I was being responsible today

I was responsible today both in terms of my finances and my health.

Finance

I checked all my accounts (PC, TD, ING, CIBC, WaMu, FirstTech, Citi Canada, Citi) and paid my credit card bills. I also checked up on my investments and opened up a CD with WaMu to get some of my American money working for me. Also changed my address from Palo Alto to Canada.

Then, I gathered all the documents generated over the summer needed for tax purposes. I got this thing in the mail asking that I pay like 9k in advance taxes to the Canadian Government b/c last year I had a pretty big negative tax rebate since I didn't pay taxes all year (didn't pay upfront on my scholarship and then no Canadian taxes on MSR earnings). This advance tax thing is to prevent people like me from not paying taxes all year, collecting interest on it, and then paying it at the end of the year.

The catch this time around, is that I won't have to pay much in taxes b/c my scholarship is now TAX FREE! At least Harper did one thing right :). Basically what that means is that this estimate of 9k that I would have to pay in taxes is much too high as I will now have a huge portion of my income that I no longer have to pay taxes on. Anyways, my Dad does my taxes and wanted to see my pay stubs, etc. to estimate how much I'd have to pay in taxes for this year, and adjust that 9k accordingly, since I won't have to owe nearly as much taxes this coming year.


Health

I then went for a run in the evening/night. It's been a couple days since my last run. I blame volleyball/frisbee on Wed and golf on Thurs, and I was in no shape to run on Tues. To make up for lost time, I doubled the distance (8 laps, ~7 km). That's actually the farthest I've ever run! I did however, do it at a rather slow pace, about 50 min. (just over 7 min. kilometres). But I still had quite a bit of energy, and ended up sprinting the last half lap. I'm feeling pretty good right now and my legs are ok, so I can easily push a few more laps at that pace. I figure, I should get the distance down first before trying to go fast. One third of the way there! (The half marathon is 21 km). Not bad after 2 training sessions :p. Just under 2 months left!

The new blogger

I got the invite to upgrade my blog to the new Blogger today. I'm not making use of any of the new features yet (eg. tags, comment feed, different archiving links). That's b/c it doesn't let you edit the raw html once you convert to a new template and I have a lot of custom code in my template. Plus, I want to do a complete overhaul of the design of this blog when I do the conversion.

The best thing about the new blogger is that the pages are dynamically created. It's all backend stuff. You don't see the effect, but for me, when I'm changing the settings, I no longer have to "republish" my blog, which takes a while since my blog is pretty big.

Anyways, while I was looking through things, I made some cosmetic changes to my blog. It's all in the sidebar. The most noticeable difference is that I now show a picture on the side. The cool thing is the picture randomly changes everytime you load the page! It's similar to what Nusraat does, but I had to do it slightly different b/c I'm using Blogger and not hosting it myself. I just used a bit of Javascript to write the image tag into the document where the image url is randomly chosen.

Code snippet:

    <script language="JavaScript">
      <!--
      var numImages = 5;
      var imgIdx = Math.floor(Math.random() * numImages);
      document.write("<img src='http://www.blah.com/ImageName" + imgIdx + ".jpg'>");
      //-->
    </script>
    <noscript>
      <img src="http://www.blah.com/ImageName.jpg" />
    </noscript>

I was sure that I was gonna get West Nile

I had already come to terms with the fact that I was going to get West Nile tonight. The plan was to go to Assiniboine Park and basically do what I was doing at Google (coincidently) - play beach volleyball and throw around a frisbee.

Met up with Kevin, Rob, and Jill at the volleyball courts (like a 5 min. drive from my place :D). I was spanking the ball pretty good today. The ball was like bouncing off the sand :). This obviously had nothing to do with the net being low (~women's height at the sides, and low enough for me to touch the top in the middle, so about 2-2.5 "squares" low). The sand was much softer than at Google, and when you dig down the sand was actually damp, plus it wasn't dusty at all.

Usually the volleyball courts are literally swarming with mosquitoes. Honestly there are mosquitoes just circling around constantly, even when you have bug spray on. They are vicious as well. They would go right through clothing. I used to get something like 25 bites on each leg and arm. It was insane.

Today, none. Zip. Zilch. Amazing! I have never seen it like that before! Ok, well, in like the beginning of May, but never in August (like peak mosquito season). Apparently the new bug guy in Winnipeg, "Taz", is doing a good job this year!

We then switched to throwing around a disc (frisbee). My forehand is like way better than my backhand now, which is pretty crazy since I couldn't throw forehand like a month and a half ago.

Of course, afterwards, we hit the nearby 7-11 for slurpees. Slurpee capital of the world baby!!!! It was my first slurpee this year, though I've had many slushies (mostly fruit based, which are better and healthier than slurpees anyways).

Jill took some pics, but hasn't posted them yet... Watch her blog for the yang version of this post (or is that yin? I'm not sure which one I am)

OMG, STOP PEEING IN MY ROOM!!!

Earlier today, one of the two dogs we're babysitting for my older sister's friend peed in my room. I didn't even know the dogs went into my room, just that they were running around upstairs, and then I go into my room, and I see this wet spot :s. Not sure if it was Rafiki or Wicket... Those dogs are funny. They look a lot like Tiggy, at least in fur colour and size, and collectively, they are referred to as 3 cats or 3 dogs. It's a little ambiguous either way. I just call them all Tiggy.

Then, just a little while ago while, after I came out of the shower and clipped my nails (btw, clipping my toe nails was a bitch b/c I couldn't see my toes! Without my glasses (getting new lenses) and with me too lazy to put in my contacts right before bed to only have to take them out again, I'm useless...), I went to my laptop to kill time while I waited for my hair to dry and I notice that my bed is soaked.

MI-MI PEED ON MY BED!!! That's Mi-mi the cat, not Mimi the person. Not only did she pee on my bed, but she peed on my pillow! This is the SECOND time that she's done this! First time being like 2 Christmas's ago. It's b/c of my buckwheat pillow. She thinks it's fun to play with and kneed her paws on. It also has a similar consistency as litter and gives her the urge to urinate all over it. I had anticipated this behaviour and had covered my pillow with my blanket, but no, she found the pillow underneath and peed right through the blanket and got the pillow a bit wet as well. It's like not a small pee either, it's a monster pee when she does this. She's all acting friendly now and sitting next to me on my bed (with changed sheets, etc.)

You pretty much can't wash a buckwheat pillow, at least you can't properly get urine out of it. As such, I'm now in the market for a new buckwheat pillow. I guess it's actually good in some respects, as I was just thinking that I needed to do some much overdue purging and cleansing, and the pillow would have been the only thing that wouldn't have gone. I'll do the ritual when I get back to Toronto.


Update (Aug. 27, 2006):  I wake up at like 7 or something b/c I hear her scratching at the wall near the door b/c Mi-mi wants to get out. When I crawl out of bed, my knee feels wet... She had peed at the corner of the foot of my bed sometime in the middle of the night :s. It was too early to do anything about it, and it wasn't super wet or smelly, so I just curled up in the opposite side of my queen sized bed and kept sleeping :p

Weak in the knees

I got it bad. I didn't think that I'd feel this way again so soon. I was actually losing hope that I'd ever feel this way again. My legs are practically trembling when I stand. I'm short of breath. My heart is beating uncontrollably. My palms are sweaty.

This is of course completely unrelated to my return to training where I ran around the park across the street 4 times. I only did the South side so I didn't have to cross Grant, but it was about 3.5 km. I was doing about 5 min. / km, which isn't bad considering that I haven't trained for about 3 years, and is just over the pace I did in the Toronto Marathon 5k run in 2003. It felt pretty good too. Every day (or day I train), I will add an extra lap (~875 m). What am I training for? A couple things. Getting in shape for the U of T varsity volleyball try-outs, training for the Toronto half marathon, and just to improve my aerobic capacity (since most of the sports I play are anaerobic).

Flying blind, or at least blurry

I'm getting new lenses for my glasses b/c my health insurance will cover it and the coating on the glasses was starting to chip off (cheap HK lenses). As such, I don't have my glasses anymore. This is a problem when I shower late at night. I am too lazy to put my contacts back in just for my post-shower, pre-sleeping activities while I wait for my hair to dry. My neck is getting sore from having to crane to see my laptop screen, as I can only see the screen if I am aobut 6 inches from it. I'm told that my glasses will be ready by the end of the week. Hopefully I won't run into a wall, trip over the exploded contents of my suitcases, or step on a cat before then.

i an nto rsenopslbie fo rany tyops im tihs bolg psot,

I'm feeling multicultural

"Rum Punch", apparently an "Indo Tropical Paradise" drink

"Indo Tropical Paradise" dancing and singing

The rest of Jill's pics

Hit up Folklorama tonight. Folklorama is "the largest and longest running multicultural festival of its kind in the world". Basically there are all these different pavillions hosted in schools and community centres throughout the city, with each one devoted to a different culture, and inside you get to sample that culture's food and drinks as well as see shows.

I went with Kevin (back from Toronto like the exact same time as me), Jill, and Florence. I was just talking with Jill and Florence the other day about how they had never met, yet they are the two people, aside from my family, who's vacation plans revolve around Hotel Vince, as they visited me in both Toronto and the Bay Area (though at different times). They did however, miss out on Seattle...

We planned on going to the Cuban pavillion, out in the "North" (aka bad) part of the city. Ok, well, not super North, but we crossed the river, which is always a big deal for us South-enders :p. Jill was driving and it was my first experience with "Truck". I have to say that the "backseat" was not very ergonomic at all, but aside from that, Truck was very nice.

When asked over the phone if Jill knew how to get to the place, she was like "ya..." She didn't know how to get there. We got mildly lost, and being Winnipeg and not many cars on the road, at least in that area, we couldn't even use the "follow that car" approach. Had I known that she didn't really know where she was going, I could have made one of my famous hand drawn maps (3 lines on a piece of paper). It's hard to trust the people from the bad part of the good part of town.

The line at the Cuban pavillion was hella long. We waited and 11:15 pm rolled along, which is when the last show started and we were told that the place had reached capacity and basically that we had little chance of getting in. So, we moved down the street to the pavillion next door.

"Indo Tropical Paradise Pavillion". We were rather confused at what culture this pavillion represented. Our first instict was telling us Indonesia-ish. But, then there was a banner on the wall for "Indian Place" or something like that and one of the singers was introduced as one of Winnipeg's most famous Indian singers.

We eventually figure out that it was the "West Indies" (aka the Caribbean), which makes sense why one of the drinks was from Jamaica. The show was alright, but the rest of the pavillion kinda sucked. They took down the cultural display by the time the show ended, the food was pretty much gone by the time we got there, and the drink selection was pretty bad. There was a dance like thing after the show, but the music was insanely loud. Like my pants were vibrating from the bass (Mike, it's pronouced like "base", as in "all your base are belong to us", not like the fish).

We took off and hit a Mexican pub/restaurant in Osborne. I knew that I had been there before, but wasn't sure when or with whom. Seems like Rob (Carroll) was there.

The exciting bit was when Kevin got drenched by the waitress who was trying to take our orders while holding a bunch of dirty dishes and cups of water. Kevin, being quite mild mannered, took it well and kept his cool. She paid for his bill, which wasn't much b/c he didn't order much and no drinks. He should've ordered everything for us and bought us drinks :p. The waitress apologized like a billion times.

We spent most of the time at that place talking about what you would do if you won the $42 million Lotto 649 that was the current jackpot (and that's $42 million tax free b/c it's Canada ;)). Florence would quit her job immediately, Jill and Kevin would follow suit quite quickly. I think that I'd finish my phd and sit on the money, letting it earn some interest for me. Everyone seemed to agree that they'd want to use that money to travel. But you know, travelling by yourself can get lonely. I eventually decided that most of my big purchases would have to have some social aspect to it. Mutual vacations are a lot of fun, like take a bunch of people on a cruise somewhere tropical. Vacation houses/condos (like on a nice ski slope in the Alps or a beach in Hawaii or a lake in Australia or just buy an island) would be nice b/c you could invite friends over (like how Jill and Flo visited!). I would then need a private jet to fly people to my place. I also decided that I would only invite my current friends b/c any new friends I'd make would only be my friend b/c of the money. The problem of finding a wife came up, as she'd only be in it for the money. I decided that I'd have to leave town like right away, and keep a low profile (like doing a phd in Toronto). Marry for love, and then be like, oh, and I have like $42 million...

Jill has posted her version of tonight's events. Check it out to see how much BS I just fed you ;)

Strange things in that big dark room

Something I hadn't seen in ages.

There are these big flashes of bright light and loud sounds along with water coming from the ceiling in that big dark room that usually has the twinkly things and that big bright circle thing.

I was actually pleasantly surprised when it started.

Wow, that was a big flash from some ginormous camera! I saw the whole backyard when that happened! The sound of the water hitting the ground is actually quite soothing. The bad thing is that it's gonna result in an increase in mosquitoes.... yay.... I'm so getting West Nile this year.

Home sweet home

Home

Aside from the flight delays, nothing notable to mention about today's travels. I am surprisingly awake right now considering my 2 hours of sleep and 14 hours door-to-door, but I guess I got a couple hours of sleep on the plane and the time zone difference (2 hours ahead here) helps.

I haven't been back in Winnipeg for about 8 months. Mittens and Tiggy both remember me :). I'm quite furry right now.

Everything's pretty much the same here, though I've been noticing all these small things that are different. Drawers don't open like they used to, the banister seems narrower, the stairs smaller, the shower head higher, and the shower water in thicker streams than I remembered.

Dehydrated flying

Sitting in the Chicago airport. Waiting for my delayed flight back to Winnipeg. Stupid North American airports don't have free wireless Internet access.

With the whole UK->US supposed terrorist threat, you're not allowed to bring any liquids onto the plane. No water, drinks, lotion, cream, toothpaste, sunscreen, shampoo, hair gel, yogurt, etc. I thought that I found the loophole whereby I dumbed out my water bottle at the security check, and then filled it up at the water fountain outside of the gate, but no, no water allowed on the plane...

My flight out of SFO was only delayed by half an hour, which was fortunate b/c I was cutting it close. My flight out of Chicago is supposed to be an hour and a half late, which made the connection a little bit more relaxing.

Flying is always very stressful for me. More to do with packing (I went to bed at 5:30 am and got up at 7:30) and worrying about how heavy my luggage is. While packing and realizing that they were heavy, I mentally prepared myself to pay $50 / piece in overweight charges. At this point, I didn't really care. I hate packing and just wanted my stuff to get to Winnipeg.

Both of my suitcases were overweight (57 and 67 pounds), which is surprising since I gave a bunch of stuff to both my family and Florence to take back for me. The guy was decently nice and told me that if I just moved a few pounds from the lighter one to the heavier one that I'd only get charged $50 for the one.

I should have more time in Winnipeg to figure out what is in my baggage that's so heavy, plus I'll be leaving a bunch of stuff there (t-shirts, extra volleyballs, random crap, etc.), but I'll be adding my rollerblades and some books.

Anyways, I should move to my gate as the flight should be boarding soon.


Update: Fark. Flight delayed another 45 min. Looks like I'll be here for a while longer. I'm convinced that it's a big ploy to get passengers to spend what's left of their arms and legs at the airports for food. Guess I'll blog offline more.

Another update: 6:15. 7:45. 8:24. 8:45. 9:05. They better not delay it again. I just found a plug, so I can write more :p

Final update: Flight finally left at like 9:15. At least I met a cute girl from Winnipeg to talk to, so I didn't mind waiting.

Florence

With few plans in place, all my evenings when Florence was here were spent planning (and mapping) what we were gonna do the next day. Sitting here in the Chicago airport waiting for my delayed flight, I finally have time to blog, though I don't have Flo's pics yet.

Here's the rapid-fire bullet point version of the past week:

Wed., Aug. 2nd - The arrival

• Florence arrives


• Winning my volleyball game to come out on top of the losers bracket


• Posing as a U of M Masters' student doing an internship in the Bay Area, I get her into the Google Engineering Intern Open House. Having noticed that Janna indicated in her calendar that she was going, I invited myself as her guest :)


• The food was crap, the talks were ok, the free shirt is really what counted, and being able to sneak around security so I could show Florence around was great

Thurs., Aug. 3rd - San Francisco

• Big tourist day, though I had two things to do this day (lunch with Nevan at UCSF and Kelly Clarkson's concert), which we worked around, i.e. Florence shopping while I did other things


• Twin Peaks on a clear day, Golden Gate Bridge without fog, and walked all along the pier


• The Vegas plan falls through with Mike not feeling great, Adam's idiotic move of trying to stand on an oversized exercise ball and getting a concussion, and everyone else being wusses

Fri., Aug. 4th - Museums

• Asian Art Museum


• Chinatown


• Legion of Honor (for the Monet in Normany exhibit)


• Japantown


• Getting kicked out of Kan Zaman on Haight St. for not ordering a minimum amount of food at 10 pm when we just wanted dessert


• Gelati in North Beach


• Twin Peaks at night in the fog

Sat., Aug. 5th - Winchester

• Slow afternoon let me plan out the Napa trip


• Winchester Mystery House (a horribly built mansion where they charge an inordinate amount of money for you to see)


• FREE FOOD AT PANERA. Oh how I miss free food :p. Thanks Sean!


• Poker at Panera where Brian and me had a side bet to see who would drive to Napa. We both lost in the same hand to Mike. Brian kindly volunteered to drive, which ended up being a good idea b/c of his car's navigational system and my lack of a printer (and resulting poorly hand drawn maps)

Sun., Aug. 6th - Napa

• 30 wines!


• The key to the day was the schedule that I told people, and the contingency plan I had in place, knowing that we wouldn't make the original schedule


• Rubicon Estate (Francis Ford Coppola's winery), Beringer (crap), Beaulieu (meh), random small winery behind BV (suprisingly good), and Domaine Chandon.
  
• Some of the wineries we went to were way too commercial


• Nice find for lunch at some sandwich shop in St. Helena


• Mitsuwa for dinner, meeting up with Janna, Sean, Adam, Michele, and Jenny in addition to our group of me, Florence, Brian, Mike, and Natalia.


• Coldstone

Mon., Aug. 7th - Yosemite

• 400 miles of driving, 5 hours of hiking/walking


• In-N-Out for dinner

Tues., Aug. 8th - Tech company tour

• Nasa Ames, Microsoft, Google (for lunch at Cafe 7), Yahoo, Juniper Networks, AMD, Cisco, Intel, NVIDIA, Apple


• Victorious in Google's volleyball tournament finals part 1


• Snuck into the Google Dance ;). Not even "The Enforcer" could stop me!

Wed., Aug. 9th - The departure

• Xerox PARC, Stanford Linear Accelerator, Stanford, Jamba Juice, Cheesecake Factory, SFO

Thanks for visiting Florence, it was a blast!

Flight is soon (hopefully) and my battery is running out...

Still packing

4:30 am. The last of the people left at 2. I swung by Google one last time around 3:30 am to get my beach volleyball that I left on the court and also to fill up the gas tank.

Everything's pretty much folded, sorted, etc. and just needs to be shoved into the suitcase now. Flight leaves at 10:45 am, and I'll have to leave here around 8:30ish b/c of traffic and I have to return the car rental, etc.

Hopefully I'll at least get an hour or two of sleep. See you on the other side of the continent.

Vince 1, Mike 0

Victory after only a week and a half ;)

1. Go to Google.com


2. Type in:  Mike Perrow
   


3. Click 


4. 
   

Picture courtesy of Adam Hooper (and that picture was courtesy of Michele Battelli).


On another note, Googling gay pictures vincent gets to my blog :s


Update (Sept-ish): I stopped being evil and this joke no longer works

KELLY CLARKSON CONCERT, BITCHES

Free poster!

This is how I find a suitable radio station when I'm in a new city:

1. Press the "scan" button


2. If Kelly Clarkson is playing, stop.
   Else, goto #1

3rd time's a charm. First time, it was Sarah's fault. Absolutely 100% of the blame is on her. That was like Dec. 2004. Then, it just so happened that while I was at MSR, Kelly Clarkson was on another tour and was playing near Seattle! I had the ticket in my hand, but she cancelled the concert b/c of laryngitis. That was Sept. 2005. Another internship, another tour, and another coincidence! This time, I finally went!

It was awesome.

If you have anything bad to say about Kelly Clarkson, you will be kindly asked to leave this blog.

For the sake of professionalism, please refrain from making any comments about jailbait or insinuating that I went soley for that purpose. Yes, there was jailbait (and plenty of it). Even "Canadian" jailbait.

Why snowboarding is better than surfing

I went to Pacifica this morning to go surfing by myself (everyone else claimed that they had to go to "work"). The conditions weren't great, but I managed to entertain myself and get up a bunch of times on the white crumbly stuff. It's actually quite scary to go by yourself. One time I got my ass kicked by a wave and while I was tumbling around, not sure which way was up, I remembered that there was no lifeguard on the beach.

I realized while I was out there, that I like snowboarding a lot better. Here's why:

• Chair lifts
  • None of this futile work trying to get past the waves, only to be pushed further back from where you started at every attempt you take


• Snowboarding is warmer
  • Yes. You heard me right. Frickin' ocean in "Nor-Cal" is freezing, even with a wet suit. At least with snowboarding you can put on more layers.


• You get to wear a tuque


• You don't have the constant taste of salt in your mouth


• You get to stand up for more than 5 seconds


• There is food mid-slope
  • mmm... beaver tails :)


• You don't have to wear a frickin' wet suit


• It's possible to go to the washroom
  • You try getting out of a wet suit


• You don't have to lug around a massive board
  • In fact, you can just skate with it


• Your board doesn't try and knock you unconscious


• Mother Nature doesn't continuously try to drown you


• You don't have to plan your day around the tide and you can board all day long


• You don't get sandy


• People don't say hella
  • As in, "dude, that wave was hella good"


• It's an Olympic sport
  • 2010 baby!


• You don't get showed up by 12 year olds
  • You get showed up by 5 year olds

With all that, I still think surfing is fun, just that I'd enjoy it more if the surf was good and I was in say... Hawaii, where the water temperature is actually above the freezing point. Oh, and if there was a volleyball court on the beach ;)

Ultimate Skirt Pictures

Vince

Natalia

Adam

More pictures

Pictures from Ultimate Skirts. Unfortunately, the photos are quite limited (us skirts forgot to take pictures) and not everyone is in the pictures. Plus, we forgot to get a group picture :(

The best was when Anna, Mike's gf, called him up the day after and was like "So, you were playing frisbee in a hot pink mini-skirt?" Mike was flabbergasted because he hadn't told her yet. I apparently have a reader in Switzerland ;). The thing is that I tend to blog late at night and with the time difference, she read the post before Mike :).

Yes, I've had enough of linking to Mike Perrow and have decided to go with variety. Note that anytime I link to peoples' names multiple times in a post, they are generally to different (compromising) photos :D.


Here's a random picture from Six Flags Marine World last Sunday. It was 40-something degrees (Celsius) outside (HOT) and Brian left his Starbucks Cup in his car. It used be be a grande or whatever is a big size.

Melted Starbucks Cup

The end.

CAUTION: This is NOT a Hallway

Please do not knock on the glass
it scares the sea monkeys

Friday was my last day.

The picture above is of my cubicle, or should I say, was my cubicle. It used to be a hallway, but about a month and a half ago, I got e-mails saying that I was in the "Vibe Zone" and that they were going to reduce the vibrations in the area. And apparently their solution to reducing the vibration (from people walking in the hallway, which I never felt) was to eliminate the hallway and fit more people in the cubes. So, in the end, I was actually sitting IN the hallway (not on the side taking pictures). People were very confused, as it all happened over one weekend and would stare at my cubicle, often peering over and staring down at me, sometimes being surprised when I was stared back at them when they peered over. That's also a very high traffic area (outside one of the big meeting rooms where there are several talks a day), which made things worse. I decided, upon Mark's suggestion, to make a humorous sign :). I could hear people laugh as they passed.

If you look through the wall in the picture and over a set of cubicles, you can see the billionaires' office.

It was a pretty chill last day. I saw a "talk" by Leslie Jordan, aka, Beverley Leslie from Will & Grace. It was hilarious. Then, I watched Will Wright (the guy who created Sim City and the Sims) talk about and demo his upcoming game, Spore. Ya, there are some cool (and fun) talks at Google.

The whole exit interview thing was anticlimactic. Any questions or comments? No, I wrote them all down on the sheet. Ok. At least I got a sweatshirt and it's nicer than the one I got from MSR.

I hung around for a while afterwards b/c of the social TGIF. When I finally left, I almost forgot to return my badge. I did so, and got escorted to the parking garage (b/c I needed someone to open the door for me). That was that.

Michele just put these pictures up, and I felt nostalgic.

Typical lunch at Google

Adam and I had a hot dinner date and went for some Pho in MV. I then joined Michele, Jenny (and friends), and Jon in SF at an Asian club. Hadn't been to one of those since Toronto. It's still a novel thing to me. They don't have them in Winnipeg. The first time I had seen one was in Calgary I think when Becky, Alvin, Florence, Ching, and I bussed it over there and somehow stumbled into one. I remember being rather shocked as I wasn't aware that there could be so many Asians in Canada.

2002 Flashback: Alvin, Ching, Vince, Florence, and Becky on our Alberta trip

Last night was AsiaSF, where the "waitresses" are "gender illusionists". It was an experience. It was scary in that the waitresses were HOT. If you saw some of them on the street, you would have no idea. They did some shows on the bar. Periodically the lights would dim and one or more would go on the bar and dance, while lip syncing. I'll never forget the look on Jon's face. Huge props to them for being able to run, dance, and jump on massive stilettos. Mike keeps talking about being flashed from one of the waitresses/dancers on the bar and being teased with a pink feather boa. Oddly enough, I found a pink blob of fluff in the passenger seat today :p. I promised Mike that I wouldn't reveal all the details of what happened to spare Anna ;)

AsiaSF's menu

We hit the bar/club downstairs afterwards. Oddly enough, it was livelier at 9:30 when we were down there waiting for our table than at midnight after our meal.

Thanks to everyone that came out!


Oh, so I don't leave until the 10th. So, I'm not sure if these celebrations were "Vince's last day at Google", "Vince isn't working at Google anymore, so he's dead to us and here's his funeral", or "Vince, leave already". Regardless, these next two weeks will be a continous and sad goodbye. By far, what I will miss most from this summer won't be the free food, the beach, or the warm (?) weather, but rather, all the good friends I made.

I'll now answer the question that everyone keeps asking me (What are you going to do until then???). I'm going to relax and do things that I wanted to do here, but didn't get a chance to. Also, Florence (see above) is coming to visit for a week starting Wednesday, so I'll have company in my explorations.

New t-shirt designs

In response to this comment...

Playing ultimate in a skirt

I played ultimate frisbee in a skirt today. It was actually quite liberating. I felt very free. The scary part was that I was quite comfortable in it.

Don't worry, there's a story behind this and it involves a girl, a bet, and beer.

Kendall bet Natalia that she couldn't get a bunch of interns to watch/play frisbee in skirts. Beer was on the line. Well, he underestimated how crazy us interns are and what people will do for beer.

I was not alone. I was joined by Adam (in his smock skirt), Brian (in his tu-tu), Mike Perrow (in the hot pink mini-skirt), and Jason (in a knee-length skirt). Natalia was the only one with a "normal" skirt. I myself had like a longer than knee length skirt, which I tucked into my underwear to make it a mini-skirt so I could run properly. It was hot. I wasn't wearing anything underneath. If you're gonna do something, might as well do it right.

Beer and ultimate was interesting. After my third, I was starting to feel it, esp. on an empty stomach and while doing exercise. I think I might have actually played better because of it :p. I'm not really sure how the bet worked out though b/c both Natalia and Kendall brought beer. So, seemingly, we wore the skirts for no reason, but hey, it was hilarious and good times were had by all.

My calves are like totally screwed up. In yesterday's volleyball game (game 3, 16-16, rally point to 17, no win by two, and we serve into the net...) everytime I jumped, my calves like cramped up afterwards. Same thing today, but to a lesser extent as I was just running, not jumping. It's probably b/c I've been doing a lot of physical activity this week (everyday since Sunday). Rollerblading to work today probably didn't help. A little under 8 km, and I did it in just over 30 min., but I would have been able to do it in about 25 had my feet not started to blister (new rollerblades), as I eased up a lot in the last 1/2 - 1/3 of the commute. Plus my body was just sore (had difficulty bending over b/c my lower back was sore), and rollerblading around the block last night after volleyball probably didn't help things either.

Charlie's was out of food after ultimate. Stupid visiting profs hogging No Name and significantly reducing the amount of available food. We hit up In-N-Out. Not sure if I was just hungry or I hadn't had grease for a while, but it was good. That place is interesting. The menu is very simple, literally just hamburger, cheeseburger, fries, and drinks, but there's like this whole secret menu where you can get like 4 patties and 4 slices of cheese, hamburgers without the bun wrapped in lettuce, and others.

L-1-VD

It's the magic code that causes people to just appear outside my cubicle. With my lead, the interns I started with quickly started using the Google chat in the internal version of Gmail. By quickly, I mean like the first day. I soon somehow became known as the "food god", as coined by Mark, as I was responsible for organizing people to go for lunch and dinner. As I was the one organizing it and my cubicle was in a rather convenient location, I started telling people to meet me at my cubicle or just outside of it so that we gathered everyone up before heading out to one of the cafeterias.

Organizing everyone for lunch and dinner quickly became difficult and time consuming. I would be messaging like 7 different people and then walking to some nearby ones to talk to other interns. It wasn't scalable.

Then came the era of status messages. In Google chat in Gmail, you can put in a custom status message that appears underneath your name. Michele had the idea of putting "L-1-VD" in my status message and that he'd do it too.

Lunch at 1 pm, meet at Vince's desk.

Once displayed, people will just magically appear outside my cubicle at the right time. Sometimes there is a bit of haggling, because of meetings or other things, but it's been found to be quite an effective means of spreading the word about meals and gathering people together.

The code has stuck now for like two and a half months and is used daily. There are several variations, L-12-VD -> Cafe 150, indicating that we will be going off the main campus to Cafe 150 for lunch, or L-12:45-VD -> Seville, to note that we will grab lunch to go and eat at a talk in Seville. There has been some attempts to change the code to make it more efficient, like removing "VD", as it is pretty much redundant since people always meet outside my cube, even when I'm not there :p. However, tradition is hard to break.

People don't really seem to understand this role that I play at Google and how much time it takes and how much negotiating there is.

One time I had as my status message:

"(On the phone) L-??? Adam is in charge, bug him"

I had like 7 chat windows open and there was a period of half an hour where I couldn't do any work.
  -- Adam after I put him in charge of organizing lunch one time

It's not always that bad, but we were going off the main campus for lunch that time (to one of the 4 cafeterias outside the main 3), so more organizing was required.

I like to think that all my peons have a say in when meals are in our GDemocracy, but sometimes a hard stance has to be taken, resulting in me being the GDictator, which I think is a term coined by the dissenting citizen, Mike Perrow. (I am trying to make it so that when you google "Mike Perrow", you get to that picture :))

It's been more difficult recently to organize everyone b/c several people have moved off the main campus across the street to a new building, plus Mark left, a key member of the original crowd. Today was probably the last of the "classic lunches" as this is my last week and people are leaving tomorrow for weddings and conferences. We even got Heidi out one last time.

D-6:30-VD