GMail is here! (well, officially here, open to public)

More and more of my friends are switching to GMail, Yeah!! So, here I offer few "cool" tips for ya:

"dots" ignored:
GMail ignores the "." in your Gmail address, so you can be creative with it. If your email is someone@gmail.com, then emails sent to some.one@gmail.com, s.ome.one@gmail.com will all go to your someone@gmail.com inbox.

Aliases
Again, if your email is someone@gmail.com, then, someone+junk@gmail.com or someone+ebay@gmail.com or someone+porn@gmail.com all points to your someone@gmail.com inbox. GMail ignores characters after the "+" sign in your username. Useful to help you sort your mails, create filter, or battle junk mails (you can now sign up web sites with an alias)

On my drive to IDF this morning, just before reaching the Fifth/Mission parking garage, while waiting at the light, my peripheral vision caught a blob of something white -- a girl just dropped her pants, exposed her white butt, and she was peeing, right at the intersection of Sixth and Howard!

I thought I could only see something like this in China, where taxi drivers are well known for unzipping in public, pulling out their "dingle-lings" to take a leak.

She put on a good show for the herd of morning traffic waiting at the intersection. The old bum in wheelchair across the street from her had the best view, and he was smiling, ear to ear... interesting morning!

In your relationship, are you a chicken or a pig?

As in a Ham and Egg breakfast, the chicken is participating and the pig is committed.
Similarly, you are either a pig or a chicken in a relationship... so, which is it?

Google released its own IM -- Google Talk, a combination of text and voice chat. Another step for Google to overtake the world...

无论外面看起来是如何的幸福、美满、成功、快乐。每个人的身后都有烦心的事情。听到自己的朋友们诉苦，又帮不上忙，有些难过。。。

人与人之间的攀比固然重要，但是要适可而止。情况不同、遭遇不同，何必要强求自己？认真过自己的日子，努力的上进就好了。老天给我们的待遇是一样的，只不过表达出来的结果不一样而已。

开开心心迎接每一刻 -- 我的原则

My usual 20 minutes commute to work turned in to a two hour nightmare today. Highway 101 was closed from Capitol Expressway all the way to Bernel road, that’s six miles of well traveled 8 lanes of highway -- Closed!

The jam was caused by a big-rig 18-wheeler leaking sulfuric acid on 101 near Bernel, that’s just a mile from my work! As much as 800 gallon of that highly corrosive spill on to the pavement, released not so friendly fumes. Emergency shelters were set up for the residents nearby, numerous helicopters hovering above the hazardous site, all traffics diverted, surrounding business buildings locked down and radio advised drivers on the road to roll up windows.

I finally managed to get off 101 to try my luck on the surface road few miles before reaching, that’s when my co-worker called me and told me to just turn around and go home, but do so, I’d have to battle my way thru traffic, turn around and spend god-know-how-long on the road to reach home. Besides, I have already sat in the car for almost two hours to get this far, no way I am going to turn around.

Someone is actually benefiting from this chaos -- our company cafeteria! Due to the lock down, the usual deserted cafeteria was packed with employees fighting over greasy pizza and not so tasty pseudo-Chinese food.

I am feeling a little headache, not sure if it is due to the acid fume or lack of sleep or sick of work? :-)

We got four turtles, a cat and its dozen fleas living with us under the same roof. Recently a new family of ants moved in as well, uninvited.

I didn’t pay too much attention when a tiny, cute little ant, 1/4 of an inch long was snooping around on my pure white couch a week ago. But within days, that little scouting ant led an entire army into our house!

We have always been careful with leaving food crumbles in the open to avoid pest problem. But MaoMao’s cat food is always in the open, and apparently these ants have developed a taste for cat food.



My co-worker advised me to try different brand of ant baits since certain breed of ants are only attracted to certain brand of bait; I wasted no time and went to Home Depot after work today and grabbed every brand of ant baits they had. I was on my hands and knees, observing the trail of ants response to the baits, so far, no sign of interest...

Getting frustrated!

Related Blog:
Wild Discovery on Esperanca (2005.06.02)

“Yeah, I just bought a house”
“I went car shopping today!”
“Nancy got a new Benz!”

The past few months have been exciting. Half dozen of my friends made house purchases; Sam got himself a brand new BMW 330, few days later, Jason upgraded his ride to a plush 2000 Mercedes-Benz S430 and immediately pimped it further with a nice set of rims and HID headlights. Tonight, Nancy announced that she just went out and bought herself a shiny new Mercedes C320!

Wait! The frenzy didn't end here... In the next month or so, Sam will be getting another new car (the Beamer is for his sister Ally, and Sam is considering the TL!! We'll be twins!), and the freshly returned Lydia will have to get a new car as well...

What is going on here??

Ok, if you haven't already noticed, I just added a new Gallery section to my forum.

Previousily, despite the heavy usage of templates, it was still quite time consuming to compose those pages under Events and Trips section. Now the Gallery provides a quick-n-dirty way to post those pictures and the best part is: it allows people to leave comments!

I will still post pages under Events and Trips, since some experiences need more than just pictures to fully appreciate! Well, happy viewing!

我一直有点瞧不起西方的情人节(2/14)，虽然它的历史悠久，追寻到古罗马时代。不过我总是认为它是一个人为的、商业性的节日，作为推动卡片、花、商品的借口罢了。

牛郎织女七七幽会的故事脍炙人口，而且更是我们中国老祖宗传下来的情人节。不过这几年，在高昂的崇洋媚外势头下，“2/14情人节”早已经在年轻人心中根深蒂固了。

今天是农历七月七，在此我:
祝我的BB薇薇快快乐乐，健健康康，永远美丽！
祝我们两个小人儿天天嘻嘻哈哈，无忧无虑，相亲相爱！

Related Blogs:
Be My Valentine (2005.02.14)
Our Melody (2005.02.14)

Actually Vivian flexed her muscles and rolled the bins out last night! I did the gathering and stuffing.

All the recent workout is paying off! :-)

Every Friday morning, at the crack of dawn, husky men in overalls and their marvelous garbage truck would go around our neighborhood to pick up the wastes we’ve cumulated over the week, and leave behind emptied, yet still smelly trash bins.

... So, every Thursday, all day long, I’d sit in the office looking forward to -- go home and roll out the garbage bins!

No joke, the motion of rolling out the garbage bins symbolize the weekend is just around the corner! And I savor every second of it; open the gate, shifting the bins on to the cement path, roll them around the corner of the house, guide them down the drive way slope and lining them up along the curb, walking back to the house while turning my head for one more glimpse at the sight of the bins under the soft soothing street lights...

Well, last Thursday, I was robbed of my pleasure -- I forgot to take out the bins! By the time I got ready to go to work, all the bins on my street have already been emptied! Shit! Not only did I forfeit the tradition, it also meant we’ll have to live with all the trash for another week. Those bags of watermelon peels, leftover food (from the two massive BBQ we had) and yard vegetations are not going to agree with the 85-degree summer days. But, the matter is beyond my power now, I shrugged my shoulders and hauled ass to work.

It was Thursday again! This time, I had my revenge. I scoped up every piece of trash I can find around the house, changed MaoMao’s litter box, and flattened every Coke box, shoe box, packaging box we had, stuffed it all in the trash/recycle bins and send them to the curb.

Ah... Satisfied...

Adidas recently gained a new attitude from Nike's famous slogan -- Just Do It!

News has it today Adidas announced an agreement to purchase Reebok for $3.8 Billion. Together they will battle on the Big-O-Nike.

I had a pair of Reebok when I was in middle school, it was a Reebok Pump. That’s when it first came out, my gosh; the attention I got from that shoe was just great! Especially for a little skinny immigrant Chinese kid in an average US public middle school, those pair of Pumps definitely raised my social status up few notches.

Well, those “fitting-in”, “being-cool” days are long behind me, I now buy shoes that are comfy and aesthetically pleasing, and the latter requirement is oh-so-important! Here I quote (from 10 years old memory) a line Alicia Silverstone’s character Cher once recited in the movie Clueless: “I would spend hours to decide what socks to wear, just imagine the time it takes to choose a panties to cover up my…”

I am no Alicia, but I am a picky man when it comes to apparels, and shoe defines a man! Just as my ultra-high-maintenance-Korean-hottie-college-friend Trisha once said: “A stud in an Armani suit wearing a sneaker is a bum, a bum wearing a trash bag and a pair of nice shoes is a stud!”.

Nicely put Trisha, nuff said...

Oh, one more comment, I always root for the underdogs, that’s probably why I haven’t purchased a pair of Nike’s in years. And without any biased opinion, the most comfortable pair of sneakers I ever had is the plain Adidas I currently have (pictured below)!! I’d vote for Slashes over the Swoosh any day!

They called it National Night Out, well, it was one of those meet your neighbor, promote neighborhood awareness event. Since we're new to the area, Vivian and I thought it would be a good opportunity to meet those who lived around us, and we even volunteered to help out.

It was a good turn out. We helped and mingled and even won a feet massager and two tickets to Great America! The mayor, chief of Police of Santa Clara all showed up, and so did Darth Vader and the Storm Troppers! :-)

I have been very prolific publishing photos from recent activities! Go me!
Check out our White Water Rafting trip and the day at Paramount Great America!

Our dear friend Kevin (a.k.a. KK, aFu, 阿福) has a set of fantastic hair. It is short on top, and really really short on the sides. His haircut should be a familiar sight if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area or LA counties or anywhere that has a large Asian population. However it is not the haircut that I am raving about here, the topic of discussion is, rather, on the supernatural strength his hair possesses! For example, can you claim that your hair withstand the twirling gusty wind when driving 80-miles per hour with the windows down? Can your hair puncture skins on its own right? Can your hair support an entire keychain on its own? I didn’t think so... but, Kevin can proudly claim those statement and them some more, his superb scalp-product can endure anything short of a direct nuclear blast.

So, here is a picture that testifies my latest discovery on the usage of KK’s splendid hair – Key holder! My next task is to see if I can use it to pick locks! Stay tuned...

(This blog entry was composed with utter respect to Kevin and his magnificent mane)