most schools stress that the stats varies widely from year to year, but most report (if they report) the waitlist acceptance rate between 33 - 50%. Not to shabby, especially when the said school(s) encourages contact, in which case you can send admission commitee (adcom) a bouquet and a puppy to see if you can bribe your way in. I sent NYU an email detailing my recent achievements at work, along with the notebook scans from the China trip after being placed on waitlist (the scans didn't help my stanford app much, but i don't think anything short of an 800 in GMAT would have helped). But alas, as my plan developed i lost my interest in pursuing this and ceased to actively communicate with them... i was rejected on Aug. 3rd.

bottomline... Given the experience i think i'll need some extraordinary incentives and/or reasons to try again in the near future. And if i do apply i'll only apply to stanford and berkeley next time... all or nothing =)

taipei, kaohsiung, hualien, tainan, kenting

2006-07-31T19:16:00.000-07:00

I had almost forgotten about the 100% humidity and 100F weather, having not been back during summer time for a while. I had forgotten about browsing through every third store just to get some AC, about trying not to sweat while getting dressed after a shower, and about getting the sandel tan line on my feet.

The trip was very nice.

I visited southern taiwan and w visited north. We met friends and relatives; we ate local and not-so-local food; and we visited musuems/aquarium. In the south we drove, and in the north we walked; In the south we visited historic landmarks and famous food joints, and in the north we visited friends' homes and shopping malls (no wonder she kept saying southerners are more cultural =) ). ...Rest of the time was spent in taiwan doing the usual routine: Hualien to visit grandparent -> dental appointment -> new glasses/perscription -> meet up with friends -> haircut. The new event added this time was Chinese medicine clinics + western hospital runs ... went to MaJie general hospital at least half a dozen times last month for follow-up of my illness in China and an X-ray for my back <-- all the Chinese therapists/doctors declared that my spine has two crooked segments, but the x-ray shows that it's perfectly straight ^^;; ... so now i've been drinkin' herbal medicine twice daily for almost 4 weeks now u.u ... 2 more to go.

....

the actual update

2006-06-24T21:29:00.000-07:00

the postmortem entry was actually sitting around as drafts for a few month now. beeing editing it on and off, including tonight... ^^;; sorry if it's really long and uninteresting. i have a few more that still need to be finished an published =p , but first some update...

been in asia basically since i quitted (except an unsuccessful interview with expedia just before i left the states =(... sorry v+l, i failed... ^^;;) Met up with a for a few hrs to catch up, and got to walk around ministry of foreign affairs in sandals =D quite nice, actually. true taiwanese style! I was only back to taiwan for two days before taking on a family trip to visit yunnan (again. for me. sort of) =D. The 6 days trip was great fun involving lots of horseback riding (and sore/aching butts, backs, and legs that came with it) and walking around the touristy but ancient and beautiful cities of Dali and Lijiang. I got extremely sick on the 7th day when we flew back to Shenzhen and slept all day to wear off the fever+upset stomach+muscle fatigue+chills+headache. We flew back to taipei yesteraday (8th day) and flew down to visit grandparent/uncles in hualien the same day. Today i'm completely healed (yay for my immune system), and sticky sitting in our old house's living room with no AC.

ok if i keep posting at this rate i'll run out of steam soon =) good night! (12:30am) here..

Job Postmortem

2006-06-24T21:00:00.000-07:00

The 2nd postmortem post...

--
Boring history...

Once upon a time in 1996, 4 research scientists at the Digital Mapping Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University created a spin-off company that would utilize the programs and research done at the lab. With some of the Ph.D students in MAPS Lab, they created a modular system for putting many various types of data together, and creating a 3D visualization of the geographic data using the tools and libraries from the lab. They received government contracts to continue development of the software suite, TerraTools, and sold copies to US agencies and oversea VARs (value added resellers... These are software middlemen who pitch 3rd party software to their local companies and government agencies, often include training and/or contract works).

And for a time, it was good.

I received the offer on Dec. 13th, 2003, accepted it on Jan. 4th, 2004, and my first day at TerraSim was Feb. 1st, 2004. It was hard breaking into the code base, as there are well over 2.5 million lines of code, and many (especially the old MAPSLab's code) were poorly documented and not very reader-friendly. But half a dozen programming tasks and a few weeks later, I got the hang of things and started implementing a number of key features in the next release of the 3D realtime database viewer. Over the next 6 months, I implemented over half of the new graphics tools and GUI enhancements.

Over the summer months, the gang left Pittsburgh one by one, and I moved to schenley apartment to roommate with jt, so I can pretend to be a cmu undergrad for a year longer. At work, I was charged with the task of creating a new product line, using COM/ActiveX to interface between our programs and 3rd party software. Since then there was a gradual and steady decline in quality of life at work. The COM environment is hard to work with and cumbersome, to say the least; the new usage of the existing programs reveals bugs in old lab codes that predates mankind; the 3rd party API is massive, buggy, and uselessly documented despite their best effort (supposedly) to support the developers. Most importantly, the project quickly overtook my normal, more interesting, shorter tasks and consumed my hours at work, preventing me from working on computer graphics related work (which was supposed to constitute at least half of my responsibilities, accordingly). I tried hard to keep my life outside of work colorful and fun, and indeed the summer was great fun traveling to visit everybody and fall was not too bad either (see: Pittsburgh Postmortem).

And for a time, it was good.

Nevertheless, I knew I will not stay in Pittsburgh any longer than I have to, so quitting TerraSim constantly lingered in the back of my mind...

Thus it was a gloomy Tuesday after the Chinese new year of 2005 when I flesh out my plan to quit. I would leave when the next version of software is released in May, and go backpacking in China. Little did I know that I wasn't the only one making exit plans... And company lost 4 employees over the next 3 months, including the director of research (my supervisor). ... So I took a partially unpaid leave and came back from china for another year of hacking...

--
Insights

It's funny how heavily job satisfaction is influenced by the outcome rather than the course to get there. Regardless of how many new things learned, regardless of how much experience gained and regardless of all the personal growth along the way, at the end of the day it's the sense of accomplishment that really counts. Even though all the elements mentioned certainly contributes, without the milestones reached or product packaged it's hard to feel productive at all. I think you know what I'm going to say already... What I realized over the past year is that when it's not working, knowing complexity of the problem doesn't help me feel better; and when it finally worked, it didn't matter that it was not a computer graphics project.

The problem with a spin-off that doesn't grow, is that it ends up having to deal with complex software engineering problems that usually happens in larger companies. 25 years of source code implemented, modified, reimplemented, and modified again by dozens of PhDs who just want their thesis done... by the time TerraSim was born, the code base was outdated, tattered, and obfuscated (not to mention a lack of in-source and external documentation). The company end up lagging many many years in terms of updating to new technologies and revamping old programs.

The world of government contractors is also something I care not to experience again... As explained above, the product I was given charged of was difficult and very unsatisfactory to implement. After nearly a year of work the software was still extremely buggy, and would crash left and right at more extensive trade show demos, etc; and my boss would say: "wait until you see the work of other companies." This 'whose tomato is less rotten' reasoning is just not acceptable for me... And that was a important reason for many of my other concerns about the company's software: 10 yr old graphics, inadequate UI, slow processing times...

but I digress.
The company is understaffed. That is the undisputed truth. Growth of a small company in a niche market is surly a colossal task. But it was clear if the company have fewer of the above problems it would have far greater potential [of being bought, make lots of money, etc], and people would stay. That and location. Aw. Pittsburgh, the it's-not-so-bad-but-everyone-keep-leaving city was a important reason for quitting.

--
Quitting

quitting. is. hard. very hard.
The entire process took over three months, including multiple 'talks' with my boss about the reasons (except the most important one just mentioned ^^;; )... MBA, Pittsburgh, growth, family, friends... causing much stress on both sides... finally he just said, 'I'm gonna feel bad regardless of how u handle ur departure, so just do what makes u happy' ... And that was that.

It's not so much about loyalty, nor was it so much about responsibility, though obviously they are very important. The company undoubtedly taught me much, most important ones could not be put on my resume. Besides the obvious and perhaps relatively-narrowly-scoped programming skills, software engineering processes through the experience is invaluable. Communication skills, written and spoken, to clients and colleagues, analytical and marketing... I have as many reasons to leave as there are reasons to miss this company (just as there are just as many ways I contributed to it). The interesting balance would be broken if I stay any longer. So quite simply, as I've told many, it was just time to leave.

old job: software engineer
new job: professional bum
start: 02/02/2004, 09:00 AM
end: 06/09/2006, 05:00 PM
duration: 859 days, or 123 weeks, or 2 yrs 4 months 8 days
estimated work time: 545 working days, or 4360 hours
bottom line: my first job is great, quitting is also great, and everything is just the way it should be. I will miss terrasim, and I will miss Pittsburgh...

Lots has happened since my last post...

2006-05-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

--
the Bay

My skin finally finished peeling after two weeks XD

After an unexciting week of staying around trade show floor and talking to people who are not really interested in our products, I was in bay area for the weekend of May 5th.

Aside from the standard kareoke run and good food (hotpot, dimsum x2, monster sushi(was TGI sushi), breakfast at b&j's =) ), we went hiking and played lots of badminton (seperately, that is ;p ). Pix are up at the usual place, complete with shots atop mission peak and awesome action stills from our badminton session =)

--
the escape

Here's a shocker for you (in case u didn't know already), I finally, resolutely, unmistakenly quit my job. last day is june 9th, and i will be leaving pittsburgh on 11th to seattle, Taiwan on the 13th. I will write about this in more detail in another post, probably.

The plan is to spend the first week on a family trip somewhere (prob. outside of taiwan), then bum around taiwan for 3 weeks or so, then back to pitt and take 2+ week to do a cross country road trip, driving my car to west coast =)...

--
the choices

I've been passively looking for jobs, since it's probably not a good idea to say, i'm actually on the other side of earth; we can interview next month ^^;; But so far it looks promising, speaking with a few companies and already turned down an xbox contract job ^^;; more on this once i actually get a job =p MBA looks less and less likely, even if i got accepted to Stern.

Untitled =/

2006-04-21T17:09:00.000-07:00

Statistically, it should probably be apparent that this is the expected outcome. It was never a question of what I should do because, for the most part, the choices were made without me ever really have to decide anything. I believe "behavioral engineering" is the proper term: no choice was ever forced upon me, but usually by the time I have to decide, it was clear there was only one way to optimize the situation. Decisions to go for cmu waitlist, to go for ece waitlist, to go for dual degree, to stay in pitt, to stay in pitt longer ... god knew there were no other legitimate choices.

Using college app process as a template, i knew that statistically i should be accepted into one backup school and one non-backup school, and waitlisted by one more. I picked no backup this time and was accepted by Tepper. Stern waitlisted me and the rest were rejections. Exactly according to script. With the pattern empirically proven to be accurate, we can thus conclude that i shall be accepted by Stern (as i got in cmu from waitlist). Eventually. Though now, for the first time, i am given choices. True choices that are nearly equal in terms of benefits and drawbacks. No gold paved road this time... actually, i guess there never was, just that before all but one were blocked by boulders ... Now the boulders block my way before i even reach the crossroads...

Proximity of friends is a luxury that seems so simple yet impossibly remote. Obviously what i need to do is to take the first step: to get rid of those damn rocks... and the rest will be easy...or something.

Excellent essay on patents

2006-04-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

pulled from /.
paul graham wrote with candor and insights about the software industry, in easy to read english =)

camping, stocks, and that guy with the BB gun

2006-03-24T13:03:00.000-08:00

I woke up saturday morning, peered out the window, saw the rooftops flooded with dazzling sunlight, and said, "let's go camping." Frantically, we prepared the backpacking gear, researched for a location, and prepared dinner ingredients. Then we drove all over the town to rent equipments from REI, print out directions/maps, buy lunch for saturday and breakfast for sunday, and marshmallows. All things are in order, except we didn't find charcoal and lighter fluid at geagle shady side ... nor gas station in oakland ...nor REI south side ... nor CVS in oakland ... nor the gas station downstairs from our apartment.... ... ... so we ran upstairs back to our apartment and queried through the possibilities until we verified that home depot has what we sought. Rule 1 of camping is to reach the camp ground before nightfall, and we didn't have much time left. At 3:45, I gunned my old infiniti with its trusty 90 horsepower engine, heading west, charcoal and lighter fluid safely tucked on the backseat floor.

We hiked roughly 1.5 miles and reached the camp ground quarter til 5, just enough time to get everything set up. The ground was dry and I started a camp fire effortlessly. The rented tent and mats and sleeping bags were all in very good conditions, and we finished pitching the tent and laying out our beds in 20 minutes. We collected firewoods as darkness fell and our dinner cooked on the charcoals. Dinner was great and marshmallows were even better, but as temperature dropped from a comfortable 40 to an unbearable 20, i started to regret not bringing an extra wool blanket... We retreated into the tent around 9 and tried to mummify ourselves with the sleeping bags so we don't freeze to death. At 6am, the tent was covered with a layer of frost, and we were both too painfully cold to have any appetite... =P We were back home by 10AM and a hot shower was all we needed...

So ok, with the numbing cold and frozen fingers it wasn't perfect... but i think it was much better than last time =)

----

I created an Ameritrade account last week so that my money don't sit in the bank collecting dust. since then i wasted many many work hours reading up on news and figures (scary... it's like gambling, not that i've gambled before) ... net result... +$102.80 ... not bad for my first time ;) (i got lucky and bought Dreamworks (DWA) a week before they added two members to their board of directors and stock shot up 10% ... too bad i only bought 50 shares =)

i'm gonna need to train myself to resisting logging in more than once a week... not that i have that much money to play the stock market game anyway...

---

you know Pittsburgh is a safe city because if you cause a public disturbance as seemingly harmless as shooting pigeons with a BB gun, the f*cking SWAT team comes out and blocks off half of downtown to beat the crap out of you!

The articles really don't do the incident justice... First a co-worker burst into the office around 2PM and said "there's someone on a roof with a rifle... they blocked off 5th avenue and stanwix". To our disbelief we looked out our office windows and we could see lights flashing below and onlookers gathering around the police blockades. We wondered where we can go for lunch now that the roads are closed... we spoke with our neigher company workers who had a TV, who told us "ya they said the rifleman is on top of Foo Lai (chinese takeout)" and my boss replied "damn, i don't blame him." LMAO... later we found the guy was carrying a pellet gun, and was on top of the blueshield building, not foo lai... o_O" ...

anyway, it was good fun =)

perpetual motion, and perpetual stillness

2006-03-12T19:45:00.000-08:00

hmm.... really haven't done much recently.

My project finally stopped crashing at work ... I went to the SBIR phaseII final meeting (which was the contract that funded the project) on Thursday at Alexandria, VA (near DC), and presented the final product to a bunch of 40 yr old army personnel and contractors. My colleague and our army contact (the person in charge of this contract) sat nervously through my presentation, crossing their finger every time the software pause to crank out those elevation data on to the screen... and at the end of the day the meeting went well and everyone was extremely happy, mostly because the software didn't crash (4 weeks prior we had an internal finals meeting prep with our army leads, and the program was crashing so badly we couldn't demo the project at all... it was all extremely embarrassing) ...

Restarted playing Go... i think i lost a rank, having played zero games for 5 months during mba app period... but it's ok, i haven't played badminton much during that time either, and now i can play ok again =P ... finished reading the latest ender book, which finally came out on paperback last week =)

... and i grow impatient, waiting for the admission offices to send me responses =/...

"We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question."

2006-03-03T13:39:00.000-08:00

"Sickness and healing are in every heart. Death and deliverance are in every hand"

I finally got around to read the Speaker for the Dead. I blame ppl's opinions of this book for my delay in reading it... I got the impression that the book would read more like a non-fiction discussing philosophy rather than a novel... and those of you who have read the book, how can you possibly not have anything to say about it?

First i want to say that this book shows Card's true brilliance. The questions, the opinions, and the truths, stated in plain English that holds both great depths and compassion. The plot and the background are optimally utilized to illustrate his ideas, and the story has virtually no plot holes, as usual. The weakness and strengths of human nature, and themes of suffering and misunderstanding that are universal to human history are highlighted through the people in Enderverse and their contact with an alien race. The book also posts some interesting theories in AI and hypothetical future of mankind. .. ok, you can see why i like this book better than Ender's Game (though as Card pointed out, the Speaker for the Dead requires Ender's Game as a prequel in order to be a great book)

Ender's viewpoints (which are surely also Card's viewpoints) on the subjects of religion, conflicts, and human nature aren't revolutionary or even all that different from common knowledge, but it echos strongly with our own emotions and we really understood what the characters are going through, how they must feel (which, of course, was what Card tried to accomplish). The speaker for the dead speaks not the dry facts and the person's resume, but the story of the dead, his personality, his dreams and his motivations. The speaking is for the living to hear the truth and hereby relieved of its burden. It's a powerful book... go read it.

In other news, as a strange coincidence, I came across some evidence that we evolved from alien organic matters ... or not ;-)

johari window o_O

2006-02-15T12:07:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, I posted about the grid that i learned about in a seminar... apparently it has an official name (title link stolen from blue) ... I would post my own, but then i would be tempted to select all the traits that's listed on the site, making it pretty pointless =P

events updates

2006-02-13T21:30:00.000-08:00

i'd write somethin' about v day... but i don't wanna make anyone depressed ^^;;
.... ... ok, w&i are going to Cafe Allegro in south side for dinner =D... only got a 9PM reservation because i booked on sunday ^^;; hopefully it's good...

after procrastinating for nearly 5 months, I finally got my act together, printed out my china pictures and sent them to the family we went mushroom picking with in shuhe =) ... hey at least I beat n to it... and i even wrote a greeting card to go with the pictures! I fedex the padded envelop to Shuhe, Yunnan, China today... there was only one shipping rate available - $45 for 7-day delivery o_O... dang, i bet it'll be the first time in their lives to get a fedEx package, not to mention from the US! Let's just hope it actually gets there (apparently they started using zip codes in China now, and since i have no idea what's the zip code of Lijiang, the FedEx guy just picked a random zip code in Yunnan and said that FedEx China will figure it out o_O.... fingers crossed)

oh yea... and go steelers! =) abit late, but i really did watch the game at j's place (with some excellent wings and potato skins =) ) ... too bad nobody in seattle actually cared, else i'd root for my home town (sort of) =p

... and pardon the buggy blog template... i'll fix it when i have time...

This is so educational!!... scribble scribble...

2006-02-02T10:56:00.000-08:00

science myths...some of these are lies our grade school teachers told us and became apparent as we grew older... but the others came as a bit of a shocker for me o_O ... and sorry guys... no more 5 second rule... ;)

The Great Wall of China is the only manmade structure visible from space
There are several variations on this folkloric statement, and they're all quantifiably false. Astronauts can spot the Great Wall from low-Earth orbit, along with plenty of other things like the Giza pyramids and even airport runways. But they can't see the Wall from the Moon.

Humans use only 10 percent of their brains
This media darling has been around for at least a century. Fortunately, it's just not true. MRI imaging clearly demonstrates—with fancy colors no less—that humans put most of their cerebral cortex to good use, even while dozing. Much of a human's crucial brain development happens during childhood, but it isn't all downhill from there. Studies have shown that neurons continue to grow and change well into the adult years.

Animals can predict natural disasters
There is no evidence that animals possess a mysterious sixth-sense allowing them to predict natural disasters. Their keen senses of smell, hearing, and sharp instincts alone are enough to send them scattering for the hillsides during a hurricane or tsunami. And even so, animals often die during natural disasters, so if they do have some sort of sixth sense, it's not worth much.

A penny dropped from the top of a tall building could kill a pedestrian
A penny isn't the most aerodynamic of weapons. A combination of its shape and wind friction means that, tossed even from the 1,250-foot Empire State Building, it would travel fast enough merely to sting an unlucky pedestrian.

Yawning is "contagious"
Empirically, this is tough to deny; perhaps you'll yawn while reading this. The real question is whether there's actually something physiological at work here, and the answer is likely yes: even chimpanzees mimic each other's yawns.

Eating a poppy seed bagel mimics opium use
Purveyors of this urban legend call on a popular Seinfeld episode for support. It turns out there's truth behind the comedy: tests suggest ingesting just two poppy seed bagels may produce a positive result for opiates on a drug screen.

There is no gravity in space
Blame the term "zero-gravity" for this common misconception. Gravity is everywhere, even in space. Astronauts look weightless because they are in continuous freefall towards the Earth, staying aloft because of their horizontal motion. The effect of gravity diminishes with distance, but it never truly goes away. Oh, and while we're at it, it's also untrue that space is a vacuum. There are all kinds of atoms out there, albeit sometimes far apart (and this thin gas adds to the collective gravity budget, too!)

The five second rule
Having an arbitrary rule justifying the consumption of food dropped on the floor within a certain time frame is convenient, especially when said food is a brownie. Unfortunately, tests (and logic) confirm that germs will stick to most foods right on contact.

Hair and fingernails continue growing after death
Though hair and fingernails appear to keep growing after death, this is merely a morbid optical illusion at work. In death the human body dehydrates severely, retracting enough skin to expose more nail and hair.

Source: www.livescience.com

new york

2006-01-30T12:46:00.000-08:00

phew... almost had a month with no entries...
so lemme break it into seperate posts... i'll post about ny first...
[edit] i was gonna write about MBA apps next, but decided to wait until i hear back in march/april to post it together with the results ;)

New York, 12/24 - 01/01
hmm... not sure what's the best way to describe this trip, but I need to make sure to trade pictures with the participants.
The majority of our time was spent on commute and waiting and looking for people. We were split into about 4 to 6 different groups of 1 to 4 ppl (depending on how you count), scattered throughout manhatten, queens, and new jersey. m&a had the worst commute, which at some pointed involved the sequence of shuttle bus->airport railway->train->path->subway o_O (of course, the route was later optimized for time, money, and hassle), but we were largely unorganized and spent countless hours just wondering around and trying to decide what to do. I think everyone did some subset of the following...

[Activities]
Kareoke - how can we not? d was going crazy with his canto friends in there ^^;; again, i demand pictures.
Natural History Museum (thanks to l, i got into this one for free XD) - there were large poster about the darwin exhibit everywhere in manhatten, but we didn't see it the three hrs we were there (everyone was so Ross-like that we took 2 hrs to cover the dinasour section x_X ... during which i sat at a bench for an hour complaining about the lack of evidence supporting the conclusions that's written on the plaques)
The Bodies Exhibit - This was cool, albeit kinda gross. I was relieved that you cannot really tell that the corpses are Chinese, wondered how they transported all those delicate dissections around the world. The most amazing was the circulatory dissection, where all the arteries, veins, and capillaries were perfectly extracted and preserved...
The Nutcracker - i didn't go to this one, since i saw this in Pittsburgh two weeks prior (in which the main dancers were good, supporting dancers were crappy, and the freakin' symphony was missing<-- that was gay...!)
statue of liberty - didn't go to this either... ...
Comedy Club - the first two guys were very funny, but the last guy just sucked (and he shooked hands with me afterwards too, and i guiltily complemented him ^^;;)
... hmm... i'll add more if i think of them ^^;;

[Food]
Joe's Shanghai (鹿鳴春) (x2 for most of us, x3 for m&a, et. al ;) ) - soup dumpling x 6? mmmmmm..... oily goodness =)
Carnegie Deli - holy crappos $10 for corn beef hash, andrew carnegie ripped us off!!!... actually, carnegie deli has nothing to do with andrew carnegie, it's named that simply because it's close to carnegie hall...
Yakitori Totto - awesome japanese shishkabob place midtown... =)
King of Egg Tarts - replaced sweet&tart... the fresh yolk egg tarts are great... but strawberry/honeymelon/etc ones tastes funny...
-- and of course there was the normal bubble tea, dimsum gogo, shuliushan (許留山), bars, lounges, ...

[dramatic events]
cross off from todo list: jump down to the newyork subway track =) I was being a dumbass and tried to take out my pda to do somethin... and my spare battery flew out and drop on to the track... we waited for the next train to pass, then i jump down to the track and grab the battery and n+m pulled me back up XD
keys: so i found out last minute that if i stayed with m, i would had been sleeping on the floor with two couples in the room >_<... so i asked willy to let me stay at his place while he's gone... w gave me a copy of his key over dinner on the first night (he left on the 25th for taiwan ;p ), and I arrived at his nice apartment complex the next night at 2:30 (after hangin' out with n&c), only to find that the copy does not work... having no choice, i head back downstairs to go back to crash at chenen's place with norm. The security guard/doorman (a nice middleaged black dude...) stopped me and offered to help, so i explained my story to him. He wanted to let me in for the night by using his spare key, but found that it doesn't work either o_O He then told me to call a locksmith to open the door, but chickened out 20 minutes later saying that he'll get in trouble without a signature (on approval form) of the apartment tenant... so he canceled the locksmith appointment and said "no problem... there's a couch next the mailroom; i'll dim the light n' turn down the music n' ain't nobody bothers you... if i don't get off s' late, i'd let u stay at my home... i have 6 kids and the eldes' one is older than you... " so i called norm immediately tellin' him the story and that i'm headin' over to sleep... And with a dramatic gesture, the doorman turned to me and said "wait wait... i just found another key...", and behold... it was the right key and he just gave me the wrong key earlier... so i forged w's roommate's signature the next day and made a copy of the good key, and all was good with the world...

[people]
I counted 22 ppl... but you guys can correct me if i miss someone ;)... in no particular order...
annaleealanjendavidjanejenberttianluisawillymingangelanormhelenchenenjohnhenryphoebejason XD
once again, it was seeing everybody that really made the trip worthwhile.
It was awesome sitting around various coffee houses, cafes, and bars catching up with ppl, one of whom i haven't seen in over 15 years!

good stuff =)

sorry... just random thoughts, not a real update

2005-12-19T06:39:00.000-08:00

- temperature this morning... 15F... feels like: 4F. It takes 15 minutes to walk from pnc park parking lot to gateway center... i swear i will bring ski mask and goggles tomorrow if it's this cold again =/

- has the Wean elevator became faster since i graduated??? or maybe it's just me. I can almost feel the elevator trying to hurry along, cranking as fast as its 50 yr old circuit and equipment allows... I can just see it: some cs PhD fiddling with the vacuum tubes in the middle of the night, letting out sinister laughters...

- don't know how to write essays =(... i dug out my college admission essays, and they were so crappy that i wonder who in the right mind admitted me into cmu o_O ... crappos... the closer i am to completing the mba application, the slimmer my chances look =/

- NYC for xmas to new yr...the fact that there has been next to no email bouncing around on what to do when we get there makes me nervous.... hehe... watch me get stuck in the hotel room finishing up my stanford essays =p