a chinese mixup

Question: In what language can the question:

“Do you know where WuFenPu (a shopping market) is?”

be accidentally mis-pronounced as:

“Do you know where I farted?”

Answer: Chinese

And, for what it’s worth, the response from the girl I asked it to was as you would expect.

sigh. Never underestimate my ability to make a fool of myself in any country, in any language, at any time.

Add comment May 28th, 2007

my last blog post as a bachelor

… after a week filled with “last ____ as a single man”, it’s time to add “last blog past as a single man” to the list. i don’t anticipate blogging anything in between now (wedding rehearsal) and tomorrow (wedding day!), so here it is.

…

…

deep and provocative, i know.

i’m pretty exhausted; we’d had a busy week of packing up the kitchen and living room in preparation for our kitchen remodel and (minor) living room remodel (we’re adding recessed lights to the living room and doing some drywall repair on one wall). we got our marriage license yesterday (the county of Alameda apparently sees no reason why Wendy and I should not be wed - though they did for some reason insist on putting “England” as my place of birth instead of “United Kingdom” because (and I quote literally): “people might abbreviate United Kingdom as UK, and UK is not a state in the US.”)

we’ve packed up our bags (mostly) for our honeymoon, practiced our first dance enough times that we’re now sick of it, and i’ve been working on my vows, while checking the weather report for Saturday about every hour or so.

okay, i’m heading out. it’s off to my rehearsal. this will be the last time i leave my house as a bachelor. the next time i come back, i’ll be married. weird.

2 comments May 4th, 2007

marsh-ed?

i’ve always wondered where the origin of the word swamped came from (as in “i’m so swamped with work”). why not marshed? i notice swamped does share some commonality with bogged, as in “i’m bogged down”.

but anyway, i digress.

i’m swamped, bogged, marshed, whatever…

the SCM Migration Project is predictably going slower than we planned. on the plus side, i’m seeing lots of interest from other engineers - but we haven’t been getting the internal resources we’d hoped for, so for now it’s primarily me, richlowe, and kupfer plowing ahead. we’ve picked up a couple guys from ERI that should help.

of course, the other major thing on my plate at the moment is my very-very-upcoming wedding (18 days!!!), so my days are oft filled with wedding errands and such.

so of course, with all this stuff going on in our lives… wendy and i thought it would be best to …. remodel our kitchen. a combination of a decent tax refund, and the realisation that the one-month estimate to remodel our kitchen (during which our house would be a disaster) coincided nicely with the one month of time we would be taking for our honeymoon and vacation. so now we’re rushing about trying to secure contractors, and get permits in the two weeks before we leave.

i feel like our lives our pure chaos right now. on the one hand, it’s hectic, crazy, and i’m getting crappy anxiety-ridden nights of sleep. but on the other hand, i’m really starting to appreciate the small quiet moments… like the 8 minutes i took after the electrician left today during which i just laid out on the sofa/futon with one beagle slumped across my feet and the other splayed out next to me resting her head on my chest. within 45 seconds, both were snoring. those 7 minutes and 15 seconds of blissful peace (i won’t say quiet, since they were filled with the snores of two hound dogs) and doing nothing but vegging felt great.

2 comments April 17th, 2007

what a weekend

i still miss that utah snow

erik: you threw an awesome bachelor party. it was everything i thought it’d be…. 3 days of kick-ass powder. it was great to just be able to ride hard non-stop and then crash in the hot tub and chow down afterwards.

thanks again everyone for coming - i had a blast…. the riding was great, the snow was amazing, the food was heavenly (from the goat cheese ravioli…mmmm…droool…. even to the corn dogs), the drink was plentiful, and the company was brilliant.

even if i did “crap my pants”

cheers, steve da pimp

(thanks for taking the photos dan!)

1 comment March 1st, 2007

heaven

i’m not religious… but i do believe in heaven.

not only do i believe in it…. i was just there.

heaven (or at least something akin to it) is flying down a double-black on your brand new snowboard crashing through fresh untracked fluffy light powder…. and then doing it again…. and again….. and again. repeat for 3 days straight… toss in a great dinner, great friends, and a ridiculous amount of eggs, corn dogs, beer, and a bottle of Laphroig - and you have the recipe for an awesome bachelor party.

1 comment February 26th, 2007

epicness

between MLK day, all the jurassic (home directory server) outages on tuesday & wednesday, and me leaving soon for a weekend of epic awesomeness in the snow at Park City, this has got to be one of my shortest work-weeks ever.

… for which i do feel guilty …

but i can’t help but be psyched for this weekend. i haven’t seen some of these guys in a while, and i’m looking forward to 3 days of boarding in the powder. i’ve only been up to tahoe twice so far this year in our winter-of-crappiness we’ve been having, so i’m feeling totally ill-prepared for this weekend. but oh well… i’ve got my asthma inhaler and a crapload of ibuprofen - i should be set, right?

Add comment February 22nd, 2007

bangkok

is it sad that everytime i think of Bangkok, the first thing that comes to mind is Tom Shane (of the Shane Company commercials we hear on the radio all the time here in the SF Bay Area) talking about how he goes to Bangkok every 3 months to purchase rubies and sapphires?

sad isn’t it?

anyway. so this is the conclusion to my travelog of my month in Taiwan/Southeast Asia. we spent the last 3 days of our travels in Bangkok, Thailand - doing… well, a lot of shopping. Ah Bangkok, home of the 95 degree heat and humidity. home of the wonderful air conditioned shopping malls. home of the INSANELY huge Chaktoochak (I’m sure I misspelled that somehow) open air market. home of countless night markets. home of strangely attractive transvestites.

we didn’t visit a single palace or temple or museum. National Palace? nope. skipped it. Temple of Dawn? nope. skipped it. Lucky Buddha temple? nope. skipped it. seriously, all we did was shop.

we stayed at this great little place called La Residence. what a wonderful place! it was a really cute little hotel with great clean rooms (it’s small, only 24 rooms). it’s run by some great ladies, with some really helpful staff. everyone spoke great English and were really really helpful with lots of local info, and tons of guidebooks/maps to give to us. definitely highly recommended. it’s really close to the Patpong area, 5 min. walk to a BTS station, and is just overall a great place.

upon arriving we went out in search of glasses. i finally bought a pair of wrap-around prescription sunglasses (can’t get them in the states w/ my prescription due to optometrists being scared of the liability). and wendy got a pair of eyeglasses.

then we started hardcore shopping. bought lots of great little wooden trays for our house, a gorgeous (and big) wooden vase. we of course bought lots of clothes, and wendy went shoe-crazy. anyway, i won’t dive into it - but suffice it to say Bangkok has some great shopping, and some awesome night markets. bargaining was fun as always, though i think not as fun as in China.

in China, the vendors treat it like a game. they size you up, and then basically throw out a ridiculous #. the Thai do this as well, but they seem to be more serious about it. they really ARE trying to rip you off. whereas the Chinese vendors throw it out and almost have a grin on their face because they know that you know that it’s ridiculous (like the woman who tried to sell Poorna a pair of sandals for 1200 yuan!). anyway, it’s just a vague feeling, but i feel like the Chinese vendors are more fun to bargain with.

my only real negative impression of Thailand is really just that i felt like everyone was out to try and rip me off. i realise i’m an American tourist travelling, and that i will get charged higher than locals - but don’t treat me like i’m stupid. i know that taxis are supposed to start at 35baht, so don’t try and charge me 200 baht to go 2 blocks. really, come on. i would say Thailand is certainly more developed and modernised as a whole than China. Bangkok is by far a more international city than Beijing - but i would have to say that in Beijing, i never felt like i was getting cheated. i don’t mind paying more - it’s natural that i’ll inevitably get ripped off as compared to the locals. it’s no big deal if i’m willing to do it, but what gets me is when people really try to cheat you - and i felt like this happened a LOT in Bangkok.

all in all, would i go back to Bangkok? eh. maybe for a day or two to do some shopping while en route to somewhere else. Thailand was fun, but a little too hot for me. nice beaches, nice resorts - but i think i’d like to go somewhere else next time. more countries to explore!

1 comment February 28th, 2005

holy koh

we took a crazy speedboat to Koh Tao today (1.5 hr there, and another 1.5 hr back) to spend the day snorkelling and lounging around on a beach. the speedboat driver was insane. that’s all i can say. certifiably insane. he was racing another boat out to Koh Tao for the better part of half the ride out there. wendy and i were holding on for dear life. after some really great snorkelling, we had lunch on the island and then headed over to some random beach to do some more snorkelling and lounging on the beach where we talked to some girls from Germany.

quote of the day: “for real man. fuck that shit.” - not amazing in and of itself, but it sounded better when it came from one of the German girls who was ethnic Korean. it was startling.

after that, our ride back to Koh Samui was even worse. the driver was trying to surf the waves…. with a speedboat. he would throttle down right before the wave, and then floor it off the crest of the wave causing the boat to SLAM back into the ocean every time. it was a long painful 1.5 hr back to the island where we recuperated by having dinner at Sandal’s again.

Add comment February 22nd, 2005

lazing around

we did virtually nothing today. i bought a pair of swimming goggles. we lounged by the pool drinking mango shakes, reading, and swimming.

once we got tired of swimming in the pool, we walked all of 10 feet and headed into the ocean… to go swimming.

ah. what a lazy day.

around noon we moped’d around the island, this time riding north to see the Big Buddha and have lunch at Angela’s Bakery.

in the evening, we headed into town for our big indulgence. wendy got a massage, facial, anti-stress massage, and a body scrub. i got a massage…. and yes, my first ever facial. you could ask me how it was, except i have no idea. i fell asleep after 15 minutes. i woke up not being able to see (because of the mask/towel thing over my eyes), and with the faint scent of jasmine in the air. let me tell you, this is a disorienting feeling.

anyway. that was our day.

Add comment February 21st, 2005

moped’ing around

we woke up late (9am… hey, it’s late for us) at our beautiful hotel. we stayed at “Baan Haad Ngam”, a really great hotel that’s in the best beach on the island: Chaweng Beach. Chaweng suffers from the usual glut of tourists, and it’s basically a strip of really loud noisy bars/restuarants/hotels. fortunately, Baan Haad Ngam is allllllll the way at the north end, secluded from everything else - but close enough to be a 10 minute moped ride into town. the only downside to the hotel? nobody speaks English. oh well. this is Thailand after all.

we woke up, did laundry, and headed into town to find a nice spa to book before heading off to Na Muang 2 waterfall on the moped. along the way, we stopped for a quick half hour elephant trek. it’s really tricky riding one of these things. i kept feeling like i was continually falling forward. all in all, a really interesting experience.

after the waterfall hike, we headed back into town where Wendy got what was apparently the best facial of her life at the Four Seasons while i bargain hunted for a new pair of flip flops.

in the evening we had dinner at Sandal’s, in my opinion - one of the best restaurants on Chaweng. it’s great, the tables are literally on the beach - you can take your shoes off and you’re in the sand.

1 comment February 20th, 2005