photos from Europe wedding trip

Here are some photos from traveling in the countries near Monaco right before the wedding. My friend Megan went on the trip with me. She has been my personal trainer for three years, and we are also friends.


Megan posing with her French hat.


Me in a newly purchased French hat!

The dress, shoes, and purse in this photo are also purchased in France. I usually dislike shopping, but Megan forcefully taught me to appreciate it on this trip.

She described ten rules of shopping: always show your friend what you tried on, go into many stores (not just a few), be super-nice to the sales clerk, and some others I forget. When I told this to my brother, he said, "You only remember three of the ten? That's only 30% retention rate!"


Megan mid-shopping.


Megan right before going for a run.


A cool art display in our hotel lobby.


A church. I always find it calming to sit inside a church during a busy day. You are assured of a quiet, respectful environment. No one will pester you, or try to sell you tourist junk, or get into a loud argument next to you.

The architecture itself is majestic and inspiring. I wonder how much of people's religious faith is influenced by how good it feels to go inside a church.


Vernazza, a little coastal town in Italy.


A multi-tier display of coconut, sold at a street vendor.

definition of a hipster

I've had difficulty understanding what a hipster is. People just describe attributes, like "hipsters wear tight jeans" or "hipsters look anorexic" or "hipsters are unhappy even in expensive homes".

It s like trying to understand what a Jewish person is like, when you only get surface descriptions such as "some of them have large noses" or "they have a ceremony called a Bar Mitzvah".

Anyway, today a new friend Renee was kind enough to define it for me:

I'd define a hipster as a cultural early adopter (as opposed to an early adopter of technology or fashions, though a hipster might be those too): someone who takes a certain delight in getting there first, whether there is a neighborhood, a restaurant, a hobby, a band, or whatever.

Do people agree?

funny things my dad says

Happy Father's Day to my dad!

I think these are more entertaining in Mandarin, so the Chinese speakers will appreciate it more.

"有人一生象 sin(x)，从零开始，到一。 还有人象 cos(x)，从一开始，到零。 反正从零到 2 * pi 积分，最后都是零。“
("Some people's lives are like sin(x): starts from zero and then increases to one. Others are like cos(x): starts at one and then goes to zero. Regardless, when you integrate from zero to two pi, it all ends up being zero in the end.")

"十件事里，有七八件顺利就满足了。 如果好处全让你们家得着了，那别人还活不活了？"
("Out of ten things, be content if seven or eight of them go well. If all the advantages in life accrue to your family, are other people going to keep on living?"）

"我昨天跟你妈说：你这次去法国参加婚礼，幸亏你没养猪。 你说：把猪搁哪儿？ 你说说看猪能搁哪儿。"
("Yesterday I was telling your mom: this time you went to Europe for a wedding, thank God you never got a pet pig. Tell me: where would you put the pig? Let's hear where you could put the pig while you're gone.")

:)

Elaine's wedding

Last week I went to my dear friend Elaine's wedding in Monte Carlo, Monaco.


The wedding was held at Hotel Hermitage. The day started off overcast, but thankfully cleared up in time for the ceremony.


Elaine's entrance was breathtaking. She looked so picturesque! Everyone gasped.


Cute. :)


The wedding cake was made of maccaroons.


Me with Victoria, another friend of the bride.


Hor d'oeuvres!


A pretty ornamental piece made of an orchid and candle in water.


The bride and groom were so relaxed throughout the evening. They both did brief Texan accents during their wedding vows (they are from Texas). Later we did a bunch of goofy dances on the dancefloor. They are such a silly and happy couple together. It was really sweet to see.

Sunfire furniture hilarity

Sunfire Offices doesn't have a coffee table yet. We ordered an ottoman online, but it hasn't arrived yet. Yesterday I came in and someone had constructed a coffee table out of empty furniture boxes.



The cardboard flower and vase were made by "Tao", one of the engineers in the office. It is even more adorable in person. The texture of the cardboard looks flower-like.

The real roses were brought by ex-Googler "Ava" in appreciation for the office space. It's really nice having flowers around.

On Tuesday, six office members went to IKEA to buy more desks and chairs, since all of our initial furniture is now in use. I was out of town during the trip. On my return, I asked "Vishnu" (ex-Google research scientist) how the trip went.

Vishnu: "The desks come in two parts: the glass surface and the four legs. Since we were getting eight desks, we needed 32 legs. After we put them into the cart, I counted the legs and there were only 31. I asked Yishan to count. He counted 33."

Me: [laughing]

Vishnu: "We had the four other people count, and each of them ended up getting a slightly different number. So we decided, like engineers, that we would just go to the checkout, and they would scan in the bar codes and tell us whether we have 32."

Me: "Oh, good idea."

Vishnu: "At the checkout, two different cashiers scanned it, and got two different counts. Finally, we spread them out on the floor and made bundles of four. We made a bundle of four, and then next to it, another bundle to make eight, then twelve, and so forth."

Me: [laughing harder than before]

Vishnu: "There ended up being 36 legs."

pork buns

Cute pork buns! (Photo courtesy of my friend Victoria)

Power overwhelming!

Tom: Check out my new license plate.



Me: Oh. My. God. That is awesome.

Tom: Maybe my license plate will attract hot girls who are also 'for aiur'.

Me: As you drive, there will be girls throwing their phone numbers into your open window.

Me: Or, I guess, their battle.net usernames.

the book "Travels"

I recently read the book "Travels" by Michael Crichton.



What a marvelous book!

The author is very self-aware about his psychological state. In one scene, he went camping, and became anxious about wild animals entering his camp. He couldn't sleep. Eventually he heard crashing sounds and was terrified. He looked outside to see a huge elephant. He panicked. Then he realized the worst has happened, and there's nothing he can do, and he went to bed and felt promptly asleep.

I found this a fascinating rendition of how the anticipation is usually worse than the outcome.

He also wrote candidly about his romantic relationships, how his second marriage ended during a hilltop conversation when the two of them spoke of their future plans and realized they were making individual plans, not plans as a couple. Then they talked about being hungry and wondering what's for dinner, and went down the hill to their camp.

He talked about another relationship coming to a close during a trip to Hawaii when his girlfriend was miserable, and he spent all his energy maintaining a cheerful mood no matter what she did.

It was much more satisfying than Jack Welch's autobiography, which describes the end of his 23-year marriage in a single sentence with no actual explanation.

Good writers create such amazing autobiographies!

"Sex and the City 2" movie!!

Sex and the City 2 is rated 16% on RottenTomatoes. Megan went to see it, and pronounced it "terrible". So it was with lowered expectations that I saw it last night.



It was fantastic! I loved it!

I remember reading a newspaper article about Star Wars: Phantom Menace when it came out. One of the fans queueing outside Mann's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood said, "You could show me two hours of Obi-Wan Kenobi mowing his lawn, and I would still go see it."

That's how I felt about the Sex and the City movie. It could be two hours of the ladies sitting in a diner eating flapjacks and discussing their romantic past, and I would still go to see it.



But it was not two hours of diner-eating. It was wonderful! There was a scene where Carrie wakes up Miranda to rescue Samantha from the consequences of her shenanigans. Instead of getting irritated at being woken up in the middle of the night, Miranda jumps out of bed and says, "I'm on it!" It was so sweet.

I also thought the way it portrayed relationships during the first half of the movie was realistic. The way people pester each other to change their behavior, and then sometimes the pestering results in the other person withdrawing out of feeling criticized. It seems realistic.

Sunfire Offices

I'm happy to announce that my friend Yishan Wong and I have created a co-working office in downtown Mountain View. It is called Sunfire Offices, and is located in downtown Mountain View. It will fit 20 to 30 engineers, designers, and other aggressively productive people to work on startups and independent projects.


Southeast corner of the office.

We're looking to create an office community where people can create great stuff, as well as explore opportunities for what they're doing next. The office is offered free of charge and paid for by our sponsors, a mix of angels and seed-stage investors who want to build relationships with people who are productive and entrepreneurial.

The only obligation for using the office is to attend the weekly networking mixer where one of the sponsors or a company in their portfolio will have the opportunity to give a demo or a pitch. These companies might be looking for publicity, product feedback, or recruiting.

Due to limited space, we are currently only offering services on an invite-only basis. Right now, we're extending invites to people within our networks (mostly ex-Google, ex-PayPal, and ex-Facebook) who have use for such a space. We are taking referrals from people we know.

The space is 2200 square feet and located on the 7th floor in downtown Mountain View, offering a great view and close proximity to Caltrain and food. If you have a track record of building great stuff and especially if you've worked with one of us in the past, we welcome you to inquire about visiting and to see if it's a place you'd like to use.

For more information, you can check out our site at www.sunfire-offices.com, and we'll also be having an office-warming party on June 24th.


View of Castro Street below.


Fort built by Chris, a UI designer working from Sunfire Offices. He made this from cardboard boxes that the office furniture came in.

let's make sure this SMS conversation passes validation

My parents and brother are on a Chinese-run tour of the East Coast right now. It is a six-day tour, conducted by bus. They started from New York City, rode down to Washington DC, and will soon return north to Boston and Niagara Falls.

This tour group does a promotion of "buy 2 get one free", as long as all three people stay in the same hotel room. Last year my parents and I went on a tour run by the same company, for the western US.





This morning I got a SMS from my brother:

Tom: "Might need to take a vacation after this one to get rid of stress."

Me: "Oh no, what is wrong?? Is it because you have to wake up at 6am?"

Tom: "No, that's fine. It's that we spend 90% of the time on the bus and get like 30 minutes at each stop."

Tom: "We got 60 minutes at the Met, 25 minutes on Capitol Hill. Now 30 minutes at the Smithsonian. What a joke."

Me: "Are you meeting other tourists on the bus?"

Tom: "No i am meeting no one else. I am just filled with disappointment."

Me: "Hahaha what were you hoping for?"

Tom: "I don't know. I gave up 5 days on a beach in Hawaii to spend time with our parents."

Tom: "There better be some divine karma that is getting direct deposited as we speak."

Me: [laughing]

Tom: "XML"

Me: "What do you mean by XML? FML? Did your iphone auto-correct?"

Tom: "FML. </>"

...

I can't tell if that last part is him making a squinty maximum-frustration face, or if he is writing the closing tag for his XML schema.

shrek forever after (no spoilers)

I watched an advance screening of "Shrek Forever After" tonight.



It was amazing! The movie did an incredible job conveying emotional states (desolation, despair, missing a loved one horribly), without being heavyhanded. It was reminiscent of how "Up" used a montage to display the arc of a marriage over decades.

I'm impressed that the fourth installment of the film turned out to be the best in the series. Highly recommend!

law of big numbers

Over IM with my brother.

Me: "I think Cynthia is going to regret leaving Bill one day, when she realizes he is in the top .001% of men."

Tom: "Only 1 in 1000? I'd give him better than that."

Me: "0.001 PERCENT."

Tom: "Oh right. 1 in 100,000."

Me: "Actually when you write it like that, it seems like it should be better than that. Maybe .0001% of men."

Tom: "I don't know if it's better than that. He would be one of the top 150 men in the US."

Me: [lol]

argh cable

My housemate suggested that we upgrade our cable, so that we can watch the World Cup this summer.

This morning the cable guy came and installed a HD box. He cycled through all the channels, and they looked awesome! All evening, I was looking forward to coming home and watching my new clear HD channels.



We have three guests over tonight, and we cannot get the cable box to work. There is no video on the television. The only thing I did after the cable guy left was to turn the TV off and back on.

Frustration!

We've tried rebooting the cable box, using the television menu to switch the audio input, turning the TV off and on numerous times.

At first, my guests made jokes about how many Google engineers it takes to turn a television on. But now we are so frustrated that it is beyond joking.

UPDATE: The Comcast guy replaced my HD box, and now the cable works.

Mother's Day cuteness

I called my mother on Sunday to wish her a happy Mother's Day.

My mother: "Your brother called two hours ago."

Me: "Yeah, I saw him yesterday in LA."

Mom: "How is he?"

Me: "He's on a fitness kick. He's down to 13% body fat."

Mom: "What is your body fat?"

Me: "I haven't measured in a long while. Last time I checked, it was 22%."

Mom: "Yours is much higher than Tom's, but you are not much fatter than him. Gosh, my body fat must be at least 50%."

Me: [laughing really hard]

you know what would go well with this pasta? Warcraft II

Yesterday CM and I cooked pasta.



Afterwards I was washing the sauce skillet. As I poured out the dishwater, a bit splashed onto the leftover penne pasta in a collander in the sink.

CM: [reaching for the penne to put into a tupperware]

Me: "I spilled some dishwater on it, but I already rinsed it off."

CM: [jerkily pulling penne out of the sink]

Me: "You want to wash it again, don't you? I can tell by your hesitant motions."

CM: "Okay, yes." [washing the penne]

Me: "I could tell because just now you were like those AI characters in video games, when they have two conflicting goals. They go into hysteresis and start twitching."

CM: "That's not very good AI."

Me: "It's actually extremely good AI, because it exactly modeled what you just did as a human. It would've passed the Turing test."

CM: "No. When I play Warcraft II and send my peon to mine gold, and he starts twitching, I don't wonder to myself whether he's experiencing dissonance between obeying my orders versus going home to his wife!"

lillers

Hanging out with Lillers on Friday night.

Lillers explained beer pong to me. Apparently you throw ping pong balls into a cup of beer, and then drink the beer. Won't the ping pong ball be smushed against your nose, rolling beer onto your face while you drink? Also the ping pong ball is unsanitary. You wouldn't go around licking a bunch of ping pong balls, so why would you drink beer after dunking ping pong balls into the beer?

lol laguna beach

"That summer, my friends and I went through our 'Laguna Beach' phase."

"You went to the beach every day and picked up women?"

"No, what I meant is that we watched the show 'Laguna Beach'."

pragmatic dad

Two days ago, talking to my dad on the phone.

Dad: "Your brother keeps flying out of town on weekends. He went to Chicago recently."

Me: "他对 Irvine 还不熟， 没什么事做。 比较孤独。" (He's still new to Irvine, and doesn't have a lot to do there. It gets lonely.)

Dad: "孤独才好看书！" (But lonely times are the best times for studying!)

Me: [laughing]

Dad: "All of my useful knowledge was information I studied during lonely times."

Happy birthday to the best little brother

My brother is 23 years old today!

A montage of previous birthdays and occasions:




18th


20th


21st

As a birthday gift, I enrolled him in a six-month "Gourmet Food of the Month" club. The first shipment arrived on Tuesday: two bottles of premium vinaigrette dressing.

A new friend laughed at my gift choice. "This is clearly the gift YOU want," he said, "not what a 23-year-old guy wants. This would be like if he got you an xbox fighting game for your birthday. He would be saying to his friends, 'She'll like it, right? It's a really good fighting game.'"

This planted a seed of doubt in my mind. But Tom sounded really excited about his vinaigrette, and said I was the best sister and gift-giver ever, so hopefully it's not too bad.

Next year I'll give him an xbox fighting game.