Potpurri
- Ross: "It's ok, Monica's gonna make POTPURRI"

- My sister is thinking about getting a dog. I think she wants one like the kind Jessica Simpson wanted in that one episode of Newlyweds (Maltese?).

- I was thinking about how some people (girls) criticize others (guys) who are only attracted to those based on physical appearance. But when any of us visit to a pet store, do we pick the ones who we think are the most "loyal" or have the best "personality"? Admit it, you go for the ones who are cutest. And how is that any different from when guys are naturally drawn to the girls with pretty faces/hot bodies? Yeah, people are different from animals, but still. Does an ugly puppy or kitty deserve less attention or love than a cute puppy/kitty, in the same way ugly people get less attention and love in this world? I'm not going to say yes or no to that question, since I know it's there's more to it than yes or no. All I'm saying is, I think a lot of you people who say "Guys are shallow because they care so much about looks" might be guilty of the same shallowness, only in another way.

- Jessica Simpson might have exploded in popularity and exposure thanks to her show, but it's also made it that much harder to take anything she does seriously. When I hear any of her songs on the radio, all I can think about is her talking about "dropping the kids off at the pool", or picturing her trying to do laundry. It was especially weird recently to hear her remake of "Angels", a song I actually liked back in the day. With that said, they better release some "Newlyweds" seasons on DVD soon. I think that might be the one show I actually miss the most since we cancelled our cable a few months ago. Such quality entertainment.

- It's that time again: fantasy football season is approaching. In case anyone out there is planning any events that might involve me, don't choose Sunday, 8/29. That is this year's Mcnown League draft date. Mark it down on your calendars now!

- I'm sure everyone heard about Mike Ditka being considered to take Jack Ryan's place in the Senate race as the Republican candidate. I don't know what I think about that, but one thing I found very interesting was that the whole reason Jack Ryan had to quit was because his ex-wife released embarrassing information about his past. Well, that's not the interesting part, the interesting part is that I heard his ex-wife was Jeri Ryan. The actress who used to play some hot alien chick on Star Trek, and was also a teacher on Boston Public. Not that I was a fan of hers or anything, but still interesting.

- The letters in SKABERFAT can be rearranged to form the word BREAKFAST. No I didn't come up with that myself, I see that on a cereal box every morning. Not even my own cereal box, I keep seeing it one of my roommates' boxes of Cocoa Puffs as I go to put back my own box of Cheerios. Just thought I'd share that fact because I keep thinking about it for some reason.

- Sometimes I feel like the longer I work here as an electrical engineer, the more I start to lose touch with the other parts of life. One way it is definitely affecting me is in language - the way I interpret certain words and phrases these days makes me realize how much of a loser nerd I'm becoming.

For example, "coax" used to be a verb pronounced COKES, like a synonym for "persuade" or "cajole". Now when I see the word, I hear it pronounced in my head as "co-Ax", as in the type of cable. Also, normal people hear the word "puff" and think of things like cocoa puffs, cream puffs, Puff Daddy, etc. Enginerds like me think of puff as the abbreviation for picofarad (pF, unit of capacitance). Same with "mic" as the abbreviation for microfarad. So when I hear Nas rapping about "all I need is one mic", I picture him talking to one of the techs in our lab, asking for a 1.0uF Tantalum capacitor. Then when I hear Nelly's song "E.I.", I think about Ei, sometimes used as the symbol for input voltage. Pretty sad.

- If it's not enginerd stuff, it's sports stuff. When I read or watch regular news, I forget that UK refers "United Kingdom", not "University of Kensucky". Or that "colon" is a kind of cancer, pronounced like COLE-on, nothing to do with fat greasy pitchers and not pronounced co-LONE.

Master P

This blog is dedicated to one of my best friends of the past 7-8 years or so, the one and only Piya P. (Last name withheld for privacy sake but it rhymes with "dunker", for those who know more than one Piya P.) He recently moved away from the fine state of Illinois to the land of cheese (Wisconsin), so I figured this would be a good time to write about my boy. I think he won't be getting internet access for another week, so he won't be reading this immediately, but that's ok. I'm writing this more for myself and everyone else who knows and loves him.

My first memory of Piya came in sophomore year of high school (DGS), when we were in the same gym class. It was the first day of our swimming unit, and as we were leaving the locker room to go to the pool with the rest of the class he stopped me and asked "hey, are you good at swimming?" I said no, and he replied "ok good, cause I don't really know how to swim". So that was our first bonding moment, based on our mutual lack of swimming skills. It might seem stupid, but in high school, you don't want to be the only kid who gets put in the "beginner's group" for anything, especially in gym.

The next thing I remember about P was junior year English class with Mrs. David, when I sat in the seat in front of him. Every single day for that entire year, the first thing he said to me when I walked in was "did you see Simpsons last night?" For those of you who don't know Piya, he is probably the biggest fan of the Simpsons that you will ever meet. I know some of you think that you're the biggest fan, but you're not. He is. Actually, now that I think of it, I think he signed my yearbook back then with a drawing of Homer's head. Haha.

Senior year of high school brought more common threads to our budding relationship, in addition to the ones I already mentioned (sucking at swimming and talking about Simpsons). Being both top AP students, we had around 4 or 5 classes together, and we were also both on Math Team. In other words, we were brought closer due to being huge nerds. Throughout the year, there were plenty of memories, but among the highlights were:

1) AP Physics, sitting behind Garza and Kuettler (better known as Audit Boy) and watching the fun unfold

2) English with Mr. Connaughton teaching Moby Dick, George of all people becoming teacher's pet, field trip to the Art Institute, and of course, Gina trying to hit on Piya the whole year

Anyways, despite the fun times in high school, it wasn't until college that the real fun started. There's no way I could list everything me and P went through together in those 4 years, and I don't even know where to start. One big thing was, since we were the same major, we had so many classes together. I think for at least one or two semesters we had the exact same schedule. Which meant:

- Holding each other accountable for going to class
- Using each other as an excuse for skipping class (he had to fill me in on lectures more than the other way around)
- Skipping class together to shoot pool or craft
- Many nights studying together at Grainger for the same exams
- Copying Vas's homework from last semester (thanks Vas, mad props)
- Making fun of our professors and TA's

When we weren't doing anything school related it was a lot of video games:

- Playing Starcraft while watching TRL (and many other situations)
- In NFL Blitz, me trying to get green on all the categories against him, and him just trying to prevent me from doing so
- Picking up Rover after class, then playing Triple Play with our fantasy baseball rosters. Barry Bonds capping off a huge comeback for me with a grand slam is a memory that comes to mind. Also Tim Hudson's unhittable breaking pitch is worth mentioning.
- Playing Puzzle Fighter not so much to win, but more about trying to build the hugest solid block possible of one color, and then cracking it to see how much crap you could drop on the other guy at once

And there's other fond memories:

- Fiending for the first episode of Baseball Tonight at the beginning of the MLB season
- Making immature derogatory versions of people's names and other words in normal conversation
- Pact with Chras and Dennis
- Flamin Hot Cheetos
- Running over the possum
- Using .WAV files to talk on AIM through Direct Connect (James Iha: "What up", or Local H: "You crass badass!", or Homer: "U-R-GAY hehehe", or Chris Rock: "Why you gotta say that?")

We also talked about the possible future things to do:

- If we ever started a band and made it onto SNL or Letterman to perform, we would wear ECE-Illinois T-shirts
- Someday returning to Grainger, bringing huge speakers to the quiet 2nd floor study area, and blasting Rage Against the Machine's "Bulls on Parade"

Neither sounds too likely at this point, but maybe we will actually end up accomplishing those goals, who knows?

Anyways, I don't want to make this blog too long, and it wasn't supposed to be a farewell tribute or anything like that. Just wanted to take the chance to remember some good times with one of my favorite people in the world, and share it with anyone else who also feels like remembering our buddy Piya at the moment. I don't know about the rest of you, but even though he's only an hour and a half away, it still feels to me like he's much farther away from us now. So maybe writing/reading this blog will make it almost seem like he's still around. Any of you guys out there who have favorite Piya memories should share with us here too.

The blog wouldn't be complete without some pictures:

Outside Everitt


Thug Luv


Me and P


Just Chillin'


Me and P Part 2


Kissing the McNown League trophy

Food Talk

I haven't written about food in a while. If you met me for the first time, you probably wouldn't expect that a skinny nerdy kid like me would be one who thinks about food as much as I do. But I actually do think a lot about food, probably more so than your average person. As I've talked about before, one of my life's ambitions is to get good at cooking. I just think it would be so awesome to have the skills to be able to just whip up a good meal whenever I felt like it.

So yeah, I love talking about, thinking about, preparing, and most of all, eating food*. I think part of it is because there's not much else to get excited about in my life, so maybe the little things (such as "eating") get magnified into big things. Another reason is because I was born and raised in a Chinese family, and as some might be aware, Chinese people are all about their food.

Actually, when it comes down to it, Chinese or non-Chinese, skinny or fat, who wouldn't love food? We were all born with the need to eat, and satisfying that need is definitely up there on the list of life's greatest pleasures. I guess maybe since most of us have never had to worry about going hungry for real, we have lost some of that sense of excitement towards eating. Well, not so much for me.

Anyways, today I would like to rave about the latest greatest thing I've added to my food life lately - salad. Yeah, I know it sounds stupid, getting excited about salad. But unfortunately, since I haven't had the time and energy outside of work to seriously pursue my cooking aspirations, I can't yet take on anything too elaborate.

That's not to say that my salads aren't at all elaborate. You might be thinking that I just buy those pre-mixed bags from Jewel or Dominicks, and add dressing. Well, that's a start, but only the beginning. In my mind, there are a number of essential ingredients required for any salad to be considered worthy of my stamp of approval. I'll explain shortly, but first, some history:

I've loved salads for a long time. I think it started back when I was a kid and my family's favorite "American" restaurant was Ponderosa. For many years, I think it was pretty much the only place we ever went out to eat at, other than Chinese restaurants or fast food. They don't have many Ponderosas around anymore, and the one by my house got replaced by some other restaurant many years ago, so I don't get to go to any Ponderosas much these days. But for those of you who don't know, Ponderosa was this relatively cheap family restaurant that is somewhat known for its steaks. Now, I never had any of its steaks, because (as you may have guessed by the way this blog is going) every time we went, I got the all-you-can-eat salad bar.

And boy, did I love the salad at Ponderosa. Part of it might be because when you eat nothing but rice and Chinese food at home every day, anything that's different for one meal probably tastes awesome automatically. Either way, whenever I think about the good old days of Ponderosa salads, I start to get a craving for some of that good stuff.

Eventually, we expanded our selection to include other American restaurants, such as Old Country Buffet. As some of you may know, OCB is also one of my favorite all-time restaurants which I get cravings for now and then (I think I might have written a whole entry on it before), and the biggest single reason for that is because they have a good salad bar as well. Okay, I really love their fried chicken too, but that's a story for another time.

So later on in college came the experience of dorm food. Some of us hated dorm food, most just disliked it, but I found it to be pretty decent. The reason? You guessed it - because they had good salads. Even on the days when they served the crappiest specials, I could always count on having me a nice solid bowl of salad.

As a matter of fact, it was during those dorm days in college that I think I started to perfect the art of making a good salad. I still remember more than a few times when I brought my carefully constructed salad to the table and it got some looks of admiration as well as some heartfelt praise from Chras. Damn Dudo, that salad looks awesome! Which leads me back to my discussion on the essential ingredients for making a great salad:

1. Greens - Obviously, the heart of the salad. Generally, any of the major leafy vegetables can form a good baseline; iceberg lettuce, romaine, spiznach, etc. My personal favorite is spiznach, but I think the best solution is to use a good variety that includes more than one or two types of greens. Still, no matter what other people say, in my opinion you can't call a salad a salad if it's only the greens. You definitely need the other ingredients like...

2. Other vegetables - Typically, the other vegetables are added for 3 major reasons: (a) more nutritional value, (b) mix up the texture, and (c) make the salad look more colorful, and in turn, cooler. All 3 are important, but to me, probably reason (c) matters most. You can't discount the importance of your salad's final appearance. I'll discuss appearance a little bit more later on. There's a lot of stuff that can be added, but of those I would say that at the very least you should have shredded carrots and some of the chopped up purple stuff. Anyways, as I mentioned before, I usually buy the pre-mixed bags of salad, which already include good vegetable variety, so I don't worry too much about it beyond that.

3. Cherry Tomatoes - These little suckers are pretty good on their own. My mom used to grow them in our backyard so I would eat them a lot. I've always appreciated being able to eat them whole in your mouth, so that the juice doesn't splatter all over the place and get messy like full-sized 'maters do. But yeah, when you throw a bunch of cherry tomatoes into a good salad, that's when they really come into their own. Actually, I think the kind I get are "grape tomatoes", which might be a little smaller or differently shaped, but it's basically the same thing. A must have in any good salad.

4. Chopped Mushrooms - Mushrooms are an awesome food that I love having in many other dishes, and as long as they're fresh, they make an awesome addition to all of my top salads.

5. Hard-boiled Eggs - Possibly my favorite ingredient in salad. No wait, they're all my favorites. I like them better chopped into squares, than sliced.

6. Sunflower seeds - Technically, I think they're called the "meat" of the seeds, but I don't think anyone's dumb enough to put sunflower seeds into a salad with shells intact. They have a great taste and texture, but the best part is that they're small and spread out through the salad well. One of the main challenges when making any salad is to keep the ingredients mixed and distributed as well as possible. It's not always feasible to put your salad in one of those big bowls so you can cover it and shake it up. But with sunflower seeds, a little few simple rakes with your fork will do the trick.

7. Croutons - I love croutons. My mom used to always yell at me and my sister for adding too many croutons to our salads, because she felt that they took up too much space in our stomachs and thus we wouldn't be getting the best value at the buffet. That's what Chinese parents do. As a result, croutons have always been somewhat of a "forbidden fruit" when it comes to salad making, and that probably makes them all the more desirable to me. I think I would love them regardless though, they just taste so great and top off the salad so well. I will say that if you're gonna add croutons (which you should), they must be fresh and crunchy, preferably with some garlic flavor too. There's nothing worse than stale/soft croutons that taste basically like plain white bread. Now that I think about it, that was one major flaw with the salad bar at U of I residence halls. The croutons there were generally mediocre to borderline intolerable. It's a good thing the rest of their stuff was good.

8. Dressing - Health freaks say that adding dressing more or less ruins the benefits of eating salads because it's so loaded with fat and calories. I say screw the health freaks! I can't even begin to imagine eating a salad with no dressing. It's almost like driving your car with no engine oil, or shaving your face without shaving cream/gel. Nasty. I guess if it's that bad for you, I'll try to use reduced-fat or fat-free dressing, but I definitely need a good dressing on my salad or else I'm not eating it. Not only does it make the texture so much better and accentuate the flavor, but it can also be the crucial factor to making your salad's final appearance most impressive. Pretty much any of the major types are good, although I think French with its dark smooth style is the best at bringing out the salad's overall color dynamic. Sometimes it just depends on your mood - Thousand Island if you're feeling "saucy", Ranch if you're feeling "mellow", and Italian if you feel "spicy". Don't ask me what the difference is between "spicy" and "saucy" moods because I don't know.

Believe it or not, I have been consistently including all of the above ingredients in my homemade salads. It takes significantly more time and effort than just opening a bag and adding dressing, but it's definitely worth it. Managing the freshness of some of them is a bit of a challenge though. I'm still working out the kinks in my salad making system and thinking about maybe even adding some more improvements. I think shredded cheese is on the horizon, and perhaps grilled chicken strips if I'm feeling extra ambitious. We'll see.

In conclusion, salads are awesome. No other food can boast of having both the variety and flexibility that you have in salads. Think about it, you could have multiple vegetables (green, orange, purple, whatever), fruit/vegetables (cherry tomatoes), fungi (mushrooms), bread (croutons), meat (eggs) and potentially many more food groups, all in just one bowl. They're relatively easy to make, taste good, reasonably healthy, and when made right, can get you looks of admiration and many compliments from those around you. I think everyone reading this should go have themselves a salad right now. I know I will.

*On a side bar, I would like to say that yes, I am one of the slowest eaters known to man. Many of my friends are already aware of this fact, and for the rest of you, it's just one of those things you will have to learn to accept about me as a person. The good thing is, Olivia is almost equally as slow an eater as me, so I don't feel bad for making her wait every time we go out to eat. But it seems like recently my slow eating has been cropping up more in affecting those around me. Like during my trip to New York, I think for every single meal the others finished their food in 5 minutes and then had to wait 15 more for me to finish mine. Sorry Jeff and Laura, if I were you guys I'd be annoyed.

But honestly, it's not that I try to eat slow, I just do. I think one reason is because when I used to eat at home growing up, and my grandparents were eating with us, they would make us feel bad if we finished too fast before they were done. Not because of manners or anything, but because they believed that finishing fast meant we didn't eat enough and we should be eating more (Chinese grandparents typically believe that "fatter is better" and that there is no such thing as eating too much). So maybe consciously or subconsciously, I just slowed down my eating to avoid being yelled at, and now it's ingrained into my eating habits. Unfortunately for my sister, I don't think she ever wised up and made any adjustments - to this day she still gets the snide comments whenever she leaves the dinner table too early for their liking.

The good side is, eating slow is supposed to be good for you. At least that's what I hear. Supposedly the right amount of times to chew something before swallowing is between 30-35, which is more than most people do and right around where I'm at (I encourage you all to try counting next time you eat to see how many times you chew, for kicks and giggles). Another thing I heard is that when you eat too fast, your body doesn't respond fast enough to send you the "feelings of satiety" telling you to stop eating, and therefore you tend to eat more than you should and become fat. I don't know if it's true, but I would say that at least the empirical data in my case probably doesn't disprove that theory.

*****

Sometimes I wonder why people still read my blog. I just realized that I wasted a significant chunk of my time writing about retarded stuff like making salads and how slow I eat. And now for anyone who has actually read through all that, I've dragged you all down with me. It did occur to me before I posted this that maybe it would be better just to delete this entry and keep some of my thoughts to myself, but oh well. Sorry. If it were up to me, my readers would all get awards for continuing to follow my blog. But for now, all I have to offer is my eternal admiration and appreciation.

*****

I think I'm out for softball this weekend. Wanted to help P move and check out his new pad as he moves to the 'Sconz, and also I think it might rain anyways. If any of you still want to organize a game, feel free, otherwise, I'll probably try to set something up for next week.

Title

Happy 4th of July Weekend to everyone. Too bad it's over already.

Happy late bdays to Andy and Scott. I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but back in the day when my family was moving back from Taiwan, we were very close to buying a house in your little cul-de-sac (across the street from Andy's house). I wonder how different my life might be (for better or worse) if things had worked out that way.

I watched 2 movies over the weekend, Spiderman 2 at the theater, and Independence Day on TV. Both were of the "over-the-top action with lots of corniness" type of flick, but I still liked them both. Watching both these movies got me in a thinking mood for some reason. First, I know it makes me sound retarded, but I felt like I kind of identified with Peter Parker when he was losing his powers. Not that I have any super powers normally, but it does feel like recently I haven't been as sharp as I'm used to. I'm a lot more absent-minded in general, forgetful about a lot of things, and just feel like a big dumb idiot overall. I've had a bunch of near misses driving in parking lots, and one non-miss when I scratched my bumper on a concrete post pulling out of the parking garage at Olivia's condo. I'm spilling stuff on myself (even more than usual), dropping things on my feet, banging my knee into corners. Those inanimate objects will get you every time. Then, at work I'll be reading an article and go through an entire page without absorbing or understanding any of it. Or sit through a 2-hour meeting and forget what it was about, right after I leave the conference room. Also, when I played softball a couple weekends ago, I was sore for a good 4-5 days afterwards. I used to only get that sore from playing football, a sport with actual physical contact. Anyways, like I said, it's not like I have special Spidey-sense powers that I normally use to save the world, so nobody cares. But like Spiderman, I'm suddenly having problems performing at a level I'm used to, and I don't know why or how to fix myself. So it does suck from my own point of view at least.

Another thought I had while watching the movies was about "perspective". When you're seeing giant Alien warships destroying the White House, or a guy with 8 huge mechanical arms stomping around New York City, you start to lose some sense of reality and forget about your own world. Which is kind of good, and that's part of the point watching of these kinds of movies to begin with. I mean, it's just nice to escape into fantasy land for a couple hours, especially nowadays when life outside the theater has been getting uglier and more stressful. Of course, it's only temporary, but it's still cool. Don't tell me you guys weren't pretending you were Spiderman when he was swinging through buildings and stuff.

But about "perspective", I guess what I was thinking about is how a lot of times we talk about the concept like "you gotta keep things in perspective" or like when something bad happens, "it really puts things into perspective". I say those kinds of things myself a lot, but now I'm wondering, what does it all mean?

For example, when someone complains about how it sucks to wake up early to go to work, you could really get on his case about not having the right "perspective". What about the kids in Malaysian sweat shops who work 18 hour days with machines that might chop off their fingers? Ever think about them? Or you could be one of those coal miners back in the day working in deep holes all the time, breathing cancer-causing air at your job. Just be glad you're not a slave being whipped, who doesn't even get paid and has no choice about when to wake up or who to work for, like you do.

Or, when we were kids and didn't want to finish our food, our parents probably gave us similar type lectures. There's all these kids dying in Somalia and you don't appreciate every last bite of your food? That homeless guy on the street would probably give anything just to have some of your leftover crumbs. Don't forget that when we were your age, we had to share half a grain of rice between our 53 brothers and sisters for one meal a day!

Basically, with this thinking, no matter how bad you might think your life is, there is always someone who has it worse, so you have no right to complain. Don't like your car? At least you have a car! Hate your parents? At least you have parents! Think your house is too small? At least you have a house!

I think throughout the years, I have been trained with this school of thought. Maybe people around me might disagree, but I would say that I'm someone who typically doesn't complain about anything, regardless of how bad it might be. Probably burned somewhere into my subconscious mind is the image of an orphaned blind and deaf boy born with no arms or legs, who is also mentally retarded. So when anything bad happens, I can always say to myself, "at least I'm not the retarded crippled orphan kid!" and that's supposed to make me feel lucky to be where I am.

I don't know how exactly this discussion came out of watching Independence Day or Spiderman 2. Maybe it was just thinking about the part in Independence Day when everyone around the world joins together to fight the aliens, and then comparing that to the state of the world today. We have the Republicans and Democrats bickering about this and that. The Americans and the French arguing about every last issue of foreign policy. The Muslims hate the Jews, Michael Moore hates President Bush, Red Sox hate the Yankees, but no matter how big or small our disagreements are in a relative sense, wouldn't we all forget about everything if our world was being threatened with global destruction, whether it's from aliens or from a big ball of fusion?

I kind of forgot what my point of writing this was. Maybe what I was trying to say is that although a lot of the things we concern ourselves with right now would seem silly or insignificant when viewed from another "perspective", does that mean we don't have a reason to still be concerned with them? That is, just because we have a great life compared to the blind crippled orphan, or because our world is pretty good compared to how it would be if aliens took over, does that mean that nothing else really matters? Should I feel so guilty if I have a bad day once in a while (from my own perspective) and want to complain about it or feel sorry for myself for a day or two?

I guess I don't really know the answer to that question. Clearly, all of us have a lot to be thankful for, compared to the rest of the world. There are definitely situations where I have to maintain a grateful heart, despite some things not going the way I want them to. On the other hand, you can't realistically expect to go through your entire life with the constant mantra of "it could be worse". Or maybe you can?

My head is starting to hurt now from all the thinking and writing, and I have to get back to work. Before I go, I would like to suggest that we play softball again this Saturday, 2:30 at the same place (DGS). Hopefully I'll have time tonight to send out an email and most of you guys can play again.