Over-optimization.

In December of 2004, my brother figured out the source of most of my parents' arguments.

We were at the Wuxi train sation during our southern China tour, and my mother bought a packet of tofu curd marinated in chili oil. It cost 2 RMB, the equivalent of 25 US cents.

She ate half of the tofu curd, and offered the rest to my dad, my brother, and me. We passed on the pungent snack, preferring the sweet red bean rolls and lotus buns sold at a cart vendor in the train station.

It was time to board the train, and my mother carefully folded over the top of the 8-inch plastic bag containing the remaining tofu curd.

"Throw that thing away!" my dad urged impatiently. "We're not going to carry it with us on the train."

"No, it's mine, and I'm going to eat the rest later."

I could see the anger rush into my dad's face. "After the train, we're going to have to walk with all of our luggage to the tourist van. Then they're taking us to the hotel, and there's not even going to be a fridge. That bag is going to stink up the whole room. Throw it away!"

"I'm not going to waste food."

This went on for 5 minutes, after which my mom got up, with the bag in her hand, and boarded the train. My dad followed, fuming. The marinated tofu stank up their hotel room for the next 2 days.

I inherited a frustrating mix of optimization. Recently I bought a computer desk from Bombay Company -- elegant tapered legs, wide table surface with dark wood.



After I put it together, I realized that the computer is in full view, with all of its cables dangling behind the mahogany Victorian tabletop. I then thought that perhaps I should sell it and buy this desk instead:



Bombay has a $75 flat fee for all deliveries -- whether you have one item delivered or ten, it's the same fee. This is incentive for consolidating purchases.

Furthermore, this weekend is a 2-day-only sale of 10% off their items. So I am self-inflicting pressure to decide on a new desk, chairs, wall clocks, and dining table, and do it all today!

Stress.

Plant war.

Yesterday, I noticed a houseplant on Alipé's desk, with long green leaves surrounding a pretty red core. I inteded to compliment him on it, but it slipped my mind.

Around noon, he and I got into a debate over a particular detail in C++ style. A couple of hours later, he told me, "I emailed the C style mailing list."

"Good Lord!" I said, "How did that go?" The C style mailing list has its share of style enthusiastics who will happily spend hours debating indentation and naming.

Alipé revealed that he garnered staunch support but eventually the decision stalemated.

Me: [unsurprised] I see. [pause] ... By the way, I like your plant.

Alipé: Oh, do you? I got it from Safeway last night. ... [muttering] Perhaps I can talk to it about C style.

Me: You can say to it, 'If you agree with me, DO NOTHING.'

Alipé: [chuckling]

Alipé: ... Or 'If you disagree with me, prepare to face imminent death."

Me: That's what you should have said to the C style mailing list.

...

Later I told the story about Alipé's plant to Peter.

Me: Then I told him that he can say to the plant, 'If you agree with me, DO NOTHING.'

Peter: Imagine if just at that moment, a single leaf falls silently off the plant.

Alcatraz indignation

Darryl's family is visiting him for the week, and he's taking them to Alcatraz on Friday.

I told him about my favorite part of the Alcatraz tour: standing in the prison cells and listening to an audio tape about the prisoners. One sequence took place outside a cramped cell with a hole in the base of the wall, and the tape described how 3 men managed to escape in the 60s:

"The theory is that they hid away spoons and chipped every night for hours against the wall. After ten years, they managed to dig a tunnel beneath their cells using these spoons, and they slipped out into the duct and escaped."

It's likely that they froze to death swimming to San Francisco, or were eaten by sharks, but there's also a good chance that they have managed to survive. Since this only happened in the 60s, it's quite possible for them to still be alive today.

When I heard this, I knew that it would be undeniably tempting for those escaped prisoners to come back and take the Alcatraz tour, so they can hear themselves described as the only successful escape.

So, there in the dim prison hall, when it got to the part about the spoons, I fully expected one of the white-haired old men standing in the tourist crowd next to me to blurt out,

"Spoons?! That's not how I did it at all!"

Brunch with Tommyknockers.

I drove over to my brother's Stanford dorm room at noon to pick him up for brunch. Several rounds of knocks on his door went unanswered. Where was he?

After searching for him fruitlessly throughout the dorm and dining hall, I got back in my Honda and began heading home. Just as I pulled out of the parking lot, my phone rang.

Me: Hello?

Tom: [very groggy] Ohhh, I'm sorry, I just woke up. Are you still around?

Me: Yes. [straining not to ask whose room he spent the night in, since it wasn't in his own room]

Tom: Okay, I'm going to shower and then bike over. Just stay put.

Ten minutes later, Tom emerges, laden down with a heavy backpack.

Tom: I worked for 16 hours yesterday and it was raining hard, so I just slept in the computer science building.

So my brother's secret lover turned out to be ... the computer lab.

---

We eat at California Cafe, a high-ceilinged restaurant with delightful bread and eggs.

Tom: I saw that video you had about the coffee commercial. I watched it five times in a row.

Me: Yeah! Me too.

Tom: It's so much like our parents. I can just imagine one day, my kid will be in the World Cyber Games tournament. Dad will show up and say, "He's better than you, Tom." I'll say "How would you know?" and he'll pull out a faded photo of me playing Counter-Strike: "You used rail gun."

Hallejuah

If you asked me last week, "What are you worst at in the world?", I would answer singing. Singing is a skill that everyone else seems to magically possess since birth, and yet I just can't do it. My singing gives William Hung a run for his money.

The last time I sang in public was 5 years ago, when Szechuan Chinese Restaurant held a karaoke night. I was a regular there, so I happened to be around when they began the event. "Go on and sing," the restaurant staff urged me.

"No, I'm terrible," I said, truthfully.

"Stop being modest and just go! We're all amateurs."

When I finished slaughtering Yesterday by the Beatles, no one would meet my gaze. I had to leave the restaurant shortly after, out of discomfort.

It all changed tonight! X.M. invited a group of us out to karaoke, and I agreed to go. The first song, Eternal Flame, was as bad as I expected. I didn't even realize for the first 30 seconds that my microphone was off. It didn't make much difference, because I could barely get my voice to come out. Other people picked up the second microphone and sang with me, to help take me out of my misery.

When I sat down, Feng's wife tried to comfort me by saying, "That song is really strange."

"No, just my rendition of it," I said.

"You can still continue to pick songs," she said, and I laughed.

"Don't worry, this is about what I expected."

I've tried to fix this incurable problem before. I sang in the Caltech Women's Glee Club for a year. I sang in Microtones (Microsoft's glee club) for 2 years. I took a singing class in the evening at a nearby community college. I've played the piano and sung along to it one note at a time.

None of it made any difference.

Tom told me recently that he took a singing class at Stanford. "You must stand up to sing," he said. "That way your lungs can expand fully. Don't think about fixing your notes. Just sing, and it'll sound like the way it does in your head."

So tonight, I stood up for my next karaoke song, I Do It For You, even though everyone else was sitting. I had to bump their knees aside in order to stand, towering over them. I opened my mouth and ... a clear singing voice filled the room.

"They forgot to turn off the guiding audio track," I thought, and looked around for the remote control in order to shut it off. I found it, picked it up, and then realized ... that was my voice. I almost went slack-jawed at the realization that from my throat was somehow emerging the beautiful singing voice that I've always wanted.

But my jaw had taken on a life of its own. No slack-jawedness for it! It went on to hit the high notes, the low notes, belt out the chorus, soften up for the tender refrain. When I paused during the instrumental section, my friends gave me a rousing ovation.

"And you said you were bad!" X.M. said, and I hugged her out of sheer delight.

When we left two hours later, I took a map of the karaoke place. It's all I can do right now not to get back in the car and drive over to sing some more. It's open until 3am!

I am going to turn into one of those freaks that sings at all sorts of inappropriate moments, to show off their singing voices. People at work will ask me "Where do I find the code for X?" and I'll loudly perform I Can Show You the World in response. Why? Because now I can.

Psuedonyms.

Eating with coworkers. During a lull in the conversation:

Alipe: So ... Niniane, I discovered your blog.

Me: [mentally thinking] Heavens! The inevitable has come to pass! [out loud] I see. Did you notice you have a psuedonym?

Alipe: Yes! I'm Alipé (ah-lee-pay).

Me: Oh. In my head, it was pronounced Alipe (ah-leap).

Alipe: I like Alipé.

Me: Okay, Alipé then.

Alipé: You know, my friends also discovered your blog. They said to me, "[suspicious look] You're not mentioned in this! Do you really work for Google??" I had to say, "Yes, yes! I'm Alipé!"

Women's Day

I finally did some work that my mother can appreciate.

For March 8, International Women's Day, the Google Beijing office asked me to write an article for the Google China Blog in Mandarin. It's about my perspective as a female software engineer.

In it, I mention an incident at Nanjing Univ. last October, when a girl came to me after my tech talk and asked, "I'm studying computer science, and I like it. But women are not so suitable for studying programming. Should I switch majors now before I go further down this path?"

"Why would you think women are not suitable for computer science?" I inquired.

"After we reach 30 years old, our physical energy and mental abilities deteriorate, so we won't be able to keep up with the men."

My article states that the greatest threat of these "predictions" is letting them sap one's self-confidence.

I sent the article to my mother, and after reading it, she phoned me with an especially delighted tone of voice. "It's great! Great!! Very great."

This is undoubtedly influenced by the fact that she's mentioned in the article. I described how as a female engineer, and also having skipped 3 grades, I encountered many a skeptic growing up, who protested that I was too young or not suitable for my field. In the article, I mentioned how fortunate it was that my parents never took them seriously.

I dearly hope that the Nanjing girl will stick to her interests and prove her naysayers wrong too.

What I told her at the time was, "There have been many discriminations throughout the ages that are now proven wrong. There was prejudice against the ability of black people as professionals, and we now know that was wrong. Now there is prejudice against gay people, which has been overthrown too."

Those may not have been the most convincing examples, since many Chinese people are still quite prejudiced against black people and gay people. But might as well aim for 3 birds with 1 stone.

Best commercial

Thank you Diego for introducing us to this Tim Horton's commercial, which I watched four times back-to-back (more than I can say for any movie). Ladies and gentleman, this is the real Best Movie of the Year:

Best Movie.

Oscars.

We foolishly missed the first half hour of the Oscars, including monologue. Last year's speech by Chris Rock had me in stitches: "When Nicole Kidman lost for Best Actress, she had such the biggest gracious smile. She should've won an Emmy for her performance at the Oscars! Nicole, if you'd acted that well in your movie, you would've won the Oscar!"

Markus, Diego, Peter, and I are watching from our living room. Best Costume is announced, and a tuxedoed man grabs the hand of the woman next to him, and they dash up to the stage.

As the man drones his acceptance speech, the camera cuts to a scene of two women, the right one in a red evening gown and trails of tears on her cheeks.

Me: Wow, she's so happy that her coworker won! Look at her crying! [struck by a thought] ... Or maybe she's just a good actress.

Markus: Or that could be a shot of the losers.

Asimov.

I'm reading Asimov Laughs Again, in which he shares his favorite jokes and short treatises on his beliefs.

One story that combined both:

I was carefully decanting liquid from one vessel into another in the Navy Yard, and in so doing, my abdomen protruded rather more than usual. A young, very thin woman in the lab lifted a long piece of glass tubing, and said, "I think I'll let the air out of your belly so that you'll look more like a man."

"Good idea," I said, still decanting. "Then you can take the air and use it to puff up your chest so that you'll look more like a woman."

Asimov liked to flirt with pretty girls. For example:

I once came to Boston University to take Robyn [Asimov's daughter] out to a steak house for dinner. She asked me if it would be all right to take her roommate. I said sure, and she brought along five roommates.

Every one of them was twenty-one years old, every one of them was beautiful, and I kissed every one of them.

One of the young ladies said, "Oh, Dr. Asimov, you behave just as Robyn said you would."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"Well, you kissed us all."

I said, "Don't the other daddies kiss you all, too?"

"No," they all chorused. "Robyn said you would be the only one."

His first wife reputedly looked just like Olivia de Havilland:



I couldn't find a picture of her, but it's probably true, because they produced a breathtaking daughter Robyn:



However, Asimov was deeply unhappy with his first wife. She criticized him frequently, and was reputedly frigid.

After twenty-odd years, he divorced her and remarried a sweet, tender woman named Janet:



Asimov writes, "Now, my dear wife, Janet, considers herself plain and, every once in a while, feels sad about that. To me, however, she is the most beautiful woman in the world, and my heart invariably leaps up when I see her unexpectedly, and she knows this."

I am very touched by this, considering his numerous discourses on his appreciation of cute girls. His love for Janet is clear through the small details, for he always refers to her as "my dear Janet", whereas his first wife is described as "Gertrude, who loved enumerating my faults" or "Gertrude, with whom I don't have many happy memories".

Offended

My Chinese American friends sometimes protest, "There are so few Chinese stars in US pop culture! Zhang Ziyi, Jackie Chan, and who else?"

I don't perceive this as a problem. Why should the US promote Chinese stars as avidly as Caucasian stars? There's no one crying foul that the top stars in China are Chinese, or that the top stars in India are Indian, so why shouldn't the same apply to US stars?

But, my turn to be deeply offended came three weeks ago, when I was reading my email.

In my inbox, the Gmail web clips showed a clip from the "Ask Yahoo" RSS feed. These questions can be quite catchy, such as "Do eyelashes grow back?" or "How often does a blue moon occur?" Unfortunately the answers are less interesting, often in the form of "We don't know either." The question on this day asked:

"Why are all babies born with blue eyes?"

I clicked through to the answer, expecting that it would start with, "Now, now, that's not the case for many of our friends: the Chinese, Indians, Africans, ..."

However, the answer instead describes melanin, cites an doctor, and leaves this travesty unaddressed.

Not to worry, I think, soon this will be noticed and addressed. Today I chanced upon it again. The answer has been posted for weeks now, in original form.

Ah, Yahoo. The same disregard that they show for users by giving them crappy UI (interstitial ads for sending email? extraordinarily slow file upload? giant animated ads everywhere?) shines through again.

not 000!

At dinner yesterday with coworkers, I mentioned that I'd seen a trailer of "Beauty and the Geek" in the gym. It's a show where pairs of beauties and geeks learn from each other in a race for a cash prize. The women learn computers and cars, and the men learn how to treat women.



I described a scene where the geeky guys were sent to buy clothing for the women. One geek came back with a dress that was way too big. His partner said, "I'm not a size 8! I'm a size 0!" and he was very indignant, "How can you be a size 0? 0 means it doesn't exist!"

Alipe: There's a size 0?

Me: Yes.

Alipe: [to Darrell] Did you know this?

Darrell: [shakes his head no]

Alipe: The show is saying this guy is a geek because he doesn't know about women's clothing? So ... cool guys buy women's clothing?

me and Darrell: [laughing]

me: Well, there didn't used to be a size 0, but sizes have inflated over the years. Stores discovered that they sold more clothes if their sizes ran big. If a woman wears size 4 at Banana Republic and size 6 everywhere else, she'll like Banana Republic more. This caused an arms race. Today's size 0 is actually still bigger than a lot of people. So now there's also 00.

Alipe: I wonder if sizes will go negative.

Darrell: Well, if there's already 00, then it'll probably just go to 000, etc.

Me: Can you imagine how easy it would be to offend women at that point? "I'm not a size 000, I'm a size 00000!"

Abort, retry, or fail?

From a Google News article:

"In South Dakota the state legislature voted to outlaw all abortions
except to save the life of the mother. The legislation, which did not
even include the usual exception for rape or incest, was clearly
intended as a frontal assault on the high court's 1973 decision,
Roe v. Wade, guaranteeing a woman's right to an abortion."

Growing up with the Chinese mentality, this stance against abortion is foreign to me.

The Chinese philosophy is pragmatic. In a country that enforces population control, abortion is a way of life. My mother had two abortions in between giving birth to me and my younger brother. The only regret I ever heard her express was, "做完第二个人流后，我屁股就大了。" which means "After the second abortion, my ass got a lot bigger." Other than the weight gain, she had no complaints.

My mother told me a story of her coworker in Beijing who got pregnant for a second time. This coworker wanted to keep the child, so she hid her pregnancy until the seventh month. Then the officials found out and forced her to go to the hospital for an abortion.

"She protested that it was too late in the pregnancy for an abortion," my mother described, "but they forced her into it. They took the fetus out, and she heard it let out a cry. Then the doctor took it away and killed it in a pan."

That's probably the kind of story that made South Dakota pass their law.

funny

During a recent discussion:

Alipe: Linux is a small percentage of the market.

Joby: But those are often the linux geeks, who know all about computers and will advise their friends on what the cool new apps are.

Alipe: Does anyone listen to the linux geeks?

Joby: Sure, just not to the religious ones.

[Pause.]

Alipe: Is there another kind?

---

At lunch last month:

Sasha: You know what would be cool? If I wore a low-res camera headpiece all the time that piped video to my computer, so that I could search it later.

Billy: How is that going to capture things like whiteboard diagrams that you really want to remember?

Sasha: I'll put a soft button on the side of the camera. If I press it, it'll take a high-res photograph.

Billy: Okay. What if you go to the bathroom and want to shut off the camera while you're in there?

Sasha: I'll put another button to pause recording in the bathroom. Though ... If the two buttons are close to each other, I might accidentally press the button that takes a high-res photo.

Me: [laughing]

Billy: How is your product going to differ from the much-maligned DARPA project LifeLog?

Sasha: [without skipping a beat] Mine won't be maligned.

nice thing that happened today

I won a Google Founder's Award.

yay!

Superbowl indignity

The Superbowl was very unjust. It was the first Superbowl I watched, and outrage filled me as I sat there watching bad call after bad call. First touchdown by Seahawks, rejected. Non-touchdown by Steeler, admitted as touchdown. 18-yard run to the 2-yard line by Seahawks, reverted. Foul-laden interception by Steelers which led to touchdown, permitted.

It was horrid seeing this most important game, what will permanently change the lives of many athletes, coaches, managers, wrecked by a number of false calls. It is so unjust!

I know this happens everywhere. The student who doesn't get admitted to college who has to work hard to make up for it. Five minutes later on the admissions committee, the committee decides to let some other student through, because they're feeling more guilty or there were more positive words in the next student's essay or the sun came out from behind the clouds.

I am the implementor of this too, as I perform resume screenings.

Best movie yet of 2006

Tonight Peter, Mingjing, and I saw Transamerica, the best movie we've seen yet in 2006. Better than Munich, Brokeback Mountain, and even Boycott the MLK movie.



It touched me for the same reason as Garden State, because its people are so flawed and yet so wonderful. Toby, the son, shoplifts alcohol and drinks it despite being underage. Bree lets it go. He starts smoking in her car. She lets it go. He hangs outside the car window, and she asks him not to. He stops. 1 out of 3!

The movie has prostitutes and porn actors and family members hitting each other, and yet -- and yet -- it's beautiful.

Previews.

We're watching previews before our DVD of Mean Girls, while eating take-out chicken salads. The movie is made by Paramount, so all the previews are also Paramount, complete with the Paramount mountain opening screen.

The first preview is Sponge Bob Square Pants going underwater to a burger joint.

Narrator: And now... bigger! louder! spongier!

Peter: Did you know it's the same guy who narrates most of these previews? Yeah, they just take him from studio to studio in a limousine, and they pay him twenty thousand dollars per. He does, like, four a day.

Me: Wow, so that's almost $100k per day.

Peter: He doesn't work every day.

Me: But even if he just worked 100 days per year, that's a million dollars. That's pretty good.

The next preview starts, which is an advertisement for Sweet Central '05, a photo album that you can put in your prom pictures and yearbook pictures. Peter suddenly stops chewing mid-bite, stops moving, almost seems to stop breathing as he stares toward the screen.

Me: What's going on? Do you really want one of these albums?

Peter: [silent]

Me: I can get one for you if you really want. But why?

Peter: It's not one million dollars, it's ten million dollars per year.

Me: Oh, yeah.

The next preview starts, and once again there's the Paramount splash screen:



Me: Wow, it's the same mountain that stars in almost all of these trailers! That mountain must make so much money!

first bounced check

I sent in an estimated tax payment on the 16th, and unexpectedy it already arrived and was cashed (in 3 days!). Unfortunately the money I transferred from Fidelity to my credit union is set to be credited tomorrow.

Thus I just experienced the first bounced check of my life. It feels dreadful, due to the unnecessary work that I have now incurred. I need to write another check and print out another IRS form and address another envelope. It's just too much! This in addition to all the bounced-check fees. Blargh it!

movie quotes

Watching King of Masks, a chinese movie about an old traveling streeet performer who adopts an 8-year-old child to carry on his legacy. At one point, the performer decides to abandon the child on the river bank, so he leaves her there and then pushes off in his boat.

The kid jumps into the river after the old man, and starts drowning.

"What are you doing?" shouts the old man, and then jumps in after her, leaving his boat to continue down the river.

"What about his boat?" I say. "He lives on the boat! He's just going to give it up?"

"It's not like a car," says Tom. "He can catch up to it once he rescues the kid."

"What if it runs into something?"

"Then it'll stop. Even easier for him to catch up to it."

---

Watching Man On Fire today, in which Denzel Washington takes his vengeance by killing a bunch of kidnappers, one by one. Denzel takes over an old man's house is taken over in order to fire a rocket launcher from the window.

Old Man: "In church they teach us to forgive."

Denzel: "Forgiveness is between them and God. It's my job to arrange the meeting."

Peter and I paused the movie so that I could cheer on Denzel's cleverness and Peter could flick his fingers in a gangster style.