[placeholder title] *beta

I was wrong.

Best coffee table ever.

One of my most poignant memories from middle school was the first time I received a detention in Mrs. Braize’s 5th grade Reading class. I had neglected to do my homework, and the standard punishment for this kind of infraction was a detention. When I was handed the actual detention slip, I shrugged it off and played it cool like it was no sweat. But once I had it in my hand, I could only stare at it and wonder what my parents would say. I tried to go over scenarios in my head in which I’d mention offhand, “Oh, by the way, I forgot to do my homework, so I got a detention. Can you sign this form and pick me up from school at 4pm on Wednesday?” No matter how casually I mentioned it in my mind, I could not get over the fear of what their reactions would be.

When I got home that afternoon and the time came to tell my parents, I did what any 10-year-old would in that situation and frame of mind: I stalled. I decided that it would be more responsible of me to wait until my father came home from work and tell both of my parents together. Except, when he came home, the right opportunity never came along. They never asked me, “How was your day at school? Did you get any detentions?”

So I went back to school the next day with an unsigned detention form and I skipped out on my incarceration. Standard procedure at my middle school dictated that a skipped detention warrant another one tacked onto it, and I now had the grim presence of two unsigned detention forms in my Trapper Keeper. Looking back now, I find it difficult to understand what my reasoning was. I couldn’t have had any realistic expectation of this situation turning out favorably. Now, in my mental scenarios, my parents were furious, because I had not only forgotten to do my homework, but I had also skipped detention. I believe I had about 5 or 6 pending detentions by the time my school gave my parents a direct phone call. For some reason, that caught me by surprise. Perhaps I had been hoping there was some upper-bound on the number of detentions a student could acquire, and that they would just give up, or reset to zero.

My parents were, of course, deeply disappointed. They patiently explained that the first detention wasn’t a huge deal to them, and that they were far more hurt that I didn’t tell them the truth. My school ended up reducing my sentence to only two detentions and I had a few teachers take me aside in the hall and give me eerily similar “what the hell were you thinking?” talks that were more chiding than stern.

Later that school year, I inevitably forgot another homework assignment and received another detention. As soon as I got home, I triumphantly whipped out the form and presented it to my mom.

Anyway, seeing that my blog hasn’t been updated regularly in a year now has brought up similar feelings. The longer I wait to post a new entry, the more I imagine readers rolling their eyes and thinking finally! Although my stalling may actually work this time, as my already dwindling reader-base has surely given up hope, so perhaps, this long-winded excuse/apology for my absence will go unnoticed and unpunished.

Topics for discussion:

- Arrivals

• John, Khai, Kevin, & Vivian - driving down, arriving Friday afternoon
• Ed - arrives at LAX Friday afternoon, driving to John Wayne
• Grace & Del - arrive at John Wayne Friday afternoon/evening, picked-up by Ed
• The Bozarths - driving down late Friday night
• Matt - arrives John Wayne, Friday night (~9pm) - needs a pick-up

- Bars, liquor stores, and other points of interest in or near:

• John Wayne Airport:
• LAX:
• Newport Beach:
• The Lake Forest Comfort Suites:
• The Ritz Carlton in Dana Point:
• Orange County and Vicinity:

- Friday night festivities

• Karaoke Night! (25Si Karaoke in Garden Grove) - 10pm - 1am, Party of 12 under my name

- Saturday fun

- Saturday night festivities

• Do with Darick as we please
• OC Pub Crawl?
• Bowling?
• Party at Mike and Hazel’s in the LBC?

- Drunk dialing/texting list

• Trueter
• Robin

- Sunday pre-wedding plans

- Departures

• Ed - depart LAX on Monday, 12:50pm
• Grace - depart John Wayne, dropped-off by Ed
• The Bozarths - driving back up after the wedding
• Matt - depart John Wayne ~9am, needs a ride (Ed?)

- Any other topics

Feel free to comment!

Name: Carth Vader

Born: November 2002

Occupation: Commuter, road-tripper, leisure-driver extraordinaire

Skills:
- Making an inexperienced, so-so driver seem like a pretty good auto-crosser
- Transit to Tahoe in 3 hours (Kirkwood, Sugar Bowl, & Heavenly)
- Dyno-ed at 220hp at the wheels, All Wheel Drive
- Throwing sporadic fireballs
- Collecting dirt, dust, and door dings
- Attracting undesired attention from police officers and teenage boys

Likes: Open mountain roads, long drives on the beach, car washes, high-octane gas

Dislikes: Cops, teenage drivers, fast-lane squatters, smog checks, speed bumps, potholes, birds

Notable Roadtrips: Tahoe (countless times), Las Vegas, San Diego, LA

Memorable Incidents:
- Rolled back into a USPS truck on a hill in Noe Valley
- Slid back into Matt’s car on a solid sheet of ice in Tahoe
- Attacked by a large tree branch on a windy day in Burlingame

Most Difficult Mod: Removing ~50 lbs of dead weight from the driver’s seat

I had the eerie experience the other day of syncopeetion (synco-pee-tion). This is when the person next to you at a urinal in a bathroom synchronizes their peeing with yours. This particular syncopeeer had been standing at the urinal for a little while, yet still did not start peeing until I had. It was almost as if he had waited up for me to start peeing. That was awkward enough, but when we both stopped peeing at the same time, it got too creepy for me, so I hastily washed my hands and left as soon possible.

This episode inspired the idea for a great prank: Serial Syncopeetion. It’s relatively simple, but it takes a lot of patience, urinary tract discipline, and an unlimited source of drinking water. You simply stake out a particular bathroom in your workplace or school, and start syncopeeing with the people in it. The more you get repeat syncopeetion victims, the better, as they’ll start to recognize you. See if you can get people to stop coming to that bathroom, or even better, if you can them to start talking to each other about you. There’s no clear way to actually know if you’ve achieved the latter, however, unless you have a conspirator.

You can mix your styles of syncopeetion. Sometimes, you can just wait at a urinal, ready to pee until someone walks up. Other times, if you see someone already at a urinal, you can run up beside them and catch up before they start peeing. And you can always fall back on the classic full-imitation, timing your actions with everything they do in the bathroom. The only stipulations are that you start peeing when they start, and stop peeing when they stop. This can be quite a challenge, as you need to make sure you can pee long enough to accommodate people who really need to go, yet be able to stop for those who have low bladder capacity tolerances or prostate problems.

Unfortunately, I have neither the time nor the fortitude to pull this particular stunt off, but I’d love to hear how it turns out for those who do.

Note: I need to credit Phil for coining the term “syncopeetion.” The only terms I could think of were “pee-stalking” and “bowl-mates.” Additional suggestions are welcome.

I realize that I haven’t posted since last year. One of my loyal readers graciously pointed out that I’ve been pondering on the toilet now for 4 months straight. So rather than try to write a monstrously long post covering everything that’s happened in my life and in my mind since December 20th and compensating for more than a fiscal quarter’s worth of silence, and then ultimately failing, I’m only going to give a brief recap and move right along.

Holidays
Hung out with family both old (my lil’ bro came to visit), new (met my really cool cousin-in-law for the first time), and really really new (my newborn niece Khang Ninh). Khai was here for a couple weeks, but we only in the bay area for a total of 2 days or so.

Snow season
Worst snow-season ever. Only a couple of Tahoe runs this year, and while some of them were pretty good days, there were no legendary powder days. Tahoe reunion was a blast. Huge house, small group of close friends.

Work
It’s been super-busy. Switched roles… traveling a LOT. Destinations include Hot-lanta, Boston (x2), France, Italy, Spain, and more destinations to come.

Vacation
Took almost a whole month off to go to Vietnam and Japan. Words to describe my VN trip: hot, relaxing, coffee, beach, yummy, cheap, bliss. Words to describe my trip to Nippon: drunk, stuffed, delicious, scenic, karaoke, sakura, food-show.

Music
!!! - Myth Takes: B
Arcade Fire - Neon Bible: A-
Peter Bjorn and John - Writer’s Block: B
LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver: B+
Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha: A
Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City: A-

Now, I’m recovering from vacation, swamped with work, and facing the dreaded 4 month stretch of Khai-deprivation.

So that’s the recap. I may provide more details on some of the above if I am so moved. Don’t count on it though.

I was pondering on the toilet the other day (don’t look at me like that, what else am I supposed to do?), and I thought about some of the unintentional suggestions that I’ve both given and received. One notable example is the now infamous “beyond hot” comment that my soon-to-be wife gave me when we were waiting for a play to start. I mentioned to her, somewhat wistfully and hopelessly that I’d like to get back to my pre-college weight. She responded that I’d be “beyond hot” if I accomplished that. Just a simple statement became almost a mantra in my head as I pounded out the miles on various treadmills and swore off all sodas, juices, snacks, and yummy fatty goodies. I don’t think either of us could have predicted how different my lifestyle would be. Unfortunately, her prediction was a bit over-enthusiastic, as while I’ve achieved my target weight, I have yet to transcend thermal labels attached to my attractiveness.

A time when I impacted someone else’s life with a simple comment was with my brother when we were kids. A common activity of ours was to each draw a fighter plane on a piece of paper, and argue whose was drawn better. More out of the virtue of my 3 year head start on argumentation and general verbal persuasion/intimidation than any sort of artistic skill, I always won these contests. One day, almost on a whim, I conceded: “I think yours is better.” My brother was elated and couldn’t wait to tell our parents about his triumph. From then on, he embraced drawing, and his skill improved vastly.

It’s almost scary to think how much influence we can have over others’ lives, especially family and close friends. A very common Asian-American intra-family stereotype is that daughters can excel through hard work and responsibility, while sons are naturally gifted, but lazier. Children grow up hearing their parents tell them, “You’re so lazy, if you’d just apply yourself…” or “Your sister works so hard…” and these stereotypes become self-fulfilling prophecies. The result: an entire generation of competitive, hard-working, over-achieving women out for blood and complacent, passive, pushover men with a false sense of never-to-be-fulfilled entitlement.

So be mindful of what you say and how it might impact your loved ones, and be equally aware of how others might affect you. Of course, I still believe that we’re the masters of our own ships, but there are still many tides and currents to contend with.

Apologies for ending with a banal seafaring metaphor.

It’s that time of year again: office gift exchanges! Whether your office follows the traditional Secret Santa model or has adopted the recently popular White Elephant model, most office exchanges have a reasonable spending limit, thankfully. The biggest challenge, of course, is how to maximize your budget. So I thought I’d try to be helpful and try to inspire people with some low-budget office gift ideas that are sure to please (the phrase “sure to please” is in no way a guarantee).

Today’s Featured Office Holiday Gift Idea:
The Mrs. Doubtfire Player - Now you can watch your favorite scenes from the heart-warming and hilarious Mrs. Doubtfire over and over. Want to see Robin Williams give Pierce Brosnan a poorly executed Heimlich Maneuver?  No problem with The Mrs. Doubtfire Player.  Connects to any television accepting standard RCA inputs. In addition to standard playback, it forwards, rewinds, pauses, and even plays in slow motion!  On top of that, it comes with a remote control!  My friend Grace had one of these that she got at a garage sale, I think. I believe at first, it was just a normal, run-of-the-mill VCR, but at some point, the tape of Mrs. Doubtfire got stuck in it and wouldn’t come out. Everything else still functioned normally. Only then did Grace realize what kind of rare find she had stumbled upon. You might also consider: The Monty Python and the Holy Grail Player or The Encino Man (Director’s Cut) Player.

During my last month of forced bachelorhood, I’ve had the unenviable pleasure of dining alone on several occasions. This is a pretty stark experience for me, coming from a background where meals are social outings spanning hours, and family vacation activities are chosen for how well they aid digestion and their proximity to dinner. Consequently, I’m quite self-conscious on these occasions, always imagining the back-stories that others are fabricating about the “lonesome diner.” Since I have no one to talk to or socialize with, and I’m a naturally fast eater, I’m usually in and out within 10 minutes of getting my food. But between large swallows of hastily and haphazardly-chewed pollo asada burrito, I’ll occasionally look around and observe my fellow patrons. Every time, I’m surprised to see how many other solo diners there are. There’s even a guy who’s only ordering beers and eating chips by himself!

Naturally, I start doing exactly what I fear others are doing to me. Each back-story is of course, more pathetic than the next. The guy scarfing down beers and chips is being stood up by a woman he met last weekend, the latest, desperate grasp at ending his middle-aged single status. The man in his 60s next to me is a regular. He and his wife divorced more 15 years ago, and his children only call him once a month and on the holidays. The drunken man in the corner just finished a 14 hour shift, and is just dreading going home to his wife and young children, so he’s hoping that they’ll be in bed by the time he sobers up and bikes home.

So I wonder what back-story I would create from observing myself. How different it would be than reality? I’m usually in my gym clothes, post-workout, and it’s around 8:30pm, the weeknight dinner crowd winding down. Maybe I’m a college student, exhausted from a basketball game (my dearth of basketball skills is not as obvious when taken out of the context of a basketball court and basketball) and because I missed the potential game-winning shot, I didn’t want to go out with my teammates for the usual post-game dinner ritual. I can definitely come up with something more compelling and depressing… details would help. I’m a recent immigrant from China, having left to better my family’s fortunes on my own in the States. I made the mistake of coming to the bay area, where my part-time wages from moving boxes of frozen seafood for Ranch 99 are eaten up by the small bedroom I’m renting from family acquaintances. It’s been four months since I’ve spoken to my wife. In that hurried, 5 minute phone call, I reassured her that things were going well, and she managed to get my 2 year old daughter to say a few words to me. Ok, that’s pretty good. If I lather it on any more, I’ll end up selling my body for money, addicted to crack, and on the run from the police.  It’s not easy being on your own…