online shopping experiment

I arrived home tonight to find a large cardboard box -- my Victoria's Secret clothes!

It was like Christmas morning, pulling out clothes and trying them out.

These two dresses were awesome, particularly the first:





but the red dress, the one I'd been looking forward to most eagerly, was a big disappointment. It's not the beckoning, bold color in the picture,



but rather a plasticky looking color more like this (try to ignore the fact that the model is hot and just focus on the color):



Incidentally, the image search results for "red dress" are awesome!







I will totally wear this maternity dress when I have my bump:

young, old, fast, slow

I ran into Andrew in the dinner line. He had just come from playing pick-up ultimate.

Me: Oh, you were probably the best one there, right? You've been playing ultimate for, what, 15 years?

Andrew: Yeah, but I'm old now.

Me: So?

Andrew: I'm old and slow.

Me: So you used to be faster?

Andrew: When I was younger.

Me: But you were less experienced. So you'd end up running REALLY FAST in the wrong direction.

we probably made a funny sight

Today DW and I arranged to go for a jog around the lake next to work. My big fear with jogging outside (other than passing out, which is a fear independent of whether I'm outdoors) is being too cold. Having cold skin and warm muscles makes me itch terribly, particularly in the thighs.

Maybe it's to do with fat distribution, because why else in the thighs??

To combat the cold problem, I changed into 2 layers of long pants (one spandex, one cotton) and three shirts (1 tank top, 1 long-sleeved cotton, 1 long-sleeved flannel). Thus bundled, I proceeded to jog around the lake ... alongside DW who wore shorts and a T-shirt.

House makeover

In 3 weeks, my upstairs bathroom sink:



will be replaced by an undermount stainless steel sink on this granite slab:



sporting this charming faucet:



My white ceramic tile shower downstairs:



will be transformed into a lovely green marble or tile, with this showerhead set:



Interior decorating is addictive. You get to shop for cherry cabinets and granite counters and wall paints, and then tell yourself that it's also a financial investment to increase your home value. That's awesome. It's like eating a chocolate-y dessert but yet having it make you skinnier.

In other words, having your cake and eating it too.

they do need contact paper though

Party at Nellie's tonight. Mingjing and I went. Here we are, respectively with other party-goers:





At one point, I was talking to a few Googlers, and mentioning how my mom is in town to help me remodel.

Josh: How long will you keep your condo?

Me: 6, 7 years.

Josh: Why, what happens after that?

Me: I pop out a couple babies and need a bigger place.

Sanjay: That's an image I didn't need.

Avni: They don't need their own bedroom when they're young.

Me: What, I should just put them in a drawer?

Avni: Uh... I meant they can share a bedroom.

Me: No, the drawer is a good idea. Then I just need a chest of drawers. And hey, I can unscrew the knobs on the drawer handle and use the two holes for breastfeeding.

Sanjay: There we go with another image I didn't need.

More panties.

My friend John suggested a few more HTTP responses that deserve to become panty status:

> 405 Method Not Allowed
> 412 Precondition Failed
> 417 Expectation Failed

Once your mind goes in that direction, every HTTP response code sounds dirty.

> 100 Continue
> 300 Multiple Choices
> 307 Temporary Redirect
...

By the time you're through with those, even "504 Gateway Time-out" sounds kinky.

Think about THAT next time you're debugging HTTP codes.

HTTPanties

Today Darryl came into work wearing this shirt:



"Great shirt," I said, and he then introduced me to ThinkGeek clothes, where I found this delightful item:



HTTPanties! How delightful.

I don't get the 413 panties though. The other panties make it clear that the wearer of the panties is the one returning the code (as opposed to receiving the code). So the panties are saying that the wearer's ass is too big for the other person to handle? Or that the wearer's vagina is? Who would wear panties to declare that???

There are 2 other HTTP response codes that I think deserve to be made into panties:

402 Payment Required
305 Use Proxy

Tom Cruise is going to eat his baby's placenta

Oh dear God. From this CNN article:

In another strange revelation, Tom Cruise said he was planning to eat his baby's placenta. He told GQ Magazine: "I thought that would be good. Very nutritious. I'm gonna eat the cord and the placenta right there."

Okay, this is probably a joke. But because it's Tom Cruise, it COULD BE TRUE. No wonder he and Nicole Kidman had to separate -- I can't imagine her standing by this Scientologist, home-ultrasound-performing, silent-birthing, potential placenta eater.

I don't know what's more embarrassing, Katie's husband or Britney Spears' husband. Come on, girls! You can do better!

"Sex in video games" Conference.

The Sex in Video Games conference is happening in 2 months at the San Francisco Kensington hotel. Part of me wants badly to go, but it's on a Thursday and Friday and I'm not willing to skip work for it.

My chinese frugality balked at the $295 price tag, and my first impulse was to offer to give a lecture in exchange for a free pass. Then I realized it might not reflect the best on my company. sigh... sometimes one must give up their dreams for the greater good.

I must say I'm disappointed by the titles of these talks. "Integrating the Adult & Game Markets". "Creating Successful Games with Erotic Content". "The Future of Technology & Sex". How is it possible to take such exciting material and make it sound so boring?

Here are my suggestions:

"Integrating the Adult & Game Markets" --> "Make your X-box an XXX-box"

"Creating Successful Games with Erotic Content" --> "Hot Coffee, Hot Games"

"The Future of Technology & Sex" --> "Frontiers in Fucking"

Many alarming things rolled into one

Last week, in hiring committee, we're reading a packet in which a female interviewer Mary described a series of actions by the candidate, which left her feeling subtlely but definitely slighted. (This is vague on purpose, to prevent any sexist bastard readers from gaming the system during interviews!)

Me: [reading the description] This is pretty bad. If this is true, I don't think we should hire.

Recruiter #1: Well, I spoke to Eleanor (senior recruiter) and apparently this happens every time we set up an interview with a female interviewer in this particular format.

Brandon: Yeah, we probably already hired a bunch of people who would've shown this kind of sexism, except we didn't put them through this setup.

Me: That's ... probably true. [becoming depressed]

Recruiter #1: Yeah, Eleanor said not to set them up in this way in the future, because it always happens.

Me: That's not true. I did one exactly like this on Monday, and the candidate was perfectly respectful and didn't do any of [waving the packet] these things.

Martin and Brandon: [simultaneously] That's because it was YOU, Niniane.

Me: Are you saying that I look like a man?

Martin and Brandon: [still in unison] NO.

Recruiter #1: Okay, so it might just be that Mary (the interviewer) made the candidate nervous. That could explain his actions too.

Recruiter #2: Yeah. [turning to me] Niniane, a bunch of candidates told me you made them nervous.

Me: What?? I make such a big effort to be friendly!

Recruiter #2: Sure, but they walk in there, not expecting to have a senior engineer interview them who's ... pretty. They're expecting ... one of these guys [gestures toward Martin and Brandon, who are surprisingly unoffended].

Me: Okay, so to test out this theory, we should have an attractive female engineer re-interview this candidate. I suggest Wendy S.

Everyone else: [complete silence] ... [crickets chirping, tumbleweed, etc] ...

Recruiter #1: Uh ... anything I say in reply to that might end up in a lawsuit.

...

There are a bunch of things screwed up about this. The part that bothered me the most was the idea that perhaps in comparison, I actually have it easy. Perhaps other women deal with a lot more sexist crap. I know this is true for China and other countries and other companies, but maybe it's true even within Google's primary-colored walls.

sigh.

I'm already annoyed at the subtle (and not so subtle) sexist jabs that I have to deal with. So if other women have it worse, I'm amazed we have ANY women in computer science.

I guess if women can push watermelons through straws, then they can deal with anything.

Blog of schoolteacher in Japan.

I'm reading this blog of a black man teaching English in Japan to high school students. It's very funny, and sometimes contemplative.

Hee hee hee:

In this class, I was supposed to talk about what I did on Sunday. ...But I didn't really do anything on Sunday. So I decided to spice it up a little with an opening joke. I said that I went to Tokyo and fought with Godzilla. He was a very tough opponent! But then I kanchoed him, and I was the winner! I looked down to see 30 serious Japanese faces, concentrating hard on what I was saying. I finally had to break the tension by announcing it was a joke. Some of them laughed. Some of them had to erase the notes they'd taken on me fighting Godzilla. In their minds I'm not that much smaller than Godzilla, so this was entirely possible.

and:

I was at the gym with a female Japanese friend. We were watching the news on TV when suddenly she turns to me and asks "So, you're American, right? How many guns do you have?"

Notice the word usage here. Not "if" I have guns, no! "How many" guns do I have. Because surely, as a red-blooded American, I own guns. Yee-haw, when I'm not drinkin' my root beer and eating myself damn to death, I sure love me to shoot some stuff! *thumbs up*

Clearly, I needed to set her straight. I pointed my first finger at her in the classic "Now let me tell you something..." pose, but before words could escape my mouth, she innocently said "Oh, only one gun?"

And this one.

Parties, like cotton candy

Orkut tax season bash:



Chatting in kitchen:



Misha cowgirl party with mechnical bull:



Jon Perlow's hat, a work of art in itself:

Dinosaur helpline.

Dan forwarded me this comic.

I can't imagine why.

lying broken on the floor

Friday bottomed out at 12:35pm.

I had decided to attend the lunchtime group exercise class "Body Sculpt and Abs". I've been ill and not in peak exercise condition, but that's not going to get in the way when there are abs involved.

Anyone who reads this blog will realize that I went with fantasies of fellow exercisers showcasing perfectly sculpted abs framed by spandex. Sha-mayn later laughingly corrected me, "Those people don't go to abs classes! Group classes are for motivation!"

The instructor led us in exercises, starting with biceps, then back, legs, shoulders. "This is easy," I thought at first. 15 minutes later, not so easy. Another 15 minutes later, quite hard.

"I'll get a bottle of water," I said to myself.

By the time I walked across the gym to the water supply, I realized I needed to sit down, or would be forced to by my body going on strike. I dropped into one of the red velvety chairs, and rested my head against its cushioned back. I sat, my chest growing tighter and the desire to keep my head lower steadily increasing.

2 minutes later, my primary goal in life was to make my head vertically level with my heart. As it's not acceptable to suddenly lie down in the middle of the gym, I began the trek to the locker room. It was only 30 steps away, but made difficult by the bright white light coating my vision.

I finally navigated my way in, and was greeted by a woman inside. I said nothing in return, and still don't know who it was, since facial recognition abilities were long gone at that stage.

I stumbled past the changing area and into one of the shower stalls. As soon as I snapped the door closed, I collapsed onto the floor, lying face up on the chilly tile. Then followed wretching, 3 spasms over half a minute where I could feel bile rising up my throat. "Good thing I picked the shower," I thought. "Easy to clean."

It brought me back to elementary school, when I didn't know how to pace myself while exercising (a skill I only learned at age 20). All those sunny P.E. hours when I would be following instructions, running around the track or around the bases or around the field, when my throat would start to burn and an unbalanced pressure would tighten in my chest.

Staring at the grey shower wall at 12:35pm, I remember my childhood self and how fervently I hated exercise back then. There's a unique feeling of simultaneous strength and loneliness which comes from lying on the ground and fighting a battle within your own skin. Who knew I would go from that to one day running 10k races for enjoyment?



Just like all the previous times, suddenly I crested the tide, and the pressure began to recede. I managed not to vomit. My head cleared, and I went back to the exercise class to finish out calf exercises and the promised ab crunches.

Perhaps the class sculpts your abs not through strength training but by inducing vomiting and inability to keep down food. That should be their tagline:

"Want better abs? Find bulimia too difficult? Come to 'Body Sculpt and Abs' every Friday at noon!"

new vocabulary word

Today Joby set his IM status message to indicate that he got little sleep last night, followed by "gg D:"

Me: [over IM] What is "gg D:"?

Joby: [replying over IM] D: is a very upset face, like this.

I swivel around in my seat to catch a glimpse of him rising out of his chair and making a wide-mouthed horrific expression, which, had I captured on film and put here, would surely cause a submission of the Blog Removal Request Form.

Me: [laughing] What is the "gg" for then?

Joby: good game.

Me: [confused] What? How does it apply here?

Joby then sent me the link to urbandictionary.com.

The first definition was the one that I'm familiar with:

A polite remark uttered after the end of a round, game, or other measured interval to indicate that a match was fair and enjoyable.

At round end:
Volmarias: gg
Rill-a-roni: gg
Dagashi: gg

The third definition, which is the one used by Joby, made me almost fall out of my seat in mirth:

Exclamation: A way of resignedly expressing one's own defeat or disgust with a situation. Often followed by the object in question.

*toy breaks*
person: gg plastic

person was killed by headshot from awp
person: gg overpowered awp

Cats: You have no chance to survive, make your time.
Captain: gg

Hiring committee banter.

This morning, in hiring committee.

Martin: [looking at candidate packet] Whoa, why is this candidate's lunch interviewer so enthusiastic to write this big recommendation?

Me: Yeah, what could he have said over lunch to impress his interviewer so much?

Martin: Perhaps he chose his food extremely wisely. [imitates interviewer writing feedback] "Made nutritious and filling choices."

Me: Or perhaps he took all the food on his plate and mixed it together before eating it, to increase efficiency. [mime using fork to stir everything into a big blob] "Efficient food digestion. O(N) in stomach operation."

Martin: "But not very object-oriented."

Removal Form.

Today Peter asked me to remove some of the posts featuring him. "You compared me to a monster in a movie!"

Later Dan asked that his picture be changed. "My eyes are rolled back so much that you can hardly see my pupils! I look like a monster!"

sigh.

To make future requests easier, please use the following form:

Niniane Blog Removal Request Form

Select the action you are requesting:

Remove post.
URL of post:


Change my pseudonym.
Current pseudonym:
New pseudonym:


Remove this "Blog Removal Request Form".


Reason for Your Request:
It makes me out as a monster.
It has me making out with a monster.

(Criticisms of my HTML form writing abilities are not welcome.)

Food philosophy w/ coworkers.

Joby: Did you hear they're installing a frozen yogurt machine?

Me: We already have Ben & Jerry's ice cream in the kitchens.

Joby: But frozen yogurt is better for you.

Me: Well ... [explain eating philosophy] ... So if you eat what you really want, you'll be satisfied sooner and you'll end up eating less overall.

Joby: No, I would eat the same amount of ice cream or frozen yogurt. So I'd be either eating three thousand grams of fat, or three thousand grams of sugar.

Rebalanced.

My pH has recovered itself since the weekend roller coaster. This was actually 95% thanks to Dan. Here's a random picture of Dan from the ol' internet, which is a very representative pic since he's rolling his eyes:



It wasn't any particular insight from Dan, but rather the simple joy of swapping funny (mostly Google) stories for 4 hours, something that Peter and I had difficulty doing. We gossiped about how Eric, Larry, and Sergey handle disagreements between themselves (gracefully), recent product launches, our friends J & J who just quit their startups.

Dan mentioned his high school girlfriend Jenny, which reminded me of my All-Time Favorite Dan Story. ...

The story goes that Jenny really liked a mom-and-pop donut shop in the mall. One day, she was out of cash but nonetheless went in and asked if she could have a donut, for free.

The answer was of course no.

"It's almost closing time," she said. "What are you going to do with these leftover donuts?"

"Throw them away."

"Well, why not just give them to me instead?"

"We can't do that. Then everyone would ask us for them."

"What if I take them out of the dumpster after you throw them away?"

"Well, we can't control what happens after we throw them in the dumpster."

"So what if I stand in the dumpster and catch the donuts as you throw them in?"

At this point, the cashier rolls his eyes and says, "Well, I guess that would be fine."

An hour later, the cashier goes out back with a plastic bag of donuts and Jenny is indeed standing in the dumpster along with her friends.

"Oh my God!" he says. "Fine, look, you don't have to stand in the dumpster. I'll just give you the donuts in the future, if you meet me here at midnight. Don't tell anyone else."

So she would go every night and get free donuts. After a while, they got used to her, and it got to the point where she could walk into the store at any time of day and get a free donut.

Cost benefit analysis.

At dinner.

Joby: Why is that I eat 2000 calories per day, and I don't exercise, but yet I don't balloon up?

Me: Because just by living, you expend 2000 calories each day.

Joby: Really?

Me: Yeah. See, a pound is 3500 calories. So let's say you do the elliptical machine for 20 minutes each day and burn 100 calories. Then after 35 days, you would lose one pound.

Joby: I am never exercising again.

Convo with Andrew.

At lunch with Andrew.

Me: I told my mom that I may never find the right person to get married. But regardless, I still plan to have kids. When I'm 34, I'll either adopt or get artifically inseminated.

Andrew: You said that to your mom?

Me: Well, not the last part. I actually said, "I'll either adopt ... or I won't." She knew what I meant.

Andrew: What did your mom say?

Me: She stood there in silence for half a minute, then said, "I think you should have your own kid instead of adopting." Which implied she's okay with the out-of-wedlock part.

Andrew: Raising a kid by yourself is hard.

Me: I know. But falling in love is so unlikely! It's like winning the lottery! Come to think of it, childbirth is so difficult that it also seems impossible. If I didn't know that billions of women had already done it, and you described childbirth to me, I would say that it's impossible! It's like pushing a watermelon through a straw!

Andrew: [shocked laughter] ... But you want to do it, huh? You want the watermelon?

Me: I want the watermelon.

Sad.

At lunch with Rolandall (Randall + Yolanda = Rolandall).

Me: Falling in love is so rare! I don't know how all these other people do it. ... So I've accepted the fact that I may never get married.

Randall: In 20 years, we can introduce our kids to you as our weird spinster friend.

Me: That's right. I'll get 19 cats. As you're leaving, I'll throw a cat or two at you.

Randall: When I was a kid, there was an old neighbor down the street. She was 70 when I knew her, but had been a widow since her 20s when her husband was killed in war. All she would do is watch Wheel of Fortune and chain smoke. After she died, I had to go help clean out her house, and scrape nicotine off the walls.

Me: Don't worry, I'll pre-pay professional nicotine scrapers as part of my will.

BBQ, Beijing style (from March 26)

This is what happens when your parents hold a barbeque for 45 guests, and your family comes from Beijing where the worst nightmare is running out of food while hosting a party:

Three tables of food, two days of preparation,





and a week's worth of leftovers:

awe-inspiring left and right brain merging

Yesterday I went to the Seattle Asian Art Museum with my coworker Reza. We saw this thousand-armed statue (that fan-shaped object attached to his back is a mass of arms):



I adored the color of this vase (it does lose a little in translation into a photograph):



Then I drove over to Min's house, which may as well have been another museum.

I walked in and immediately dropped all my bags in order to kneel in worship before this painting-in-progress:



HOW? How can one person be that good at computer science AND that good at painting?? It boggles my mind. The pathways between her left and right brains must be busier than the 101 in rush hour.

I forced her to pose with this one of her paintings:



She wouldn't sell me this one for $160 (another buyer had reputedly offered $150):



Oh, she also cooked me amazing stewed meat, couscous, and peach tea.



...

Can a more talented person exist?

The answer is no.

maybe he was just baiting me

Tuesday night I attended a 10-course dinner with chinese reporters who flew in from Beijing on Google's dime to interview the company. There were around 15 reporters, and 7 Googlers accompanying them for dinner.

Over a meal of lobster, peking duck, and jellyfish, the reporter to my left turns to me. He looks a little like this Hong Kong action film star.



"So you've been an engineer for so many years?" he asks. "Do you think you'll keep at it forever?"

I pause. One day I'd like to found my own startup, and if takes off, my main focus would no longer be writing code. "Maybe not," I say.

"Okay, because women aren't very suitable for engineering."

I sigh inwardly. "You should read my Google China blog article on this topic."

"Women are .. not logical enough. If they're debugging code with a lot of bugs, they'll get frustrated, whereas a man will be more calm."

I resist the urge to say, "Is that because it was the man who created the bugs in the first place???"

Instead I say sweetly, "I haven't found that to be the case."

"Let me tell you, I used to work as an engineer," he declares in a this-will-explain-it voice. "We had a few female engineers come into the company, and they quickly found a bunch of men to do all of their programming for them. Then they would get married to one of the best programmers, and quit their job to stay home as a housewife."

I double-sigh inwardly. "That may have been your experience, but if you worked at Google, I think the reality would change your mind."

That having failed, he tries a new tactic. "I'm sure you must do presentations for execs. And they're usually men. If they do something overstepping professional boundaries, then the women will get uncomfortable."

"Uh... That's illegal in the US," I answer.

"It is?" He seems disconcerted. "Well, women just aren't analytical enough to be engineers."

In the ensuing silence floats an unspoken "QED."

Kai-fu said to me last October that the first step to combating discrimination is making it socially unacceptable to voice it openly. People will still think it, but they will no longer be comfortable saying it. After enough time passes in this manner, the discrimination will be eliminated gradually from the minds as well.

China has a lot further to go on this first step than the US.

...

Or he could've just been baiting me, hoping to write an article headlined "GOOGLER EXPLODES WITH RAGE, HITS REPORTER IN FACE WITH CURRIED JELLYFISH."

you know you're considered an ancient relic when ...

Today I receive an email from Tom, my darling brother (pictured below in a state of embarrassment over being in Starbucks with his camera-toting sister):



He asks if I'd like to receive this T-shirt for my birthday:



"Of course not," I say. "Why would I wear such a mean shirt?"

His reply:

The inside joke is that the founder of myspace.com (a blog site),
automatically forces everyone who uses myspace to be his friend.
Thus, people were angry, and wore shirts such as: "Tom is NOT my
friend."

My answer to him:

I KNOW WHAT MYSPACE IS, TOM. You don't need to define it. I am not that out of touch with today's youth. I don't yet look like this:

Ballmer joke

It isn't every day that a slashdot comment actually makes me burst out laughing. The post said:

"In a recent Fortune interview with Steve Ballmer, the newer kinder Microsoft CEO is not only ready to take on the videogaming, search, music download and mobile markets - but he's also laying down the law in his own house. Steve says that his kids are not allowed to use Google or have an iPod."

The first comment said:

I'd take the other approach - if they choose rival manufacturers then study first hand why they do so.

I can hardly quote the follow-up comment, as my hands are shaking with laughter.

Whoa, study? It's Steve Ballmer we're talking about, if he as much as SEEs his kids anywhere near iPods or within 20m of a computer displaying a Google page it'll be Chair Throwing time, he'll Fucking Bury(TM) them. He's done it before and he'll do it again. He's going to Fucking Kill(TM) his children.

another Google China blog mention

Kai-fu mentioned me in his latest entry on the Google China blog. It's an
article about chinese engineers at Google.

This is so hot.

I LOVE the Windows Disk Defragmenter. I sit there and watch it for minutes at a time, as it increases the performance of my machine.



But today I learned of something even more magnificent: Mac OS X on-the-fly defragmentation.

That's so hot.

Nannies and gigolos.

[driving to the city to have dinner with my coworkers]

Me: "Why do you suppose my coworker Sandra puts up with so much crap in her relationship?"

Stella: "Because she's getting older. As you get older, it becomes harder to find a decent guy."

Me: "Even if that's true, it's no reason to stay in an unhappy relationship."

Stella: "How old are you?"

Me: "26."

Stella: "Okay, what are you going to do if you get to your 30s and you're not married?"

Me: "Not get married."

Stella: "What about kids?"

Me: "I'll still have them. At 34, if I'm not married, I'm going to get artificially inseminated. Meanwhile I'll focus all my time on making money, and then I'll use the money to hire nannies and gigolos."

Breaking my stereotype.

I was picking up takeout from Queen House last week, my favorite local chinese restaurant. Since I got there just before closing, I overheard the tall angular-featured male cashier talking to the lanky squinty-eyed waitress.

"... don't think I'm going to go with you," he said. "There's nothing there good to look at except the show itself."

I immediately cast him as the stereotypical Asian guy who is critical of every physical flaw in women.

"Oh, and of course you," he added as an afterthought to this waitress who could not be described as beautiful.

My heart was warmed.

Xbox party (edited)

This week is GDC (Game Developers Conference), and much of the party grapevine centered around getting tickets for the Thursday night Xbox party. Tickets were so difficult to score that one bitter conference attendee printed out orange fliers for his "Official 'F*** the Microsoft Party' Party".

Even engineers from Microsoft Games had difficulty getting tickets, since games and Xbox are separate divisions within Microsoft.

Last night, I and a few Google ex-games-industry coworkers were standing around the Sony party, when we recognized a few Xbox engineers that we had worked with. As we chatted with them, the Xbox guys told me, "You should come by our booth tomorrow, and we'll give you a party ticket."

"Aren't these tickets more valuable than gold?" I replied, suspicious why Microsoft would be more eager to give a ticket to a Google employee over one of their own.

What they said next gave me serious doubts about their party: "It'll be great to have a woman there, especially one who actually has a reason to be there and is a former GDC speaker, instead of a hired dancer or model for the event."

Tonight I originally planned to go home and skip the party, but my 7pm meeting at the hotel next door ran long. I found myself 2 blocks from the party 15 minutes prior to its start.

"I'll just go and check it out," I thought.

Since I got there early, I was at the head of the line, which quickly wrapped all the way around the block. At 9pm, a string of women in tight black dresses walked by, followed by dancers in pink bikinis with white sashes hanging off their thigh-high boots.

I got inside, and it felt ... sexist. Unwelcoming. Monitors displayed Microsoft's Xbox games, where big breasts bounced around, rendered in 3-d detail. The dancers in pink bikinis strutted their stuff on podiums, and male conference attendees watched silently in clumps of two or three, sipping beers. The dancers had disappointingly protruding abs and mountainous thighs. What does it say when the Google employees I see everyday around campus are hotter than the hired dancers at a Microsoft party?

As foretold, I was the only woman not hired to be there. This produced a subtle sapping of my spirit, as I was bombarded with the sight of all other women at the party serving the male attendees food, giving them little gizmos, being paid to flirt with them, to dance for them, to smile. The men had judging, patronizing expressions, which didn't change when their gaze flickered from the dancers briefly onto me as I moved about the party. Rarely have I encountered so many instances of men openly looking me up and down.

It was 9:15pm, and I made for the door. When I got outside, I saw Jon, my first manager from Microsoft, now a product unit manager on Xbox tools, standing on his tiptoes peering in, trying to get a ticket.

I walked down the street and ran into the Xbox engineer who had invited me. "What? You're leaving? It's just getting started!" he exclaimed.

"Yeah, it's not my thing," I said.

"You're not much of a party person, huh?"

"I am, but --" I saw his look bordering on bruised ego, and changed my tune. "That's right, I'm super lame like that." I finished.

As I walked to my car and then drove away, I felt my heart lightening. It is like the time when Bob (name changed) went to interview with Microsoft.

"The closer I got to the Redmond campus, the worse I felt," Bob said. "I actually felt physically ill!"

"Just like Mordor!" replied my brother when he heard the story.

"add salt now!"

My mother called me urgently yesterday.

Mom: "Did you meet with your accountant yet?"

Me: "Yes, I gave him all the paperwork."

Mom: "Did you tell him that he can deduct the 27-year depreciation of your rental property against the rental income?"

Me: "I mentioned it, but I'm sure he knows about it."

Mom: "Maybe he's just a Silicon Valley accountant who knows about stock options, but not about rental properties."

Me: "He asked for my mortgage closing statement and knew he could deduct the points, and he talked about 27-year depreciation. He's been a tax accountant for over 20 years, so I think he knows what he's doing."

Mom: "But you should still go and show him the 1040 form where on line 17 --"

Me: "Okay, what you're suggesting now is equivalent to going to a 4-star restaurant and then insisting on going back to the kitchen. Then we stand behind the chef and give him orders, 'Put in a little more oil.' 'Add salt now!'"

She laughed heartily and to my pleasant astonishment, dropped the issue.

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.

Fun

Last night Peter, Mingjing, and I played an online version of Family Feud. It was exciting fun, the most fun thing I've done yet in 2006.

The highlight was when I blazed through all 7 answers for "Name something that kids eat as a snack in between meals" without incurring a single strike.

Cookies, candy, chips, crackers, fruit, ice cream, carrots.

Getty Center

Memorable items from the Getty Center:

1. Painting of a threesome:



2. I'd love to have a snooze in this bed:



3. Comfy sitting areas:



4. Pleasing to the eye:



5. The world is beautiful: