end-of-August Sat night in pics

With the statuesquely beautiful Sara:


Warm wishes to the birthday boy:


With Christina and her tattoo:


Pool party at an awesome house with five levels. The kitchen:


Fun Australian girl. Great dress:


Gay love:


Indoor pool, hot tub, and steam room on the first level of the house. I'm taking this pic from the stairs on the second level.


Christina: "We're engineers! This pool scene is Silicon Valley trying to be LA."

cute little exchanges

Me: As you requested, I wrote a blog post about you.

Lu: I am excited and nervous... God bless me.

---

Me: The American cafe that opened across the street in building 44 is SO GOOD. Corn bisque, handmade ice cream, ... I'm worried I'm going to get fat.

Alipé: Well Niniane, if you'd like, I can give you daily feedback.

---

At dinner.

Alipé: I noticed girls you're dating don't like it if you tell them that they've gotten fatter.

Me: You don't say.

Alipé: Yeah, they get all miffed. Then I say, "What, would you rather I just silently resented you?"

Me: [laughing]

Yonatan: You could say it in a more lighthearted manner.

Alipé: There's always a grain of truth to jokes though.

Joby: Yeah. You can't really say, "Hey, you're REALLY FAT. Oh ha ha! Just kidding!"

Star Trek inspirational posters.

My faves:





Alas. I've never seen the famed "City on the Edge of Forever", and it's not on YouTube or Google Video.





and the best one, funny because it's true:



The Full Deal.

Goodbye Pluto. Goodbye Earth.

So Pluto is no longer a planet. Fine.

But apparently, the redefinition may hit a little closer to home.

Stern sees problems ahead for the IAU definition.

Under the current wording, Earth does not qualify as a planet because it has not "cleared the neighborhood around its orbit," he said. Objects called near-Earth asteroids orbit the sun at roughly the same from our home star as Earth.

Intern sass, remembered.

Watt reminded me recently of the time that he and Alipé faced off against Henry and me at basketball. Watt sustained a toenail injury during the game, and we went to a nearby Google building to treat it.

We picked up bandages, and then Henry and I went into the microkitchen. When we came back into the corridor, Alipé and Watt were nowhere in sight.

Henry: They must have gone into the bathroom.

Me: Yeah. [pause] [goofily] Which one do you think they went into?

Henry: The women's bathroom. Judging from their performance at basketball.

Me: [laughing] Ha ha! [suddenly] Wait, that's an insult to all women too.

Randall trying to provoke

Dinner with my ex-roommate Yolanda, her boyfriend Randall, and my brother Tom. Randall cooked stewed beef, mashed potatoes (from raw potatoes!), and gravy.

Sipping champagne after dinner.

Randall: Did you two fight growing up? You seem to get along really well.

Tom: Not really. But my sister did give me a fear of heights.

Me: [looking down sheepishly]

Randall: How did that happen?

Tom: I was 3, and my family went to Carlsbad Caverns. My sister pretended she was going to throw me over the railing into the cavern.

Randall: Niniane!

Me: [chagrined] Yeah, it happened.

Randall: So which one of you did better in school?

Me: Tom.

Tom: [simultaneously] Niniane.

Me: He has the higher GPA.

Tom: Stanford has grade inflation though.

Randall: Which one of you does your Mom love more?

Tom: Definitely Niniane.

Me: Yeah, it's me. I think my dad loves Tom more, but his delta is less than my mom's delta.

Randall: Your mom loves you more, even after your recent argument?

Me: Oh! Good point.

Tom: Yeah, you've probably gone down in her mind. It's time for the rise of Tom!

don't fight the obsession

I'm in the middle of two writing books: On Writing by Stephen King, and The Art of Writing by John Gardiner.

They both make the point that in order to write well, you must read a lot. Tonight I drew up a list of 30 books I want to read. As a child, I went through one 300-page novel every 1-2 days, but now I am 50 times slower.

Growing up, my mother repeated daily to me that reading novels is a waste of time. To parents out there, please don't stop your kids from obsessive reading! You may be suppressing their deep love for literature and ingraining guilt into them over a passion that they cannot control! Take the time you would've spent forcing them to play the piano / violin / cello and let them read instead.

David A. makeover

David A was visiting Cali last month, and his wife Nina asked me to take him shopping and buy him a couple of new outfits.

Before:


After #1 (dressy):


After #2 (casual hip):


I hope you like it, Nina.

ah, America

There is a 22-year-old Chinese engineer Lu on my basketball team. He is going to college in China (清华）, and here in California for an internship. He wants to learn more about the culture in the States, and I like hearing about how things are in China, so sometimes we talk about the differences.



One day, Lu asked me how people date in America. I gave him a rundown of the typical stages, from meeting to exchanging contact info to dates to relationship.

Me: ... So at some point after you've gone on some dates, you have a talk about whether you're exclusive.

Lu: Oh, in China, it is assumed that if you go out two or three times by yourselves, then you implicitly agree to be exclusive.

Me: Yeah, in the US you usually have to state it explicitly.

Lu: Is that also when you say "I love you" to each other?

Me: No!!!!!! That usually happens much later. Often months later.

Lu: Oh. In China it happens early on. Actually, we say "I love you" in English quickly, but "我爱你” ("I love you" in Chinese) later.

Me: Huh.

Lu: American dating is so much fun! One needn't have too much pressure hanging out and making out. In China the fifth time you date a girl, you'll probably have to ask her to be your girlfriend.

Me: In the US you can just have fuck buddies. If you're into that.

Lu: What is that?

Me: From urbandictionary,

7. a special friend that you fuck.
Example: "would you like to be my fuck buddy?"

Lu: I see.

[ ... much later in the conversation ... ]

Lu: btw in USA is it polite to ask a girl you meet to be your fuck buddy, according to the example sentence in urban dictionary?

House makeover

Dining Area Before:


Dining Area After:


Kitchen Before:


Kitchen After:

between two continents

When I was 22, I roomed with a midwestern American girl Mary who was both Mormon and a prolific dater. Coming home was full of surprises. One day I'd open the door to see church elders holding a Bible study in our living room. All the wine bottles would be gone from the kitchen counter. The next week I would walk in to find Mary making out on the living room floor with a guy I'd never seen before. They both stumble up drunkenly, and the guy slurs out an introduction.

Every month Mary would tell me about a different guy, and more often than not, she would breathlessly describe his positive traits. He could be the One ...

I marveled at this, because at that point I had never dated a single person who I thought could be the One, and she was raking through them. At one point it occurred to me that we probably both want someone who shares our background and upbringing. It's just that her pool of potential One's includes most Americans, and mine is some subset of immigrants who are acclimated to the US but also maintain their (preferably Chinese) heritage. I envied her the size of her selection pool.

Sometimes I miss my Chinese side so much. I'm buying sandwich bread in Safeway and I hear a couple talking in the next aisle, comparing canned foods. The man has a Beijing dialect, and I stand there for thirty seconds hearing the timbre of their voices. It comforts.

My friend Lu and I were eating dinner at Google a month ago. It was not long after I met him. I spoke to him in Mandarin, and as the conversation continued, he spoke more and more in Engilsh.

"Aren't you more comfortable in Mandarin?" I asked, since he just left China last year.

"Yes, but I figure you're more comfortable in English," he said.

"I like hearing people speak in Mandarin."

He then immediately used some Chinese idiom that I didn't understand. "See?" he said, "Why do you want to speak in Mandarin when there are going to be these things that you don't understand?"

But he humored me.

I don't fit in to the Chinese world. Any true-bred Chinese person who talks to me for more than one hour will end up telling me that I'm too straightforward. I lack the subtle Chinese-specific social nuances. The innate knowledge that it's okay to say, "You look so much fatter! You must have put on thirty kilograms!" but it is not okay to say, "It's really chilly in your house! Can you turn on the heat?" Or maybe it's all right to say that -- case in point that I don't know.

Drifting between the two continents can sometimes get lonely.

Vindication

To all those who ridiculed my eating philosophy of "follow your body's signals":

Ha, ha. I am supported by at least one study involving 597 women.

A new study has found that finding the right diet is no match for a new style of eating called “intuitive eating” that is based on feelings of hunger and fullness rather than on emotions or situations. Those who followed intuitive eating principles actually had a slightly lower Body Mass Index than women who did not.

Other researchers have determined that intuitive eating has three components: unconditional permission to eat when hungry and to eat what food you desire; eating for physical rather than emotional reasons; and reliance on internal hunger and fullness cues to determine when and how much to eat.

perhaps * sweet

A news article this morning on Tiger Woods mentioned Joe DiMaggio, so I read his wikipedia entry:

According to biographer Maury Allen, Joe was so alarmed at how Marilyn had returned to her self-destructive ways, falling in with people he felt detrimental to her (including Frank Sinatra and his "Rat Pack"), he quit his job with a military post-exchange supplier on August 1, 1962 to ask her to remarry him. But before he could, she was found dead on August 5, a probable suicide. Devastated, he claimed her body, and arranged her funeral, barring Hollywood's elite. He had a half-dozen red roses delivered 3 times a week to her crypt for the next 20 years. Unlike her other two husbands or other men who knew her intimately (or claimed to), he refused to talk about her publicly or "cash in" on the relationship. He never married again.

Joe was finally taken home on January 19, 1999. His last words, according to Engelberg, were "I'll finally get to see Marilyn."

It's sweet. The reality was probably marred with violent jealousy and making each other miserable. But the essence of the story, when boiled down to eight sentences, is sweet.


See the stone set in your eyes
See the thorn twist in your side

Sleight of hand and twist of fate
On a bed of nails she makes me wait

Through the storm we reach the shore
You give it all but I want more

I can't live, with or without you

-- With or Without You, U2

sushi

Me: "I went with another Googler to a sushi restaurant on Shoreline, and it was amazing. We were there late, 10pm, and they were closing down. We ate, paid, and when we turned to go, we saw that across five tables were black plastic Google boxes. The waiter was filling the boxes with sushi."

Wei-chao: "They make Google's sushi?"

Me: "Yeah, we paid 50 bucks for the sushi we could've eaten for free the next day!"

Wei-chao: "That's not what I was thinking. I was thinking that they make the next day's sushi the night before. That's not very fresh!"

repeatability

"Niniane, I need to figure out what project to do after my current one. Well, maybe if this one really takes off, I'll go about it more relaxed."

"You already created something hugely successful! Why not relax from that?"

"I want to know that I can do it for something other than this one thing."

"Ah, you want to know that it's repeatable. Not just a fluke."

"Yeah. You know, every billionaire should have to undergo a test where we strip them of their money, connections, and fame, and they have to start from nothing and prove that they can become a billionaire again. Until they've done this two or three times, they shouldn't get our respect."

"Yeah ... they ARE far more impressive if their success is repeatable. For example, you know Warren Buffett would be able to do it."

"Except that he's 70 already."

"Ignoring that. Steve Jobs can do it too -- he basically already did, with Pixar and NeXT. And Oprah can too."

"Martha Stewart?"

"Yeah. But Larry Ellison, probably not."

it's not really Emily Shaw

Me: [telling Tom about the flak from this post] I wouldn't read the emails now, but ten years ago, definitely.

Tom: Did you mask the identity of the Caltech girl? Because Caltech is a small school and if you put in a lot of details, people will figure out who it is.

Me: Of course I masked.

Tom: Tell me you didn't write "The girl is Emily. Emily ... Shaw. Yes, Emily Shaw was date raped. Emily, if you're out there, I feel for you sister."

Me: [laughing] Come on.

Tom: Then when she googles her own name, the first link will be your blog post. "Emily Shaw date raped". The spellchecker will say "did you mean: niniane feels for you"

unruinable

Dinner tonight at Google No-Name Cafe with Alipé, Darryl, and my brother Tom.

Afterwards Tom and I sat on couches on the first floor of building 45. He talked to me about learning to drive, and whether to keep working part-time during the school year.

...

Me: I skipped a cruise on the Bay tonight for interns and their hosts, in order to do more work. Wonder if I should've gone. The water would've been a nice view.

Tom: You could've played shuffleboard.

Me: I bet I didn't know the majority of them. It was probably 95% interns.

Tom: You could've played shuffleboard with people who would let you win.

Me: [laughing]

It's not at all true though. Interns these days are SASSY! Last month:

Joby: .. So this guy avoids me when he sees me. If I'm walking along [draws a dot to denote himself and a straight line coming from it], then he'll go in a big circle to avoid me [draws another dot going in a huge circle around him]

Joby's intern: Is that because you were so fat?

...

I drove Tom home, and as we said goodbye, we waxed a little sentimental about how great it is to have a sibling.

Tom: ... Because other people will be careful what they do, to avoid ruining the friendship. But we are unruinable.

Me: Yeah. [pause] Knock on wood!!!

Both of us: [knocking own skull several times to avoid jinx]

That ain't right

I am deeply disturbed by this user's AOL search history:



It is not normal to cook him breakfast!!

This reminds me of a time in college when I accidentally stumbled across a bunch of emails that another student had printed out. I read all of them, of course. (Don't judge me -- you know you would've done the same when you were seventeen. (If you wouldn't have, then I guess you can judge me.) I wouldn't do it now, but back then, yes.)

(* altering some details below, so that I'm not a complete privacy violator)

First there were some emails between her and her college boyfriend Max. They had a fight over washing dishes. Max decided they would only use disposable plates from then on. Make up, kiss kiss.

She moved to the East Coast to go to graduate school. She started working with a project partner Bob who sent her five frantic emails in an hour during both occasions when she missed their work appointment.

Next was an email between her and Bob's best friend, in which she revealed that Bob raped her. The friend urged her to get help. File a police report, or at least for God's sake, call the rape hotline and talk to them. But she didn't. She decided that she and Bob would talk through it and deal with it as friends.

It breaks my heart when women treat themselves this way. Partly because it makes me remember back to when I was young and didn't know how to stand up for myself.

all in the family: brother

I took my brother to the Google Picnic on Friday. It was easily the nastiest food I've ever eaten at a Google event. Tom ate six mini-burgers and then had a stomachache.

We ran into Mike, Tom's officemate during his Apple internship last summer:



I invited Tom to Sha-mayn's going-away party in the city that night. We ran into an obstacle in that Tom's only 19 years old, and the event is at a bar. Fortunately, Mike agreed to lend us his ID.

Before the party, Tom and I ate at a chinese restaurant with my parents who are visiting from Vegas, and our cousin who is in Cupertino on business.

Tom: Niniane, can you give me the ID now? I want to start memorizing the info, in case the bouncer quizzes me.

Me: [handing over ID]

Dad: [to Tom] Why do you have your friend's ID?

Me: I'm taking Tom to a bar tonight.

Dad: [in lecturing voice] Okay, don't lose your friend's ID. And don't just put it in your pocket -- you might bend it!

I have to give my parents props for the fact that the only nagging they did over our usage of a fake ID was about bending the corner of the ID.



After dinner, we went to Ichiban next door and I bought GUMMIES!

Me: [cradling my bag of gummies] Tom, last month I bought a bag of gummies and then I lost them. I wrote a poem about it. Would you like to hear it?

Tom: Sure.

Me: [deep breath] Oh gummies, my gummies! [pause] Um.... [long pause]

Tom: You're holding a bag of gummies, so you can't recall the pain that inspired the poem. If I took it and ate it all in front of you right now, then you'd remember the poem for sure.

I drove the two of us to the party at Levende Lounge, one of my favorite spots. We bid goodbye to Sha-mayn, since she'll be working from the Google Beijing office for six months. I will really miss her.



Tom and I stayed over at my San Fran crash pad. We chatted about his upcoming job hunt, his friends, my friends.

Me: Tomorrow you can sleep in. I'm getting my nails done in the morning.

Tom: Okay.

Me: I'm going to do my fingernails in blue, but I don't want to redo my toenails which are red. So they're going to clash.

Tom: No one's going to notice unless they're looking at you from head to toe. And if they've gotten to that point, then you probably don't need to worry.

Ah, the logic.

...

Saturday afternoon, we ate pizza at the Italian restaurant down the street.



I love Tom.

all in the family: Parents.

An emotionally difficult Saturday afternoon and Sunday.

The crux is that I told my parents that from now on, I am going to leave the room whenever they do one of the following:

1. Fight.
2. Badmouth the other.
3. Make racist remarks.

I told them I may leave for an hour, a day, or five minutes. They are not pleased, to say the least. Neither am I, but this is the decision I chose out of many crappy options.

My wise friend said to me yesterday, "1. Life is short, and 2. you only live once. Don't spend your one short life in situations that make you miserable."

things that are whack

Two horrors I encountered this week which appalled me to my very soul:

1. This gray tiny dog that I saw on Saturday!



2. The Google Summer Picnic is tomorrow. Last month we were asked to RSVP via a web form. Usually I am very impressed by all the Google internal apps, but this time...

The form has 2 radio buttons: one for "I am attending myself" and one for "I'm bringing a guest". I select the second, and then repeatedly encounter an error on submitting.

After two minutes, I finally realized that they wanted me to select BOTH options, since I am attending and bringing a guest.

Horror washed over me.

I emailed the Summer Picnic Committee a long treatise, which centered around the point "RADIO BUTTONS ARE MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE".

They fixed it the next day.

Today I go to pick up my wristband, and I learn that I have to bring a printout of my original confirmation page. That's right -- there is no way to access that page once I closed my browser. There is no confirmation email that I can print. Since I didn't happen to print that page last month, I am screwed.

I called upon my trusty Desktop Search but even it didn't cache the confirmation page.

Good thing none of our other applications are like this.

Pie #6

I came into work to find a beautiful Marie Callendar's pie box on my desk. A handwritten post-it note on top, "Congratulation on winning the bet. -- Steve".

It's very like Steve to leave off the "s" in "congratulations" in order to save time. He's the type of person to alias "ls" to "l" in order to save typing.

It was my pie #6 for winning my bug bet with Steve. I assumed that I forfeited the last five pies when I transitioned off the Desktop Search team. But now, two years later, here is another pie.



I sent out email inviting coworkers to come share in the pie, but there were almost no takers.

Unfortunately, today I decided to start a food journal for my personal trainer. Despite all my original insistence of no nutrition advice, I decided to ask her for suggestions on WHAT to eat (but not WHEN to eat -- there is a big difference!). So far, the food journal looks like this:

10:00am - 1 piece of custard pie
10:30am - 1 piece of custard pie
12:15pm - 1 piece of custard pie
1:30pm - sushi roll
4:00pm - 1 piece of custard pie
7:30pm - 3/4 chicken burrito

makes gym-going a whole new ballgame

Tomorrow is my fifth session with Megan, my personal trainer. Time flies during the sessions because we're doing girltalk the entire time. For example:

Me: [quietly, while doing bicep curls] That's XX over there. (person I used to date)

Megan: Which one, which one?

Me: The one that's standing right next to the rack of weights.

Megan: [looking him up and down] ... Wow, that's a bangin' body. [long pause]

Me: You can't date him.

Megan: [at the same time] I'd fuck him.

Me: I know! That's why I had to preempt! You can't!

Megan: Okay, I would never do that to you. [still looking over]

...

When I first emailed Megan to ask if she'd be my trainer, I specified that my main goals were to gain muscle tone and to have fun, and I didn't want nutrition advice. My words were: "I've found that trying to eat less of a certain food is the surest way to guarantee that I'll end up eating a boatload of that food out of temptation."

She agreed to these conditions, though apparently she wavered when deciding whether to accept me. I'm the only client who she doesn't require to keep a food journal.

Megan: One time a client showed me his food journal, and he had pixie stix for dinner. I told him to get out of my studio.

Me: Uh... I'm really glad you're not looking at my food journal.

Megan said that it's 70% nutrition and 30% exercise, but despite maintaining my eating habits of three desserts per day, I think I notice some improvement. My shoulder seems more toned. Thank you Megan!

During our first session:

Megan: What are your goals? Do you want to lose some percentage of body fat? Lift more weight?

Me: I just want to have fun.

Megan: So ... how would we measure whether we're achieving that goal?

Me: Whether I'm smiling! [pointing at face, which is wearing a big smile] As long as I'm smiling more than 80% of the time during the session, we are achieving the goal.

Megan: [shaking head in disgust]

...

On Tuesday we did so many shoulder pressses and exercises that when I started to do one-handed plank lifts, my shoulder started trembling, then gave way and I fell onto the mat.

Megan: What the heck was that?

Me: [laughing] I think it's safe to say we worked that muscle to exhaustion.

another way to see it

(* details changed)

Me: My friend Jessie had three free tickets to a sold-out show for last week. She emailed a few people, including her boyfriend, asking if they wanted to go. Her boyfriend said he had a work meeting, so she found three other friends to go with her. Then her boyfriend called to say his meeting got cancelled and asked for a ticket. She said she already promised them to other people. They got in a big argument and he called her a bitch.

Rand: [nodding]

Me: Guys can be so mean.

Rand: So can bitches.

Liquids

While driving Tom to SFO airport:

Me: My personal trainer measured my body fat today. I have 22% body fat.

Tom: And I read somewhere that the body is 78% water, so ...

---

Tom: I dropped off my suitcase at your house on Friday morning. Lugging that suitcase all the way from Cupertino made me really thirsty, so I opened your fridge and found a Naked Juice.

Me: I have a Naked Juice in the fridge?

Tom: Yeah. Well, so I started drinking it, and it was really sour. But I drank half of it anyway. Then I looked at it and realized it was a month past the expiration date.

Me: Doh.

Tom: My stomach hurt for the next hour. I called Dad and he said I should've known better than to drink something from your fridge.

the opposite of cotton candy

I recently dated a Chinese guy for one week. (See, gentle readers? I do listen to your comments! 中国是伟大的民族！)

...

He likes to drive, which is compatible with my hatred of driving. Sunday morning he asks, "要不要去吃点心？" ("Would you like to go eat dim sum?") He appears a little startled by my reaction of explosive delight.

We decide to invite Zhong, the one friend that we have in common, but Zhong doesn't answer his cell phone, and we only have his address but not his land line. Googling reverse address lookups yields property reports but no phone numbers. Finally we find a land line report that costs $9.95, but we're too cheap to buy it.

We knock on Zhong's door twenty minutes later, who emerges bleary-eyed to find us grinning on his doorstep.

The dim sum restaurant is running out of food because it's 2:30pm, but the three of us sit and eat anyway. It is the first time the guy I'm dating orders dim sum for me, instead of vice versa. It is a new feeling, and very appreciated.

"So what is going on with you guys?" asks Zhong. (你们两个怎么样？）

"我们两个很好，在喝茶,” ("The two of us are doing good, drinking tea.") says my date, immediately picking up his tea cup to take a sip. Ah, the chinese way of sidestepping questions by pretending not to understand them. How frustrating when used on oneself. How immensely entertaining when used on other people.

"Fine," says Zhong, and then turns to me and asks the same question.

"We're very good, and will be dating for another four days," I say, holding up four fingers.

Later, I'm telling my date a story about my mother. The story goes that my mother has a classmate Fen who is five feet tall and chubby. Others don't consider her beautiful, but she considers herself so and preens often. Fen gave birth to a daughter who is astonishingly cute. One day at a classmate reunion, a few people were gathered around cooing at the daugher, and my mother blurted out, "How can Fen look the way she does, and her husband looks the way he does, but the daughter is so cute?"

Fen nearly busted a kidney. "What do you mean by that? I want you to tell me! What's wrong with the way we look!".

My date listened to my story, smiling, and then said, "怎么收场？" ("How to close on that situation?")

It was such the perfect thing to say, tickling me in the right way because the words were in Mandarin and so cute, and I mentally replayed it in my head three thousand times over the next day.

...

On the last day.

"Dating a chinese guy has its upsides, I'm realizing. Maybe I should only date chinese guys from now on. ... They'll have you to thank."

"I'm not going to date any more chinese girls, because it can't compare to what we had. I'm only dating Estonian girls from now on."

Tom

Tom called me on Wednesday. "I'm on the Google campus!" he said. "I'm here for the Intern Open House!"

I found him on the patio outside the cafe, and we walked around meeting my coworkers. It's the first time I've seen him in three weeks, since I dropped off his luggage after he got back from the semester in Japan. Spending time with Tom grounds me. It reminds me of what's really important. But he's busy and I don't want to bother him, and he thinks I'm busy and doesn't want to bother me, and so it goes.

Last night I drove him to the airport for a weekend trip to New York. My cell phone rang during the drive, and he handed me my red clutch purse. When we parked and I reached for my purse, it was MIA. We looked under the seats, in the frontseat, backseat...

Finally, Tom said, "Maybe I put it inside your other purse." and zipped open my large black purse. Immediately we saw the glint of red leather.

"Tom!" I giggled, standing next to the car and bending down to look at him through the open car door. "What happened?"

"I was putting the purse away and then I just kept recursing," he said, through laughter.

We sat in the airport lobby for half an hour, chatting about what type of fulltime work he wants to do, whether he would live in San Francisco or the South Bay after graduation.

"Hey, that worker is wearing the same dress as you," he said.

I was in my custom-fitted cheongsam en route to a party in San Fran. I turned to my right, and indeed behind the fast-food chinese counter, the server was wearing a knockoff version.

"Thanks Tom," I said.



It was a very lovely conversation.

One of the top three mistakes of my life was that I didn't call my brother more often when I went away to college. I shouldn't keep making the same mistake.

Get your dance on

The Google Dance is coming up next week.

Last year, the week before the Google Dance, I emailed an engineer Maddox to set up a meeting with a startup CEO in his product space. I'd never met Maddox. I opened up his calendar, picked an empty slot, and created a meeting.

"My product manager can't make it," he emailed back to say.

"That's fine, as long as YOU can," I said, emphasizing that at least one member of their team needed to be present. After sending the email, I realized that it could be constituted as a romantic overture. But too late, already sent.

Then I went through my email, and saw that the Google Dance was coming up the next week. In order to remind myself, I added a meeting to my calendar.

The next day, I was going through my emails when I realized that I had still been in Maddox's calendar when I created the entry. So the calendar program sent him a meeting invite for him and myself to the Google Dance.

I laughed when I saw this. Then I felt great embarrassment. Then I saw the humor in it again and laughed. This cycled a couple more times.

When I showed up the next day for the meeting with the startup CEO, there was a cute blonde girl sitting in Maddox's cube along with him, who he specifically introduced to me as his girlfriend.

Two-timers.

There are two guys that I found attractive recently.

One of them made proclamations of being emotionally attached to me. Then he revealed that he and his ex have been talking about reconciling. They're going on a trip together next month, and he was originally determined to be true to her, get her back, and then marry her. Now he wants to ditch her for me. But he waited a while to tell me because he was afraid of my reaction.

The other revealed that he's dating a girl right now, and it's nonexclusive but she would get mad and jealous if another girl came into the picture. Would it be okay, he asks, if he and I snuck around behind her back and didn't tell her?

Oh my God, guys are such two-timers! By the letter of the law, neither case consitutes cheating on their partners, but in spirit both pretty much are.

Have the majority of men turned into bastards while I wasn't looking? Or were my previous samples skewed inaccurately toward kinder-hearted guys?

I am scared.

Party pics.

Friday night dinner at Supper Club. The club is lined with beds, and on the dance floor every thirty minutes roamed people on stilts, people in huge headdresses, acrobats pulling themselves up a rope. Here is a woman getting painted with chocolate:



Instead of eating at a table, you get a bed with pillows and sheets. You eat in bed. My friend Eva flaunting her gorgeousness on our group's bed:



Afterwards, dancing with the beautiful Sara:



Saturday night AsiaSF. There are two natural women and three transsexuals in the picture below.



I was tremendously glad to see Eva and party with the girls. But I was sad too, because partying is like cotton candy -- fun but ultimately leaving you hungry.

Can I please meet a sweet, smart, loyal, Mandarin-speaking guy with good abs? (Cue the 中国是伟大的民族！ comments.)

dangers of using an exercise ball as your desk chair

I use a blue exercise ball instead of a desk chair. This allows me to bounce on it since I am prone to fidgeting.

Five minutes ago, I was preparing my expense reports from last month. I stood up to get a paper clip from my shelf. When I sat back down, at the moment where I should've contacted the ball, there was only air. There was a loud thud as my ass fell hard onto the carpeted floor.

I looked around me, and the ball had rolled to the far side of the cubicle. People ran over from two offices down to see what the source of the thud was.

too vague

Me: [... long tale of my weekend ... ]

Dan: Sounds like an emotional roller coaster.

Me: Yeah. Too much drama.

Dan: Want to see a movie?

Me: Sure. Something distracting.

I should have specified that by "distracting", I meant "hilarious and action-packed" in the manner of "Home Alone" or "South Park: The Movie".

Instead Dan took me to see "A Scanner Darkly". An hour into it, I was recoiling in my seat away from the three onscreen drugged-up men ranting about conspiracies and threatening to fight each other with hammers. For the next 20 minutes, I debated leaving the theatre because the characters were so out of control. I stayed, which was fortunate as the ending was satisfying.

Walking out of the theatre...

Dan: Was that sufficiently distracting?

Me: Uh ... in the "fighting fire with fire" sense.

...

Moral of the weekend: Use more specific words when speaking.

gone to waste

Last night my college friends Tao and Sam came to Google for dinner, with Tao's new girlfriend.

Me: I'm really into basketball now! I wish I'd played on the Caltech women's team.

Tao: You would've gotten on the team for sure.

Me: I know!! Most of the women players were 5 feet 2, and I'm 3 inches taller.

Tao: How tall are you then?

Me: 5' 5".

Sam: [bursts out laughing]

Me: [indignantly] What??? I am 5' 5"!

Sam: [in between laughing] I'm laughing at the fact that you said they're 5' 2" and you're 3 inches taller, and Tao still needed to ask how tall you are.

Me: [also laughing] Yes... Good thing we spent 4 years getting that Caltech education.

Why I Don't Date Asian Men

This post was written as a joke.

But I have now deleted it.

It was supposed to be funny, because surely people would not take it seriously. This was wrong. Many people took it seriously. Despite disclaimers.

So now, after a year and a half, it's deleted.

Instead, for a laugh, you can go read "Differences Between Men and Women", and then write ridiculous flames about how the article author must hate all men and all women.

Youtube

I discovered that I can find all the music videos to my favorite songs on YouTube. I just watched Baby Got Back, 18 and Life, and 對面的女孩看過來 (Will the girl across the way please look this way).

I might never leave the house again.

Embarrassed candle

It was 105 degrees in Mountain View today. It was so hot that one of my candles became impotent.



This is the first time it's ever happened, swears the candle.

Update on rock situation.

I went to eat some food, to see if that would fix the lethargic-rock problem. I drove over to Queen House, my standby, got a table, and ordered:

- cashew chicken
- a plate of dumplings
- scallion pancakes
- rice
- hot tea
- lychee tea with taro balls

"Will there be someone joining you?" asked the waitress.

"No, it's just me," I said, and giggled.

"Okay, is that all then?" she asked, and then we both laughed.

The food did help. So now I have to watch out to not go too long without eating. The reason I previously thought it was from drinking is probably because I often avoid eating before drinking, so that I can get tipsy more quickly on an empty stomach.

Unmoving rock.

I was wrong last month when I attributed a day of slug-like slow movement to
Asian alcohol intolerance.

Today it hit me again, worse than ever, and the only alcohol I drank in the past week is a tiny amount of champagne yesterday afternoon.

This morning I sat for 20 minutes unmoving on the couch, staring off into space, because anything else required too much energy. Then I went downstairs, where the temperature is cooler, and impersonated a wax statue in my armchair for another 15 minutes.

Why is this happening? I don't feel ill, and even the times when I've had a fever I had more energy than this. This morning I woke up after 6 hours and despite being exhausted, couldn't fall back asleep. Am I dehydrated? Is it sleep deprivation from the past week?

Is my blood sugar too low? Maybe it's because the only thing I've eaten in the past day were some snacks at TGIF at work. Maybe my eating philosophy of following your body's hunger has its downsides. I'm going to try eating some food and see if it helps.

melancholy

One of my friends is having a family crisis, and is moving away. It's the right thing to do, for loyalty and family, but I will miss her so much!!

伤离别离别虽然在眼前
说再见再见不会太遥远
若有缘有缘就能期待明天
你和我重逢在灿烂的季节
-- 祝福 - 张学友

(Sorrow over parting which is before our eyes
Say goodbye, and our next meeting will not be too far off
If we are fortunate, we can wait for tomorrow
You and I will meet again in the spectacular season
-- "Blessing", Jackie Cheung)

...

This decision came as a shock, as I knew things were bad but I didn't realize the extent. Last week she skipped an outing that she committed to, and I crankily asked her to give us more warning next time. Now that I fully empathize with her situation, I see that I was a callous, horrible human being.

Two other friends are going through traumatic ER health ordeals involving either themselves or their family.

I know life throws us sometimes good cards and sometimes bad ones, and I try not to take it too seriously when either one happens. But it's still saddening watching my friends go through these tough times.

My dad likes to say, "Some people's lives are like cosine (x) -- starts at 1 and then goes to 0. Other people's lives are like sine (x) -- starts at 0 and then goes to 1. But when you take the integral from 0 to 2 pi, it comes out to 0 for everyone."

This may be a melancholy weekend.

(details in this post changed for privacy protection)

I never saw this happen in the NBA.

My basketball team was supposed to play the Google Ads basketball team at 5pm today. I was nervous all day, because I didn't want to drag down my team.

Me: I need to mentally set low expectations so that I have some chance of meeting or exceeding them.

Alipé: I know. Why don't you just make it your goal that this time, you will not fall over onto your ass?

Me: Brilliant, that's what it'll be.

We arrive at the courts at 4:45pm and warm up. 15 minutes pass, and there's no one but us out there. It's 5:05pm. 5:15pm. My teammates start to become dejected.

At 5:25pm, a beige car pulls up and 5 guys in Google shirts jump out. It's the other team, making a fashionable entrance.

We start, and it's a tight game. My team let me start, because they are so nice, and they call out directions to me the entire time. They also pass me the ball and let me shoot a couple of times, but I was always too far away to make it.

10-7, our lead. There is a big struggle over the ball right under their basket, and the other team fumbles the ball. I manage to catch it, hold onto it tightly before it could be stolen, and then pass it to my teammate. It was my highlight of the game.

15-15, tied. My team has taken me out of the game by this point, and I watch appreciatively from the sidelines.

Me: [to other team members on sidelines] You have my undying gratitude for being so supportive despite how much I suck.

Adil: I don't know why you would say that. You're actually useful.

Me: Adil, that is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me about basketball.

Then 19-17, their lead. Players from both sides began jumping on each other to try to steal the ball. Huge pileups of several people. Guys falling onto the ground, tripped by each other. It looked more like rugby than basketball.

A white-shirted opponent complained that players from my team were playing too aggressively. "I'm going to start calling fouls!" he exclaimed.

The play then went like this: 10 seconds of play. White-shirt guy calls a foul. Return to check position. 15 seconds of play. White-shirt guy calls a foul.

He called 5 fouls in a row. Then they scored 2 more points and beat us.

I wish I knew enough about basketball to determine whether our players were indeed crossing the line of aggression, or whether the other team was overly picky.

Vonnegut

The cafe downstairs in our building (building #45) is opening, and the celebrated chef is soliciting email suggestions for the cuisine type.

Joby: I want it to be meat. Lots and lots of meat.

Phil: A slaughterhouse?

Me: It should be called Slaughterhouse 45!!!

Personal trainer

Today I had my first gym personal training session with Google's subsidized program. I went to Megan, who is Joby's personal trainer and oversaw his amazing transformation.

Megan is an energetic petite blonde. She had me do lunges across the length of the gym, while she walked backwards facing me. After two sets, she announced that the next set would be duck lunges.

"Oh my God!" I said.

"You can just call me Megan," she replied, thus sealing my love for her.

Two minutes later, I felt the familiar sensation of light-headedness. This time, my hearing also became muffled and distant, which I took as a bad sign.

"Uh, I need to sit down," I said. "Can we sit for a moment?"

"Are you tired already?" she asked. "Okay, we can walk it out."

"I'm not tired, I'm just afraid I'll pass out."

So we sat down.

"Did you eat before you came to work out?" she asked.

"Not since lunch," I said. "Oh, and I only ate soup for lunch, because I wasn't hungry. Was I supposed to eat before this?"

"Yes! It's 5:30pm!" she said, and then ran across the gym and retrieved two Balance bars in peanut butter crunch and caramel apple. "Pick your poison."

I stared at them in dismay. "These bars are going to taste disgusting! I only have a limited number of meals in my life! I can't eat this!"

"You must!" she said, and went into an explanation of blood sugar. The result is that I was forced to eat 10% of the caramel apple Balance bar, thus wasting valuable stomach real estate.

We did weird balancing exercises and bicep curls and push-ups.

To my delight, she said, "You're stronger than I expected! You were able to do 12 push-ups with good form."

"It's practice from pushing people away," I said, and she laughed heartily and said we could delve into that emotional shortcoming some other session.

I signed up for 10 more sessions.

stomach is a pool of acid

This morning I spent 1.5 hours on the phone changing my XX Airlines ticket.

Peter and I have vouchers left over from last year when we decided not to go to Paris for Thanksgiving because his family was worried about the riots. The XX agent told us we had a year to rebook, but when Peter called last month, he was told it's actually only 90 days. He called their customer service over and over, and filed complaints, and emails, and they just refused adamantly.

So this morning I was dreading making the call to use this ticket for my Brian-hosted Egypt trip this fall. Indeed the agent told me the same problem with the 90 days, and I made my plea plaintively!

Then I was put on hold for an hour while she went to find supervisors.

At last it is done. They issued waivers and allowed me to use the ticket.

But my stomach is a big pool of acidic stress. If you dipped a rod of iron in my stomach juices right now, it would just melt.

a day in the worklife

Today, Joby came into work in nicely fitted black pants, button-down vertical striped shirt, soft-black undershirt, and snappy belt.

Joby: I bought new clothes.

Me: I see that! They're showing off your new trim figure! You look so skinny, Joby. You're half the man you used to be.

Joby: [jubilantly pumping fist] Yes!!

...

At 7pm, I convinced a couple coworkers to play basketball. They're not on my basketball "league team", so we were just having fun.

I announced that I would make basketball one of my goals for the quarter. At Alipé's recommendation, I did that HORSE game of switching between positions and seeing how many shots it took me to get 5 baskets.

After ten minutes, I was at 2 for 23. :( Then I suddenly got 3 shots out of the next 4, resulting in 5 baskets out of 27, i.e. a 18.5% accuracy rate.

Me: Okay, my goal will be to increase it by 50%, to 27%. How accurate were you guys?

Alipé: I got 5 baskets out of 7.

Henry: I got 5 out of 8.

Me: Oh my God, my league mates should just throw me off the team right now.

...

We went to dinner. While walking with our plates out into the outdoor seating, I saw Reza, an ex-roommate of our intern Darryl.

Me: [very loudly, with a friendly big wave] Hi Reza!!!!

Reza: [momentarily startled, then waving back]

Henry and Alipé: [quietly to me] Isn't his name Ralph?

Me: God damn it.

...

We sat down and began eating.

Me: You know what would be fun and bonding? Sharing embarrassing stories.

I shared a story of how I had to heat water in our school microwave when I was 12, and I did it wrong (we didn't own a microwave at home). Henry shared a story involving his high school chemistry teacher. Alipé shared a story where he wrecked his dad's car as a teenager.

Me: Okay, so what do you think is the most embarrassing imaginable event that could occur in your life?

Alipé: [immediately, solemnly] Why, it's greeting someone by the wrong name loudly in a public setting. I couldn't imagine anything more embarrassing than that.

another Saturday night in pics

I had quite a few drinks on Saturday night.

Sunday I woke up and looked at my camera, and was startled to see that amongst the pictures were half a dozen that I didn't remember taking. That's never happened before!

So I'll just make up some captions.

The many arms of Vishnu:


Closer... closer ... maybe I can meld with her into a single two-headed entity...


This one I remember. At Fluid with fabulous music and fabulous company. I was the Dancing Queen. Either that, or my inebriated evaluation is non-objective and I actually looked like a fool.

Too oft repeated.

Last week Cindy told me that on a trip to Spain, people kept saying "konichiwa" to her, even though she's Chinese. At first it was just amusing but after the 800th time, it really got on her nerves. One night near the end of the trip, after a few drinks, when yet another guy said it to her, she erupted at him. "Why the fuck would you say konichiwa? Do I look Japanese? I'm Chinese!! Why would you fucking say that to me???"

Me: "Poor guy. He probably went home thinking to himself, 'Japanese girls are mean.'"

There are two phrases that people say to me over and over, that have gotten tiresome.

Scenario 1.
Me: [meeting someone new] Hello, nice to meet you.

Person: Nice to meet you too. What kind of work do you do?

Me: I'm a tech lead at Google for a new project.

Person: A secret project??

Me: Yes.

Person: So you could tell me, but then you'd have to kill me! Ha! Ha!

Me: [thinking] Oh, if only I could. [out loud] Ha ha, yeah.

...

Scenario 2.
Me: [talking to friend] Hey, how's it going. What'd you do today?

Friend: I woke up, ate some leftover pizza, watched the World Cup, and then came to this party. Hey, is this going to go in your blog?? Are you going to blog this to everyone?

Me: [thinking] No, I only blog interesting things. [out loud] Ha ha, no.

witty line

Me: I heard a good line this afternoon.

Alipé: Oh, what was that?

Me: I was walking down Haight Street, and two tall black guys were coming from the opposite direction. They were chatting with each other, and then one of them looked at me and said loudly in freestyle rhythm, "Asian Persuasian! And I'm not Caucasian!"

Alipé: [chuckling] Ha ha! I'll have to remember that one.

Me: But Alipé, you ARE Caucasian.

Zidane parody

Thank you to Reza for providing this glorious link: Zidane as seen around the world.

Gross-Off

Two weeks ago, Alipé and I were chatting about disgusting stories, and we each announced that we had the Most Disgusting Story Ever. How to resolve this?

I put a calendar entry for a meeting on July 14, "The Gross-Off". All entrants were invited to tell their most disgusting story, and then we would have blind voting.

Yesterday was the long-awaited day.

Alipé: My story is truly disgusting. I will surely win! I wish more people would enter this competition, so that Niniane isn't embarrassed about being the only one whose story gets blown out of the water by mine.

Yonatan: I bet Alipé is going to win. Niniane's story is going to be something really mild. Like ... 'One time someone wore pink shoes with red trousers! It was disgusting!'

Joby and Alipé: [chuckling]

Me: We shall see. WE SHALL SEE.

At 5:30pm, I gathered 5 coworkers in an office to listen to our stories. We did a coin toss, which I won. I elected to go second.

Henry: How are we going to decide on the winner?

Me: Blind voting.

Cue: We should see which story induces the most vomiting.

Henry: [poking the trash can with his foot] Let's weigh this after each story.

Alipé told his story, eliciting groans of disgust.

Then I told mine.

When everyone sufficiently recovered from rolling on the floor in disgust, we did the voting. The results:

Niniane -- 4 votes
Alipé -- 1 vote

After I preened a bit at being crowned the new Gross-Off Champion...

Me: [extending hand] Good game, Alipé.

Alipé: [shaking my hand] Well, the best man ... lost.

(If Alipé grants permission, I will post both stories here.)

Smugmug comments.

I discovered to my great amusement that my smugmug photo gallery was posted along with my bio on a chinese web site, and I now have a bunch of smugmug comments written by chinese people. My favorite ones:

"She is so excellence!"

"OGM!"

"is the instinct from the interest of something ? lack always is perfect!" (Any guesses what this one means?)

and lastly, my absolute favorite, my reason for writing those Google China blog articles, the one that means more than anything else:

"After reading your introduction,I think I ,a girl, can also be a software engineer! Thank you!"

Basketball.

Two months ago, in a bout of glorious enthusiasm, I signed up for a Google recreational basketball team, despite having never played basketball with anyone other than Peter (and that only half a dozen times).

Today I played in my first game against another Google basketball team. It was also the first real full-court game I ever played in my life. Previously we had a few pick-up 3-on-3 practices amongst my team.

I really, really enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun, and not as scary as I feared.

However, in comparison to my awesome team, I sucked. My team got to see me perform feats such as:

• while jumping up to catch a ball, fell backwards onto my ass
  
  
• forgot to follow the opponent I was defending against, such that he got the ball and scored a point while I was standing 15 feet away
  
  
• not score any points. I attempted 2 shots, one of which bounced off the rim and the other of which was blocked. This was very sad, as shooting is one of the few basketball things that I'm any good at.
  

My teammates were very kind, allowing me to play for half the game, and saying things such as "You improved a lot since our first practice!", "You're making all of your passes!", "You're doing really well!".

At dinner, I chatted with Lu, one of the other players.

Lu: Did you enjoy the game?

Me: A lot. [pause] You know, I had a revelation.

Lu: Yeah?

Me: When I was in my master's program, for one class I was on a project team with 4 other people. One of them was a guy who had already gotten a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and he was now switching to computer science. He obviously wasn't very technically savvy, so when we coded up our project, he didn't actually contribute any code. So we asked him if he'd take all the applications that the rest of us wrote and benchmark them against each other, make a couple pretty graphs. It turned out that he couldn't even figure out how to run a Java program. At the time, I was annoyed at this guy and shocked that he got into a top-notch CS grad school and he couldn't even execute a Java program.

Lu: I see. And what brought on this memory?

Me: I realized that in our basketball team, I'M THAT GUY.

Lu: Oh, it's not the same.

Me: Well, I realize now that that guy deserves sympathy!

Wedding and a funeral

I was so honored to be invited to Andrew & Jennifer's wedding.

Aw.



Awwwww.



Awwwwwwwwwww.



I was sitting next to a very relaxed, fun family consisting of a Googler with his wife and baby. The baby foot! It's so tiny!

---

Monday morning, I sauntered into work. "Hello hello hello!" I said chirpily, before lurching to a shocked stop in front of my desk.

The beautiful round yellow exercise ball that I usually sit on was gone. In its place was a yellow ball-corpse flat on the floor. I picked it up, and felt the rubbery textured edge where it had split down the middle.

"It missed you so much that it deflated," said Joby, trying to draw attention away from the fact that one of the last times the ball was seen before its death was when it was brutally kicked by Joby.

"Well, let's say a few words in memory of the ball," I said, picking up its lifeless body. "OH BALL, we knew ye well..." I began.

"Throw it away!" said Finn without turning around from his monitor.

Saturday night in pics

The San Fran crash pad is serving its purpose. I went to 3 parties on Saturday night. The no-drinking embargo has ended (duration: 1 month).

8pm: Girls Night at Shirles' place.


10pm: "Single & Fabulous Party" thrown by Ingrid's friend Anna (who is no longer single). Ling dropped by, bringing 3 Asian girlfriends and a Caucasian guy with an Asian fetish.

Humoring the guy:



At this party, I meet 2 friends of Ingrid's: one English and the other Irish.

Me: Did you meet each other by standing at opposite ends of the English Channel and sending messages in a bottle?

English Bloke: I canoed over. [mimes paddling a canoe]

Me: [to the Irish bloke] So what do you do for a living?

IB: [with foreboding] You don't want to know.

Me: It can't be as bad as what I'm imagining right now.

IB: Trust me, it is.

Me: Really, it's as bad as the zookeeper who has to manually give the animals their suppositories? [using right arm to demonstrate shoving a pill up a large elephant]

IB: What is that job called?

Me: I have no idea.

IB: A zoo-supp. It should be called a zoo-supp.

Ingrid: [wandering into the conversation, casually] What are you guys talking about?

IB: [matter-of-factly] Zoo-supps.



12:30am: "An Evening at the Dolores Estate", a preppy house party. In the kitchen with my friends Ingrid (left) and Sara (right), and Sara's new roomie Karey (middle):

Collision

I was rear-ended on Sunday, en route to Andrew's wedding. I'm okay, but my beloved car is injured.



Last night, while carpooling up to San Francisco:

Alipé: [talking about a new model of car] It's like the Audi TT, but a longer body.

Me: That sounds nice! But I still love my car.

Alipé: Even now that it's damaged?

Me: Especially now, in its hour of need! In sickness and in health, Alipé.

World Cup.

Today I watched soccer for the first time in my life, and I LOVE IT.

The reason is that all these tough men are showing massive amounts of emotion. In the finals, one Italy team member reached out and ruffled the hair of a French team member to show good sportsmanship. It was so sweet! Right before the penalty kicks, the goalies embraced, and patted each other on the neck in goodwill, and I was really touched. When else do you see grown men doing that? I certainly don't see Joby patting Alipé supportively on the neck before we go into our VP reviews.

When they lose, they kneel on the ground in agony of defeat. When they win, they hug and run screaming around the field.





Also, I discovered to my pleasant surprise that soccer players have beautiful, tall, lean, tight bodies.

Next World Cup, I am watching every single game.

the family jewels

Google's hallways are littered with exercise balls, and in the past 2 weeks, I've taken to sitting on a yellow exercise ball instead of in a desk chair. When I get deep into thought, sometimes I bounce up and down on it.



Today I was coding away, sitting on the exercise ball as usual. Suddenly, from behind me, I hear Joby's voice say, "Hey, it's time for our group meeting." at the same time that I feel my exercise ball bump gently below me.

I turn around, while saying, "Did you just kick ..."

When I see Joby's little smile and simultaneous looking away to the side, the culprit is clear without me needing to finish the question.

"Joby, please don't kick me in the ball," I say.

Sweetness.

love
I get so lost, sometimes
days pass and this emptiness fills my heart
but whichever way I go
I come back to the place you are

all my instincts, they return
and the grand facade, so soon will burn
without a noise, without my pride
I reach out from the inside

in your eyes
the light the heat
in your eyes
I am complete
in your eyes
I see the doorway to a thousand churches

- "In Your Eyes", Peter Gabriel


Tonight Jill told the story of the start of her relationship with Adam. I know both of them, so as she told it, I re-enacted the two of them in my mind. He pursued her for many months, ironclad in his faith that they would be great together. But she had reservations, so for months he stayed madly in love and she resisted.

Then after many months, he declared that he was going to stop insisting and agreed to just be friends with her, and talked about how much he still valued the friendship. This melted my heart, because it's a rare man who actually will hold dear to a friendship with a woman who turns him down.

THEN she changed her mind and they had a date. She told us about the first time that he held her, and the sweet sweet things that he said. "You are my dream girl" was just the beginning.

I imagined Adam, that reserved engineer who was too private to even tell us which suburb he lives in, gushing these unbelievably sweet things, and WOW. My heart was beyond melted. There was a big puddle in my chest cavity where my heart used to be.

Offensive pickup lines

[Kevin (one of my SF roommates) says I should have sympathy for the man in the story below because it's hard to start up conversations with female strangers, so I almost didn't post it. But then desire to write overcame sympathy!]

Sunday night I'm at Harry's Bar waiting for Cecilia and her boyfriend. They're lost driving up to Pacific Heights, so I sit on a stool and watch the bar's plasma TV playing "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" on mute.

A Caucasian man, around 30 years old, 5'10" with short wavy brown hair, comes up next to me.

Guy: I'm going to put my drink here next to your water, okay? [Editor's Note: This line isn't the bad one -- it doesn't go bad until a couple minutes in.]

Me: Okay.

Guy: Hey, so where are you from?

Me: Originally? China.

Guy: Where in China?

Me: Beijing.

Guy: But you don't have an accent. You must have been very young when you came to the States.

Me: Yes, I was 5.

Guy: So you're basically American then. You're an AMERICAN GIRL. You're not really Chinese. You can't call yourself Chinese.

Me: Can.

Guy: You can't! You're not Chinese! You can't call yourself Chinese! [keeps going in this vein]

Me: [slightly annoyed, starts looking away from him]

Guy: Okay, okay. So where did you go to high school? Did you go to high school?

Me: [in disbelief] Did I go to high school? What kind of question is that??? By U.S. law, everyone under the age of 16 is required to go to school!!

Guy: Oh. Hey, what the hell would I know about US law?

Me: I guess you can't call yourself an American then.

Just then Cecilia came in and saved me.

Johnny Depp, sweet

This positively biased interview with Johnny Depp made him sound like a truly upstanding man:

He is hugely loyal, hugely old-fashioned, and I think he just wants to be involved with Vanessa, so much so that even a screen kiss with Keira Knightley for Dead Man's Chest got him twitchy and feeling a little awkward.

and really knows what's in his heart:

Johnny Depp seems straightforward but you know he's complex. "Well," he says, "I was given the 'weird' badge but I think everybody's weird and that's the key to it. We should celebrate our individuality, not be embarrassed or ashamed of it. We all have idiosyncrasies, tics that are obsessive-compulsive. People do themselves a great disservice by not allowing themselves to see who they really are because they are afraid."

It's so sweet that I find myself wanting his marriage to work out. Because then it's a sign that it really can happen, a celebrity mobbed by thousands of women daily can stay true to his wife and love her and be loyal for the rest of their years. And then there would be hope for all of us.

It's also why I want Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to last.

San Fran, fish out of water

My weekend crash pad is 4 blocks from Haight St (of the famous Haight-Ashbury), and these 2 days I've felt like a fish out of water.

Where are my Starbucks on every corner? With their trusty Internet connection and decaf Java Chip frappucino! Instead I'm writing this from the Sacred Grounds Cafe (kudos on the witty name). Sitting on a chair outside the cafe is an Asian man sporting dreadlocks, smoking a joint. He was originally smoking it at a table 10 feet from me, until the waitress asked him to move outside.

Another reason for fish out of water is that the Internet at my crash pad is broken, and an internet connection is definitely water to my fish. We pay $20 per month to use the connection from Tully's directly below us, and their router is on infinite reboot. When I went down to tell the barista...

Me: Hi, I'm trying to use your internet, but the connection is cycling on and off. It looks as though your router might be rebooting.

Barista: [blankly] Our what is what?

Me: Your internet isn't working.

Barista: The technical support said our power supply might be broken. Hey, maybe that explains why the ice machine next to it is broken too!

Me: Wait, if your ice machine also isn't working, then it's probably not the power supply on the router. It's probably the electrical outlet or the wiring in the wall.

Barista: [slowly, as if speaking to idiot] No, it's the PO-WER SU-PPLY. See, there are surges of power, and then no power.

Me: Uh...

Barista: They're sending out a technician on Monday.

Me: [with relief] Thank you.

I do like it, this challenging of my comfort zone. And there are perks nearby which are right in the middle of my area of comfort. I'm a few blocks away from Golden Gate Park and the de Young Museum. Check out this cocoa pod sculpture from de Young. It's a coffin.



That's right, the artist was a maker of coffins, and his fisherman uncle asked for a special one, so he made a boat. Then more friends started asking for special coffins. He lived in a country where the main export is cocoa. Hence, the cocoa coffin.

One of my favorite paintings is this one:



My mother said on our visit a few weeks ago, "This painting is so easy! Just a few rough slashes with a brush!"

But I was captivated. The man and woman are looking straight at each other, in a gorgeous room with high ceilings and sunlight streaming in through picture windows, yet the scene screams desolation.

Most of us have been at that place before, yes?