Masakazu Imanari Highlight Video

My Kung Fu brother Toast posted this video a while ago on the Meihua Student Association of Martial Arts webgroup. Since I'm in a combat-sports kind of mood (carried over from this weekend), I'll share it with everyone here.


Awesome background theme song. The leg locks are nice too... I've read comments that he did not do well against better rounded opponents, however. I imagine if he trained up some striking skills he would be a serious force in the UFC circuits!

Kung Fu Cherry, Hughes vs. Gracie, and Some More N64

This weekend was Memorial Day Weekend, which meant that I got another day off (another, since I took Tuesday off last week due to a cold). I guess I never really thought much of Memorial Day - since usually I was at school or in China and therefore I probably had that day off anyway, so I never really noticed it. My family, being not of American background, never did any of the barbecues or other things that American families do on this weekend, either. This weekend, however, I caught the Mel Gibson movie, "We Were Soldiers". I'm not a big fan of military movies - but I decided to watch this one, and I have to say that airing this film this weekend was a move of sheer brilliance by the networks. Both Cherry and I were very moved when they showed Mel Gibson walking by the Vietnam Memorial. If you haven't seen the movie, I would recommend it. It gave me a new appreciation for the mayhem that occurred during that war.

Cherry is taking a Speech class this year (something my mom has bugged me to take for years and years in hopes of improving my speaking skills...). She has already given her first speech - an introduction of herself about her leaving China to come to the United States last year. Her next speech, which she will give tomorrow, is an informative speech about making our famous dumplings, so if you want to find out our trade secrets, show up in her Speech class at Brevard Community College tomorrow! She's also already prepared her third speech for the class, which will be a persuasive speech about practicing Kung Fu (at my suggestion!).

She worked really hard on it, making a Powerpoint presentation to accompany it. She just learned how to use Powerpoint effectively earlier this month as well, so this was a great chance to polish up some of her Powerpoint skills. We took a set of photos of her doing some kung fu for her presentation. She also practiced a little bit more of the kung fu I've taught her over the past year so she can demonstrate some kung fu for her speech!

Saturday night, Shawn invited Nick and us to his house to watch Ultimate Fighting Championship 60, which featured some great fights such as Mike Swick over Joe Riggs by "Swickatine" hold and an awesome submission by triangle hold victory by Dean Lister, one of Tito Ortiz's grappling instructors. But the main event of the night was the return of UFC legend Royce Gracie, the first, second, and fourth champion of the original UFC tournament style events and the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu icon, to the Octagon. He would face "the most dominating welterweight of all time", current Welterweight champ Matt Hughes. While I thought it would have been interesting to see Gracie submit Hughes, the fight was more or less dominated by Hughes, who was quicker, probably more well-rounded, and definitely much stronger. Gracie amazed me, however, by not tapping out when Hughes had his left arm in what looked like a near-200 degree hyperextension, and I thought he might have some amazing tricks up his sleeve at that point in the fight. In the end, I guess I was a little disappointed that the old-school fighter was crushed by the new-school fighter, but I'm not that surprised.

In an effort to try to get a few more games that Cherry would enjoy, I got two more ROMs over the weekend - Mario Tennis, a tennis game that obviously features Mario characters, and Magical Tetris Challenge, a Tetris game that, unexpectedly, featured Disney characters! I was inspired to get Mario Tennis after fighting Phantom Ganondorf in Legend of Zelda, the Ocarina of Time. In that fight, after being killed several times and not inflicting an ounce of damage on him, I finally figured out that you had to actually hit the bolt of energy he fires at you back at him in order to hurt him. Of course, he can then hit it right back at you, so you have to play a game of "Lethal Tennis" with him in order to get past him. The tennis mechanic worked a lot better than I expected, so I went ahead and got Mario Tennis to see if it would be just as impressive. I have to say that it is quite fun - especially in multiplayer mode, as Cherry and I played against the computer in Doubles matches. She enjoyed the game as well, which was the most important thing.

We also spent a couple of hours playing Mario Kart 64 (her favorite game, and my favorite series of all time in terms of replay value) and Tetris - which I enjoyed, but in versus mode, the game ends once one of the players loses, which is kind of disappointing since I couldn't just play forever and ever. To me, that was the real challenge of the original Tetris - to see just how long your eyes and fingers could hold out! Cherry enjoyed this game as well, which is great since that means, when I get the Nintendo Wii, I can get some multiplayer games that we probably both won't mind spending several hours on!

What if the Cast of Final Fantasy VII Ran a Fast Food Joint?

I couldn't resist...

Spring 2002

If you're sharp, you'll notice that the title of this post does not include the prototypical "Photo Album" tag that has traditionally accompanied my posts recounting my college years. That's largely due to the fact that my life had apparently hit a low point in terms of photo-worthy activity and there are simply not that many photos from this era. Never fear, however, because the few that do exist are going to show up exclusively here on Grant's Pad!

2002 started in rather crappy fashion for me. I would break up with then-girlfriend after our short 3 month stint, of which nearly one month was the winter holiday, which I felt pretty down about. In retrospect, I probably felt bad because I had dated around a bit in Fall and Summer of 2001 before kind of deciding to stick it out with her, only to be dropped like it's hot... er, not hot. Probably had an effect on esteem too - because even though I still went out a lot with Chris, Kaveh, and Ahmed, I didn't do a whole lot of dating that semester.

It's great to have great friends after you break up! I recall Chris having broken up with his girlfriend somewhere around this time too, or maybe it was Fall 2001. He was pretty upset about it and thus the Triumverate went out a lot during that period too. Chris later picked up another girl during our club outings this semester, but he had grown bulletproof and ended up breaking up with that girl on his own. Spring 2002 was probably where the most of our Triumverate days took place - we had barbecues on the weekends, and alternated breakfasts at each others houses when we had to study all night for exams. Some of my best college memories are waiting outside the Marston Science Library for all the eye candy to head to their next Liberal Arts class and late night breakfasts at Denny's with the guys.

That semester also was the last I would spend with most of my old friends, like my roommates Jordan, who would go to Spain the following academic year, and Paul, who was graduating. Jorge was on the verge of transferring, and Pablo, though he still often slept on my couch, was through with school and looking for work. The "old" group still got together a few times in Spring of 2002, though, to try to stay tight, and most of us have since stayed in touch, to an extent.

It was also this semester that I started hanging out more with Kir-Wei, my Kung Fu brother. I'd actually known Kir-Wei since the middle of my High School years, as he sometimes went to Chinese school (another phenomenon that I should write about one of these days. Later on, he join up at the same Kung Fu school that I studied at. Since I went to college, though, he ended up training for much longer with Sifu, and so he knows more kung fu than I do, even though I'm his Si-Hing, or older kung fu brother (by seniority at the school). In Fall of 2001, he got me to go back to Kung Fu school even though I had been away for over 2 years, and I'm glad I did! We spent a bit of time doing CASA things, like attending the New Year's show and the CASA Woodser camping trip. Our tent-pitching kung fu was so bad ass that we pitched our tent, as well as the tent of those two girls in the photo, before most of any of the other members had pitched their own tents!

Well, that's about all for Spring of 2002. Like I said, not much.

Speaking of sharpness, however, I'd like to make a confession of my own lack of sharpness - the previous video link of the MC HotDog song, "我爱台妹", might have strictly been a spoof on the song. While looking on YouTube for MC HotDog videos, I came across this video for the same song.



Maybe it's just me - but MC HotDog in this video looks a bit different from the one in the previous one. I think I actually enjoyed the spoof more though!

Singed Throats, Sniffles, and Delayed Reticles

Darn those brush fires. I don't know if they're solely to blame, but I'm blaming them anyway. I'm mostly recovered now, but a few days ago, the part of my throat near the nasal passage area felt like it had been burnt to a crisp. Shortly after, I started to feel sick in general, to the point of taking yesterday off of work. That sucked, because I kinda wanted to make it through the whole first year without taking a sick day, similar to that whole badge thing. Oh well.

The day off was unthinkably boring. I thought I would have some fun because it would give me more time to play some video games, but I felt crappy enough to actually not really enjoy playing games. I tried playing Madden 2002, but those cheating Lions kept kicking my ass so I gave up and spent most of the day sleeping. Once again, I note that I really think I'm better off working than staying at home.

Although I'm back at work today, I'm arguably not feeling much better than I was yesterday. I'm still sniffling pretty chronicly, and when I move my head quickly, it feels like there's a slight delay before my reticle catches up, creating quite a dizzying sensation. Add to that the muffled sounds in my ears, and you can say I'm still feeling pretty crappy.

On an interesting side note, Foley, former president of the Chinese American Student Association at UF, is interning now at my company. That's pretty cool. Foley likes running around and doing sports stuff, so maybe this summer I'll be able to do a little more sports stuff other than just kung fu and lifting.

MC Hot Dog!

On my first trip to China in 2002, one of the students that went on the same program was 22-year old Jelani, the oldest and probably most unique among our group of travel abroad students. Everywhere he went, Chinese eyes would float his direction, and not without reason! He was black (not that many non-yellow people in China, and even less black people), stood over 6'2", always wore huge Buddhist beads around his neck, and sported a massive mane of dreadlocks.

He was a really cool dude though - definitely a free-spirit type, and he came to China with basically no cash, which is a lot more daring than I have ever been. He was the first of us to go on a Chinese train, as he took an overnight train from his point of arrival in Beijing to our host city of Xi'an. For those of you who haven't been on a Chinese train before, it's a pretty eye-opening experience, albeit a great one that I would regret much if I had never done it before. He was so free-spirited that he actually drank too much the night before his flight back to the States, missed his flight, and was delayed in Beijing for another month!

This might sound totally stereotypical profile-like, but Jelani had a pretty good sense in music, and, compared to the rest of us, was a great freestylist. He appreciated rap of all sorts, and came across a couple of CDs by one MC Hot Dog, an underground Taiwanese rap artist at the time. His lyrics were lewd, and the beats were great, especially when compared with softer music which is typically more the norm of Chinese pop. I liked the CD so much that I picked one up for myself.

This morning, I got an e-mail from my lab-mate in Taiwan, Wetin, from the summer study I did in Taiwan in 2004, with this video of MC Hot Dog's new song "我爱台妹", or "I Love Taiwanese Girls", roughly translated. He should definitely keep making music, but he's a terrible dancer. I had no idea MC Hot Dog was so ugly, haha! Apologies to my readers who can't understand Chinese, but you should check it out anyway for the amusing shot at Brokeback Mountain, and to get a taste of obscure Taiwanese underground rap music!

MC Hot Dog, “我爱台妹" Video

Very Nice Wushu Form

This video is of Zhao Qing Jian, a prominent Wushu champion in China, performing Chang Quan. From what I've read, he also practices traditional Kung Fu in addition to performance wushu.

To clear things up a little bit, wushu is an acrobatic product of Kung Fu developed by the Chinese government in the 60's or 70's. Prior to the development of wushu, the Chinese Communist Party effectively banned the practice of martial arts. Wushu was promoted later to bring back Chinese martial arts and promote Chinese culture worldwide, but it was created as more of an acrobatic, gymnastics-like sport, with little or no true martial spirit. It is characterized as being very fast and flashy - my style of traditional Choy Lay Fut, though considered very fast in comparison with many other kung fu styles, pales in comparison to the flashiness of contemporary wushu. Basically, the government didn't want people to learn to fight - rather they wanted people to learn a beautiful art that promotes Chinese culture.

Wushu is thus often criticized for not being true martial arts, since often little or no martial applications are taught. However, wushu artists are without a doubt some of the most athletic people in the world, and some wushu schools reportedly do teach application. I think there should be application in most of the wushu forms, since, despite their being created for performance, they were designed by prominent kung fu masters at the time to incorporate movements and techniques based on their styles into the contemporary forms. With that background, there must be useful techniques, and can be an added bonus to the athleticism gained by learning wushu.





Often, the criticism of Wushu stems from lack of power and intent in the striking - but Zhao Qing Jian does not have that problem!

More Photo Album Fun! (Summer and Fall 2001)

I almost did it. I almost went my whole first year working here without ever forgetting my badge. Another month and 2 days, and I would have done it. What's weird is that I put my badge on the same hook on the wall that I put my keys, and obviously I remembered my keys, or else I wouldn't have made it this far... unless I didn't forget lost it on the way to work! I'm hoping that I just forgot it, and didn't lose it. Then again, my photo on it wasn't that good... so maybe it would be a good chance to replace it, if I really did lose it.

Speaking of photos, I just put up the latest photo album. In grand chronological fashion, I continue the series with photos of my college life in the Summer and Fall 2001 semesters! As you can see, there must have been less of it, since there's only 16 photos in the album.

The summer of 2001 would be the first (and I believe only) summer that I would spend in Gainesville. It was mostly uneventful, although it did feature the one and only meeting/function of ASEA, the Asian Student Engineering Association, a club that my friend Tuan wanted to start. It never took off beyond this first picnic, though, which is a shame because I would have been vice president along with my other friend Karn, who also is present in the photo.

Also in the photo is Shuli, one of my classmates in my EE classes, who hails from China and actually attended the Jiaotong University in Xi'an, so she helped hook me up with some of her friends when I went on my first trip to China in 2002. Sitting in the top left corner is Chris, who, along with me, makes up part of the aforementioned "Triumverate".

It would be this fateful Summer 2001 semester that we would meet the third vertex of the Triumverate, Kaveh Haji Ghazi Tehrani. Kaveh is his first name. The rest are all his last names. Kaveh is originally from Iran, and hails from a long line of government judges (from before the current government kicked them out). He is by far the quickest-witted member of the Triumverate. I met him in my Circuits 1 class, and Chris met him in his other summer class (I think), but we three would be become best friends. For some reason, I don't have a photo of him from that semester, here's one of him from later on. He's a player, but the girl on the right is really his real girlfriend, Christina.

Moving right along, the Fall 2001 semester opened with most of Royal Village 128 moving out of Royal Village 128. Only George was left behind. Pablo moved out because he was graduating soon, and didn't want to be stuck with rent for the rest of the year. He was also still recovering from his mid-college-career crisis. Although he lost his mohawk from the spring, you can see in the full size version of the photo that he pierced his eyebrow - so he wasn't fully recovered just yet!

Fall of 2001 brought along yet another group of International La Manchans. As usual, there were a few hotties in the group - among them the Italian girl Valentina, who is seen skillfully, uh, riding a big gun here in St. Augustine. As with all previous La Mancha groups, the local La Manchans - myself, my first roommate Thiago, Pablo, Jorge, Jordan, Jose, etc. would make several trips to St. Augustine with the new group of La Manchans - but beyond that, and a few house parties, the connection between us and the International La Manchans was really starting to weaken.

I guess you could say I started to have my own mid-college-career-crisis. The Triumverate and our friends in the EE department started to go out a lot - often four nights a week, to clubs. Favorite clubs were Sky, the Lounge, Florida Theater (or whatever it's name changed to), Element, and the Loft. I started really working out in earnest this semester as well - as I developed my 3-day fast rotation weight training program. Basically I would go to the gym three days in a row, with the first day working Chest and Legs, second day Shoulders and Biceps, third day Back and Triceps, working two exercises per muscle group for 5 sets each with 60 seconds of rest in between sets, and work abs each day. Then I would take a day off, and the cycle would repeat itself. It was really grueling, and not that effective, in retrospect. My endurance went up like crazy, but my strength never made any big jumps, as I was stuck at benching about 175 pounds at most during this whole period.

This was also the first semester I joined CASA, the Chinese American Student Association. I went at the whim of Little Liz, one of Jorge's friends that I met the previous semester. I ended up spending a lot of time with CASA over the next two years - it gave me something to do. I met a lot of people, a lot of chicks, and was learning to dance pretty well! That Halloween, I went out like I did every Halloween, dressed in costume. I went as Goku, from Dragonball Z. I liked the costume so much, in fact, that I went out twice - once with Gangsta Pirate Ed and my friend Liz that I met in CASA (another Liz, not the Liz I mentioned earlier), and once again with Bad Man Vegeta, AKA Chris, over the weekend. I even dyed my hair with blond highlights for the "Super Saiyan" look the second time - check out the photo album to see it! Enjoy!

No Love From Traffic, Traffic

Been a couple of days since the last post. That's because we went back to my parents' house this weekend for Mother's Day and to see my grandparents one more time before they leave Florida. So, here I am on Monday to tell you about it!

The trip started out like any other back to South Florida - packing up, eating a little snack for the road, then piling in the car and taking off. But, as soon as I got on the on-ramp for I-95, I noticed something strange. Cars were going in my direction! I checked my left, to make sure that it was indeed the on ramp. Yellow on the left - yep that's right, I'm going in the right direction. So what are all these people doing, coming off the highway the wrong way on a one way on-ramp?

Looking ahead, I saw what what seemed to be the problem. Yes, it was a traffic jam. No big deal (unfortunately, unlike the one in the picture). I decided it wasn't worth compromising my road morals to get around this traffic jam.

It wasn't long before an hour passed, and we were at mile marker 178 (we started at 180). At this point, I'm starting to think that maybe I should have put my morals aside. Some ten minutes later, I saw the source of the jam. They had blocked off I-95, and were making people get off in Palm Bay! After some struggle, we managed to work our way off the highway. Just as we got off, I saw cars and trucks driving on the highway! That really pissed me off. However, you still couldn't get on the highway from this exit, for some reason, and my road morals kicked in and told me that I shouldn't drive through the barricade.

So, I had to figure out a good detour. Figuring we wouldn't make it back in time for dinner, we grabbed a couple of double cheeseburgers at McDonald's and then headed to US1, which would take us to Sebastian which took us back to a now open, but very smokey (due to the never-ending brush fires here in Central Florida) I-95. Albeit at some two hours after we left the house initially. 20 miles for 2 hours of travel - at least it was an improvement over the two miles per hour during the traffic jam itself!

Saturday turned out to be a very busy day. As I mentioned in the previous post, I managed to get a rather large bolt stuck in my tire on Thursday, which I got plugged for a whopping ten dollars. Ten bucks for pulling the bolt out with pliars and pushing a sticky rod of mush into the hole, then filling the tire. I figured I would try to get a better solution while I was in South Florida. See, I got my tires at Costco, and they have Road Hazards and all sorts of other warranties on it. Last time I busted one of my tires (late last year), I couldn't make it to Costco because that tire was seriously damaged, and I had to settle for sixty dollars of reimbursement for a new tire that I bought at Tire Kingdom. This time, I was hoping to get a better deal, so we headed to Costco at about 9:30 in the morning.

This would actually turn out to be the first time I'd been to Costco without my parents. This being so, my dad let me use his Costco card. Also, since Costco only takes cash and American Express, he gave me 200 dollars to cover any costs that I might incur while going there, since I only have Mastercard, Discover, and Visa. We made our way north towards where I thought Costco would be, only to find that the intersection I was looking for didn't exist. I always had a knack for picking roads that don't meet. Eventually, we finally made it to Costco and their tire department. What I didn't expect was that it would be a 2 hour wait before my car could even get looked at, so we went inside the warehouse and picked up some shirts, socks, fruit, tissues, things that would probably come in handy in the future. The problem with going to Costco is that even though it's sold in bulk and cheaper pound-for-pound, you still end up spending a ton because you're buying so much of it! We walked away wondering how we only had $15 left - good thing they fixed my tire for free (they didn't replace it though...).

We ended up back home at around 2 PM, and we watched Chicken Little, then Ed, Melinda, and I went to the pool for some 2-on-1 Water Volleyball. Interestingly, Melinda had the best win ratio - she won most of the games when she was teamed with me, and won all the ones where she went up against me and Ed! How embarassing, to be owned by your 11-year-old sister! That evening, we went to Ed's roommate Shawn's house for a hot-pot dinner, and some Karaoke, where I once again wowed the crowds with my Andy Lau voice and looks, then Ed, Melinda, Cherry and I went home and Ed and I played some Conker before hitting the sheets.

Sunday was less eventful - I had my mom cut my hair, and then we went way south to Pembroke for the mother's day picnic that the Chinese associations were having. The food was okay - I brought a bunch of it back to use as lunch for the next few days, and I got to throw the ball a little bit with Ed (I caught a perfect hail mary in stride)! But we had to get going, so we went back to Boca and packed up, leaving at around 5:00. We drove all the way up to Vero Beach, when, once again, we were stopped and forced to get off of I-95. This time, I could see why - the smoke from the fires was so bad that the visibility was about two feet - we really need a good tropical storm or something! Once again, I made the detour to US1, which we took all the way back to Melbourne. When we got to Melbourne at around 9:00 PM, I turned too early, and discovered the Park and Shop district of Melbourne. This little place looked awesome - much like downtown Gainesville! We'll have to come back to that place some weekend!

So, you'd think after all these traffic mishaps, that I'd catch a break. No luck there! This morning, as I was dropping Cherry off at school, we noticed that there was an accident southbound on Wickham. This is broad daylight, folks... cars should come with TCAS these days with how crappy people drive! Anyhow, on the way back towards work, I decided to try to be smart and detour again by taking the next southbound road - only to end up at US1 again (way further than I had expected to go). I finally got to work at 9:00 AM - it's a good thing we don't have those morning meetings any more!

Brand Loyalty

E3 was this week, so I've been keeping up on the news on the next generation systems. I learned that Sony's Playstation 3 is in fact $599 for the full, tricked out version, and that Nintendo's Wii stole the show at E3. I'm pretty happy about that, because I've always liked Nintendo. Yeah, I'll admit it, I'm a Nintendo "fanboy".

I'd never even heard the word "fanboy" until I started reading about the next-gen video game systems. Didn't even know what it was. But I do have to admit, after figuring out what a fanboy is, I'm pretty guilty of it. However, I like to think of myself more as having brand loyalty. It stems from really far back. How far back? I'm not sure, let's try to count back.

Let's start with PCs. As my avid readers should know, I just recently bought a new Dell laptop. I'm told that all "real" nerds build their own computers, so I guess i'm not a real nerd! Yeah! However, this is my third Dell computer. I was very pleased with my first Dell desktop, which I got the summer before I started college. I was even more pleased with my first Dell notebook, except for the fact that the battery died on me. This new computer has had a number of awkward crashes, but I'm very pleased at the overall speed of the machine. So, I'm a Dell fanboy!

As I've mentioned countless times, I'm a Florida Gator. Florida Gators use Nike footballs. So when I looked around for a football to throw around at home, I had to get a Nike football. However, when it comes to shoes, I have always liked Adidas, for some reason. I think it stems back to my early college years. As you know, I was friends with a large number of Europeans in my early years. Europeans play soccer, and Adidas is a primary soccer brand, so most of them liked Adidas. Mantis see, Mantis do, so I'm an Adidas fanboy!

The first car I ever drove extensively was a white 1987 Nissan Sentra. My current car is a white 1994 Toyota Corolla. Speaking of my Corolla, Cherry got her driver's license today, using the Corolla! However, in an unfortunate twist of events, a huge bolt somehow got lodged in my passenger side front tire, and I had to get it plugged. That's the second tire I've had to repair or replace this year!

But back to the subject. The next car I will get will likely either be a Honda or another Toyota. Japanese cars are where it's at! Similarly, between Wii, Playstation 3, and XBox 360, the only one I never really considered was the XBox 360. Japanese is the way to go, baby!

So, what else? I like my Levi's, Hong Kong Giordano, and Gap. Ah yes, how could I forget? The famous Grantis Mantis Vintage Beverage: Coca Cola Classic! Believe me, I am seriously upset with UF's Pepsi contract. All six years I was at the University, we drank Coke. The only Pepsi drink that I drink on a somewhat consistent basis is Mountain Dew, for those all-nighters. Cherry, Vanilla, or Lime (anything but Caffeine-Free or Diet), I'm definitely a Coke fanboy!

Capitalism works. Especially when there's people with my kind of Brand Loyalty...

Kung Fu Mahjong, Ants, and Fires

Got to work pretty early today, and I don't have to attend morning meetings any more, so I thought I'd do a little catch up writing.

Towards the end of last week, we watched the awful movie Kung Fu Mahjong 2. It features Yuen Qiu and Yuen Wah, the landlord and landlady from Kung Fu Hustle, the pretty good film by Stephen Chow last year. These two were classmates of Jackie Chan in Beijing Opera school, and were definitely great in Kung Fu Hustle. They didn't do a damn thing in this movie. Cherry Ying, the female lead from Why Me, Sweetie? (a film that I thoroughly enjoyed, starring Louis Koo), has the same expressions as she did in that movie. Overall, the movie has an 80's Hong Kong cinema feel that is almost like Chow Yun-Fat's A Better Tomorrow, which was great back then but not very up to par to what they are able to put out these days. The comedy is lewd (the winning statement in Mahjong also happens to be the term from masturbation in Chinese) and somewhat racially insensitive (with a smelly Indian guy and a Muay Thai Mahjong master), though that actually made the movie salvageable in a way. I rented this movie expecting some kung fu comedy, but there was very little in that department. I should have expected this low level of quality though, since it is after all a Wong Jing production. For the uninitiated, Wong Jing is a very prominent director in Hong Kong who has put out probably over 100 movies - heck he put out Kung Fu Mahjong 1 and 2 in the same year - of which maybe 10 percent are good... I'll have to be more cautious from now on!

I've had a problem with those little sugar ants for the past few weeks. The picture isn't of those ants - in fact, it's not even a real photo - the photos I found of real ants were too nasty to post! My parents house has tons of these little guys - and they just won't go away! I tried vacuuming them, but they just lie low when the vacuum goes over them, hanging on for dear life, and manage to survive! I never had them at any of the apartments I lived at - I think the pest control usually took care of that. However, I did notice that these past few months, I haven't gotten any notices that pest control has been at my apartment - those lazy bastards!

At first, I saw a bunch of the ants hanging out in my electric water-boiler-thing, so I grabbed it (good thing they weren't biting fire ants) and washed it out. So, the problem went away for like 2 days. A few days later, Cherry saw an army of them hiking towards a cabinet where I keep my microwave popcorn. I opened up the cabinet, and wouldn't you know it, they were attacking my popcorn! I can't understand how they were getting anything out of the boxes though - I don't think any of them actually made it past the plastic wrap - but they definitely had something in their jaws. I emptied out all of the packages and washed the ants off. As a testament to the plastic wrap - the inside bags stayed dry - so I popped one bag, and it seemed to be pretty ant-free inside, so I decided to keep the rest of the popcorn in a separate container.

They were still running rampant in my cabinet though, so I rushed out and grabbed two bottles of Raid, then came back and annihilated them. Reminded me of another Raid incident I had in 2004, only with huge roaches (in the patio) that disintegrated when I used the military-grade outdoor Raid on them. Thus far, the Raid seems to have been pretty effective on the ants. That's all Pest Control had to do. Lazy, lazy, lazy...

Also these past few days, there has been an extraordinary amount of smoke in the mornings. This morning, it was especially bad - probably because we left the house so early for Cherry's test. Recently, an older couple who smokes like crazy moved in downstairs - so we have had to deal with that. However, this smoke was different from that. It was fire smoke. I don't know what's been up with the weather lately, but it seems like there have been forest fires in this area every day for the past week or so. There's a lot of forested area in the Space Coast too - hopefully they don't keep spreading. For me, the smoke is an annoyance - but I think there are people being driven from their homes from these fires - so it needs to rain or something soon.

Spring 2001 Photo Album

Spring 2001 - the true beginning of the 21st century. At this point, my life would start to change a little bit. The beginning of the semester started off very similar to every semester before it - an introduction of a new set of International La Manchans, which we celebrated with a kick-off party in late January.

This latest group of International La Manchans was not as close to us as the previous groups, however. I guess partly it was because we no longer lived at La Mancha, and it was simply too much trouble to hang out with them all the time, like we used to. We started to hang out more with each other, the "domestic" La Manchans from 1999. We still did the usual things - visiting St. Augustine, things we always enjoyed doing. Usually a few of the new La Manchans would join us as well, which was always a good thing!

We were also getting a little older. Some of my close friends, like Pablo and George, were seniors, and I know Pablo was having his late-college crisis, as evidenced in the photo to the right. He was also hanging out with his friends from work and school more often, so that cut into La Mancha time.

As for me, I was a little older. You should be able to tell that it was around this time that I was making my biggest physical changes - as I was working out more and kept on cropping my hair short. Many of my newer friends couldn't believe that I was the same guy as in my Gator One student ID photo! I was starting to branch out as well. I started to dabble in Kung Fu again, and I met Sifu Des, who has helped out our Meihua Student Association of Martial Arts quite often ever since we started up in 2004. However, after only a few lessons with him, I broke my arm, and was forced to take a hiatus from contact activities.

I also checked out Omega Tau, some kind of engineering fraternity on campus, but I never went to another one of their events again. However, it was the first time I would meet Chris, and the Triumverate was finally starting to form. Chris, and later, Kaveh, the third part of the Triumverate, would take nearly every undergraduate engineering course with me - and we spent the better half of our college careers hanging out - sitting next to the Computer Science building watching the bimbos go by, shooting guns in Kaveh's apartment, you name it. Omega Tau is where it started though! Throughout that semester, Chris and I hung out quite a bit, and we even threw our own parties, which were of a different, but definitely not bad, flavor than the La Mancha parties I was used to! I was 18 that year, meaning I could go to clubs without a fake ID of any kind, and we picked up those 3 girls since I recognized one from High School that night, so Armando, Chris, and I threw our own impromptu party to make up for one of many crappy nights on the town! We would throw a few more of those that semester - but it would not be until the Triumverate was fully formed that we became the club zombies that we were for the latter half of my undergraduate years!

Check out the whole Spring 2001 album here!

Saturn! (Not Sega, the real one!)

I mentioned earlier this week that one of the highlights of my boss Gerry's Cinco de Mayo party was the little bit of astronomy we did towards the end of the night, using Gerry's monster telescope. Rick went home and processed some of this image of Saturn from that night - essentially he took something like ten 30-second exposures and overlayed them on each other. In essence, this makes the things that you want to show up appear brighter and more clear, and avoids the excessive light that you would have captured if you were to just take one 300 second exposure. Kind of like spread spectrum, for you communications engineers out there!

Anyhow, the photo turned out okay. It's a little worse than how we were actually seeing it directly through the telescope. It was a cloudy night, so some of the exposures probably got distorted a bit. Also, every few seconds there would be this "wave" effect that would blur the whole image. From what Gerry and Rick told me, this phenomenon is actually caused by gaps of heat in the atmosphere! Even with these setbacks, the photo is still pretty cool. You can clearly see the overall shape of the planet and its rings, and you can even make out a few of it's numerous moons!


It turns out that we are in a pretty opportune time to look at Saturn. From what Gerry and Rick told me, every twenty years or so, Saturn will make a full "vertical" spin, in the sense that at the beginning and end of the revolution, the rings will be basically perfectly aligned with viewers from the Earth, rendering them invisible and making Saturn just a large bright spot, and twice in mid-rotation, the rings will be perpendicular to our line-of-sight, making Saturn look like a donut. For the next few years, we are in the stage where Saturn is tilted in a sort of 3/4 aspect, so we can appreciate some depth perception! So, if you get the chance to use a monster telescope, make sure you check out Saturn in the next few years!

Awesome Knockout

I couldn't resist. It's like straight out of a Tony Jaa film. I would have been pissed if I paid to see this fight though!

Winter 2000-2001 Photo Album Up!

And now, enter flashback mode...

2000 was an interesting year in my college career. The fall semester was by far my worst in terms of grades - which can be greatly attributed to the large number of house parties that I threw in that semester. It was also the first semester where I had my first college relationship. Needless to say, that fell apart, and to be honest, I was pretty messed up for a while - Pablo, Jose, Jordan, and several others can testify to that!

The semester ended, and my family and I took a nice trip which probably helped my 18-year-old feeble mind a little bit. I made my first (and only - thus far) trip to Europe. The itinerary included Portugal, Spain, France, Monaco, and Italy. My readers will know that I made friends with a number of Italians in my first few years at the University of Florida, so I was pretty excited about being able to visit Milan, the city where my Italian friends went to school (not to mention one of the fashion capitals of the world!)!

Another great thing about the trip was that my cousins Leo and Tina and their family would also be coming along. Well, that Leo was coming was a great thing, that his mom was also coming wasn't so great - I got in quite the shouting match with her somewhere in Spain because of her incessant bickering while I was trying to communicate with the hotel con-man-agers somewhere between Madrid and Barcelona. My readers should also know that Leo is my closest cousin, as we have been playing together ever since I was a toddler - but now we were both in college, so there was to be no Transformers skits on this trip, unfortunately!

The trip had its ups and downs. I was nearly mugged in Lisbon - the only thing that stopped the thief was the fact that I had no money in my jacket pocket! And of course my awesome kung fu skillz... actually I never even saw him coming - a friendly plainsclothes cop alerted me to the thief's presence (after the attempt, but still, a nice gesture). I remember having had some kind of fight in Spain, probably over the lack of the group's interest in trying the local Spanish cuisine, and I ended up wandering about a cold, wet Madrid on my own. Even so, Madrid is one of my favorite cities all time. We stayed in Madrid's equivalent of Times Square for about 3 or 4 days, and I would go downstairs and mingle with some of the cute locals, who were impressed by this Chinaman's broken Spanish ;).

We also made our way to the namesake of my former college home, La Mancha, as well as the aqueducts in Segovia, the castles in Toledo, surreal Barcelona, nice Nice, Cannes, as well as Big Pimpin' Monte Carlo. Aside from the gorgeous landscapes, which I know you will see in my photo album, I was very impressed by the local McDonald's in France, which featured a genuine Royale with Cheese sandwich of Pulp Fiction lore! This was much much more exciting than the horribly located Burger King at Il Duormo cathedral in Milan (not that I don't like Burger King, but when you're visiting a Renaissance cathedral, you don't really expect to be smelling flame-broiled burgers).

Anyway, this is probably the first time many of even my closest friends will get the opportunity to look at photos from this family trip of mine - I burned the photos to a CD and forgot about them for a while, until George and a few others pressed me to dig up old photos from our college years. So, enjoy!

Winter 2000-2001 Photo Album

The Power of Advil

I'm not sure of the reason, but this morning I woke up with a fierce headache. I've gotten this kind of headache a couple of times since I started working - and usually I just chalk it up to bad sleep habits or whatnot. Today, however, the headache was accompanied by a wicked nosebleed! Interestingly, I had a similar nosebleed the morning before as well. Perhaps the two are related?

After siphoning out all the blood from my nose, I still had my piercing headache, and I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make it at work today, but then, I busted out the Advil. I recalled the first time I had such a headache - I held out for nearly a week, thinking it would just go away, before I finally decided to take some medication. About an hour later, the headache was gone! And this was after a week of suffering! So, I took an Advil this morning, and I seem to be fine now! I need to figure out what's causing these headaches though...

Conker, Dumplings, and Stargazing

Another weekend over, another blog entry.

After a dullingly long week, I warmly welcomed the weekend. I started it off with some Nintendo 64 - in particular, I picked up where I left off on Conker's Bad Fur Day. Conker is a really entertaining game, with some serious lewd humor - on the segment that I played on Friday night, Conker helps an old, flustered male bee who is infatuated with a large-breasted Sunflower. Problem is, the Sunflower keeps herself covered up all day. Conker encounters a number of "tickling bees", who then help him expose the Sunflower, which allows the flustered bee to get it on with the sunflower(to Conker's disgust!). After the new couple indulge themselves, Conker is rewarded as the Sunflower let's him bounce on her hooters. This is not a useless gesture - you actually use this reward to bounce to the top of a ledge where you can pick up another wad of cash. I'd say it's definitely one of Nintendo 64's most entertaining games - it's a shame Microsoft bought up Rareware, so we won't be seeing much of Conker on Nintendo platforms in the future.

The main purpose of today's entry, however, is to showcase the collage tool from Picasa again. The pictures below are from the early Cinco de Mayo party that one of my bosses, Gerry, has been really eager to throw for quite some time. The party itself was not very exciting - the promises of a Paintball game were shot down since no one seemed to want to play, so we just sat around, eating and drinking. Gerry's house is on a massive 2 acre lot, and the weather was a very pleasant 75 degrees or so, so paintball probably would have been pretty awesome.


Dinner was pretty good. Gerry made a lot of shrimp dishes - one appetizer with homemade seafood sauce, some gumbalaya, and curry-type dish. His shrimp were huge - something like six inches each! Rick and his wife brought a corn casserole, Bob brought chicken fajitas, Marlene brought an authentic Mexican dish with tortillas, something I can't pronounce very well or spell at all, and meat and veggies, and I brought dumplings that Cherry and I made earlier. It's a shame Cherry didn't show up, because the dumplings were definitely a hit with Gerry and his very tall wife, Shelly.

At the end of the day, when it got dark and slightly less cloudy Gerry and Rick got out Gerry's huge 10-inch telescope to do some astronomy. I'd never actually used a telescope before - kind of surprising actually, considering I used to be pretty into astronomy as a kid. We looked at the moon, which was just a sliver that night, as well as Saturn. They also showed me what a star looks like in a telescope - and basically it just looks like a star, only slightly bigger. Saturn, on the other hand, is much more interesting - you can actually see several of the moons around it, and of course you can see it's rings. After I left, they looked at Jupiter too, and they were setting up the camera to take some exposures of the planets, so hopefully those will be ready by my next post. Rick has taken some awesome shots of stars and galaxies and nebulaes and so on, so I expect the photos should be pretty awesome. Stay tuned!