Grueling

Sunday night 9:45pm to 6am - help Jean shoot his student film
Monday 6am to 4pm - drive home in a daze and crash on my bed
Monday 5pm to 6:20pm - class (more sleep time)
Monday 8pm to 1am - help Jean shoot his student film
Tuesday 11am to 12am(midnight) - help Jean shoot his student film

Making films is tiring work. But I did drive on the wrong side of the road last night (this morning?). Can't say I've done that before. It was in an empty park though, no oncoming traffic. Maybe next time.

East Coast vs. West Coast

Pop - Soda/Coke

Highway - Freeway

Middle School - Jr. High

There's also a lot of "s" adding around here. Laters, whenevers, Septembers, etc.

Safari users

I'm hoping everything shows up right for all you Safari users out there. Please let me know if the poll shows up on the right hand side now.

Chinese restaurants have great service

Chinese are known for their great service. Consider the following:

Four Chinese American guys decide to go out to eat one fine Southern Californian evening. This is not a suprise because, let's face it, Southern California has some of the nicest evenings anywhere.

They decide to go a Chinese restaurant, not that the restaurant building itself is of any ethnicity, but rather the food that is served there. This restaurant will go unnamed because I don't want everyone crowding it because of the awesome service. Also, because this is supposed to be a hypothetical story.

They walk in, are seated in about 5 minutes, and proceed to pour over the menu. When the time comes (read: they are starving and tired of all the waiters/waitresses ignoring them), they need to flag down a waitress because all Chinese restaurants have waiters/waitresses that come when you want them to. The waitress proceeds to take their orders and leaves to fill them. Time: approx. 10:15pm. The orders: One "Chicken a la king", two "Pork Chops", one "satueed shrimp with rice".

It take an usually long amount of time to receive their drinks. They spot the 4 Thai teas at the counter and know it is for their table. No one brings them their drinks. Grass grows and gets cut. Nations rise and fall. Bad movies are sat through. Finally, BM goes to the counter to see if he can get the drinks. The counter guy says, no, but he will bring them over.

The waiter at the counter brings the four drinks, all of which are Thai ice teas. At least 3 of them taste like they've been made with sour milk, so the waitress is again flagged down and 2 are exchanged. A few minutes pass, the waitress returns with 2 soups, saying the other 2 will come shortly.

A few more minutes pass, with no sign of the soups or the remaining food. The four guys flag down a waiter and tell him that two soups have yet to come out. He goes into the kitchen.

The waitress comes back a little bit later with the two soups. They are quickly consumed. The waiter comes back after the soups are consumed and gives 2 more soups. The guys have now received 6 soups when they ordered 4. All Chinese restaurants have excellent communication among their workers.

3 of the guys' food comes out. The two pork chops, and the shrimp with rice. The conversation gets into gear; 3 guys chow down on their food. Approx 20 min have passed since ordering.

Everyone wonders where the "Chicken a la king" is. The four guys flag down a "manager" (he's wearing a shirt and tie, not a uniform). They proceed to tell him the "chicken a la king" has yet to come. The following conversation takes place.

DVJ: "We ordered a Chicken A La King and it hasn't come out."
Manager: (shakes his head and puts his hand on the guy's shoulder as if somebody just died) "Awwww, sorry, we ran out of chicken breast and we forgot to tell you. Do you want to order something else or just take it off the order?"

Dumbfounded that a restaurant can "forget" to tell someone their order isn't coming, DVJ says to take it off the order, and he'll go without food. He changes his mind and walks off to flag down a waiter and order pork chops.

Restaurant: 1 DVJ: 0

He comes back, conversation again picks up. Meanwhile, the Thai ice teas and other drinks have been consumed and refilled. DVJ asks, "Do you get free refills here?" "Yeah." DVJ finishes his tea and flags down the waitress for a refill.

Waitress: "Oh, that drink you only get one of."

Restaurant: 2 DVJ: 0

Another 10 min pass. They flag down the "manager" again, to ask about the pork chops.

DVJ: "I ordered pork chops, and it hasn't come out."
Manager: "Is this before or after you took Chicken a la king off the order?"
DVJ: "After."
Manager: "Who did you tell? Which waitress or waiter?"
DVJ: "I told that waiter over there."
Manager: "Oh. They're not making it for you. Sorry, I'll go check on it right now."
All Chinese restaurants have excellent communication among their workers.

This is immediately followed by the waitress bringing a glass of ice water for DVJ as a consolation prize because his drink doesn't get refills. Talk about rubbing salt in the wound.

Restaurant: 3 DVJ: 0

Time: about an hour since walking in. DVJ has had a bowl of soup and one drink. Everyone else has finished their meals. The pork chops have yet to come out. The manager stops by and says, "I'm sorry about this." TC did get DVJ a free refill though. Another 10 min pass. The pork chops still don't come out. Everyone wonders if that last statement means the manager is sorry because DVJ will not get his pork chops. (maybe they ran out?)

DVJ accepts the fact that he will eat nothing tonight and flags down the manager to get the check. DVJ goes home hungry, but with first hand knowledge that Chinese restaurants have the best service.

Time: a little over an hour
Meal: none for DVJ (plus a drink with no refills)
# of times 'flag' appeared in this story: 8

EH: "I stopped playing Halo 2 because I was addicted to it; it was taking over my life."
EC: "What do you do now?"
EH: "I play hold'em everyday."

California word of the day

weak sauce - wimpy

Oh what a predicament

Have you ever been in the mall on Easter Sunday when it was closed? I have.

Our church meets in the mall, usually in a community room. Since today was Easter, the mall was closed, but we asked for special permission to meet there since we were having a potluck. They were nice enough to let us use the foodcourt.

Sometimes we are presented with dilemmas. Purely hypothetical example:

Say you were at a potluck, and a very enjoyable one at that. Say you brought food, as did everyone else. Say everyone brought more food than was consumed, therefore leaving so called "left-overs" (so named because they are literally left over. See? This blog is educational! You've learned enough today, go play outside. But I digress....) Say you are helping to clean up and notice that one dish has not been touched. Say it was no one's fault; this dish was hidden by other food and no one saw it. What do you do? Hmm, sounds like a poll to me.

Read this and tell me what YOU think it means.

www.getfirefox.com

Ok, I've fixed the poll so IE users can see it now. But you should really switch to a more secure browser that WORKS WITH OPEN STANDARDS!!!! (/me kicks IE).

If you haven't heard of all the security problems IE has, do a search for "internet explorer cert". If you don't know about IE's (non) support of standards, do a search for "internet explorer standards".

Or, better yet, just switch to a better browser and start enjoying the web today!

Oh, and I moved the poll to the top. (you really needed me to tell you that, I know. don't worry, I'm here for you)

Get ready for recounts

So I finally implemented something that I had wanted to do for a long time: I added a poll to this blog. There are a bunch of free polls out there, but they all look ugly or don't do what I want them to. So I found a free poll php script and am hosting it on my computer, (yeah the same one all those pictures are on) so hopefully it'll work out. As always, let me know if there are problems. Hopefully the comments show up, too. You might need to reload the page to see the comments after you've sent them.

Great mysteries of the world

There are these things people refer to as "great mysteries". Usually it's defined by something that is unexplainable, either because nobody can adequately explain it with our current understanding of how the world works, or because it has not been observed enough times to be properly studied. Examples include why there are an odd number of socks in the world, why women demand men put the seat down (we have to put it up to pee, you should have to put it down to pee, we're just treating you as equals), the existance of eyebrows, and why Jeff keeps posting on his blog when nobody reads it.

Today, I am here to present you with another so-called "great mystery". Where does all the toilet paper go? The past few weeks, I have replaced the toilet paper 3 times, if not more. All over the course of 2 weeks, _maybe_. It's probably been shorter than that. Does that not warrant some investigation? I could have sworn that I replaced the roll 2-3 days ago. Today, what do I find? An empty roll. "How is that possible?" I ask. Deep, empty silence answers me. I realize I am the only one home and wonder why I bothered to wait for an answer. Or better yet, why did I ask the question out loud? (that is another great mystery to be solved in the next installment)

So I put it to you, dear readers. Today I replaced the roll again. When I replace it again, you'll know how quickly it disappears. "Where does it go?" you might ask (only if you're at work and you're bored). The great toilet in the sky is my only guess.

The adventures of someone on the internet

Spring break has come and gone. And it's raining in SoCal.

First day of class: boring, as usual.

We go to the mall the other day to check on movie times. As we get into the elevator to ride up to the second floor (because the escalator takes up too much energy), a bunch of younger Asian girls get in the elevator and ask us if we're going to Dave & Busters. We say we're going to the second floor where the movie theater and D&B's both are. Then they ask us if we're over 25, at which point BM points to BH and says, "He is. He just turned 25." Keep in mind that BM is the oldest of all of us, which makes him a few years older than BH. They need someone to get them into D&B's cuz they're under 21. BM says, "His name is Ben and he's a nice guy" at which point all the girls introduce themselves to BH. BH did his good deed for the night by getting some younger girls into D&B. What a guy. I guess he should thank BM for volunteering him in the first place.

I was also later asked if I was 25 by a crowd standing outside the door. Man, do I look over 25? I'm not sure how I feel about that.

Commenting on the many newcomers at his church.
"How do you know they're newcomers?"
"Because they all stand up and I don't know them." -BH

Talking about playing basketball after the winter hiatus.
"It's getting warmer because it's Springtime." -BH

After meeting a friend's boyfriend for the first time.
"Is he Christian?" --someone
"I dunno." --everyone else
"I don't think so." -BH

Plumber jeans, they're all the rage in Taiwan.

got gmail?

Looks like Google finally is letting people sign up for gmail.

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/buzz/archives/004488.html

Apparently, if you go to google.com, random people will get a link that they can use to sign up for gmail. Here's one I got that I haven't used.

This will only work for the first person who signs up using this link

I still have 6 invites that I never used because nobody ever wanted to join. Oh well.

Or you can just go here as they have about 500,000 invites available.

You never know

I went fishing Saturday morning with a friend. We didn't catch anything, but it wasn't a total loss.

On the way to the lake, we stopped by a grocery store to pick up some coffee and donuts. As we were standing in one of the two checkout lines that were open, some of the workers came up to the line and were saying something about the manager and people who were buying small things. We assumed they were going to open another checkout, because the line was getting kind of long. A few people went over and asked if the things they were buying were small enough. The workers said, "Yeah, you can go." Go? "Where do we go?" we all asked. They said, we can LEAVE because their systems were down. Free coffee and donuts for us! Too bad we didn't "buy" more stuff. Then we went across the street to see if their systems were down, but no luck.

Russell Peters

Just in case you still haven't heard of Russell Peters, he's an Indian Canadian comedian. You can watch one of his shows here:

Windows Media version

Real Media version

Both videos are the same, it's just whatever format you prefer.

As of tomorrow, Spring Break starts. I'm not going anywhere in particular. I'm getting more and more antsy about starting a company though. Anybody bored with their life/job and wanna join me?

Cool flash thing

"What is this?" --JT
"It's a Flash thing." --me
"But, there's nothing flashing." --JT

Response when viewing drum machine.

Favorite quotes for today

We went out for BM's birthday tonight. Some people were less than sober. Including me. I wasn't drunk, I was just a little loopy. After 1 beer. This list doesn't include the bad stuff said while people were inebriated. Those are just not appropriate to post.

"Are you making up your own Manderin?"
--JT's reply to DVJ after he butchered a chinese word

"誰是你的爸爸?"
"se2 shi4 ni3 de ba4 ba2?"
"Who is your father?"
--DVJ's favorite Mandarin phrase meaning "Who's your daddy?"

Tomorrow night, Dave and Buster's for JC's birthday. I wonder what will happen...

Question of the day (raised by TC): "Why do Chinese restaurants put ice in the men's urinals?"

Hopefully tomorrow will be sunny so we can play some beach volleyball.

before we started the Race for the Cure and I almost died

The best post ever

Just got done with 2 midterms and a project. You know that feeling you get when you're about to take a midterm for a class you always attend, take good notes, read the book, and studied the material for the same amount of time it takes to bring a child to full term? Yeah, that's not how I felt. Probably because I didn't do those things, but there's a slight possibility it could have been something else (dinner the night before?). Anyway, I think I did ok on the midterms, which doesn't give me any incentive to actually attend the classes. Maybe I'll turn over a new leaf. Or maybe I'll turn it over and realize it's not a leaf but a blood sucking alien that just ate my hand (which doesn't make sense since it doesn't eat hands, it SUCKS BLOOD. But I digress...). Either way, it has nothing to do with what I'm about to say.

So I ran in the Race for the Cure Marathon on Sunday. I haven't been able to blog about it because 1) I've been busy or 2) My legs are so sore I can't even stand up to reach my computer. You pick which one is right.

I am seriously out of shape. There were old ladies that beat me. But then again, they _have_ beaten cancer, so they're pretty tough. On the other hand, there were mothers who were pushing those carriage-on-wheels things that ran faster than me. I think those things are really motorized and they just hung on. Lucky.

Next up: dragon boat racing.

From a theme park in Taiwan. Is that face supposed to make me want to get on the ride? Notice, if you have short children or an expectant mother, you are not in good health.