Stories

(email me with missing stories)

• Conwell was visited by TUPD, and S's car was described as "mysterious car" in an incident at Jackson Gym?
• G and AHo were really scared b/c I left them parked in my car in Chinatown near what used to be the red-light district
• G's good-bye party at Conwell, where he got a super-sized eggroll filled with "lat".
• Gyuhama in Boston. 20+ people, a greedy restauranteur, a credit card swiper, Cantonese cursewords at their finest, a misunderstood middle finger, the Club, the heated exchange, and the late-comer K, jumping into the fray while drunk.
• K got drunk and I had to smack his head with Doraemon
• K flooded Conwell's bathroom
• K, S and I got pulled over by Boston PD b/c of a broken license plate light, and got questioned as to our gang affiliation. After examining his license, K was told to "go back to Weston". Notable: Our friends in the car in front stopped and got out to see why we got pulled over - G was running over, and the cop was close to pulling his gun, and told him to, "stop where you are".
• KSA & TEMS
• Nicole's, Europa (Where Paul Pierce was stabbed)
• Porter Square-Cafe Mami's Tokyo Hamburg Steak w/ an Egg, Green Tea Milkshake
• Smoking Mild 7's yielded the letter of someone who liked you
• Someone at Conwell backed into the neighbor's car (while it was in their driveway), and then peeled out
• The Polks Video - missing...last seen at C's in Boston

LA Story:
In LA, I was driving just North of the the 210 on local streets, going east away from Pasadena. At one point, the 2 lane road became 1, after a stop sign. I was in the right lane at the stop sign, and sped up to pass the car in the left lane, as the road changed to one lane. ABout 5-10 minutes later, the car behind me (I assume it was the same one I passed earlier, but am not sure) began to tailgate me. Further, it began to weave left and right behind me, across both sides of traffic. This definitely got me worrying. I could clearly see the 2 men in my rear view... both Hispanic, both wearing white wife-beaters, both sporting shaved heads. I knew I had passed the wrong guys. At the next stop sign, I pulled to a stop, as did they. However, about 5 seconds after, they rammed my car from a stopped position, creating a large bang sound. Looking back, they were smiling... I knew this was no accident. Heart pounding, I made like they do in the movies, and peeled out, turning right and headed for the nearest gas station. I saw that they sped in a different direction, past the stop sign. I reported it to the police by telephone and that was the end of that. Lesson learned - watch who you pass while driving!

What products I'm using

Technology

• Email: GMail has better searching than Yahoo!, but still prefer folders over "labeling". Still really irked at how you need an extra click to get to your Yahoo! inbox after logging in; also, logout screen requires clicking back to mail page to login again, vs. being able to login directly (I have multiple accounts).
• Hardware:
  IBM: Thinkpad T40. Now Lenovo, but was IBM when purchased. It's been more reliable than past Thinkpads (no freezing during hibernation), but now in it's 3rd year, overheating to the extent that I can't place on my legs for more than a minute.
  Microsoft wireless mouse (earlier version of this): cheap, easy, and reliable
• Messaging:
  AIM: Only use it b/c many of my friends exclusively use it. I prefer ICQ and MSN. Really a basic-user's IM product.
  ICQ: Used to exclusively use this, but most friends are on AIM or MSN now. Rarely use it, but still think it's the best IM product out there. Simplest, best feature was offline messaging, kind of like a vmail box.
  MSN: Signed up b/c most friends and coworkers use it.
  Google Chat: not many friends use this, basic functionality
  Google Talk: really basic functionality, only unique feature being that you can opt-in to be watched by Google's recently-launched Music Trends. This is where they aggregate users' currently-played music and publish a "Top 40" of sorts.
• Software:
  Google bar: Does what it's supposed to; searches and blocks pop-ups.
  Skype: Good quality PC-PC (free) consistently poor quality PC-phone (costs $). Compatibility issues with Mac.
• Web
  LinkedIn: Professional community. Large network of users; easy to find potential networking contacts, but haven't had much luck with referrals (the basis of the business)

Interests

Hobbies

• Animal Planet
• Aquarium of the Bay (San Francisco, CA)
• Buy Fish online (I've done it. Overnight the fish in plastic bags, in styrofoam boxes. Cheap and safe)
• Chengdu Panda Breeding and Research Center (Chengdu, China)
  My Chengdu Panda Videos:
• Hanauma Bay (Honolulu, Hawaii)
• Long Beach Aquarium of the Pacific (Long Beach, California)
• Maui Ocean Center (Maui, Hawaii)
• New England Aquarium (Boston, Massachusetts)
• Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan (Osaka, Japan)
• Poker: Miss playing it, watching it (World Series of Poker, Celebrity Poker).
• San Diego Zoo (San Diego, California)
• Monkey park (Osaka or Kyoto, Japan)
• Taipei Sealife Aquarium (see my video of a Taipei Zoo (Taipei, Taiwan)

Entertainment

• Curb Your Enthusiasm - just started playing old seasons in Taiwan. Favorite episode was when Larry picks up the prostitute just so he can ride in the carpool lane to the Dodgers game. Same episode where his father takes marijuana for his medical condition, but Larry's friend gets arrested for posession.
• Seinfeld
• The Wire - no one I know besides myself watched this. I thought it was quality ghetto, and portrayed drug dealing like no other series did. The detailed ins and outs of the business, including the dealer going to night classes at a local business school in Maryland to learn how to improve his business.
  

Taiwan is such a High Tech powerhouse...but not

Taiwan is a global leader in many high tech industries, like Semiconductors (IC design, mfg, pkg & testing...), LCD displays, Contract manufacturing of PCs, iPods, PS2s, Xboxes, connectors, cables, and almost anything digital.

However, why is so much of Taiwan itself still so low-tech?

• Public buses are ancient, smoke-spitting, gas-guzzling machines, that are harming both the environment and its people. I don't know when the last time the buses were upgraded, but it's definitely overdue. They do have 2 LCD TVs in each bus, and most also have digital displays of each bus stop in English and Chinese. However, it's outweighed by the smell and smoke that they spew. It's extremely obvious when you are waiting at the bus stop, because you have to inhale this toxic air many-a-time before your bus comes. I'm also not sure of why they set up the bus stops the way they do. There are probably 10 buses that can come to an average bus stop. Which ones go where you need to go? Well, you have to check the sign...I mean, the route signs. Similar to what'd you see in the US as a No Parking on Sundays sign, Taiwan has one of these route signs for every 1-2 (sometimes 3) bus routes that come to each stop. Therefore, there are 5-10 of these signs, spaced out at about 4 feet in between. (If the stop has a US-style sitting area, then they should have all the bus routes on one glass wall, behind the bench). This means that it takes you awhile to figure out which buses you're looking out for. If you can't memorize all the bus maps, you have to run to each sign as each bus comes. It's a big pain.



• Scooters - same pollution situation as above, but a bigger problem, as these seem to outnumber cars.

I'm just so sure that if the government or a consortium of high-tech companies invested a fraction of their profits into improving Taiwan's environmental conditions, they could do so in a relatively short time. Think of it as pro-bono. Further, I believe that better, environmentally-friendly technologies for buses, scooters, etc. are already in exisitence in the US and Europe, so it could be just a budgetary matter.