Not so sad.

I didn't realize people would find the squirrel picture as amusing as I did (typically the case...for most things), so I figured I might as well share my other picture of the vagrant squirrel.

Try to ignore the weed garden in my backyard.

Check out how high it actually climbed on the screen! And this was one bold rodent. I tried scaring it from the other side of the window, and it didn't even flinch. It just stared back at me with its beady, defiant little eyes. (See previous squirrel picture.)

In other news, it's a good thing I took my car into the shop yesterday. Though it cost me $240 (yay, BMW), I was able to run errands without fear of the falling snow. Crucial errands like buying a snowboard! With a navy blue and lime green design, it was seriously one of the easiest purchase decisions I've ever made.

Sad.

It's always sad to see a car where one of the driver- or passenger-side windows has fallen out of its tracks and just sits there, stuck halfway in the door. It's even more tragic when it's your own car. (I look at the oblique window and can't help but think, "I've fallen, and I can't get up!")

I'd love to share with you this pathetic image, but I can't bear to take a picture of it. Indeed, it's hard to use a camera when my fingers are frozen stiff from driving around with a window down like that. This will be my third trip to the repair shop in a month, as my old car proves herself to be high-maintenance and costly. Ugh.

In other sad news, check out the "holiday tree" that's been erected in downtown Seattle:

O, Christmas tree?

Living in The Emerald City of The Evergreen State, it's no wonder that people are a little disappointed in this scrawny shrub. In fact, it's already been dubbed the Charlie Brown tree. You can read about how it got to be so ugly here.

Well, lest I leave you utterly depressed, here's a photo that I took just the other day. Imagine waking up one fine Saturday morning to find this at your window:

Cue Psycho music.

Not quite as repulsive as the black squirrels that terrorize the Stanford campus. In fact, almost cute. Almost, that is, if it didn't look so intent on finding a way into my house. Gah...

Rants of a Product Designer

I despise whatever conniving Marketing genius at Procter & Gamble decided that Dawn Direct Foam would be the next big advancement in dishwashing technology. Remember in recent past when all the liquid dish soap brands started advertising their products as "concentrated" (with little obvious change to the soap itself...just smaller bottle size)? Now it seems they've actually gone the other way, diluting the soap with water so that it can be turned to fluffy foam before it touches your sponge. And they put such a spin on it, it disgusts me.

Of course, the idea of a foam-dispensing pump is not all that bad. I appreciate the neat hand soap that comes from such an invention. For this, we thank the engineers. But I do not appreciate the bright bulbs in Engineering who designed Dawn's blasted pump, the spring of which cannot overpower the pump's internal friction. What do I mean by this? Well, you push the pump down to dispense foam onto your sponge. And then the pump just sits there. Stuck at the bottom. You literally have to pull it back up in order to depress the pump a second time. And you need to depress it that second time, and five more times after that, because each pump action yields about enough foam to clean one tine on a fork. This is hardly product improvement, if you ask me.

This irritates me to no end at work, where all we have in our kitchenette is this Direct Foam crap. I've seriously contemplated calling up the P&G consumer hotline just to complain, but then I remember that I also contribute to the design of a product, the end-user experience of which often leaves something to be desired. Whoops. And so I'll just shut up and appreciate the choice of colors that Dawn used for their Lime Surge variety of Direct Foam. There, I said something nice.

Uprooted

Tonight I did the inevitable. I replaced my car's beloved Illinois plates with new Washington plates.

Farewell, maroon font which beautifully matched my car's unbeautiful paint. Farewell, ghostly, free-floating head of Lincoln. And good riddance, long overdue tabs.


I shall miss the out-of-state excuse for driving like a moron.
Of course, now I have the in-state excuse for driving like a moron.

Yes, some clouds have only rusty linings.

Back in Town

So I'm back in Seattle now.

Tonight I watched a friend play a nun in a local production of "The Sound of Music." The entire musical was very well done, I thought. My favorite part was when Liesl climbed into Maria's bedroom, after her torrid midnight rendezvous with the postman/closet-Nazi Rolfe. She was drenched from the rain, and as she climbed awkwardly through the bedroom window, I was reminded of a scene from "The Ring," when the antagonist climbs out of the television, wet locks and all. I laughed.

There were several other funny moments (intentional or not) throughout the musical, but I'll just share one more. At the very beginning, as the pit orchestra started playing, it was apparent that not all the sections were playing in tune. And after hearing a few, mmm, jazzy chords, I had to look down and stop myself from laughing out loud. A friend seated next to me (also a musician/pitch snob) was doing the same. But while we merely smiled in condescending judgment, a Chinese woman behind us actually voiced her thoughts out loud. Some of the sentiment is lost in translation, but she basically muttered, "Aiya, how could the music be so bad? This is worse than a children's band." Ouch. It really wasn't that bad, and the pitchy punishment didn't last.

Speaking of outspoken Chinese people, I had a great time in Hong Kong and Chengdu. Even though my race was questioned constantly by the people I met. "Are you Korean? Japanese? Surely not Chinese..." And this would be after I spoke Chinese. Sad.

Here's a small selection of photos from my trip.

This was the seafood menu from one of my dinners in Hong Kong:

(Click on it to view the full-sized picture.)

On the bottom right: "Crispy yuppies topped with golden garlic, chili & onion." How appetizing...I always wanted to know what yuppies taste like! Also note the "Crispy soft shell crabs with Szechuan red pepper." I would've preferred "crab" singular, but what can you do? I ordered it anyway.

Behold, said crabs:

You can just barely make out pieces of crab drowning (burning) in the lake of fire. And I still don't understand the choice of presentation. My coworkers and I named this dish the Little Red Riding Hood Basket of Death. Dude, that dish was spicy.

Here's a picture of my favorite building in Hong Kong, the Bank of China tower designed by world-renowned architect Ieoh Ming Pei. The view from Kowloon, across Victoria Harbour:

Look how it dwarfs the Bank of America building to the left. (I am not making political commentary here.)

After Hong Kong, I flew up to Chengdu, China. And what's a visit to Chengdu without seeing the local pandas?

"Mmm, bamboo..." This one was a bit of a messy eater.

And here are the red pandas. I personally would have named them "raccoon foxes," but what do I know? Cute little monsters.

Eating...sleeping...yeah, that's the life.

Now time for me to take a lesson from the pandas.

Early Bird

Only when jetlagged might I be mistaken for an early bird. Local time is 6:54am and I feel as though I've slept in. I haven't decided whether to rejoice or mourn.

No complaints for now, though. I know the jetlag from flying back to the States will be far, far worse.

Flying By...

Geez, summer flew by fast. Heck, an entire year flew by fast. Looking back, I'm able to count four new roommates since I left college. Four weddings and a funeral. Six visits to Stanford and the Bay Area. As hard as it was to fathom back then, life does feel more fast-paced after college.

Anyway, my main reason for posting is to say I'm now in Hong Kong for business. Local time is 10:50am, September 1. Blogger tells me that Seattle time is 7:50pm, August 31. My biological clock doesn't give a crap for either fact, because I destroyed it back in school anyway. I've been in HK for twelve hours now and I just hope my luggage arrives soon, because a change of clothes would be nice.

Oh, and for the record, business class on Cathay Pacific is sweet. (In case you're wondering, it was a different airline that left my luggage behind in Seattle.)

Here's our Airbus A340-300 pulling into the gate at Vancouver prior to boarding:

And this was after boarding:

A "Cathay Delight" kiwi and coconut juice cocktail and scallop hors d'oeuvre. Even the neighboring glass of water looks good.
And all this was after, yes, the pre-flight champagne.

I decided to stop taking pictures, lest everyone identify me as that guy who had clearly never before flown international business class.