never say never about eyebrows

I had worked with Nikhil for six months when I asked him if I could pluck between his eyebrows. This was in 2004. He was the PM on Desktop Search, and by the time an intense half-year passed, we developed a jovial friendship.

Let no one say that I went into the question unprepared. The night before, I put a pair of tweezers into my purse so that if he said yes, I could do it right there on the spot.

"Never!" he said. "I wouldn't even let Becca do it." [Becca is his longtime girlfriend.]

Over the past two years, I asked him on and off about the eyebrows. Sometimes we pass each other outside building 43, and we say hello. Then I ask, "Can I pluck your eyebrows?" He says with a smile, "Never!", and we keep going our merry ways.

Last Saturday, Nikhil held a party in the SoMa district of San Fran. He and Becca brought their dog, clothed in a cotton "I Heart Dad" doggie shirt. I'm not a big fan of dogs, but their dog is unobtrusive. It makes a low growling noise instead of barking, and its fur is tidy.

Around 1 am, as Nikhil sprawled on the living room couch, I asked the time-old question.

Venus must have been rising from the proper house of Jupiter, because he said yes. Becca supplied tweezers from her makeup bag. Although it was hard to contain my joy from fulfilling the two-year wish, my hand stayed steady as I pulled out his T-zone hairs, first three and four hairs at a time and then precise trimming along the edges.

The other partygoers laughed and took pictures, which excited Nikhil's little dog so much that he ran over to sniff out the action.



After my handiwork on Nikhil's eyebrows:


The original eyebrows, from 2004:

America, these are your celebrities

I don't know what's worse, OJ Simpson's new book:

Simpson describes how he would have committed the 1994 slayings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman, "if he were the one responsible."

An image of the cover featured Simpson's face and the title "If I Did It," with "If" highlighted in white and the other letters in red.

or the note Kevin Federline scrawled on his dressing room door. Just two weeks ago, he told a studio talk-show audience about his devotion to Britney, to which all the young women in the audience emitted a collective "Awwww". And now he's written this:

Today I'm a free man
Ladies look out
Fuck a wife
Give me my kids, Bitch!

we ended up getting a Cranium set

Me: [on phone to my brother] Tom, I need your help. I need one of your skills. You're the best in the world at this.

Tom: [instantly] Eating.

Me: I can do that myself. I'm even better at that than you are.

Tom: That's true. Is it my ability to stay non-stressed?

Me: No.

Tom: Hm... [suddenly, very excitedly] You need me to play an MMORPG for you?

Me: [laughing] No! I'm going to a birthday party for someone on my team tonight, and --

Tom: Ah, you want me to help you pick out a present.

Me: That's right. I've been walking around stores in downtown Mountain View, and all they sell is candles and chandeliers.

Tom: It's not a present for you, Niniane.

...

Me: I've been asking him to work a lot in the past few days to meet a deadline, and I figure if I meet his wife and kids, then they won't hate me.

Tom: Or it could let them put a face to the enemy.

Fit or Fat

A decade ago, during a summer internship at Microsoft, I went to the intern picnic at Bill Gates's house. During a moment in his living room, I scanned his bookshelf. The right side of the bottom shelf was devoted to health and exercise. One title which caught my eye was called "Fit or Fat".

I found this title amusing, as I pictured a proper Jeeves-like man coming up and asking, "What would you like, sir? Fit or fat?" and then the reader carefully deliberating the pros and cons.

...

I gained ten pounds over the past two months. This is very foolish to write on the blog, because men who might want to date me will read it and decide to go ask out a skinnier woman instead. But the truth shall set you free!

I don't know the cause. I've tried to understand my body before -- why I sometimes need 10 hours of sleep and other times 5, why I fluctuate so much in weight. The analysis culminated in a three-month experiment this summer when I tracked a dozen variables daily in an Excel spreadsheet (Google spreadsheets hadn't launched yet). At the end, I excitedly graphed all the variables against each other, and ... nothing. It looked like a scatterplot.

The timing of my weight gain coincides with me starting to work out with my personal trainer Megan, though I'm sure it's not related. I must be Megan's worst example. She's often telling me about her other clients: the one who lost four dress sizes and bought her a facial as a present, the one who recently lost twelve pounds, the one who was able to go off diabetic medication.

On Tuesday, I was warming up on the treadmill, jogging with Megan standing by my side.

Me: "By the way, I weighed myself for the first time in a month. I'm now fat."

Megan: "Stop being ridiculous."

Me: "The scale doesn't lie, Megan."

Megan: "We don't know that it's fat. It could be muscle."

Me: "I did NOT gain that much muscle. Anyway, I've been following all the stuff you told me. I started eating breakfast. I run on the weekends, and I'm getting enough sleep at night. And what do I have to show for it? Fat."

Megan: "Give it another month."

Me: "Fine. One more month, because it's nice having more energy during the day."

Megan: "Good, we can see where you are then."

Me: "I'm telling you though, in a month, if I'm even fatter, I'm going back to my old habits. Because apparently, eating ice cream and never exercising works better for me."

inside the pyramid, and other photos

Inside the Great Pyramid. This is the Grand Gallery, an inner chamber almost as tall as the pyramid.

I like vaulted ceilings.


The wall behind me has the Book of the Dead carved in hieroglyphics.


Ana is the director for a Giza archaeological site, and friends with Brian (our trip host and my dear friend). She explained the history of the sphinx to us, and showed us how archaeologists dig through layers of soil to analyze the history.


Ana explaining to Cheryl and Dan. Ana is unbelievably beautiful. She digs through sand under the hot sun for hours, wears no makeup, and still looks breathtaking. The rest of us try to look good with our eyeliner and mascara and lip gloss. Ana is the real deal.


Julie descending into the Red Pyramid, while the guard raises an eyebrow at the camera.


Brent and Julie at Philae. They live together in Seattle, and have been dating for three years. (Too bad for the anonymous commenter who thinks Brent is cute. Hopefully that wasn't just Alipé trolling again.)

Me: "How did you two meet?"

Brent: "Through Dave. [Dave worked with Brent and me on Flight Simulator.] I thought Julie and Dave were dating."

Julie: "Brent, stop telling people that!"

Brent: "Dave took her to the Microsoft Holiday Party in '03. I was like, 'Dave has a date like that, and I'm here with Steve?'" [Steve is a software tester on Flight Simulator.]

Me: "Steve is a really nice guy."

Brent: [raising one eyebrow] "Anyway, Dave asked me the following Monday, 'Hey, do you want that girl Julie's phone number?' I said, 'Weren't you on a date with her? What's wrong with her?'"

Me: [shocked laughter while glancing at Julie]

Brent: "Then I called her, and I found out what was wrong with her."

wherein I learn about my twisted back

Today I worked for 12 hours and then ended the day with a massage.

By comparison, the Egyptian masseur from two weeks ago was crap. His massage technique was the same as how I would do it, only more forceful. My Google masseur tonight had fancy professional methods, pressing out the stress in a way that said "non-amateur".

When he got to my right shoulder, it became much more painful. "This must be your mouse hand," he said. "Years of stretching forward to use the mouse has caused this muscle to deform. Your rib is sticking out in the back, and your shoulder is contorted forward." He pressed his thumb just below my collarbone, and I yelped. "Feel this knot here?"

"Are you sure you're not just picking a spot and poking me in it?" I asked hopefully, between gasps of breath.

He laughed and continued kneading my shoulder with his knuckle. "You should learn to use the mouse with your left hand, so that you can switch between the two."

"Won't that make me deformed on both sides instead of just one?" I said.

"No, the damage is exponential based on use."

Alas, gentle readers and mouse-users, you probably have the deformity too.

photos from egypt week 1

Driving on the street in Cairo, you can see the pyramids in the distance. The rich Cairo citizens want to buy flats with a "pyramid view".


Brian (my friend and ex-coworker from Microsoft) is friends with an archaeological team. Here he is with one of the archaeologists, when we went to their dig site.


The team carefully sifts through every basket of sand they excavate.

They disagree with the common theory that the pyramid workers were slaves. They found a number of cow bones, suggesting the workers were fed beef.


The archaeologist tent looks just like in the movies.


In the tent.


Lobby of the fanciest hotel in Cairo. We didn't stay here; just came in to withdraw money from the ATM (which turned out to be broken).


Felucca (small sailboat) ride on the Nile.


The rest of our group arrived in Cairo.


The inside of a 800-year-old mosque.


Brent and Julie posing in front of a sarcophagus.


Another mosque.


Dan looking out of a carved window, at the Cairo street below.


Mingjing at lunch in the Hilton.


Me with strawberry juice, mango juice, and Turkish coffee.


Then I improved on this by getting a single fruit drink with all the juices layered together.


An early step pyramid. They didn't figure out how to build the gigantic smooth pyramids all at once. They took it ... one step at a time. Pun intended.


Obelisk.

This reminds me of the last day in Cairo, driving during dusk. We passed a cylindrical tower, and several people commented on how phallic the building was.

"I've seen more phallic things," I said.

"But mostly on people, right?" Dan said.


Hypostyle grid of columns. It was similar to the Lord of the Rings underground hall where Gandalf runs away from the balrog.


Luxor temple at night.


Andrew looking very much like my imagination of a Caucasian traveler to Egypt from 1850.


Avenue of the Sphinxes. The Luxor mayor decided to increase tourism, so he dug up a field where he suspected sphinxes were buried. In so doing, he overturned the soil. By the time archaeologists rushed to the scene, the soil layering was lost. It is impossible to tell the time period for pottery shards and tool fragments found in the jumble, or to re-create the context of which piece laid next to which other piece.

To top it off, they didn't even find sphinxes in the field.

U.S. out of my uterus

I'm finally getting around to posting pictures from Becca's "No to Prop 85" party last month. Prop 85 is a California proposition requiring parental permission for teen abortions.

Asians against Proposition 85!



Becca held the event at Mr. Smith's, a bar in the Tenderloin district of SF. Door cover was $10, and she raised several thousand dollars over the course of the night, for doing radio ads reminding people to vote:



Girl dancing on the bar:



The lovely hosts:



In real life, this girl was one of the skinniest women I've ever seen, but somehow in this picture she looks pregnant:



Please, God, don't take away abortions from teens...



...

The vote was held on Tuesday. I duly submitted my vote against Prop 85, and ... we won!

Prop 85 Defeated

Nov 8, 2006

The Campaign for Real Teen Safety is delighted that California voters rejected Prop 85 and protected the health and safety of our teenagers. California has always been a pro-choice state and the voters saw through this deceptive initiative and said NO to placing our teens in danger. This vote guarantees that all teens, even those from abusive homes, will be able to access qualified doctors, nurses and counselors when they need them.

signs of getting old

Before

Acquaintance: How old are you?

Me: 23.

Acquaintance: Really? You're so young!

Now

Acquaintance: How old are you?

Me: 27.

Acquaintance: Really? But you look so young!

packing heat in Egypt

In Cairo, our travel company assigned a bodyguard named Mohamed to follow us around all day.



"Is our bodyguard packing heat?" I asked the group, because the question sounds cool and is one that I've never had the opportunity to say, until now.

"Don't you see the two automatic shotguns in his belt?" Brent said. I looked at Mohamed, walking in front of me. A round grey tube peeked out from between the slats of his suit as he walked. I couldn't tell whether it was the gun barrel or a holster ornament, but nonetheless I quickened my pace to walk next to him instead of behind him.

Mohamed joked around with us in broken English all day. He called Julie "Japan" and Mingjing "China". This was during the fasting month of Ramadan. Halfway through the morning, Mohamed looked at Brent's 6'2" stature, patted Brent on the belly and gave him the moniker "No-Ramadan".

At every monument site, there were also tourism police standing guard with machine guns. They walked up to us and insisted on taking photos with us. I found it hard to say no to a man holding a machine gun.



Afterwards they would ask us for baksheesh (tips).

I wonder if the government meant it to be reassuring, the bodyguard and the police and the rifles everywhere. Because I found it far more nerve-wracking. I knew about the terrorism incidents in the past decade. Brian was actually in the Valley of the Queens during the 1997 shoot-out and saw the policemen firing at the terrorists. But it still seemed more likely that one of these tourism policemen would shoot me -- out of accident or anger -- than for a terrorist to appear on the scene.

Perhaps it's because I live in the sanitized world of the US where postal worker rage is far more frequent than terrorism.

Gentle Readers from other parts of the world, would you feel more or less reassured with the armed guards around?

chicken innard projectile

Brian took me to the Friday Market in Cairo. In the market, you can buy fish:


and birds:


and view impressive feats of balancing:


A cluster of four women in dark Muslin garb were cutting up a chicken. You can see the chicken on the table in this photo:


The woman furthest away saw my camera and spoke in Arabic to the others. They turned to look. Five seconds later, one of them hurled a piece of chicken innard at me, missing me by only a couple of inches.

JTR asked me which chicken part they threw. I didn't look! Something told me it wouldn't be a good idea to chase down the chicken part, and then lean way over to take a photo of it, with my back to the women and their chicken carcass.

the Egyptian masseuse

Our group stayed in a lovely four-star hotel in Cairo:





On the first day, while I was lying by the pool, a good-looking Egyptian young man came up to advertise the hotel's massages. It was only $30 US for a 50-minute massage, so I signed up.

We chatted while he was giving me the massage, and he told me a moving story about his love life. He just broke up with his girlfriend of two years, he said, who he loved very much. One year into their relationship, he approached her father to ask for her hand in marriage. The father replied that his daughter would need a new flat after her wedding, plus new furniture, an automobile.

The masseuse said that he has a small flat, and he could buy new furniture. But it wasn't good enough for the father, who rejected him.

The masseuse dated his girlfriend in secret after that. He claims they did "everything", even though Muslim religion forbids premarital sex. Last month, another man asked his girlfriend's father for permission to marry her. This man is ten years older, and already has the flat, money, car. The father said yes.

"Refuse the other man," said the masseuse to his girlfriend, "and wait for me." But she said she could not persist against her father, and the two of them haven't talked since.

"Are you worried that she's already gotten married to him during this past month?" I said.

He stopped massaging me for a few seconds, and I imagined him thinking, "Well, now I am!"

Later in the hour, he told me that my body is similar to his girlfriend's body, and that giving me a massage reminds him of her and was making him very emotional.

I told this story to cynical ol' Dan, who claimed there is only 10% chance of it being true. The other 90% probability is that it's completely fabricated in an attempt to seduce tourist women. (In case you were wondering, I did NOT do anything with the masseuse. Because that would be sketchy. And I already used up my sketchiness quota for the summer.)

Dan suggested we send in Julie or Mingjing for a massage, to see if he tells every woman that their body is like his ex's body. But we didn't get around to it.

I prefer the version where he's a young man in love, structuring his whole life so that he can marry his girlfriend. It's romantic, especially considering the US stereotypes of commitphobes trying desperately to evade marriage.

---

UPDATE: All the comments so far point toward the masseur being a liar. You are probably right.

It is unnerving, because he revealed many details about his girlfriend. He spoke with pride about how he saw her every day, and he emanated embarrassment when he revealed that her family is more wealthy than his.

But at one point during the massage, I asked him how often he uses the computer (always doing market research!). He said 5 hours per day. I asked what he does online, and he said video chat with friends from England, Florida, Europe. I asked whether these "friends" are female tourists he massaged during their Egypt vacations, and he said yes. So ... that's pretty damning.

Amsterdam, city of sex and bejeweled trash cans

Amsterdam is expensive! Walking down the street, I noticed these cute mosaic trash cans.



Price tag? 10,000 euros (roughly $12,700 US).

I suppose rich people can use them to throw away their extra diamonds that no longer fit into their gold vault.

Amsterdam is also a city of juxtapositions. The city center houses a beautiful 350-year-old church. Right under it is a loud roller coaster, flashing neon lights:



I walked into the church, and faced an even more extreme example. The church was holding an exhibit of "fashion throughout the ages". Display cases of lingerie, garters, panties sat right under the stained glass windows of the Virgin Mary.

In the center aisle of the church, a plasma TV played a video of a woman watching a modelicious man take a shower:



What you see on the left side of the plasma screen, next to the woman's hand, are the man's lower abs extending down to his pelvis. Right after I shot this picture, full-exposure events unfolded onscreen which aren't usually shown in US movie theatres, let alone churches.

The Amsterdam Historical Museum had a booth playing Netherlands rap. The description explained that the rap song was about "discrimination and the nightlife in Amsterdam".



The tune was very catchy, and I became curious about its political message. The young artist was so clever to embed his viewpoint on discrimination into a rap song! I played the song again, in English. After a long instrumental section, the refrain of the rap rang out:

It's TI-I-IME to PARTY!

Some things stay the same all the world over.