Old Pics

I was looking through pictures a few days ago and thought I'd post some here. (Warning: lots of pictures, may load very slowly)

*Mom and Dad*

My dad's graduation picture


Dad and his homies when he was about my age


My mom in high school.


Mom when she was about my age


Mom and Dad on Engagement Day


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*Me*

Me in diapers


Me in a girly outfit in a stroller


Studio picture - check out those rolls


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*Me and my sis*

Just chillin


Man was she one ugly baby


Doing math - notice me looking all cocky, I was born to multiply baby


I love this picture, cracks me up every time


Brother and sister picture in the studio


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*Modern Day*

Dad in his current office


Family minus me last Christmas


Me and Sis in college


9/12ths of the Dudo League in college (if you count "Rod")


Me and my favorite P_ongbunkors in college

Happy birthday to my sister. I can't believe my little sis is all grown up now - graduating college, turning 22, and soon to become a career woman.

Congrats to everyone else who graduated recently. Welcome to post-college life, it's awesome.

Happy anniversary to Olivia (actually a few days ago). It really feels like 3 years went by in the blink of an eye.

I think I am the guy in the School Spirit track (14) on Kanye West's CD:

"When a lady walks up to me and says 'hey, you know what's sexy?' I say 'No I don't know what it is, but I bet I can add up all the change in your purse, very fast.'"

When I heard that, I was like hey, that's me! Might as well be me talking right there. Yeah, you all wonder how someone can grow up in this country without ever seeing a single one of the movies I listed, but you know what the reason for that is? A four-letter word: Math.

Yes, while everyone else was watching all those movies, I was doing math. Parties in high school? I was doing math. Lose Yourself video? I was doing math.

That's ok, I'm not bitter or anything. Math is cool. It's just a part of what I like to call "growing up Chinese".

Here's some more movies to add to my list:

- National Lampoon's (anything)
- Sixth Sense
- Friday (except scattered parts of it)
- Police Academy (any of them)
- Beverly Hills Cop
- Reservoir Dogs
- Green Mile
- L.A. Confidential
- Goonies
- Men In Black

The NBA playoffs suck, except maybe for Kevin Garnett.

What would you rather have pre-flop: Q-Q or A-K suited?

As I signed on to post this, Blogger invited me to try Gmail because I am an "active user" of Blogger. I don't know how it works, I remember a few weeks ago I got the same invite, but I figured I'd just do it later. Then it disappeared, and then I heard that the invite was some exclusive thing and people were actually selling it on eBay for money. So I was pissed for missing my chance. Anyways, I guess all is good now that I got invited again and I finally got my Gmail account. I don't think they're giving me the opportunity to invite other people now though, so I can't be making any cash off it on eBay. Oh well.

I just saw a commercial on TV (I think by Michigan's tourism agency Michigan.org that showed a couple walking on the beach at sunset, with the caption: "Suddenly, yard work doesn't seem as important anymore". What a terrible ad, I was filled with rage to see how ignorant people can be, dissing my beloved hobby of yard work.

Finally, I saw Last Samurai as a rental. I thought it was a pretty good movie, not awesome though. A lot of parts of the story were not very realistic, and some scenes were flat out corny at times, but you know what, since the last movie I saw was Van Helsing, no amount of corniness can compare. In my opinion, the best thing about the movie was the scenery and the battle scenes, especially the ninjas vs. samurai.

Also, I didn't really see the movie as being "condescending" or "racist" against Asians as I've heard. I can see how some people could get mad about certain things, but that's only if you're looking for stuff to get mad about. I mean, if it were up to me, every movie would portray the yellow man as more complete, 3-dimensional characters. I don't expect every Asian in every movie to be shown in a positive light, but at least put some thought into developing the characters is what I ask. Anyways, while the makers of Last Samurai could have done a lot better in terms of promoting racial awareness and understanding, I don't think this movie was that bad enough for people to call it "racist". There are definitely bigger fish for you Asian American activists out there to fry.

It seems like at least once a week, people will be talking about old movies when I'll say "I've never seen that movie", which leads to me getting some looks of disbelief. This leads me to conclude that there's a lot of supposedly good movies that I haven't seen. So I've decided to keep a running list of titles that fit into this category here. Here's what I have so far:

- Godfather (any of them)
- Field of Dreams
- The Natural
- Major League (I think there's more than one, I haven't seen any)
- Top Gun
- Desperado
- Romeo & Juliet
- Apollo 13
- The Wedding Singer
- Seven
- Die Hard (any of them)
- Caddyshack
- Freaky Friday

Also, happy bday to Rich. And belated to Paul (sorry I missed your bashes).

Some Pictures

Me and Grandma Chen on Mother's Day. She's not looking at the camera because she's pretty much blind.


My new 2-monitor setup in my room. Starcraft on one screen, baseball scoreboard on the other. Doesn't get much better than that.


Apprentice Bill Rancic at the Sox game. I was a fan of him before I saw him run out to the mound and throw out the first pitch. The guy runs and throws like a girl.


White Sox 15, Orioles 0. Thanks to Dennis, free tickets, free parking, awesome weather, 3 brats and 2 beers... life is good.


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Also, happy birthday to Vira.

Lawn Care

My current passion is taking care of my lawn at the Darien house. It's pretty much eaten up the past couple weekends for me (or at least Saturday/Sunday afternoons) as well as some weekday evenings, but actually I don't seem to mind spending so much time working on it.

More than one person has asked me - "why don't you guys just pay someone to do it?" Well, first of all, why pay someone to do something you can do yourself? But more importantly, I'm thinking that if you put your own time and energy into working on your own lawn, it will be more rewarding in the end to see results. At least that's the hope.

See, I used to just be responsible for mowing the lawn. There's not much to mowing the lawn, except pushing a loud vibrating machine around and trying not to cut crooked patterns where it looks too ugly. Even though I never hated doing it, it was still basically a chore. Now that I take responsibility for the whole process, I'm finding that yard work can actually be kind of fun.

I know that makes me sound like a loser, but seriously, I'm finding myself actually looking forward to spending more time on yard work. It's like a sort of escape from the rest of my week. For a few hours, I don't have to deal with anyone else, I don't have to think about anything other than the grass in front of me. I don't have to worry about whether or not I have the skills or knowledge to do what I'm doing, because I know that lawn care is something you probably don't even need to finish high school to do. And maybe the best thing is, I'm not spending all my time sitting in front of a computer, or watching TV, I'm outside enjoying the sunny weather like human beings were meant to.

The main challenge so far has been trying to patch up some bald spots in the front yard where the grass died last year. The guy at Home Depot recommended this bag of stuff which has a mix of fertilizer, compost, and seeds which you use to cover up the spot and water it until it grows. According to the bag, there should be some signs of growth within 7-14 days. So far, it's been 9 days, but I don't see anything yet, so if nothing's shown up by this weekend, I will be one unhappy mofo.

The next task ahead will be to kill the weeds and spread some fertilizer. Fertilizing is cool. Maybe I shall trim the edges too.

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- Speaking of Home Depot, about a year ago I added them to my blacklist after they didn't put Wet Paint signs on their ground posts and I permanently stained my favorite pants by leaning on one of the posts. Well, I think now I need to back off a little from my original rage, because lately I have found that the people working there are so very helpful and friendly. At least the one in Darien is good. Maybe I'll still hang on to my bitterness against the Palatine Home Depot for now and see where that takes me.

- The other day, I filled up my car with my normal gas and the total came to more than $40. I don't know if this is a record for me, but I don't remember ever paying $40 for a tank of gas. I guess even when the news was all reporting about high gas prices, I still never gave it much thought. But $40 caught my attention, it seems like a lot to pay for one fillup especially since I'm not driving a huge SUV or anything. Although the 17-18 gallons my car holds is probably bigger than your normal 4-door sedan's tank. Still.... $40? I thought we were gonna rob those Iraqis blind of their oil, what happened to that master plan?

- Latest voice in my head: "This bores me... Would any of you like to play a game of basketball?" - Prince (played by Dave Chappelle)