China 2002, Part VII: The Emory Group and the World Cup!

So, recently, I've been pretty busy with work, hence the lack of posts in general and in particular the lack of China 2002 posts. Apparently, you have to work at work! Who knew?

So yeah, I was looking around on Facebook the other day and I noticed that Brian, one of Ed's friends from high school and a member of the Meihua Student Association of Martial Arts a while back, will apparently be in Asia for a large portion of the 2006-2007 year. He's already been to Boston (not Asia but part of his trip), Vietnam, Singapore and Hong Kong. You can read about his adventures in his blog, The Grand Adventure. He's somewhere in mainland China at the moment, which, because of the anti-blog stance in China, seems to be preventing him from updating often. Even so, it sounds like an awesome adventure that I'm very jealous of, since I know how awesome long-term stays in a foreign country can be. In that spirit, I bring you the Seventh Episode of China 2002!

So, we've been in China for about one month now. One day, after class, we went downstairs to eat at the restaurant that's conveniently located on the ground floor of our dorm, which, as the photo shows, was actually a hotel which offered long term rates for international students (lots of Korean students go to Shaanxi Normal University to get certified for Mandarin proficiency). The food there was pretty good, and it was very convenient, especially since they could deliver directly to your room as well, but it was a bit more expensive than most of the other places we commonly ate at, like the place with the melting plastic cups, or the tree leaves place that charged 1 kuai for bowls of rice (travesty!). Anyway, this day, we came across a group of several white people we didn't recognize, and a Chinese American girl as well. This could only mean one thing - that we were not the only study abroad students staying there!

The new group was from Emory University. Their program was substantially different from ours - most of them didn't speak any Chinese at all, the whole program was only a few weeks (about one month, compared to our nearly three months), their teacher seemed to have come with them from the States, and all food, lodging, and planned field trips were paid for (at a very high price - something like $6,000 USD per person, but I can't remember now - it's been more than four years!). To put that in perspective, most of the people on our trip made it through the three months, including transportation expenses and souvenirs and CDs and whatever else, on about $3,000 USD. However, money didn't seem to be much of an issue for these kids - one of them reportedly dropped some $100 USD at a club in the first week they were in Xi'an (note that most drinks were fairly priced at around 20 kuai in clubs - beer could be acquired for substantially less - sometimes less than 2 kuai for domestic beers!).

Us on the set of City Girl, which Genny won

We never really got along with the Emory group - in fact, the only person we did get to know was Genny, the Chinese American girl. We never really even saw the others much, but we often saw Genny around in the streets and she came to the English Salon a few times with us as well. She actually ended up staying in China for about nine months, doing various English teaching jobs, after her schoolmates completed their program and went home. Genny was really capable - much like Tom, or Daqian, from our group; she got to know people all around, from professors, to administrators, to TV show directors! In fact, she was invited as a special guest contestant on the game show, City Girl, which was a sort of beauty pageant contest on TV in China. For that event, our group was invited, since she was afraid she wouldn't have much of a fan base (especially since none of her own Emory schoolmates showed). We did go, however, and watched as she answered questions while strapped to a spinning wheel, and sang "Hey Jude" in front of the studio audience. She actually ended up winning the show, which was kind of funny since the other two contestants really prissed up for the show while Genny was just in a tank top and normal pants, with no make-up.

As mentioned before, the World Cup was going on in Korea and Japan right when we were in China, which was very convenient for us, as our own schoolmates back in the States were forced to watch their favorites play in the middle of the night, all the soccer matches we were interested seemed to happen when we were supposed to have class! We technically didn't even have to skip class, since many times, our teachers would join us to watch the matches. For the Korea-USA match, the American students even made "美国必胜"(mei guo bi sheng - USA Must Win!) headbands and watched with the Koreans! We ended up tying that game, sending both USA and Korea to the quarterfinals, where unfortunately, USA lost to Germany and Korea would make a historic run to Third Place at the end of the World Cup Finals!

Work Goes A Lot Faster...

...when you're not at work for half of the day!

Shawn and I went to a seminar today about Agilent's new and uber-powerful series of spectrum analyzers, the PSA's, and the incredible software that you can use with it. The seminar was in Port Canaveral, which is some 30 miles away from our building, so Shawn decided that it was too much of a waste for him to come to work in the morning (he lives in Satellite Beach, which is about thirty minutes away from work and in the same general direction of the seminar), and just waited at home until I showed up at around 10:00 in the morning.

The seminar was the first off-site seminar I've been to since coming to work here (technically, it's the first off-site seminar I've been to ever, as most other seminars I have attended were either on UF's campus or NCKU (National Cheng Kung University in Tainan, Taiwan), while I was at either of those two schools. It was also the first seminar I've attended where the primary topic was advertising a particular piece of equipment. Still, despite being quite a bit self-appreciative, the seminar was pretty informative, and it did kind of make me wish I had one of those PSA's at my disposal in my lab (probably wishful thinking, though - I'm pretty sure these babies, software not included, cost around $55,000 , even with Agilent's "promotional prices").

Annnnnnd, that's all for now. Gotta make up a little for the five hours I was not at the office (even though I was paid to go to the seminar =D).

Vader, the Supermarket Day Shift Manager

I know I've put up a YouTube cop out already today, but this one is a can't miss...

Console Wars

Another YouTube cop out, heh heh.



Who will win???

<3<3<3 DS Lite! <3<3<3

Well, I finally did it! After like half a year of saying I would get some sort of video game system, and approximately one month since my last attempt to actually pick up the new Nintendo DS Lite, I finally did! I had it preordered last week actually. What happened was, last month, when I tried using the Circuit City coupon that allowed the customer to get a DS Lite and the game Brain Age for the price of the DS Lite itself, they were out of stock of both items. The manager was nice enough to write a note on my coupon, saying to honor it once both items were in stock. Last week, I went to the store again, and lo and behold, Brain Age was back in stock. However, the DS Lite was not >=(.

So, I had them special order it for me, and they called me on Tuesday telling me to pick it up. However, I heard about some DS Lites kind of cracking on one of the joints, so I was reluctant to get it right away. After sitting on it for about a day, I concluded that it was a small enough percentage, not to mention that I, unlike many of my game-playing friends, have never broken a video game apparatus (e.g. controllers, handhelds, and whatnot) and consider myself to be quite careful, I gave in to my desires and went to capitalize on my coupon, and came home with a shiny, bright, brand new Polar White Nintendo DS Lite!!!

I'll admit it, when I first heard about Brain Age, I thought it was hokey as all hell. I mean, why would I want to train my brain? Wasn't I getting enough brain training from Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time? Isn't gaming about kicking the crap out of 30 guys in Super Smash Bros.? But when we fired up the DS (which was quite entertaining in and of itself with all the cool little setup things you can do - almost like a cellphone!) and started playing Brain Age, we couldn't stop for the next hour and a half. Cherry enjoyed it just as much as I did, and probably played it for just as long, trying to improve on her initial DS Brain Age of 80. Basically, the Brain Age represents how old your brain is - the younger, the better, with ideal being 20. My initial brain age was 68, as a comparison, but that's because I went after her, and kind of knew how to say Red during the Stroop Test so that the DS Lite would understand. Still, we've got a looong way to go. Which is a good thing, since that means my $137.78 is going to entertain us for quite some time! Of course, if any of you feel strangely inclined to give me any DS games as a gift, please don't hesitate, thinking that all of my time will be occupied by Brain Age...

Bo Goes the Distance

YouTube Cop Out Alert!

I thoroughly enjoyed this, and you will too, if you've ever played Tecmo Super Bowl!



Real Post Coming Soon =P.

Weekend Update: Kites and Jackie, the Master

First, a milestone update! Sometime last week, Grant's Pad broke 2000 visits! Not bad, but at this rate it's gonna be a while before we break the 10,000 mark...

Anyway, a quick weekend update. On Thursday, Cherry and I watched Titanic. I actually have never seen that movie in its whole before. I've tried, I really have. But I always fell asleep, since it is so long. This time, I was able to stay awake, but I don't really know what the fuss was about. It wasn't a bad movie, but for all the accolades and testimonials, I would have thought it was more revolutionary. Then again, it is nine years old - maybe movies have changed substantially since then?

On Saturday, Cherry and I went to the beach. Melbourne's beaches are windy, and somewhat uneven where the water breaks, so surfing is pretty popular here. I've never surfed, and I don't really see myself picking it up either, although I do like riding the waves without a board (is there a word for that?). Anyway, we took a kite to the beach. We bought the kite some time ago, at the same time we got the badminton racquets, but we haven't really had the opportunity to use it yet. I made sure to get a nylon kite, instead of the plastic kites, the ones that fall apart like those grocery store bags for vegetables, that I used to have when I was little. I thought it would be complicated to put together, so I assembled it at home before we left.

When we got to the beach, I was a little concerned because of how crowded the beach was. The last time we were at Deerfield Beach, the lifeguards didn't let Ed and I toss the football, and there were substantially fewer people at the beach on that day. I guess Indialantic Beach must be much more laid back since there were people tossing and kicking balls all over the place, so we busted out the kite. To my surprise, it took right off! I didn't have to move an inch from where I was standing - all I had to do was unravel kitestring, and the kite flew higher and higher, with virtually no danger of falling back to the earth. Somehow, I don't recall kites being so easy to fly (maybe it's because this one wasn't a plastic bag kite from my childhood?) but it was pretty fun.

On Sunday, I watched Jackie Chan's 师弟出马, or "Younger Kung Fu Brother Helps Out", roughly translated. Inexplicably, the movie's English title is The Young Master... I don't really know where they got that from, but it's the original English Title (as opposed to the lame titles given a number of Jet Li movies in the early part of the decade, like Twin Warriors for the great movie The Tai Chi Master). Fortunately, the movie itself was quite good - in fact, I would say it's one of the best kung fu movies I've seen in a while, even though it's from 1980! Yuen Biao was awesome, and the display of Chin na (a sort of Chinese grappling) by the villain at the end was really impressive, not to mention the length of the fight scenes - what happened to those good old 20 minute fights?

They all went to unimportant things, like storyline. Bah. =P

Cool Choreographed Street Fight

Not much has been happening here worthy of writing about, so instead, I present you with this rather long, but entertaining, video! Enjoy!



I also updated my music list and included a few songs from 南拳妈妈 (Nan Quan Ma Ma, or Southern Fist Mom), a cool Taiwanese band formed by Jay Chou. Not sure what the name is supposed to mean, but it's pretty cool.

China 2002, Part VI: Chinese Trains 101 and The Shaolin Temple

This post is damn long but it's really good, so take your time, break it up a bit!

Our classes in China, if you haven't already figured it out yet, are very laid back. Mere days after our field trip/history class skip day to the Terra Cotta Warriors site, Li Fei, our Intensive Reading teacher, decided to let us go early on Friday afternoon. I took this extra time to get my hair colored for the second time (if you recall, the first time was during my Super Saiyan stint on Halloween on the previous year). This time, I died it a sort of plum red. At the hair place, I couldn't really tell that it was any different at first, but once I got out into the sun, it stood out quite a bit - enough to get me mistaken as a Korean tourist more than a few times during our stay in China!

On the weekend, Diana decided to take us on another trip (this time Conrad didn't make it - apparently oversleeping, quite to Diana's disappointment). This time, our destination was the famed Shaolin Temple at Song Mountain, or Song Shan (嵩山). For those of you familiar with Chinese Kung Fu novels and/or TV serials, you might know that Song Shan is the "Center Mountain" of the Five Taoist Mountains, and was once home to a very large Sword School, the Song Shan Pai. Strangely enough, the Shaolin Temple is also located here, despite being a Buddhist temple.

Anyhow, Song Shan is located near Deng Feng county in the Henan province. Xi'an, on the other hand, is the capital of the Shaanxi province, Henan's northwestern neighbor. That meant it would be a bit of a commute to the Shaolin Temple, and called for more drastic transportation than a mere long distance bus like the one we took to the Terra Cotta Army site. Yes, this was to be, for most of us, our first trip on a Chinese Hard Seat Train (硬座). Chinese trains are divided into a number of classes based on the rider accommodation and the speed of the train. The cheapest trains are the Hard Seat, Normal Speed trains that are usually denoted with a P-number (P standing for Pukuai (普快), or normal speed), which are damn slow and have to yield to any train on the same track, be it oncoming or coming from behind. The seat is actually cushioned (though not by much), and about the size of a grade school desk, and are usually grouped in six seats around a table. Next is the Hard Seat, Fast train (designated by K for Kuai (快), or Fast), the most common train in China. These typically travel at around 120 km/h, or roughly 75 mph, and also feature the hard seat format. For really long distances, both the P and K trains have sleeper cars with cots, and are thus called hard sleepers (硬卧). Finally, there are the luxury trains, or the Soft Seat/sleepers. These are also usually the fastest trains, and are designated with T for Tekuai (特快) - especially fast at about 160 km/h, about 100 mph! They also feature full charter bus style cushioned seats or double sleeper cabins with real beds for long distances!

Unfortunately, our commute was only six hours, and did not warrant a soft sleeper. Or even a soft seat. I'm pretty sure we took the typical Fast train. Getting the tickets was pretty easy, as Diana, our seasoned veteran of Chinese travel, took care of that. Getting on the train was trickier. It involved knowing which platform your train would arrive on, and sprinting to your car's gate, then cramming in with all the Chinese passengers. Queues are nonexistent in virtually any type of public transportation in China, so you really had to fight to get on. Of course, they sell more tickets than seats for (although you would usually know if you didn't have a seat, since you paid less, and freeloaders are usually gracious enough to get up if they're in your seat), so there are always quite a few people standing in the aisles. And yes, you would much rather stand than sit in the aisles, as the aisles are used primarily for spitting and disposing of sunflower seed shells (both are rampant in China). Fortunately, we did have seats, so we didn't have to worry that much about it. One vivid memory I have of this train ride, however, was the peach vendor raid on the train at one of the stations we stopped at on the way to Henan. These guys were very skilled at what they do. They wait by the track on the station and storm on with the passengers, then try to sell as many peaches as they can before the train stewards bust them, at which point they blaze down the aisles and jump through the tiny train windows, peach sack and all! Who needs Jackie Chan?

But anyway, you're actually here to read about the trip to the Shaolin Temple. After arriving in Henan, we had to take a tour bus to get to Deng Feng, where we would walk to Shaolin. Tour buses are also quite exciting, especially when the driver leans on the horn whenever another vehicle comes in sight, getting off of it only when the other vehicle disappears from the rearview mirror. Anyhow, we finally arrived, and were quite surprised to see the large number of kung fu schools in the area, but easily more impressed at the sheer number of live-in kung fu students! There were at least 5,000, easy. I think I actually read a figure that said some 6,000 trained in the area at any given time. Diana had actually come to train at Shaolin for some time in the past, and ran into a white guy she knew while we were walking around who was currently living with a farming family in the area and otherwise training full time! Very cool.

Since it was already quite late, we didn't actually go into the Shaolin Temple that afternoon. Instead, we went over to check out Song Shan, and then, when it got dark, headed over to one of the schools, where Diana checked us into one of the dorms for the night. That's right, we got to live in a dorm at the Shaolin Temple! We walked around a bit more after dinner, saw that some of the students also trained in Sanshou, not just forms, which helped assure us that yes, these wiry dudes can fight. When it got too late and dark outside to train, they actually let the students stay up to watch kung fu movies!

The next day, we checked out the actual temple. Not a whole lot of training is actually done there - most of the training is done at some of the sanctioned training facilities outside of the temple, next to all of the vendor booths (the Shaolin Temple is, after all, a tourist attraction of sorts - something's gotta pay the bills!). Diana, with her awesome guan xi, hooked us up with Free tickets to a demo by some junior students! It was an okay demo, but it was free, so who could complain?

After the demo, we toured the temple a bit more. We saw most of the chambers, including the one in the Jet Li movie Shaolin Temple, where the floor has indentations from the hundreds of years of stomping by training monks. We also saw the Forest of Steles that commemorates all of the past monks.

So, at the Shaolin Temple, we saw a beautiful mountain, some amazing stunts, an astounding number of kung fu students, souvenir hawkers, some nice chambers and halls, a large number of memorial steles of great kung fu and Buddhist masters, and some interesting statues of Arhats and deities. But by far, the strangest thing we saw at the Shaolin Temple was the crude zoo they had put together, with a chimpanzee, some weird birds and a camel!

And that concludes the long awaited sixth part of my China 2002 series! Make sure you check out Tom's Shaolin Temple photo album (where the majority of the photos in this post come from), as well as my China 2002 albums for a lot more photos from this trip!!

Don't Try This At Home...

Or Taco Bell. Or Pizza Hut. Or anywhere for that matter!

This is a real photo. I took it myself. Right here in Melbourne!

Big Coasters, Big Acrobatics, and Big Hats

Sorry it's taken a few days to get this up - I've been pretty busy despite the four-day weekend, and I've been making an effort to work hard since I got back to work yesterday. Regardless, here we go!

So Sunday was a fairly slow day. I think the only thing that sticks out in my mind is going swimming and going to Young's Buffet, a Super China Buffet-like place in Palm Bay. It was good, but not as good as the ones in South Florida. It seemed fairly popular though, and had a Mongolian grill which was pretty cool - I hadn't seen one of those since I went to Gasparilla in Tampa in 2002 (they have a great Mongolian grill in Ybor City).

On Monday, after we dropped Cherry off at school, Ed and I went to Busch Gardens for the day. We got there slightly after 10:30, and I was surprised that there was no parking in the regular parking lot left! Instead, we had to park on a grassy space across from Adventure Island that they had alotted for the day, and shuttled us in charter buses to the front gate, which was quite nice actually.

The first order of business was to get some food. We had a number of choices - there was some sort of chicken and fish special at the Crown Colony House, the Smokehouse that we usually go to when we visit Busch Gardens or Sea World, sandwiches at a number of food places, and an All-You-Care-To-Eat picnic, which sounded damn good. But, since the picnic was the most expensive, and we were also in a hurry to finish lunch and get on with the day, we went for a grilled chicken sandwich, then went on to see Katonga, the feature song and dance show at Busch Gardens. We'd seen the show the other two times we'd come to Busch Gardens since last December, and it was equally unimpressive this time. I would say it's worth watching at least once, since it is colorful and entertaining, but since Ed and I are enamored with acrobatics, the lack thereof in Katonga led us to never really enjoy this show that much.

Next up was the Kumba, the first of the huge roller coasters in Florida. I remember when this ride first came out like ten years ago (or more!). What I don't remember is getting so dizzy on it. It seems every time I ride a long roller coaster now, I get dizzier. Must be getting old or something. Then we went on Congo River Rapids, one of my favorites from my childhood. We were a bit disappointed that there weren't some more attractive bikini clad college girls riding with us - in fact, it seemed that there were more, uh, heavy bikini clad women than usual. I think it might be that time of year, when the less physically blessed northerners come down to Florida and feel compelled to wear as little as they can to take advantage of the warm weather. I reasoned that during the school year, the vast majority of female patrons to Busch Gardens should be students from USF and UF, and since it was now the summer, they had been displaced by snowbirds.

At about 4:00PM, just like Weather.com had predicted the night before, there was a huge thunderstorm. We were still somewhat wet from the Congo River Rapids ride, so we were okay with the rain, but not so much with the lightning. Fortunately, the Stanleyville Theater was nearby, so we hid under there for the brunt of the storm. To our delight, it turned out that Busch Gardens had decided again to bring some foreign acrobatic talent to the Stanleyville Theater, like in the old days! This summer, the talent was in the form of the Dragon Pond Acrobats, a group of young acrobats, from Puyang China! Although it's quite possible that I have a strong bias, I really do think Chinese acrobats are the best in the world. See Cirque du Soleil's Dralion sometime to verify this.

The first act was a dish and plate spinning gig. Next was a sort of bungee cord thing where a bunch of acrobats spun around a bar with the youngest (12 years old) kid spinning in the middle. Then there was the candle girl, who performed contortionism with candles balanced on her head and limbs, while herself balancing on a much buffer contortionist who also at times balanced candles. There was also a hat juggling act, a ring jumping act, another balancing act with two buff contortinists, a Chinese yo-yo act, and a trident spinning act. I was really pleased with the show, even though there were a few drops. I managed to get a bunch of videos - as you can see, some of the photos didn't turn out that well.

The last ride we went on was the Rhino Rally. We'd gone on this ride the last time we were at Busch Gardens. However, on that trip, half of the ride - the water part - was closed. In fact, we had tried to go on this ride earlier in the day, but early in line, they announced that that half of the ride was closed again, so we left. This time, it was open. The wait was almost an hour, but it was worth it. Waiting in line one row in front of us was the most amazing body we would see all day. She was wearing a low cut blouse, rolled up above her belly button, and also wore a ridiculously big, racehorse track-style hat, which is probably why my TCAS, which typically picks up any nearby string-bikini clad bombshells, didn't see her at first. Anyhow, she was playing with this little girl, and did this little bunny hop run... You can probably imagine - bouncy! Ed and I were like pffffft... that's it! The water part of the ride was pretty cool too, worth checking out even without the Big Hat girl waiting in line! Really...

Tuesday was the last day of my holiday, but it was quite lazy. Ed and I tried going outside to play badminton, but it was too windy, and it was too hot to play football, so we spent most of the day playing Super Smash Bros. and Ocarina of Time (Ed picked up on this game pretty quick - he helped me get through some dungeons a lot quicker than I would have with just my own brain) until his roommate Shawn and their high school friend Alex came by. Then they joined us for some Super Smash Bros until around 5:00, when they finally left. After relaxing for a couple hours, Cherry and I went to go see the Fourth of July Fireworks Display. However, the buses had already stopped running, so we parked instead at the library, which is situated next to a lake, and watched the fireworks from there. It actually turned out better, probably, since we were able to get in and out quickly and it wasn't super crowded - there were a few other families there as well. When we got home, some people were shooting off fireworks at the apartment until about midnight, when our neighbor downstairs went over to yell at them!

And that covers my four-day weekend! Keep an eye out for the next episode of China 2002!

Loooong Weekend Mid-Term Update

Grant's Pad needs your help, people! There were a grand total of zero, that's right, zero visits to Grant's Pad yesterday. We narrowly avoided an all time visit low last month, and were not able to avoid an all time page view low! I know there haven't been many cool updates in terms of features, and I've been a little slower to write than in the past (I've been actually working pretty hard these past few weeks). I'll try to keep things fresh for you on each visit! I promise!

Anyway, in the interest of not having people wait another week for a new post like last week, I've decided to write in the middle of my long, four-day weekend. The company was nice enough to give us July 3rd, which is a Monday, off so that we could have gone on a nice trip if we wanted to. But actually, we couldn't, because Cherry's Psychology class has their first test on Monday. Damn those psychos...

So anyway, last weekend (the one where we were in Boca and I had my all star football game), we had originally planned on going to Busch Gardens on Monday, since both Cherry and Ed had that day off. We would have gone up to Tampa on Sunday and subsequently spent time with one of my best friends from college, and one third of the Triumverate, Chris. However, I had to finish some things up at work, and that plan fell through. So instead, Chris said that this weekend, he would be down in Boca to visit Kaveh and his fiancee-to-be, Christina, and then he would be headed up to Daytona, presumably to spend the holiday with his family. Seeing as Melbourne is a pit stop between Boca and Daytona, he arranged to come over on Saturday morning. However, a late start and a big family (Christina has something on the order of 12 siblings) brunch delayed his arrival until around 4:30 PM. Ed, my coworker Nick, his new girlfriend Josette, and I were throwing around the football when Chris arrived with his girlfriend's two cute dogs, who were very well behaved and so soft! There is some serious red-eye in the photo above, which is a shame because it really undermines their cuteness.

After the football, Nick and Josette went home to freshen up and Chris, Ed, and I got in some good ol' N64 action for old time's sake. We started with Super Smash Bros, and then on to Mario Kart, both of which Chris was pretty dominating. If I recall correctly, Chris went to some sort of Nintendo championship when he was a wee lad - so his video game skills are pretty sharp. As 7:30 rolled around, we had to get cleaned up too, so we gave Chris some spareribs and soup to make up for the dinner we were supposed to have and he went on his way to Daytona. Ed, Cherry, and I weren't even able to eat before we finally headed out. We were supposed to go out with Nick, Josette, and Nick's roommate Chris to see Superman Returns at 8:15, and by the time I was done with my shower, it was 7:55, so we just took off, got a huge popcorn and Mountain Dew (the only PepsiCo soda I prefer over the Coca Cola equivalent - Gatorade doesn't count since it's not carbonated), and went into the movie. It was awesome by the way, I have no complaints on this film, except for the same old "Why the heck can't they recognize Clark just because he has glasses on?" I mean, 6'4" guys stand out pretty conspicuously, not to mention with the level of intimacy the other characters have with Clark and the crystal clear photos of Superman, you'd think it wouldn't be that hard to figure out. But that was the only thing, and it's kind of classic, so you can't mess with that. Besides, after seeing the atrocity that was Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life, on Friday night, it was a wonderful change of goodness. TCAS (Traffic and Collision Avoidance System), one of the products I work on, is even featured in it! Go see it, if only for the awesome bullet in the eye scene!

It's been a great weekend so far, seeing Chris again was really great - at some point I'll need to see Kaveh again to complete the cycle. Until next time!