packing heat in Egypt

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



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

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

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

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



Afterwards they would ask us for baksheesh (tips).

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

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

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

chicken innard projectile

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


and birds:


and view impressive feats of balancing:


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


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

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

the Egyptian masseuse

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





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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

Amsterdam, city of sex and bejeweled trash cans

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



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

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

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



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

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



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

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



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

It's TI-I-IME to PARTY!

Some things stay the same all the world over.

i missed you, Cali

I got back yesterday (Sunday) to California. JTR gave me a ride from the airport directly to Seth's housewarming. Standing in a circle in the yard next to Seth's grill:

Friend #1: How was your work project while you were in Egypt?

Me: I don't know yet. I haven't checked my work email.

Friend #1: Maybe your team finished your product while you were gone, and launched it already.

Me: Well, that would be the best-case scenario.

Friend #2: [overhearing] Maybe not. What if the product wasn't ready to be launched? You'd open the New York Times tomorrow and it would say, "Google releases mysterious crappy product".

Me: [offended] It's not crappy even if it got released early!

Friend #2: In this hypothetical scenario.

Me: Anyway, that's not the style of the Times. They wouldn't say that. They'd say, "Google releases product; universally hailed as mysterious and crappy".

Friend #1: But that still wouldn't be all bad, because a launch is an accomplishment regardless.

Friend #2: Come on, not every launch is something to be proud of. What if you had worked on Microsoft Bob?

Friend #1: That's fine. I'd write the tell-all book: "Why It Should've Been A Good Idea, and Screw You All".

Haggling: Egypt vs. Amsterdam

In the Cairo tourist market of Khan-el-khalili, shopkeepers call out to Mingjing and me:

"One dollar! Just one US dollar!"
"Come look! No cost for looking!"

When we ignore them, they step up the ante to more outlandish comments:

"Buy for your son!" (Do I look that old? sigh)
"Everything free!"
"Want Egyptian husband?"

I let Mingjing do most of the negotiation because she is much better at it. The Egyptians bargain with a smile. A typical conversation:

Shopkeeper: "This is beautiful crystal pyramid. For you, only 150 Egyptian pounds."

Mingjing: "I'll give you 35 pounds."

Shopkeeper: [laughing, drawing finger across throat] "Are you trying to cut my throat? Where you from?"

Mingjing: "China."

Shopkeeper: "Ah, chinese. I like your country. I want to make friend with you. Come on, you give me good price."

Five minutes later, after Mingjing buys the crystal pyramid for 35 pounds, the shopkeeper claps her on the back and tells us to enjoy the rest of our stay in Egypt. They seem genuinely interested in ensuring a positive tone to the negotiation. Several times after the money changes hands, they ask whether we're happy (probably after they overcharged us).

...

Contrast this to Amsterdam, where I'm on a two-day stopover. Yesterday I dropped into a souvenir shop near the Flower Market to buy postcard stamps. The shopkeeper pulled out five 65-cent stamps, and five additional stamps. "One euro each," he said.

"Isn't it 65 cents?" I said. "It says right there on the stamp."

"You need two stamps on each postcard."

"But I was just here two weeks ago, and I only needed one stamp. And I'm not sure, but I think it was cheaper than one euro for each postcard."

"There's been a change in stamps," he said.

I paused, and then said, "Thank you, but I changed my mind about the stamps." I put my wallet back into my purse.

I turned and walked toward the exit. After I took two steps, suddenly the shopkeeper shouted behind me, "You leave now!"

I swiveled back to stare at him. His white moustache quivered as he yelled. "We try to help you, but you suspect us! You go to post office! Get out of my shop! Go away!"

I don't remember walking, but my next memory is of standing in the street, looking at him through the open door. "You go now!" He shouted at me, raising his arm to point down the street.

on the edge

From Luxor to Aswan, we rode as part of a convoy of a dozen tour buses. It was a three-hour ride, and I passed the time by reading technical articles from areas of computer science that I find interesting.

Me: [looking up from reading] "I read half of this article three months ago. I picked it up today to finish it, and I realize I've already forgotten most of the first half!"

Dan: "What is it about?"

Me: "Silhouette edge detection and rendering."

Dan: "It's because these articles aren't written with conflict and drama. If they had character development and suspense, you'd remember."

Me: [staring] "How in the world would you write a technical article like that?"

Dan: "Easy. Let's do it right now. We'll both read the article, and then write a story."

So... I present to you:

Story #1: "Culling"

Warning: This story rated PG-13 for strong language and disturbing imagery.

- Hey, Joe745?
- Dammit, Bob236, this better not be one of your fucking philosophy questions.
- Joe745, you ever wonder what it would be like if we were backs?
- Jesus Christ, Bob236, can't we just get some fucking sleep in here for once?
- I'm serious! If we just had, you know, a few different edges, we'd be in there with those backface bleeders, all dark and swollen. You know I almost feel sorry for the poor edgers...
- What is with you, Bob? We're not silhou back shitballs, we're front fucking faces, and I'm fucking not talking with --
- OH SHIT
- ROTATION! ROTATION!
- MOVE IT! MOVE! GO GO GO GO GO GO

...

- Oh shit. Oh shit. Bob? Bob...?! Oh shit. Bob? It's Joe, I don't think... I don't even know my face number any more, Bob. It's black here, Bob, I've never seen a zero color like this. My voice is all weird and squeaky. What the fuck is going on? Bob236! Is that your number still? Where the hell are you, Bob? Oh shit.
- Hey, Jo. Calm down, Jo.
- AH! WHO THE FUCK... oh shit.
- Leave Jo alone, Betty. She'll get a clue soon enough.
- I'm sorry, miss, pardon my language. See, I figured I was the "Joe" you were speaking to, and... oh no. Oh no. You were talking about me after all, weren't you. Oh shit. Oh shit, this ain't the front, is it.
- No, Jo, it's not.
- Oh, shit.

---

Story #2: "At All Costs"

Sol knew the way things worked. Squeeze to the crowd's edge, extend his long limbs until one arm faced front while another tilted back, and then smile graciously when the framekeeper announces the chosen silhouette triangles, with his name topping the list. But something was wrong. The last two times his name was omitted. Two! Omissions didn't happen to him, not since he was seventeen hours old and figured out the system from eight hundred frames of experimenting with one awkward stance after another, twisting his head to scan the name list during each frame while the others lounged and joked.

'Did you hear?' Sol turned. It was Ram, his large cheeks parted in a smile. Even his voice sounded fat. Happy, but fat.

'No,' Sol sighed. 'What is it, just tell me.'

'There's a new system. They figure the list once, ahead of time, and don't change it. Little fixes every now and then, but mostly it stays the same.'

Sol froze halfway through Ram's words, but now he straightened to his full height, looking over the others' heads. There was a crowd in the southeast corner, and he strode off toward it, pushing the slower triangles out of his way.

The discussion in the corner went on for over two hours, but Sol kept to a strategy. He repeated the importance of experience. Like an infinite loop, he reiterated how one can only learn the duties of silhouette triangle by doing them.

It worked. At the end of the debate, Judge CPU chose Sol and nine other triangles amongst the dozens of applicants. Sol stared at the ceiling to mask his grin from the others, particularly the unchosen ones. He felt more energetic than he had in years.

'Now that we finally finished that little item,' Judge CPU said. 'Onto a more important matter. Listen up, because this is a new rule. We need to pick a dozen triangles as the LoD representatives. Most of the time, the rest of us won't even appear, and these guys will be the only ones showing.'

Sol stared at the judge in horror, who showed no signs of noticing.

'All right,' said Judge CPU. 'We'll decide this one by popular vote.'

photo of Egyptian temple

Ramses II built the temple Abu Simbel (wikipedia) ostensibly to honor the god Amun, but in reality to honor himself. Half the walls are carved with twenty-foot-tall scenes of him shooting three arrows from a bow while riding a chariot, him holding five enemies by their hair, him crushing the bodies of Hittites under his feet.

Me: "Ramses was probably an old man by the time he built this temple, and he's still depicting that one battle from his youth. I wonder if his subjects got tired of listening to him talking about it? Well, at least he's fair to his queen. Her statue out front is the same size as his."

Dan: "Which queen statue?"

Me: [pointing to the two seated statues to the right of the entrance]

Dan: "That's not the queen. That's the god Amun sitting to the right of Ramses. His queen is that tiny statue you see standing by his foot."

Me: "God damn it."

---

[Wikipedia claims all four depicted statues are of Ramses II, but my point still holds.]

lifestyles of the rich and pharaonic

For 1500 years, the pharaoh's main job was to lead the country in worship of the gods of air, love, mummification, and other important matters. The pharaoh was always drawn and sculpted with a lean body -- in Brian's words, the "19-year-old swimmer's build".





Then came Akhenaten, who insisted on his statues having enormous hips and thighs.





He also decided to disband the religion, and switch to a single god Aten. Aten is the sun god. Akhenaten changed his name to have "aten" in it, moved the capital of Egypt, and sent a band of workers around the country to scratch out the names of other gods. These workers scaled temple walls and 30-foot obelisks, carving out the denounced gods.

Akhenaten was pretty badass.

Unfortunately, after he died, the pissed-off former priests labeled him a heretic, and then formed their own coalition. This time the name scratched out by these migrant workers was Akhenaten's.

AFD (or: what are friends for)

In Egypt, driving laws are apparently just suggestions. My Cairo cab driver straddled two lanes on the highway. Other drivers did the same, effectively converting two lanes into three. Walking in the Friday market, I heard a round of honking and looked up. A van five feet away headed straight at me, a boy of ten in the driver seat, bouncing with the bumps in the road.

Yesterday as our group rode back to our hotel from the Luxor Museum:

Me: That van next to us is driving with its door open.

Dan: [glances over at white van driving 30mph with sliding door fully open and five Egyptian men inside] Yeah.

Me: The driver is probably a ten-year-old boy.

Dan: He's still better than you.

pharaoh's revenge

I read yesterday that if event A happens at the same time as event B, then your subconscious will link the two. If your dog collapses while you walk him under a willow tree, then future glimpses of willow branches will remind you of poor Fluffy's demise.

I fear that I will henceforth associate the majestic Saqqara step pyramid



with 1). trying to sell my Google stock at the start of the trading period, via a Sidekick hiptop running lynx (text-based browser) with a lag time of several seconds, and

2). stabbing stomach pains ("Mummy's Tummy" according to the guidebook). Julie warned me that the so-called bathroom near the pyramid is actually a trailer whose walls were covered in shit. After the stomach pains set in, I was very grateful for that bathroom.

even from the dark continent

An hour before group dinner in Cairo hotel.

Dan: [clicking away at Sidekick hiptop]

Me: Are you reading work emails again?

Dan: [glances at me and then back down] [smiling] Maybe.

Me: Why are you working from Egypt, during your vacation? None of the rest of us are.

Dan: [wordlessly clicking]

Me: [after some silence] Do you think Google does this to people? Where we work so much?

Dan: No. We do it to ourselves, at Google.

Me: Surely it's not normal to work like this.

Dan: It's also not normal to do amazing things.

Otto Frank

Yesterday I visited the House of Anne Frank, during my 9-hour stopover in Amsterdam en route to Cairo.



I expected to be moved. But it came as a surprise that the story which made me blink back tears was not that of Anne, but rather her father Otto.

Otto Frank ran a business selling jars of spices. He occasionally brought his daughters to his warehouse overlooking the canal. Anne didn't like the creepy dark of the warehouse, "Why spices?" she said. "If we're in the food business, might as well make something tasty like candy!"



In 1942, during the German occupation, a "work summon" came for Margot, Anne's older sister. Otto took his family into hiding two days later, in the attic annex above his warehouse. His henchman created a secret bookcase to hide the annex entrance stairs.

Otto continued to run the business from hiding, giving orders to his two assistants. He transferred the company to their name, but they consulted him every day on business decisions.

In 1944, two years into hiding, the Franks are betrayed. The Germans search the attic and confiscate the valuables, but leave Anne's journals scattered on the floor.

The Franks are sent to separate concentration camps. Margot dies in March 1945 of typhoid, one month before the liberation. Anne says, "I have no one left to me now," not knowing that her father is still alive. She dies a few days later.

Otto lives through the end of the war. He comes back to the warehouse, and learns that his wife is dead. He asks everyone if they have news of his daughters. He takes out an ad in the newspaper, week after week.

A couple of months go by. One day, Otto is sorting the day's mail with his assistant Miep. Suddenly he goes completely silent. Miep turns to look at him. He's very pale. He hands her a letter, "Read this."

It says, "I hereby notify you that Margot Frank and Anne Frank are dead. I was a nurse in camp XXX along with them."

Miep pushes back her chair and stands up. She opens the desk drawer and with both hands takes out a pile of bound journals and loose leaf papers.

"These are Anne's journals," Miep says. "This is the legacy of your daughter."

To nanowrimo or not to nanowrimo

JTR is participating in NaNoWriMo again this year, and encourages me to do the same.

NaNoWriMo grew to 59,000 participants last year. To use their own words,

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

I participated in the event three years ago. I had just joined Google, and every day after work, I went home and wrote my 1667 words. On November 26, 2003, I crossed the 50k-word mark, which made me a "NaNoWriMo winner".

Except that it was 50,000 words of drivel. I've since deleted the file from my computer, and hope to God no traces of it exist anywhere.

I can identify with the protagonist in this video. (In a display of irony, the quality of the video is also crap.)

Almost all the other NaNoWriMo excerpts I read online and at Bay Area readings were the same way, except JTR's novel which is condensed genius.

beautiful lies

Omar: I also heard Malcolm Gladwell speak at the New Yorker festival.



Me: I hate that guy!

Omar: [laughing] He was such an amazing storyteller. He had no slides, just him standing there talking, and the audience was spellbound.

Me: I have no doubt of it. His books are beautiful stories. They really work their way into your heart. But they're depressing and they're lies. For example, he says that 4% of the population is over six feet tall, but some large percentage of CEOs are, like 50%. He concludes that height leads to people thinking you're powerful, and hence success.

Omar: I remember this.

Me: It's really annoying for me, since I'm not as tall as you are, Omar. But there could be some third factor that leads to both! Maybe it's actually that rich families feed their kids well (so they grow up to be taller) and give them more education and connections (so they grow up to be CEOs). Maybe height isn't the cause at all.

Omar: Yeah, there's another part where he says that crime in New York City fell, and it was due to punishing small crimes like littering. But there are studies that have shown that wasn't the reason.

Me: In Freakonomics, they actually did regression tests on all the factors. They ran a scientifically controlled algorithm, and found that it wasn't the small crimes at all. It was by legalizing abortion.

Omar: Right.

Me: At least if Gladwell's books are uplifting, there would be some redeeming value. But they're not. He has another section on sexism, and how it's subconscious and pervasive. He doesn't motivate by saying, 'Hey, let's band together to fight and make a difference!' No, he ends on a note about how it's everywhere and there's nothing we can do because it's so deeply rooted.

Omar: The story of the female trombonist.

Me: His stories are so compelling that it's hard not to be influenced, and a lot of it is not even factual. I fall into all the unfortunate categories that he describes. I'm not six feet tall, I'm a woman, I'm not Caucasian. If I were to believe his books ...

Omar: You're fucked!

Me: His message is: "Well, you're boned. But thanks for buying my book!"

bathroom chess

Omar: I went to the New Yorker festival last weekend.

Me: Cool, how was it?

Omar: I heard Garry Kasparov speak. He doesn't play chess any more. Now he's in Russian politics. He told a story about a game between a Russian champion and a Bulgarian champion. The Russian champion went to the bathroom a ridiculous number of times. Then he won, and people think he was getting signals in the bathroom.

Me: But he's the Russian champion. Who would know better than him what move to make next? If he's getting tips from a better chess player, why isn't THAT person playing in the game instead?

Omar: Someone could be using a computer to narrow down the top choices, and then analyze each one. A human paired with a computer is unbeatable.

Me: Oh.

Omar: The champion sometimes has two directions that he could analyze, and he just needs a signal to tell him which direction to focus on. The judges take the game very seriously. While the champions are playing, they sit behind huge concrete blocks so that they can't see the audience. Even someone in the audience raising their hand could be a signal.

Me: Didn't his time run out while he was going to the bathroom?

Omar: He went during the other person's turn. Afterwards the Bulgarian team protested, so the judges made a change. Up until then, each team had its own separate bathroom, but for the next match, they only allowed one bathroom for both teams.

Me: But maybe he had an upset stomach, and that's why he went to the bathroom.

Omar: He went a ridiculous number of times, like forty times within a single match.

Me: Forty?!

Omar: They called it the "toilet chess match".

gothic hippie: "tie-dye with black fishnets"

My translated interview article is the current post on Google's China blog. This time they used a professional translator, who did a better job than I did on my two previous China blog posts.

I was very amused to see that this section:

One candidate came to an interview wearing a gothic mesh shirt with holes through which his nipples were clearly visible. He still got the job. (I don't recommend taking this risk.)

mysteriously became this in translation:

某个应聘者曾经穿着皱巴巴脏兮兮的T恤就跑来面试，他的T恤衫上还有着许多破洞。但最后他还是拿到了录取通知（当然我绝不建议如此穿着）。

One candidate came to an interview wearing a wrinkled and dirty T-shirt. His T-shirt even had ripped holes in it. He still got the job. (I don't recommend taking this risk.)

They turned the goth into a hippie!

2046

I finally finished the movie 2046.



The movie starts with Tony Leung pursuing the unattainable Zhang Ziyi.



He employs a combination of aggression and patience, to seduce her. She falls in love with him . She pleads with him to stay true to her, and he refuses. She cries. He brings another girl home. Zhang Ziyi moves out, but can't get over him.

Repeat with the seduction of Gong Li, considered for a decade the most beautiful actress in China.



Flashback to a repeat with the impossibly graceful Maggie Cheung.



My first reaction was, "WTF? Does this director not get laid enough in real life? Why is his movie living out the fantasy of seducing every famous Chinese actress?"

Then I read the wikipedia article. It claims Tony fell so hard for Maggie Cheung that everafter he looked for traces of her in other women. Seeing her traits in them drew him, but couldn't keep him, since his heart belonged still to Maggie.

That is a more generous theory.

The same director made a prequel where the main guy is a playboy who feels abandoned by his mother. He seduces two women and promptly breaks both their hearts.

I think the theme is a good one. Sometimes we're broken by events early in life, and then we keep looking for a repeat of that event so that we can re-live it and fix it this time around. Except we can't actually fix it, so it never quite works out.

with me

Lately it takes me a long time to stop thinking about work. I don't know whether other people switch off the work thoughts when they walk out the building, but it takes me hours.

Friday I carpooled with Dan to the Berkeley opera "King Arthur" (which had nothing to do with King Arthur). Dan was curt in his responses. There was little emotion displayed, just words chosen for maximal efficiency.

"What's wrong?" I kept asking. "Are you tired? Distracted? Did you fall in love with someone?"

"No," he said.

Finally I asked, "Are you in work mode?"

This prompted a long pause as he deliberated. Finally he concluded that yes, it was work mode.

I felt somewhat vindicated. At least Dan has the same issue that I do.

un-figlet

Eating a midnight dinner at Zuni with Dan and Charles.

Me: Today is Mid-Autumn Festival, the day of the year when the moon is at its roundest. You're supposed to spend it with family. It's the chinese version of Thanksgiving.



Dan: Yes, I was impressed by the moon tonight. It was very round.

Me: Are you sure it wasn't a shark?

...

Me: [to Charles] Dan was two years ahead of me at Caltech, and I participated in his Ditch Day stack.

Charles: What's that?

Dan: It's an annual tradition where seniors construct elaborate puzzle hunts. My stack's premise was that an AI was loose in the system. It communicated with you via light bulbs scattered around campus, that flashed in morse code. There was always a switch next to the light bulb, that you tap with morse code. I put a light bulb in the steam tunnel. I even had a fridge where you open the door, and the fridge light flashed morse code.

Me: In preparation for Ditch Day, seniors hid their preparation materials behind sheets that they marked "Seniors Only". Months before the event, Dan strung a 50-foot cable across the entire Dabney House courtyard. (Imagine a black cable strung across this courtyard):



with an Atari joystick hanging from it, eight feet in the air.



Charles: What was the joystick for?

Me: Nothing. It wasn't used in his Ditch Day stack at all. He put it there for months, just to build hype.

...

Dan: On the day before Ditch Day, we stayed up all night coding. Seniors had to get off campus by eight a.m., or they'd get duct-taped to a tree. [mimes rapidly encircling a tree with tape] At 7:30am, the code was still hitting asserts everywhere.

Me: [breathless]

Dan: So we said, "Crap. Re-compile without asserts."

Me: [laughing] That's your solution?

Dan: We rebuilt the thing without asserts. We ran it, and the intro segfaulted. So we skipped the intro, and went right to the first puzzle. The program worked perfectly the rest of the day.

Me: Awesome.

---

The evening reminded me of my favorite story involving Dan. In college, we liked to use the unix utility "figlet" to make ascii art. For example:

> figlet "hello world"
 _          _ _                            _     _
| |__   ___| | | ___   __      _____  _ __| | __| |
| '_ \ / _ \ | |/ _ \  \ \ /\ / / _ \| '__| |/ _` |
| | | |  __/ | | (_) |  \ V  V / (_) | |  | | (_| |
|_| |_|\___|_|_|\___/    \_/\_/ \___/|_|  |_|\__,_|

In our college online chat, we discussed how one would write "un-figlet". The idea is that it would take ascii art input and extract the original words. The challenge is that letters overlap (witness the "e" and "l" in the example above), and it would have to handle the multiple fonts that figlet supports.

Twenty minutes into the conversation, Dan announced that he had written un-figlet while we were talking. We were shocked at the speed, but figured, hey, it's Dan.

"The algorithm is really slow though," he said. "You might have to wait up to a couple minutes."

We ran queries against it. Indeed it took at least a minute, sometimes two or three, but it always generated the correct answer. We were amazed. We lauded Dan for his impressive performance.

The next morning, our friend ran it again, and this time it hung for hours.

When Dan came online, we told him that his program broke. He confessed how his "un-figlet" worked. It emailed the input ascii art to him. He looked at it, and wrote the answer to a file which un-figlet polled. When un-figlet detected content in the file, it would print it out to the user's screen.

Gross-Off Battle

You may recall Alipé and my Gross-Off battle from July. Alipé asked for a recount, so I am expanding the vote to all of you, gentle readers.

Niniane's Story

I had a friend Jeff, whose dad is a paramedic. One day, I asked Jeff about the most disgusting case his dad saw.

A little old lady was shopping in a supermarket, and wanted a jar off the top shelf. It sat above her reach, and there was no stool in sight. She stepped onto the bottom shelf and reached her hand up as far as she could.



Even standing on the bottom shelf, she was barely tall enough to reach the top shelf. She fumbled with her arm fully extended, and her finger got caught in the hollow metal junction of the shelf edge.

She struggled to free her finger. In the ensuing kicking, she fell off the bottom shelf.

Her finger was still firmly wedged in the metal hollow. The shelf tore off the end of her finger and then pulled out a vein all the way from her elbow out through her finger.

When the paramedics arrived, the vein stretched from the shelf to the tip of her finger, as she stood on the ground.

---

Alipé's Story

Alipé: "I went to the Folsom Street Festival last year. This is a fetish fair, so you'll see a bunch of gay men dressed in leather. They like to wear assless leather chaps."



Cue: "'They'? Why are you talking about yourself in the third person?"

Alipé: [ignoring] "There were bondage fetishists and S&M fetishists. Some people had paddles, and you could pay them and then hit them with the paddle. [mimes swinging a paddle]"

Cue: "So how much money did you spend that day?"

Alipé: "I was walking, and I heard the sound of dogs barking. [mimes bark] Woof! There was a huge circle of people gathered on the corner, watching.

I walked over, and in the middle of the circle was a naked woman. She had upended two nearby garbage cans onto herself. [mimes dumping a heavy cylinder onto his body] There were scraps of rotting food, dirty dishwater from restaurants ... It reeked!

She was covered in the garbage, and the smell was causing her to vomit. The sound of barking was actually her retching. [mimes retching]

She was vomiting onto her own body, and using her hands to spread the vomit over herself. The smell was so awful that it caused her to retch even more -- a perpetual cycle of vomiting."

---

Which story is more disgusting?

Niniane's veiny woman
Alipé's vomiting fetishist

(Alipé, don't yield to the temptation of voting for yourself more than once to fake a victory. You don't want to turn this slander into truth.)

crush

Yesterday I searched for a chinese song "是否我真的一无所有" ("Do I truly have nothing left to me"), and the top youtube result was a rendition by a singer named 王啸坤. Turns out he was a contestant in a singing competition, the Chinese version of "American Idol".

By the end of the two-minute song, I had a crush. He sings with such emotion!

But don't just take my word for it.



I raved to Elad, who said, "You should email him. Hey, you never know."

"That's preposterous," I said.

Then I thought some more. "Instead I should contribute to Google China, and persuade them in return to hire him as the entertainer for one of their parties."

Today I googled for 王啸坤 and discovered that he's only 19 years old. Almost illegal. I felt dirty.

What makes us attracted to celebrities? My theory is that we develop an emotional closeness from seeing them in intimate situations: singing their heart out, crying in a movie scene, getting it on in a bedroom scene. We start to feel the bond from seeing them naked, emotionally (and perhaps physically). Then suddenly the movie credits roll, or the last chords of the song die out, and we are abruptly cut off.

It's the ultimate push-pull rubber band effect.

"Who do you think is the most popular celebrity right now?" I asked Dan. "I wonder if it's Paris Hilton or Britney Spears. Or Angelina Jolie."

We used Google Trends to find out. Way to go, Paris.

She doesn't fit my theory though. She hasn't starred in movies. Her music videos only came out recently, long after her fame stretched across the land. Any emotional connection generated by that sex tape can't have lasted for two years.

How do you do it, Paris?

my brother's views on female beauty

Tom: I chatted up a girl last week.

Me: How'd you meet her?

Tom: At a Stanford party. She seems really smart.

Me: Cool. Is she cute?

Tom: Her body is good. I can't remember about the face.

Me: How could you not remember? What were you doing?

Tom: Looking at the body.

---

Me: Tom Cruise's baby is really good-looking.

Tom: Oh really? [types at laptop, peers for a few seconds] ... Yeah, she is.

Me: Seriously!

Tom: That's weird, because Kate Hudson isn't that good-looking.

Me: Good thing his wife is Katie Holmes.

Tom: [smiling for a few seconds] ... You never know.

Me: [startled] Yeah, I guess. [pause] So do you think Katie Holmes is pretty? I guess she has that girl-next-door look.

Tom: Girl-next-door isn't a good connotation for us. 'Cause in Silicon Valley, the girl next door isn't going to be that good.

blogging about blog

My recent switch to blogger beta and construction of a "favorite posts" list caused a number of old entries to resurface in RSS feeds.

Dan emailed me about "Sex in Church", asking "Which coworker is so angry that he walked away for a few days???"

That was from 2004, on Desktop Search. (For more Desktop lore, go here).

While I'm narcissistically talking about my own blog, I have a burning question. I get dozens of hits from China. I thought blogspot was banned in China? Are all these readers coming through VPN? If you are reading this from China, give a shout-out in the comments and tell me how you're getting past the firewall.

pleasant little moments

"Fearless" at the theatre down the street. Darryl asked Joby to buy him a huge bag of popcorn. For the next 1.5 hours, I heard a steady munch-munch sound coming from my right.

Me: [turning to Darryl near movie ending] Did you eat that entire bag?

Darryl: [cheerfully] Not yet. I'm working on it.

The movie finishes with one of the characters gasping out a death scene. Then we see him dancing in a meadow, his body bathed in a white glow. He frolicks with loved ones from his life, who also emit halo glows.

Me: Argh, he promised he'd return to visit that farm girl! And he never did!

Darryl: [cheerfully] He did it after he died.

...

Minutes later, walking out of the theatre.

Joby: Some of those subtitles were not very good. Like one of the last fight scenes. In Chinese he said a very poetic line, "Now that I am already standing on this podium, I need to continue." The subtitles were like, "We gotta finish."

...

Tea at Verde Cafe.

Joby: Princeton held a contest to see who could write the fastest hash table. All these people spent hours hand-tweaking assembly code. The fastest entry ran in negative 0.2 seconds. Turned out he coded a naive hash table implementation, and then did a buffer overflow to gain OS control and set the system clock back.

Me: That's awesome. I have a story about hacking a contest. I won't tell you the name, because it would be too embarrassing for that person. So, my acquaintance entered an online contest that pitted his entry against other entries. The entry that received the most votes via user clicks would become the victor. As the contest continued, he started losing, so he wrote a clickbot. Then another contestant wrote a better clickbot that generated three times as many clicks. So he complained to the contest organizer and got the other person disqualified.

Joby: And he won?

Me: Yeah. Not only did he cheat, he had an inferior cheating script. And then he tattled, and took the victory unfairly.

Joby: So this was Alipé then?

(Poor Alipé. Please don't cough up blood again, upon reading this.)

...

Sitting on a bench outside, 1 AM.

Darryl: We need to go, because I desperately need to use the restroom.

Qing: [while walking to the car] Don't explode, Darryl. Otherwise Niniane will have another intern bathroom story.

Me: [remembering an intern who was so cautious that he asked for permission to go to the bathroom] ... Yeah, I had a high school intern years ago on Flight Simulator, who was really really nervous --

Darryl: Did he wet himself?

two-week experiment

Joby came into work and told us how Megan had him run a mile at his fastest pace. He was out of breath afterwards, but he did a 7-minute mile!

I was very impressed. Later that day, as I was warming up on the treadmill, I asked Megan if I could do the exercise too.

"Are you sure?" she asked.

I stupidly opened my mouth and uttered these words of naiveté , "Yeah, it'll be fun."

Two minutes later, at a 8mph pace, my breath came in clouds and I felt my throat constricting. We slowed to 7.2mph. Another two minutes later, I felt my stomach turn.

I knew I needed to stop before I vomited all over the treadmill. My finger hovered over the red "emergency stop" button, but I decided that using the emergency stop is more pathetic than going ahead and vomiting. I used the regular "slow" and "stop" buttons to cool down the treadmill, over Megan's protests.

Then I insisted on going over to the couch and sitting down with my head tilted back onto the headrest.

Another person might find this humiliating, at 5:40pm in front of a whole gym of coworkers and acquaintances. Luckily I maxed out on exercise-related embarrassment in elementary school.

The rest of the workout was tempered by pauses, as I became lightheaded at easy dumbbell lift exercises.

"Niniane, you can't take shortcuts," Megan said. She gestured to the weight machine and around the gym. "This doesn't come easy."

So I decided, fuck it. I am going to do a two-week trial of proper exercise and following Megan's nutrition advice.

I committed to doing cardio three times a week (in addition to seeing Megan twice for strength training), and eating three meals and two snacks of protein and vegetables and NO DESSERTS. Technically Megan said I can eat a "dessert" per day of sugar-free jello, but I rejected that travesty.

I went back to my desk and threw away the pizza, chicken salad, and pear tart I saved from lunch. Instead I ate swordfish and broccoli, which turned out to be surprisingly good.

My biggest concern is that I'm supposed to eat even if I'm not hungry. This goes against my eating philosophy to no end. But it's only a 14-day experiment.

love is a verb, not a noun

Over breakfast of pecan pancakes with Min.

Min: You should be more accepting of your parents. This is who they are.

Me: I'm not sure that I want that. My dad calls my mom stupid in every conversation. I don't think I want to change into someone who doesn't care when that happens. I'm a passionate person. If I stop caring when someone calls my mom stupid, what other parts of myself will I lose?

Min: He actually says that she's stupid?

Me: Many times a day. He drops it casually. "Your mom over-estimates her abilities." "Three of us in our family can compute the tip, but your mom can't." It's ridiculous, because she's very smart. My mom badmouths my dad too, but more subtly. "Your dad is a good person, but his temper is unbearable. The biggest mistake of my life was marrying him."

Min: You're focusing on the negative. Look at the positives. They've done so much for you.

Me: I know, and I feel like a horrible person. But this bothers me in a way that nothing else does. I can't deal with it the way a normal functioning adult can, because it started when I was eight. I have the same enormous emotional reaction that I did when I was a kid.

Min: But they still love each other, right?

Me: Yes, deep down they do.

Min: So what does it matter then?

Me: Because love is a verb, not a state of being. You of all people showed me that. You told me how much it meant to you that based on an idle comment, Joe came home and packed lunch for you. Love is in how you speak to the other person with respect, how you accomodate them and help them out. You don't get to just say you love someone and then treat them like shit and get away with it.

Min: They're still your parents.

Me: If you started telling me every day how my mother is stupid, I would cut you out of my life right away. It's not acceptable. Why should it be any different for my parents?

orkut's best party yet

Getting ready for White Party. Sara with Karey, who insisted on sleeping instead of coming out with us.



coquettish:



Poster for the party, on the entrance door. Orkut and Derek spent three hours doing this photo shoot.



Decor.



Candles + mirror = art.



One of the most pragmatic couples I know. Omar and I had an insightful conversation about life and pressures.



Sara, me, Christina.



This is what happens when people know you have an ab fetish. Instead of saying hello, they just walk up to you and lift their shirt. (I ain't complaining.)



Let's encourage that some more. You know why this pic is here.



A girl doing a shot from the ice sculpture. There's a model who pours vodka into the top, and you suck it out the ice sculpture's you-know-what:



Me with my personal trainer. I felt obliged to give her a workout report. "I walked a mile every day in New York to and from the Google office!"



Another great couple. I ask Nikhil when he's getting married, and his stock answer is, "We're not getting married until gays can get married!" Awesome.



Scene from the loft area:



Pics of the girls.





Manu got this shirt made, expressly for the party. The apartment is called Studio 767.



With the host. Orkut, showing us what it means to throw a party in style.

how expedia.com nearly screwed me

I left the Met in the middle of the Impressionism tour to cab it to JFK Airport.

Expedia booked my return flight to San Fran on Alaska Airlines. When I arrived at the airport, there were signs for the airlines at each of the nine terminals, but none listed Alaska.

The cabbie stopped at Terminal 1, the closest terminal. I leaned out the window and asked a tall security guard standing on the curb, "Which terminal is Alaska Airlines?"

He pulled out a booklet and scanned it. "It's not in my book." Pause. "I think it's terminal 4."

He stepped back to the door and asked an older guard. "Alaska. Terminal 4?" The older guard nodded authoritatively.

So I had the cab drop me at Terminal 4. I walked the entire terminal and didn't see a desk for Alaska. But my Expedia ticket says clearly:

Sat 23-Sep-06
From New York (JFK) 3:50 PM
To San Francisco (SFO) 7:30 PM

Alaska Airlines, Flight: 6032

I asked another guard, "Where's Alaska?"

"Walk down to aisle 6," he said, pointing.

I walked there. Aisle 6 is EgyptAir. I asked a EgyptAir rep, who announced that it's in terminal 8, but by now I realized they were all full of crap.

I called 411 on my cell and connected to Alaska's 800 number. On hold, then finally connected to a rep.

"We don't fly out of JFK airport," the rep said.

Fucking Expedia.

The rep took my name and informed me that my flight is actually on Delta Airlines. Delta is in terminal 3. AirTrain to terminal 3.

When I walked up to the line of Delta check-in counters, it was less than 30 minutes before my flight departure. I scanned the counters. The only one open was a middle-aged woman with an oversized nose.

It was with a heavy heart that I walked up to the counter. The rep continued to look away from me. "Excuse me," I said. After fifteen seconds, she turned to me. "Yes?"

I explained in a rush that I needed to check in.

"Flight?" she asks.

"6032."

"We don't have that one," she said immediately.

"Alaska said you did and that I was on it..."

She clacked at the keyboard without speaking, for a few seconds. "They already closed the gate."

I pleaded. I explained how expedia.com screwed me. My words tumbled out in a passionate jumble.

"I'll call the gate," she said. She picked up the phone. "Hello hon, this is Mary at the counter. How you doing? Yeah? That's good. Listen, I have this passenger here, seat 32F. ... Uh huh. No bags to check. ... Yeah, I'm willing to walk her through security."

At the last sentence, my heart did a dance, and I thanked her once out loud and many more times silently. She could easily have not offered the extra step of helping me bypass the security line. She could've stopped, and told me the gate was indeed closed.

Thank you Delta representative!

So it was that I became the last person to get on my Delta flight.

down-to-earth glamour girl

Dinner with Ming on Wednesday. The last time I saw her was in NYC one year ago, and she is as luminous as ever.



Ming wore a fluttery white top that looked like wings. At some moments during dinner, when she talked about translating for her parents (who live in Chinatown and don't speak English), I got the weird sense that I was talking to an angel. Or an anime princess.

She graduated a couple years ago from the Fashion Institute of Technology, and is designing her own jewelry. She told me how hard it is to get attention from buyers. It seems they're inundated with budding designers trying to break into the industry.

"You work at a design firm!" I said. "Don't you form relationships with the buyers?"

"No, the salespeople do. They just bring me in to ask questions about my designs, and then I leave the room."

"But you're also a model! Surely you must meet fashion industry people during your shoots."

"Those aren't the buyers."

"Oh. That's tough then."

"But it's good to have something to aim for. If you have no challenges that you're working toward, then life loses some meaning."

...

She's lived in Brooklyn since she was eleven. I love that this Chinese fashion-industry glamour-girl will interject Mandarin conversation with Brooklyn slang. Talking about relationships over hot chocolate, at a post-dinner cafe:

Ming: "(in Mandarin) He thinks the woman should clean up after the man. I was like, (in english) Oh no you DIDN'T! What?! HELL no!"

I laughed so hard that people around us in the cafe turned to look at me.

...

While we were in line for the restroom:

Ming: "I was a tomboy growing up. (in Mandarin) When I was in grade school, the other little girls would come to me when a boy stole their things. Then I'd go over to him, (in english) 'Are you messin' with my girl?' I'd shove them and fight them."

Me: Did you win the fights?

Her: Naturally.

stories from the Met, part 1

Rubens married his second wife when he was 53. She was 16.

What a mack daddy.

Here they are with their fourth kid. They had five children together over ten years. The fifth child was born eight months after his death. As the tour docent put it, the two of them were "happy until the end".

He painted this portrait to honor his wife in every detail: the lighting, how perspective culminates at her face. I wonder how she felt living the second half of her life (26 through 53) without him.

...



Venus, goddess of love, is playing with her son Cupid. He shoots a golden arrow, which grazes her elbow. The arrow is magic, so now she's destined to fall in love with the next person she sees.

She looks down to earth, and sees Adonis. She falls head over heels for him. Flies to earth, seduces him. They spend some quality time together.

But he's young, and obsessed with hunting. One morning, he wakes up and decides it's time to HUNT! Here we see her pleading with him to stay in bed with her. He refuses.

She takes her chariot back to heaven (to get another change of clothes, take a shower in her own heavenly bathroom, etc). Through a break in the clouds, she spots Adonis getting killed by a wild boar.

Doh.

Why, I wonder, didn't she just get Cupid to shoot Adonis with a golden arrow too? Then he'd be whipped, and wouldn't have left her for a stupid hunt.

But I guess she doesn't want to win his love through a manipulative love arrow. She wants to get it through manipulative feminine wiles.

I understand.

they have strength in numbers

Walking across the street to lunch a couple weeks ago.

Me: [mentioning Dan, a fellow alumnus from Caltech]

Finn: You Caltechies.

Me: Techers. We call ourselves Techers. What about Stanfordites?

Finn: It's not 'Stanfordites'. [turning to Joby] Hey, you're from Stanford. What do Stanford students call themselves after they graduate?

Me: They call themselves Googlers.