The American Le Mans

A day in Monterey watching prototypes and GT cars racing in the
American Le Mans!

Moments of Fame

Who knew a Karaoke bar would be this fun? Belting out the Beach Boy's "California Girls" in front of all the patrons of a packed bar was quite an experience. And listening to others sing was also a lot of unexpected fun; you never knew the answer to these two things when someone got up to sing: 1. Do you know the song? 2. Is this person any good? (along this second vein of thought was also: how much did this person have to drink?), so it was twice the uncertainty and hence twice the fun.


There were definitely some surprises (never judge a person by what they're wearing or how intoxicated you think they are) but most of the time, as long as point #1 was true, #2 didn't matter! What a fun night!

Given the quality of singing we heard, it would have been wise for record label scouts to be present there. These two guys pictured above probably will receive calls tomorrow.

Of Fuji Apples and (Losing) Bets

The other day a bet was placed on the New Hampshire's primaries. The trade winds of NPR, NYTimes and CNN all aligned to give me the correct top three Republican winners (McCain, Romney and Huckabee). My "C"ompetitor and I both calculated wrong in the Democratic race.

But more importantly the stakes: a Fuji Apple vs. a Pomegranate. And the resulting picture tells the full story:


Then there was a counter-bet regarding an automatic pomegranate de-seeder... and how I bet that there was such a machine that could be found online, because honestly.... what the heck isn't available online? Case in point: A pomegranate peeler! Well I ended up half losing because there wasn't a picture, admittedly the site's a bit shady...

Where's a camera when you need one?

Honestly there's no good story about why I didn't have my camera. It was in the trunk of my car the entire day, but at every destination, I think I was too excited to remember to bring it.

At the De Young museum in Golden Gate Park, I learned a lot about art and the critique thereof. Composition, themes, meaning, symbolism, titles, colors, materials, hometowns, all came together in paintings, photographs, sculptures and installations. I'm thinking I'm more of a contemporary guy...

I liked the contemporary art exhibit called the Conservation Chair. We saw this seemingly-innocuous chair that upon discussion with my awesome tour guide :-P, revealed a much deeper meaning in the inlaid wood, the transformation of real wood into a cartoonish wood and the zen-garden qualities of the water flow. All while a metal pipe painted on wood fed water back up. I could really go on and on...

Oh and I forgot about the crystal tear-drop-shaped pieces that were suspended from the ceiling, pretty in itself, until I was pointed to the shadows dancing on the wall, did I realize the real exhibit! The shadows of the crystals hung on the wall like giant falling rain drops, with some having sharper shapes while others were fuzzy. Another pleasant surprise with the crystals reflecting light creating a rainbow effect. I'll have to give full credit to the tour guide! :-)

And then there was Michael Arcega's exhibit. Very clever sculptures at the end of a club. Take the picture for example, his "War Club" display pieces featuring carved battleships at the end of a club...get it? haha! In my view, the capstone piece were the "Dance Club" pieces which featured dance clubs at the end of wooden club, complete with flashing lights in the club and -- wait for it... -- an awesome dance beat subtly emanating from the display case!

From there an erratic car drive in search of a lost artwork brought us all to a hidden playground with the most awesome jungle-gym-ish structure. The most kid-un-safe playground I've ever seen was clearly the slightly-older kid's dream! (And I narrowly claimed victory to the top.) Here's the best picture I could find.


And after X number of years at school, I've finally had a chance to appreciate the Rodin sculpture garden (although I'm still quite skeptical of the bit about broken sculptures being deliberate, I'm more with the school of thought that the movers they hired weren't up to par, but until proven; I'll buy the argument that they were intentionally broken to convey the (only) human effort that went into the design).

And then there was dim sum, ddr, and dinner!

Board Games

Good game of Settlers of Catan with Timbo, Sandini and Hsupoo Friday night. I'd love to tell you about it, but honestly I'm still trying to figure out what happened. I'd have to sum it up as such: Build your own board, monopoly house pieces and a bunch of flashcards.

Why couldn't we play Apples-to-Apples? :-P

Fun & Useful Game - www.freerice.com

So technically I'm still in the cube, but am I mentally away? ...yes definitely! :-)

www.freerice.com - still have yet to find out just how legit this is, but it seems rather easy to do.

So I also was exaggerating about how "fun" this actually is. Unfortunately for those eating the rice, I have terrible vocab, (Ask me about the story of how I tried unsuccessfully to submit the TOEFL for my Verbal requirement for one of the standardized tests...) so it's not THAT fun to be wrong a lot of the time.

This is the Year!

A couple key resolutions this year is to get out more often and to maintain a blog.

As part of the "get out more often" I've got a giant list: read more books for fun, attend more musicals, go to the SF MOMA more often and find a way to go to either the MET or the Smithsonian, go on a hike (like a serious one, not the whole "they closed this floor's bathroom for cleaning, I need to now take a trek to the next floor"), take more pictures, dance more, go to more cafes, and make more of the weekend (go do something wild every weekend)!

(Then there's the typical resolutions: "Don't Get Fired" and "Work Out More Often" that I'll do my best to fulfill.) And thus there's this blog, to track the two resolutions that will hopefully be fun to fulfill! :-)