mod’s life

Well! It’s been about half a year since my last update… too much has been going on. But my life may finally be settling back into something more manageable, or at least less chaotic now. Maybe I’ll just update you on my life with a series of pictures.

My nephew’s 3rd birthday was in June, and I went to his birthday party at a park in SF.

Nic's third birthday

I bought a condo in mid-July, a 2-bedroom, 2-bathroom at about 1150 square feet. I moved out of San Mateo on August 1, after living there for five years, and moved into my new residence in Millbrae. I held two housewarming parties, one for my family, and then one for my friends (mostly the Berkeley crowd).

Nic and Elizabeth, my nephew and niece, at my first housewarming party

Friends at my second housewarming party

In preparation for Szu-Huey’s baby, we had a baby shower for her in September.

CS162 group (minus Carol)

Nick Lin visited the Bay Area with his friend from Taiwan.

Nick and Nina

Jiong had his wedding banquet in October, during which I caught my third garter.

My third garter catch (picture courtesy of Travis)

I went home to SoCal in October to celebrate my father’s 60th birthday as well as to attend my high school’s 10-year reunion.

Dad's 60th birthday

My high school 10-year reunion (picture courtesey of Jason)

After a year of on-and-off back pains, I finally decided to get it checked out. I got the x-ray results today.

Cervical spine

Apparently my cervical spine (neck area) is abnormally straight. There is supposed to be some curvature, and the straightness is consistent with muscle spasms, and typically follows a car accident. I haven’t been in one though, so I don’t know how it got to be like that. I’ll be taking some physical therapy sessions in attempt to fix it and rid myself of the pain.

On second thought, I was reminded that I went go-kart racing back in May, and I was rear-ended really hard once. I remember my head snapping back pretty bad; that could have done it. It wouldn’t explain the pain though, because the pain started before that.

Last weekend I went to Las Vegas to meet up with some dear friends from high school. Most of them I see at least a couple times a year, but Alex I had not seen for seven years, I believe.

I miss you all already

In the top row it’s Henry, Victor, Yvette, Sunil (in the back), Alex, Paul. In the front row it’s me, Kirk, Spencer. These were some of my closest friends I had growing up (a couple others in our group could not make it). We only had two days to hang out, but we made the most of it, partying till the late hours of the morning. Despite the fact that I neither drink alcohol nor gamble, thus leaving me without much to do in a city like Vegas, I had a wonderful time being with everyone. I’m already missing the whole group. Here’s hoping it won’t be another seven years before we have the chance to get together again, and that the next time we’ll have more time together.

Friday morning I took a shower and washed my hair in the morning before going to work (unusual because I typically shower in the evening). When I stepped out my hair was pointing in every direction. Instead of pushing it down to give myself a moderately civilized appearance, I capriciously decided to push it all together, making it point straight up. I wore it like that the whole day, and was surprised that it stayed up. It even continued to stick up the following day, when I wore it to Veronica’s birthday dinner. Here’s our group picture:

Veronica's surprise birthday dinner

Yup that’s me with the crazy hair. Want to see it close up?

New hair?

The great thing is that I can claim to be 5′9″ like this (I’m officially 5′7″). Just kidding. One of the waitresses even commented that she liked my hair. I was surprised. I did it mainly for laughs, not to impress anyone.

I don't really think I'm going to keep it like this.

Anyway, I washed my hair again today and this time pressed it down to a more normal style. So no more weird hairstyles for the time being.

People have commented in the past that I’m really good at the piano. And I’ve always tried to protest that I’m not really that good. It’s not false modesty at all. I will acknowledge that, after ten years of formal instruction, I do have some musical skill. I do know how to play the piano, and I can read music somewhat well. By casual measurements, yes I can play piano better than the average person. Well, given that the “average” person probably cannot play the piano at all, that is trivially true. But I will accept that I am fairly talented and can play a tune with a moderate amount of skill.

My classification of “very good”, however, is beyond what I consider myself. I took ten years of lessons, but I did not have a super prestigious instructor. I have one friend from junior high who had an extremely respected instructor, and now he plays at a professional level. I consider myself to be an amateur/casual pianist; I have never played in an orchestra or given any other performance outside of private recitals held by my own instructor for her students. Even then, I was not a flawless performer. I made mistakes. I still make mistakes. Yes every musician makes mistakes, but my technical ability is such that I actually am not physically able to play some of the songs that I enjoy (notably Chopin) perfectly given as many tries as I want. Were I to ever give a performance, I feel that I would only embarrass myself.

But even if I were to disregard “professional” musicians, even if I were to compare myself to people of comparable musical education, I feel that my skill is still average at best, possibly lower than average. I grew up in a high school that was 40% Asian. That means every other classmate could play the piano or violin or both. Those that could play both were obviously more musically talented than me. Those that could only play the violin I believe are still more musically inclined, because violin is indisputably the more difficult instrument. (For those of you who have no musical background, without going into too much detail, piano is the easier instrument to play because it is composed of discrete keys, being far more forgiving for finger positioning error. Violin is composed of continuous strings, giving almost no room for finger positioning error.)

Compared to my fellow only-piano players, I feel that my skill is not much to write home about. I was not the greatest piano student. I wasn’t the worst either; I did dutifully practice an hour a day (even if it was forced by my mother), up until high school when the homework load started interfering with the amount of time I could practice. Perhaps the only reason people still think I’m good at the piano is because I continue to practice in the present. Fortunately, I’ve grown to appreciate and even enjoy playing the piano, so practicing is no longer a chore for me. In that sense, my skill may be greater than my peers who had comparable education to me, simply because I’ve kept it up.

As an attempt to place an objective measurement of my piano skill, I will say that I did pass the Advanced Level Certificate of Merit exam. I think a lot of my peers did as well, though I’m not positive. I have to say though, I think I was very fortunate to have passed. My performance portion of the exam was less than stellar. I played a Bach piece for the Baroque era, a Mozart Sonata for the Classical, a Chopin etude for the Romantic, and Debussy’s Arabesque for the Impressionist. If I recall correctly, I did fairly well on three of them. Chopin, however was a different story. I distinctly remember making multiple mistakes as I was playing. And it wasn’t just an unlucky performance either; I had trouble with that song all through my practices up until the exam, so it was no surprise that I wasn’t entirely ready for it. Surprisingly, despite my examiner’s comment that that was one of her favorite pieces, she passed me. Sometimes I think about it and wonder if she decided to go easy on me becuase I had mentioned I was a senior in high school, and would be attending college the following year (and thus discontinuing piano). In any case, the point I wanted to make was, despite me passing the Advanced Level CM exam, I cannot claim to play even my exam pieces perfectly, much less pieces I play on the side.

In terms of music theory, I only know enough of the basics to pass the CM exam. As for general musical ability, I have absolutely zero compositional or improvisational skill. I can only read music and play it; I cannot come up with my own material, or even enhance existing material. I cannot even play by ear. I think of playing the piano as having three separate but related entities. There is the written note, what you see on the sheet music. There is the physical key, what you hit on the keyboard. And finally there is the audible note, the sound you hear. For a single note, all three concrete entities are representations for the same abstract entity. The expert pianist/musician can translate between any of the three near instantaneously. I cannot. To me, the written note is almost equivalent to the physical key; when I see sheet music I can translate it to what is supposed to be played fairly quickly. But the equivalence between either of those two and the audible note is not natural to me. If I see a written note, I cannot necessarily tell what it sounds like. Likewise, I do not necessarily know what sound will be produced by a key I am about to strike. This is perhaps the most important reason why I do not consider myself a “great” pianist.

Today I play the piano solely for my own entertainment. I am so self-conscious about my own perception of my skill, and of people’s overestimation of my skill, that I actually feel very nervous when people ask me to play for them. I am also afraid of letting people down, especially when they have heard of an exaggerated reputation of me but not actually heard me play. I suppose I would feel better if it were made known to people that I’m pretty good for a casual pianist, but I feel uncomfortable when it’s suggested that I’m “really good at the piano”.

Two Saturdays ago was Jay’s food sort in San Jose.

Food sort

It was also Lin’s birthday dinner in the evening at Japantown.

Lin's birthday dinner

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving dinner at my cousin’s house.

Thanksgiving dinner with family

This Saturday was Dave’s birthday. We celebrated at Sushi 85 where this time I wisely chose not to overeat.

Dave's birthday at Sushi 85

It was also my company’s holiday party in the evening, held at the Aviation History Museum in San Carlos.

Lin and me next to a Pepsi plane

Before my huge birthday dinner, I watched Quantum of Solace with a bunch of my friends. I’ll say I’m somewhat of a minor 007 fan. I’m not a huge fanatic, but I did watch a lot of the older movies when I was younger (albeit not fully understanding all the plot lines), and did watch all the newer (post-Moore) ones.

I didn’t watch Casino Royale until just two weeks ago at Brian’s birthday party; I requested to borrow the DVD because I knew Quantum was coming out in two weeks and I wanted to watch it. I really liked Casino Royale. It definitely was a radical departure from all the Pierce Brosnan films. I found it to be more of a spy film than its immediate predecessors. As I think Krispy mentioned, it (and Quantum) turned out to be somewhat Bourne-like (and I thoroughly enjoyed the Bourne series overall). They’re still as action-oriented before, but I feel they’re a bit smarter and sophisticated too. It helps in that respect that the new Bond is far more serious. And the villains’ schemes are not as far-fetched as before.

What I like about the new movies is, at least from the first two, it seems like there will be a continiuing storyline involving Quantum. Whereas the previous movies were largely independent from each other, the new ones have been closely tied together. Of course, this makes it more difficult to understand the movies if watched out of sequence, but having an unresolved mystery be slowly revealed over the course of several movies makes the series more exciting, I think. Well, there’s no guarantee that that tradition will continue in the future, but I hope it will. It makes the series feel more epic, along the lines of the alien conspiracy of The X-Files or the Centre in The Pretender. The new movies are much heavier too.  Deaths in Casino and Quantum have more impact than in previous movies.

I think that knowing there’s this secret organization makes the main villain in Quantum less memorable. There are no super-weapons, no direct threats on nations, no evil mastermind hellbent on world domination. Greene’s role is much more subtle, fitting that of Quantum’s methodologies so it is appropriate, but it also not as superficially impressive as say hijacking a satellite laser. Just another example about how Quantum focuses as much on the espionage as on the action.

One thing missing from Quantum, and from Casino for that matter, is a really cool tricked out car. But then I guess having an invisible car really pushed it over the edge of believability.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie, and I’m looking forward to more like it. Casino and Quantum have both deveolped as more than mindless action films, and such can be taken more seriously than their predecessors.

I turned 27 two days ago, and celebrated with my friends last night. I had a big party at Langkawi, and now everyone thinks I’m super popular because of all the people who showed up. I made sure I got at least one picture with everyone who showed up.

clan cal

Angela, me Janice

Ka-Chun, me, Szu-Huey

Diana, Nick, Lin, me

Jed, me, Victoria, Veronica, Tiffy

Kirk, me, Jemmy

Pat, me, Paul, Evelyn, Jenny, Jeff

Karen, me, Connie

And here’s the family at Langkawi that helped make everything turn out perfectly.

My wonderful hosts

I had too much dessert. Szu-Huey baked a lemon cake for me, and my hosts made a dessert of tempura ice cream and fried bananas.

Me preparing to cut my cake, deftly holding a knife. Upside-down. Deliberately, of course.

Langkawi's gift

After dinner we had a mini-lan party at my apartment, and played the Left 4 Dead demo. I’m thinking about getting it.

lan party

Thanks everyone for coming out and making my birthday dinner a wonderful evening!

I recently cleaned my room and rearranged my setup a little bit…

my command center

Yep, that’s six computer screens you see there surrounding my throne. Not quite six computers, because one of them is a dual-monitor setup (the middle two LCDs at the corner), but still that’s two laptops and three desktops. I play Warcraft on the 22″ on the right, do my finances and some webbrowsing on the 17″ next to it, and do my AIM and Apache configuration on the dual-17″s. My guests play Warcraft on the notebook on the left, and the notebook in the front is 6-year-old P3 1ghz that has a busted hard drive or something because it takes 10 minutes to boot up Linux.

Joyce says my room is not sexy. How is this setup not sexy??

In the past, I’ve been very reluctant to post personal opinions on sensitive subjects, especially those that I know that whatever I write, there will be someone to offend. By my nature I do not like offending people (unless the offend me first). I am conflict-averse, and I prefer to stay on people’s positive sides. I wouldn’t say I’m a kiss-up, just that I feel uncomfortable when people think negatively of me. But recently, Joyce suggested that I learn how to be more open, that I be more open to speaking my mind without fear of being wrong or being disliked. As she said, it’s fine to have some people not like me. If nobody has issues with me, then I’m lacking personality.

While she was referring more to speaking my mind in general, I decided to try speaking out on a specific topic that I’m almost certain will offend some, especially with me being a California resident. If you don’t know, Proposition 8, if passed, will ban same-sex marriage in California. Just taking a quick survey of Facebook statuses will show that there are some pretty strong supporters of voting against it, with the chant of “Don’t eliminate marriage for anyone” and “Marriage equality for all”.

And that brings me to the shocker of this post: I support Prop 8. I know of at least a handful of friends, if not more, who would be offended by or at least disapprove of my stand.  But I’ve made my decision to state it. I have personal reasons why I’m against allowing gay marriage. I also have logical objections to the arguments for gay marriage. But this post is not about either of them. Today, I am writing about my philosophical issues with those the “No” camp in general (not of any particular person).

California is pretty liberal, especially northern California where I currently reside. And coming from Berkeley, I am no stranger to the extreme side of liberalism. The Bay Area is so liberal in fact, that I have come to conclude it is almost a fad to have liberal opinions. I feel like it is popular to go against tradition, to complain over the smallest things, to hold protests for the sake of protesting. It’s the “in” thing to do; everybody’s doing it.

Example: the recent clamor for Tibetan independence and protesting China’s hosting of the Olympics. While this isn’t necessarily a liberal position, without going into whether I support Tibetan independence, I’ll say that I firmly believe a good number of the people protesting were doing so out of mob mentality. A relatively small number of people who passionately and sincerely supported independence started the fire, and then people who wouldn’t care otherwise care happened to observe them. Then it started to snowball, and soon it became cool to be anti-China in any way possible. And at that point people started to scream for Tibetan independence when seriously, I don’t think they even sincerely cared from their hearts. I mean, some of these protesters couldn’t even point out Tibet on a map. Can such a person really say they care about the issues when they don’t even really know the most basic details about it?

But I digress. I mean to talk about gay marriage here. The Bay Area is liberal enough that it’s become popular to think that allowing gay marriage is “revolutionary” and “the right thing”. While I’m sure there are some who do feel strongly about the concept, this post isn’t about them. My opinion is that a large number of people who scream at others to vote no are only doing so for the sake of, to put it unsophisticatedly, being rebellious. To me, these are the people who will go against convention just because they think it’s cool to do so. These are the people who will sit in trees to protest cutting down trees that no one will miss. These are the people who will protest the pledge of allegiance in public schools due to mention of God. These are the people who will say gay marriages are good because disallowing them is the status quo, and the status quo must be bad.

And that brings me to the main point of this post: my philosophical issues with gay marriage are founded upon my observations that much of the sentiment in favor of allowing it is little more than peer pressure and the desire to fit in with the rest of liberal California. Yes there are independent thinkers out there who support gay marriage out of their own will and beliefs. But for the others, this is simply yet another outlet to demonstrate one’s liberalism. Taking a liberal position because you feel strongly about it is one thing; I may not agree with it but I can at least respect it. But taking a liberal position because everyone you know is doing it, without even knowing the facts, is just ridiculous. I don’t have issues with people who flat out don’t care about the issues either. (I’m often one of those people.) I just cannot stand people who clamor and whine about something they probably will no longer care about in a few years.

I don’t claim conservatives are immune to the same mob mentality. It’s just that at least in California, there isn’t enough conservative momentum for the same problem to occur, and thus if a person here takes a conservative stand on some issue, I can usually be reasonably sure he is sincere in his opinion. If I were in a heavily conservative state, I might have the opposite view.

So, elections are coming up in a couple weeks. I’ve already stated my view, I won’t try to persuade you one way or another, at least not today. All I’m saying is, this time, and any time in the future where you find yourself about to take a stand on some issue, you should ask yourself, “What do I really think about this issue, and do I really care about it?”