Yao Ming

On Thursday I watched my first live basketball game, Yao Ming and the Rockets against the Oakland Warriors.

I was shocked to learn: Basketball is not fair.

When introducing the Rockets, the announcer read only the names of Yao Ming and one other player. To introduce the Warriors, uniformed men ran onto the floor waving ten-foot-tall team banners, and the announcer read a multi-sentence introduction for every player.



During play, whenever the Rockets took the offensive and got into position to shoot, the announcer played tense music to throw them off-balance. Pounding horror-film music. The theme from Jaws. Beethoven's Fifth.



When the Warriors prepared to shoot, the announcer played victory music laden with trumpets.

I leaned over to voice my shock at the Googlers next to me. One of them said, "In Texas, the audience members wave shiny strips of paper, to distract the visiting team while they're trying to shoot."

WTF! How can it be reasonable sportsmanship to invite another team to play in your home court, and then do these ridiculous distractions? How about if I challenge Sha-mayn and Dan to play scrabble with me at my townhouse, and then blast heavy metal during their turns?

One man in the section to my left shouted, "You suck!" every time Yao Ming went up for a penalty free throw. (Yao landed all the free throws anyway.)

The two teams went neck-and-neck through the game. In the fourth quarter, with less than half a minute to go, the Rockets led by two points.



Then the Warriors scored a three-point toss and a foul, pulling into the lead with only 1.2 seconds left in the game. The stadium went crazy: cheerleaders sprinting onto the court, audience hopping up and down, the mascot dancing a jig.



You could say the Rockets managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Who can blame them, with the crappy home-court-advantage syndrome!

chinese sexism

I get emails every few days in Mandarin from Chinese engineers, asking for career advice. Sometimes the things they say reveal such a culture of sexism...

在没看到你的介绍之前，我对女性从事计算机行业还是有看法的，看过你的经历之后。我的看法改变了许多。从此以后也不会歧视女性朋友从事计算机行业了。

Before reading your bio, I had prejudices against women in the field of computer science. After learning of your experiences, my views have changed a lot. From now on, I will no longer look down on female friends entering computer science.

Yay! One down, how many more to go!

看了你的介绍 你真的是个厉害的女人！了不起！ 原来女人也可以这么强！

Read your bio. You are truly a capable woman! Impressive! It turns out women can also be this strong too!

Not to turn this into a gender-war battle issue, but this reminds me of a Bobby Fischer quote. He usually played the Black pieces during chess. "The turning point in my career came with the realization that Black could play to win instead of just steering for equality."

唉
惭愧啊
堂堂一个大老爷们不如一个弱小女子
上帝真是不公平 :(

sigh
so ashamed
I'm a big tough man but can't compare to this frail little female
God is so unfair :(

Yes, God is so unfair to you big tough men.

"i dream of cake"

House party last week, with such beautiful food.


Caramel peanut bar.




Made by a shop named "I Dream of Cake".

These pictures made me feel guilty, for eating curlicued chocolate tarts while other people starve. What's the name of a good charity for fighting hunger? One that will actually feed people, as opposed to paying office workers and inefficient operating costs.

internet is bad judge of hotness

Today I checked the CW11 Hot Model competition and what the hell! The top three finishers do not include my friend Ming. Come on, gentle readers, did you forget to vote for her?

The winner is indeed beautiful:


but how can you say that the runners-up:



are hotter than Ming? That ain't right.

While I'm on the topic of beauty, I was reading thesuperficial.com this week. As usual, speculations abounded on whether Britney had a breast lift, or Nicole Richie got implants. Celebrity experts pore over before-after pics to analyze.

Don't paparazzi follow these celebrities 24-7??

I see photos of Paris Hilton hounded by five cameramen as she walks from the doctor's office to the parking lot. You'd think if Nicole Richie drove with her entourage to a plastic surgeon's office, and emerged two hours later groggy-faced with a big bandaid around her chest, the paparazzi would have noticed.

final photos from Egypt

I know most of you already forgot that I went to Egypt, because you have fish memories. But here are the final photos from my October trip.


Eggplant, covered by ground meat, with an egg on top. Best thing I ate in Egypt.


Egyptian pharaohs had great abs.


Chamber inside Abu Simbel. This reminded me of the Fire Temple in "Zelda: Ocarina of Time".


Doorway into Karnak.


The Nile at dusk.


The Aswan airport showcased this list of objects forbidden on the flight. Amongst the list, "Spiral Taking Away Instrument For Cork Plug".


Little bear at Edfu.


Ah, how peaceful the Nile looks. Of course, the water is so polluted by chemical waste that a drop on your tongue will grow a second head out of your spine. But so serene.


Pyramid panorama.


Brian ordered this dish. I thought it was food for birds, not humans. It's a combo of chick peas, pasta, rice. Mingjing and Julie tasted it and started ordering it every meal.


The Pharaoh (I believe Hapshetsut) ordered engineers to build the largest obelisk in history. The engineers calculated load-bearing properties of the stone. They determined the day the Nile would flood enough to transport the obelisk on a boat. This became their "ship date", as it were.

This was before invention of iron tools. The workers chipped the obelisk out of its rock bed, by raising melon-sized stones above their head and bringing it down against the side of the obelisk, breaking away a few flakes on impact.

After eight months of working in what rose to be 130 F weather, their obelisk cracked down the middle. You can see the crack on the far end of this photo.

I feel for you, Egpytian engineers from 4000 years ago.


Recreation of an Egyptian house occupied by pyramid laborers. That red pit in the bottom right sure looks like a latrine. Brian's archaeologist friend told us it was a storage container.


Tunnel hewn into the innards of the Great Pyramid. An explorer centuries ago wanted to find the King's Chamber, so he dynamited into the pyramid side and dug his way in. This is his legacy.

how can I explain

During dinner with my guy friend, over sushi.

Friend: [talking about a girl] She's really special.

Me: Just don't take her virginity and then dump her two days later.

Friend: Why not?

people are unpredictable

I was propped against the upstairs railing at Mezzanine on Saturday night, when Omar told me that Peter is moving to Korea. [Peter = my ex, for you new readers.]

Peter doesn't speak Korean. He's never talked about friends in Korea. His work project has nothing to do with Asia. But he decided to move there for four months, and work from the Google Korea office.

That was surprising.

Tonight I got an email from a certain girl, gushing about how she just got engaged. That's great, but ... WTF? Just two months ago she wanted me to date her, and within this brief time she met someone else and got engaged?

Next thing you know, my brother is going to announce that he's gay, and then Google will acquire Microsoft and we'll port our servers to run on Vista. Because apparently I can't predict worth crap about what will happen in the future.

the holiday party

I deplore my attempts at writing about the Holiday Party. Instead here are two collages:





and one of the after-party:

low expectations = easy to exceed

Philipp at Google Blogoscoped ran a comic strip speculating on my work project.

How did you know, Philipp? I call it Google Fly Simulator (GFS).

party time

My team slaved our asses off this week (16-hour workdays), and it's time to relax.

Friday is the Google Holiday Party. I'm taking my brother. There's a pre-party in the Mission, and an after-party at a nightclub. Also, E invited Sha-mayn and me to a bar where Googlers will meet up during official party hours, as an alternative. He promised to buy us rock lobsters. We got excited until he clarified that it's just a drink called the Rock Lobster.

Me: So we're going to pre-party, party, during-the-party party, and after-party?

Sha-mayn: I can only do the last three.

Me: Weak!

...

I don't have a dress to wear yet. I bought this one off Victoria's Secret online:


It arrived and fits great, but the texture is wrong. It's a cotton fabric, a regular-night-out dress. This year I want to go over-the-top for the Holiday Party, since I missed Halloween by going to Egypt.

I want my dress to be so princessy that people look at it and say, "Are you fucking kidding me?"

Like this:

New York's Hot Model

My friend Ming is one of ten semi-finalists for the CW11 "New York's Hot Model" contest:



Ming is awesome because she defies cattiness. She and I and a big group of women spent time together a couple years ago. Drama soon ensued. One woman started complaining that she was snubbed by another. Three women got annoyed at a fourth for taking candid camera shots (guess who that was?). Through it all, Ming emitted a force shield of being so down-to-earth that drama melted before it could reach her.

Her goal is to become a fashion designer, and she spends her evenings either designing jewelry or creating flash web sites to sell the jewelry on eBay.

Anyway, the contest voting is tabulated online, so you should go vote for her!


Radiant.


Me, Danielle, Ming in a SUV on our way to a dinner event.

thanksgiving family pics

Thanksgiving dinner, chinese style. Instead of a turkey, we ate two chickens. Probably only one of the chickens was stupid enough to get caught, but the other one had to 嫁鸡随鸡 (marry a chicken, follow a chicken).


With my mom at sushi, after instituting the workaround. I love the workaround. It made the second half of my trip home actually enjoyable.


At the French restaurant where I took my dad, they brought us a basket of vegetables. Not of bread, but of cauliflower and lettuce. Later they brought a handheld basket with hard-boiled eggs. I like kooky restaurants.

best thing I read this month

If you read nothing else this month, read this story about a guy and his tapeworm. You will never think about tapeworms the same way again ... or beef tartare ... or going to the bathroom.

Here's a little hook to MAKE SURE you scramble over to read it:

I visualized the tapeworm securely hooked at the bottom of my throat using the spiny little stabbing things they had, its mouth ajar, and every time I ate, it ate; I drank, it swallowed; when I got caught in the rain, it stayed dry.

...
About an hour later, I felt something move, squirm, within me. I sat very still, as though listening to echoes in a canyon. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. There it was again!

It only gets better from there.

If you love it -- and I know you will, gentle reader -- leave a comment below about your favorite part.

she makes marriage sound so appealing

[First part of this conversation pieced together from two overlapping conversations.]

Mom: "All married couples fight like this. Ask our chinese friends."

Me: "Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

Mom: "A lot of them have it much worse. Remember Ree who runs the clothing boutique in Beijing? Her husband had an affair with a woman twenty years younger. The mistress came to the shop to stir up trouble. Ree had to take her own money and pay off the mistress."

Me: "Why doesn't she divorce that jackass?"

Mom: "Naturally as Chinese people, they want to avoid divorce. Or at least my generation feels that way."

Me: "嫁鸡随鸡， 嫁狗随狗。 (Marry a chicken, follow a chicken. Marry a dog, follow a dog.)"

Mom: "Yeah."

Me: "What a crappy way to live."

... a couple hours later ...

Mom: So! When are you going to get a boyfriend? You should think about marriage soon!

LoTR == egypt

Walking around in Egypt, several times I felt as though I'd stumbled into a scene from "Lord of the Rings". Behold:

Two statues framing the river into Gondor, from "Fellowship of the Ring":



Two statues framing the entrance into Karnak Temple:



Eowyn's castle in Rohan, from "The Two Towers":



Queen Hatshepsut's mortuary temple, in Luxor:



Hall of pillars in the Mines of Moria, when goblins (and later the balrog) chased Gandalf:



Hall of pillars in Edfu, in southern Egypt:



If only Aragorn had appeared in Egypt, the picture would be complete. Imagine it:

Aragorn looking hot in the movie:


Aragorn cooling off in my hotel room:

can't take my parents any more

It is 1:25 in the morning. I am with my family in Vegas for Thanksgiving. My parents have been arguing on and off for the past twelve hours. Or really for the past twenty-eight years.

Three months ago, after the huge weekend meltdown, I told my parents to stop arguing in front of me. If they feel the urge coming on, they can alert me and I will sprint out the door. Then they can bicker as much as they'd like.

Today over lunch, my parents discussed paying respects to my grandparents' resting places. They disagreed over who said what. My mother turned to my dad and said, "If you insist on doing this, I will never forgive you!" I raced out the door.

I came back half an hour later, when my dad was preparing to take my brother to the airport. My mom was still shouting. I packed up my suitcase and plopped it down on the kitchen linoleum. "I'm going to the airport too," I said. "I'm changing my flight and flying back with Tom."

"No!" my dad said, and rushed over to block me with his arm. "You have to stay. Stay the rest of the weekend!"

Such a display of emotion from my dad made me freeze with discomfort. I retreated to the living room, where I talked with my mother for an hour. I told her how painful it is to watch them argue.

"I didn't realize this counts as arguing! I thought it was just loud talking!" she said.

She promised there would be no more arguing, now that she understood what I meant. We re-installed Windows XP on my parents' laptop. They analyzed who caused the system to get clogged with viruses. It was my mother for downloading chinese toolbars. No, it was my dad for clicking on pop-up ads. No, it was my mother for typing on it fourteen hours a day. No, it was my dad for traversing unsafe web pages.

Two hours later, my dad asked me to install the printer on their desktop computer. I went to use the internet and it was dog slow. The desktop is five years old. Why don't they get a new one, I ask? Great idea, says my dad. No, no, my mother insisted, the internet slowness is just a fluke. She just used it again and it's fast. Go try it now! My dad sighed. "She's at it again! You just watch, she's going to use all her tricks to prevent from spending money on a new computer!"

and on,

and on,

and on and on and on.

At midnight my dad said, "This time, you're not leaving. I am." He stalked out of the room, and I heard the creaking of the garage door as it opened.

"What can I do?" my mom said, tears leaking out of her eyes. She gathered a napkin and wadded it in her hand. "Your dad keeps all the money. I don't want us to spend this much money on a computer."

I picked up the nearest book, Design Patterns, and clobbered myself on the head with it four times. I thought it would hurt but it didn't. It imparted a numbness that spread from the crown of my head down to the base of my neck.

My mom told me that it grieves her that I never call home. The only thing that gives her joy now is her church. But my dad won't let her donate to the church, and she feels guilty. She wasn't trying to start an argument, and she doesn't see why I am so upset. Her whole heart is focused on being good to her children.

"Then why are you causing me so much pain?" I said, yanking the roots of my hair in each fist. The crown of my head started to ache from where I hit it with the book, and the numbness spread to my shoulders. I began to fear that I did permanent damage to my brain by issuing blows to it.

"Fine, then maybe I will leave. Maybe I will devote the rest of my life to the church."

"You go and do that," I said, hating myself for the cruelty, hating her for the manipulation.

I escaped to my bedroom. My mother followed, knocking until I let her in. Another hour of hashing out why she was just trying to explain her viewpoint, how my dad won't let her access the money, how I should change myself so that this won't hurt me any more, how everyone's parents fight and this is normal.

Finally she sulked out of my room. I sit on the bed, googling to see if a head injury might create delayed effects that show up months later.

I am sapped. Why does everything in this house have to be so much fucking drama?

horsepower

A couple weeks ago, Wei-chao and I made plans to eat at the Taiwanese restaurant Shinbala, known for its sausage.

He offered to give me a ride from Google, even though it's out of his way. The reason became clear when he pulled up in a brand-new convertible, which I learned is called the Lotus Elise.

"This is a pretty car!" I said, as we set off along Shoreline. "How many horsepower does it have?"

"Not that much, just a hundred-some," he said.

I couldn't help but laugh. "That's the same as my Honda Civic!"

Wei-chao just sat, smiling and driving, until I stopped laughing. Then he said, "The body frame weighs very little though, so it can do this." He floored the accelerator.

As the lane markers flew at and past me, my right hand clutched for the passenger door frame. We closed in on the car in front of us, fifty feet turning to twenty as I flinched my face to the right.

Wei-chao switched the car into the left lane without signaling, and our trajectory reminded me of an airplane on the runway. I expected at any moment the bump that comes from the wheels lifting off the ground.

After some minutes, we arrived at the restaurant.



Wei-chao, beaming, with noodles:



Me, in my favorite T-shirt (go ThinkGeek.com!), about to eat the restaurant's trademark "sausage with honey".

backlog of photos, part 1

I lost my camera USB cable in Aswan three weeks ago. Since my Fuji F30 uses a proprietary cable, my photos were trapped until I got a replacement.

Liberation arrived on Monday! Here are photos from the backlog, starting with dinner in downtown SF two weeks ago:



We bought a round of $10 cocktails as soon as we sat down, but the waitress kept pushing more alcohol. "Bottle of champagne for the table?" "I recommend the martini." "Port to go with your dessert?"

I endured in silence, wishing she would stop. Mike's reaction was different. He invited her to come out to party with us after dinner.

She said no.

...

House-made ice cream:



The bill came in a lacquer box which also contained flowers. Christina spurred us to wear them for some reason.

Mike:



Me and Rob:



House party afterwards. An Asian man standing in the kitchen looked over at me a few times, and then crossed the room to start up a conversation.

He talked for a while about being a banker, and dealing with mergers and acquisitions. Then he asked where I live and what I do for a living. We got on the subject of the projects I've worked on at Google.

"What's Desktop Search?" he said.

I told him.

"Does anyone use that?"

"Millions of people."

"Really?" he said. "It doesn't sound very useful."

"Don't use it then."

"I think Google should just cancel it."

"Great, why don't you call up Google and say that," I said flatly.

"Fine, I think I will."

"Fine," I said. Then I added, "I'm so glad you walked across the room in order to tell me this."

We stared off in different directions for a moment, and then I went to go find Christina.

(He's the Asian man in the white sweater to the very left of this photo.)



Christina and I met a girl who is the Asian Brittany Murphy.



For comparison, here is Brittany Murphy. See what I mean?



The host of the party had a shelf of cookbooks. Look at these titles! Are they books for food or for sex?