adrian is rad

Watch out! Bad language!

Did you eat meat today? Preferably prepared on a fire?

That’s what an American would do…

The other day, I saw a ThumsUp! while eating at an Indian restaurant. I decided to have it with my Desi chicken flatbread wrap.

This is my rating:

It tasted old timey–like Coke with sugar or Pepsi Retro. I like that old time taste!

26th and Noe: I like the city for having things around and it’s quieter than Taipei. But I miss the quiet sometimes. At a touch after midnight, it’s quiet here, so quiet that I could think I was in a different city. But I’m only a few blocks away from louder blocks.

…

26th and Guerrero: It’s getting louder now.

I literally groaned when my alarm when off this morning. Time to get more sleep, I think.

Andy trying to slap me with his tie makes me really happy:

Trying to practice portraits, this was what I could find to be my subject:

For Colin, the only thing I could find (besides myself) to be my subject was the 2004 roadtrip bobblehead mascot:

I like this poster I’ve been seeing in my neighborhood. “No more!”

Wandering around Chinatown reminds me of Taipei:

My philly photoalbum and ghm.

My friend Dave (not this one) found this in the Palo Alto Daily News and cut it out.

I thought it was pretty funny.

[I feel it sort of stands alone, but if you really want to read Abby’s response you can find it here.]

The other week I saw a photoset of a very cool building mural/ graffiti in San Francisco, based on an icanhascheezburger image (this one to be specific).

I was running errands in Chinatown during lunch and thought some things looks familiar so I went around back, down the alley and saw this:

It’s still there! As it turns out, the building owner consented to having that painted on there. It’s still pretty cool, though.

The left side of my butt chin is bigger and lower than right.

And you know what they say about symmetry.

I was all excited because I saw I’d gotten an email
but it was from me
the one I just sent
sad

I don’t mean to brag, but I think it displays a lot of promise.

Almost a year and a half after Pittsburgh got it, Google Transit is now available for the Bay Area.

We had 511’s Transit Trip Planner already but–let’s face it–google’s going to do it better.

Internetworking:

involves connecting two or more distinct computer networks or network segments together to form an internetwork (often shortened to internet), using devices which operate at layer 3 of …

But don’t you think it should mean networking on the internet? Internet networking–>internetworking! You know Linked In and things like that. Makes perfect sense to me. Let’s reclaim the word for its new use.

A subset of that could be interblogworking, for blog-to-blog networking.

Past words I may or may not have coined:

• nowtro
• comfort music
• geek crush

I buy fresh bread. It used to go stale. I bought a bread box. Now it stays fresh longer. Amazing!

You know when you go to Buci di Beppo or Vinny Testa’s or any of those Italian places that give you a mountain of food and you eat a full meal and it looks like you haven’t even started?

Yeah, that’s what my moving status is right now.

I saw a motorcycle the other day with a disabled parking placard.

Is that even useful let alone possible?

I’m sure I’m the first person to express this sentiment.

I spent basically all the time from 8:30am to 10pm yesterday moving. By the end of the day boxes I thought were light earlier were feeling really heavy. By the end of the day, I was threatening to drop couches and things after just a few feet because my forearms were atrophied to such an extent.

I got one of those stylish back support things that you see movers and home depot employees wearing. I pretty much wanted to look professional while I moved, but it did have some benefits in back support. (And, really, I don’t want a back support device, I want an Impenetrable and Invincible Back Exoskeleton Now Made with Super-Alloy-Z.)

Our one break was a visit to In N Out in the evening. We parked our Budget rent-a-truck across three parking spaces laterally and I had the biggest meal I’ve had at an In N Out. It was the most guilt-free meal I’ve had since the Tahoe century.

Today I hurt. Back, forearms, calves, quads and all the other areas that contain muscle.

Post-easter half priced candy time! I love it.

Wii swimming.

[fin]

When I moved to Menlo Park in 2003, there were three car dealerships along the main drag, El Camino Real. By the time I moved away in 2007, all of them were closed up. I’d meant to do a photo essay on them for a while and I finally did one time in December when I was back there.

Click for larger images.

when I’m in a hurry and I think I’m grabbing peach yogurt and it’s actually orange creme.

Note to yogurt making companies: orange creme is not a good flavor. That it’s patterned after an artificially flavored ice cream snack should be enough of a hint to that effect. What’s next Jolly Rancher Watermelon flavor yogurt?

In Mexico I had a Pepsi Retro.

It has “natural ingredients” and “no artificial flavors or colors” (that’s what the Spanish says, I think). As we know, I like my sodas sans corn syrup.

It has an old timey taste. Jesse tried it as well and said the same thing. I liked it. Generally I like Coke a lot better than Pepsi but if Pepsi Retro was available in Estados Unidos (apparently it’s Mx only), I might even buy it over regular coke (though probably not over Mexican Coke (w/ sugar rather than corn syrup) in a glass bottle, which is available in some stores around me.

Last night, Dug, jwerberg, Helene (and a couple others) and I went to Lucky Ju Ju, which a pinball museum in Alameda. You pay $10 admission and then all the machines are on free play. You can play as many as you want! There are some really old gems as well as some modern oddities, like one with a convoluted surface that makes the ball jump around in a crazy way (it’s a Martian theme, or something) and a soccer one that’s timed rather than a given number of balls–you have to score more times than letting the balls through the paddles. This place is a total blast.

It’s got pretty weird hours (6pm-midnight Friday and Saturday, 4-8pm Sunday), but it’s worth a trip or ten.

Here’s one flickr photo set.

My wrists still hurt from all that pinballing!

Best entertainment for the money around here outside of Musee Mechanique.

The strangest alternative-Super-Bowl TV ever had to have been Animal Planet’s Puppy Bowl. Did anyone see this?

There have been Bud Bowls and Celebrity Death Matches, but putting a bunch of puppies (and kitties, for the half-time show) on a small field-looking play area and filming them? That’s absurd.

Also, we missed at least one or two plays of the actual Super Bowl watching it.

Decisions: do I bike the Wiggle or take one of ‘em Muni buses?

Oh learning new things in a new city!

I just saw snow flurries, unmistakably and confirmed by other witnesses.

It’s crazy! I was practically speechless.

• George Washington Carver
• Martin Luther King
• John Wayne Gacy

Who else can I add to the list?

I only listed [(first middle/last) last] name variants up there, but I figure there must be some [first (middle/first last)] names as well. If someone was famous and was called Mary Elizabeth Taylor, that would be an example of that variant.

The other implied thing is that the 3-named famous person actually went by or was call by all three names regularly.

[Yes, I’m consciously stealing the title.]

Lucerne (Safeway’s house brand) now has a green tea light yogurt. It’s really good. I’ve been enjoying it frequently. The mango green tea is also good, but I’d give the peach green tea flavor a skip.

Fight Quest is a pretty fascinating show. I caught a couple episodes of it today. Two guys travel to different regions of the globe to learn regional martial arts styles. They have 5 days of intense training and then they have to fight a skilled fighter of the style. I’m not quite sure why it’s fascinating; maybe it’s seeing these guys push themselves to the limit.

(Here’s another post from my Taiwan backlog.)

I found the bathrooms in Taiwan pretty interesting. I sort of wanted to take photos of them except that it would make me a bit creepy[1], so I didn’t.

In America, many, if not most, urinals are of the short and blocky variety, like this American Standard one, but in Taiwan and other parts of Asia, they were of all sorts, short, tall, down to the floor, curved, blocky, narrow, deep and so on. Many of them were made by Toto (”I bless the raaaaiins down in Aaaaaaaafrica!” is what I’d sing in my head each time I saw one of those.)

There were also numerous funny signs. Two of my favorite are below.

In the MRT stations in Taipei:

Come Closer Please
automatic flushing when you draw near

This one I’d always imagine the “come closer please” said low and breathy, like a movie monster or serial killer. Because, I mean, when else do you hear “come closer please”?

In the train station in Hualien:

Stand Closer
to be discrete and clean

There was also a theme in many bathrooms of things that said something like “Let’s learn English!” with an English idiom and its Chinese meaning. Some of these idioms were not very common or possibly not idioms at all. I’d love it for a Chinese person to come to America and then say one of those and when people looked at him questioning, he would have to explain that he learned it in a bathroom so it must be right!

There were also a lot of proverbs and old sayings on walls. These were also translated into English. Most of them were not very funny.

I did take one photo of a sign in a bathroom in Thailand:

I hadn’t really considered washing my feet in the sink but now that they mention it, it does sound like a good idea!

Outside of a bathroom, but still related:

[1] Is this post creepy anyway?

(I have a backlog of posts started when I was in Taiwan. Here’s one of them.)

I recently [well, I started this a while ago, so more like a month or two ago] finished Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet. It’s a memoir of his life with savant syndrome and Aspergers.

You might recognize him from his appearance on Letterman a few years ago:

I found it pretty interesting. Daniel is one of the people on the autistic spectrum that is most able to describe going on in his brain. For instance, each number has a shape and texture in his head. If he’s multiplying two numbers the shapes/ textures come together to form a new shape and he just says what that new number is based on the shape. Interesting, but not exactly helpful in getting my to do complicated multiplication or sums in my head…

There’s also quite a bit about dealing with Aspergers, unrelated to any special abilities he has. He has problems socializing and with making eye contact and things like that. I do too (though not as extreme), but people seem to just tell me to get over it.

It’s well-written and the reading goes smoothly and quickly (in case you’re concerned about reading a book written by someone who talks about his problems communicating). Overall, it’s an uplifting book, with plenty of hope and overcoming obstacles.

You can also check out another interesting video. He also has blog.

While reading this list of US Presidential assassination attempts I realized I have a new favorite president. The description of the attempt on Andrew Jackson:

At the Capitol Building, a house painter named Richard Lawrence aimed two flintlock pistols at the President, but both misfired, one of them while Lawrence stood within 13 feet (4 m) of Jackson and the other at point-blank range.[11] After firing the two pistols, Lawrence was apprehended after Jackson beat him with his cane.

Number of days: 112

Number of days or parts thereof spent traveling: 47 (3 to/ from, 7 intra-Taiwan (3 Kaohsiung, 2 Taroko, 2 Kinmen), 37 intra-Asia (7 Indonesia, 5 Thailand; 15 Hong Kong, Macau, China; 10 Japan)

Number of countries visited (since moving): 6 (Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, U.S.) + 2 special administrative regions with separate border controls (Hong Kong, Macau)

Number of countries visited (year to date): 8 (above + South Africa, Swaziland) + 2 S.A.R.s

Number of flights (since moving): 14 (SFO-> TPE-> CKG-> DPS-> CKG-> TPE-> BKK-> TPE-> HKG-> TPE-> NRT-> TPE, TSA-> KNH-> TSA, TPE-> SFO)

Number of flights (2007): 31 (SFO-> CVG-> IAD-> JNB, DUR-> CPT-> JNB-> JFK, BOS-> JFK-> SFO-> BOS-> DFW-> SFO-> HNL-> LIH-> HNL-> SFO + above + SFO-> CLT-> DCA)

Miles flown (since moving): 27,406 miles (44,106 km)

Miles flown (2007): 63,569 miles (102,304 km)

Number of high speed train journeys: 4 (Taipei->Kaohsiung->Taipei, Tokyo->Kyoto->Tokyo)

Number of train journeys: 6 (above + Taipei->Hualien->Taipei)

Approximate number of km ridden on scooters: 225

Best hotel (overall): Kamandalu Resort, Ubud, Bali. A connection to the cousin of the owner opened the door for staying in this swanky place. Gorgeous surroundings and really nice rooms. Private verandas looking over rice paddies. The service was also excellent. We went out riding bikes around the rice paddies one day and came back sweating. Pretty soon after we entered the lobby we had cool moist towels to wipe our faces with. Perhaps the only nicer place I’ve stayed is the ridiculous Schlosshotel Veir Jahrezeiten (Four Seasons Palace Hotel) in Berlin. (They had a Ferrari convention while we were there and it didn’t seem out of place.)

Best hotel (value): Hirano Guesthouse, Kyoto. 3500 yen a night in Kyoto is very cheap and besides a nice place to stay, the owner was very friendly, helpful and accommodating, making us tea when we came home for a break in the afternoons. She also made us breakfast every morning, let us use her bicycles and computer/ internet. Oh and there was a candy bowl and after we ate an unreasonable amount of it, she didn’t complain, she just refilled it.

Number of American chain stores patronized (not counting convenience stores, exact): 3 (2 Subways-Taipei, 1 Denny’s-Kyoto)

Number of American chain stores patronized (counting convenience stores[1], approximate): 22.2 (the above + Circle K’s in Taiwan, Bali, Thailand, ampm’s in Japan, plus 0.2 for a Mister Donut in Japan[2])

Oddest food obsession: Harbo’s Happy Cola gummy candies

Most common food eaten: rice (~ >1.5 servings a day)

Most common food product eaten: Kinder Chocolate (~ 0.6 a day)

Most “exotic” foods eaten: crickets, silk worms, frog

Number of Dr. Peppers consumed: 2 (one in Japan, one in Thailand)

Foods most missed: good bread, good cheese, Dr. Pepper, good beef, shelled shrimp, deboned fish.

Number of Hello Kitty products seen: in the thousands

Number of Hello Kitty products purchased: 1 (alarm clock, convenience store, Japan)

America: so quiet, so dark, so many English speakers, so many whites/ latinos/as, blacks. big supermarkets. low population density.

Least useful piece of clothing: dress shirt (the greenish one, never worn, given away at the end)

Most useful piece of clothing: shoes (the brown Adidas, nearly daily)

Most useful piece of clothing out of its original purpose (and new use): board shorts-style swimsuit (exercise shorts)

Piece of clothing I most immediately realized I’d forgotten: navy blue cotton boxers (that I use as warm weather pajama bottoms)

Number of books read: 5.75 (2nd 0.5 of Slow Man by Coeztee, Love is a Mixtape by Sheffield, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a Story of the Hip Hop Generation by Chang, Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Klosterman, Born on a Blue Day By Tammet, You Don’t Love Me Yet by Lethem, first 0.25 of About a Boy by Hornsby)

Number of concerts attended: 3 (Emily the Band @ Underworld, Apples in Stereo @ the Wall, Sugar Plum Ferry @ the Wall)

Number of CDs purchased: 19 (5 in Hong Kong (Monitor), 5 @ WWR (1st trip), 5 @ WWR (2nd trip), 2 @ IMPO, 1 @ FINAC, 1 @ Roses(?))

Number of pieces of mail received: 6 (3 packages of promo CD(s); 1 each from Ian, Lauren, Gumbeaux)

[1] This is tricky because things are confusing. 7-11 is Japanese for instance.

[2] Mr. Donut is an American brand but the Asian stores are run by Duskin Co out of Japan under a licensing agreement.

More lessons from Adrian. Former/ latter is comparative between two objects. For example:

I like apples and grapes. I like the former because of the crispness while I like the latter because of the sweetness.

(I’m just making stuff here.)

First/ last point to the ends of a string of things. If you have three or more objects, you may think you sound smart using former/ latter, but it’s not right.

For example:

I like ladybugs, lightning bugs and butterflies. I have fond memories of the first [not former] from my younger days.

That makes for an a bit of an awkward sentence so perhaps “first of those” would be most appropriate.

Basically just a caribeann-style sound system but on bikes. Pretty good photo essay.

This is awesome:

For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Panthéon’s unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid “illegal restorers” set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building’s famous dome. Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves.

It reminds me somewhat of a higher art version of what I saw at the ‘tute’.

(via wax)

Statistics lesson number 1, by me.

There’s a difference between percent and percentage points. People often get this wrong.

For example (bugmenot can help):

When it came to side effects, Effexor’s greatest liability was that it could cause hypertension, a side effect not shared by S.S.R.I.’s. Sussman showed us some data from the clinical trials, indicating that at lower doses, about 3 percent of patients taking Effexor had hypertension as compared with about 2 percent of patients assigned to a placebo. There was only a 1 percent difference between Effexor and placebo, he commented, and pointed out that treating high blood pressure might be a small price to pay for relief from depression.

Wrong. There was only 1 percentage point difference between the two.

3% is 50% more than 2%. (And 2% is 33% less than 3%). There is no form of comparison between the two of those percents that is only 1 percent.

(To the credit of the author, he points out that it can be seen as 50% more, though he doesn’t call Sussman’s version wrong.)

This logic puzzle is bugging me. I got a few steps in and now I’m stuck.

I’ve never been good at those logic puzzles. In fact, I’m probably the only person I know who was helped immensely by the GRE switching away from those. But maybe I’ll get better if I practice.

made a good point: don’t worry about little stuff and everything is little.

The weekend in Kaohsiung was good.

Friday

High Speed Rail from Taipei to Zouying (outside Kaohsiung). It’s fast and smooth. I’m a fan. There was a mix up with the hotel about the shuttle and I ended up waiting at the station for 45 minutes and then taking a taxi. The hotel paid for it (their mix up).

Saturday

Breakfast. I’m not sure if I’d ever get used to traditional chinese breakfast. I had some toast. Then I walked to the ferry pier to Chijin island. The walk isn’t far but it crosses a bridge that doesn’t have a sidewalk. It wasn’t too busy and I’m alive.

Chijin’s a small community in a big city. Small houses, lots of bikes[1]. I like it. The temple near the ferry terminal is small but one of the nicest I’ve seen. Built in 1666 or something. Lots of nice detail. I sat outside and read for a while.

I walked up to the fort and lighthouse on the hill. Nice views obscured a bit by smog. On the main drag there are seafood stalls with the stuff still alive or freshly caught and on ice. I had soem fantastic mussels and shrimp. The mussels were among the best I’ve had–done in a similar style to 3 cup chicken [2].

I took the ferry back to the main island (Taiwan Island, that is) and walked back over the scary bridge to the hotel and took a break. After that I walked to the Tuntex Skytower and went to the observation deck. It’s an interesting building that’s like a stick figure person with no arms or head; there’s a gap at the bottom, basically. Between the Skytower and Taipei 101, I’m thinking that the Taiwanese do skyscrapers pretty well–they’re attractive.

From there I took a taxi across town to the Liouho Street Night Market. It’s bustling and big and fun. I got some weird and great food and did some people watching. I’ll post a separate photo essay on this.

The taxis from Skytower to Liouho and from Liouho back to the hotel were about $4 each. Why had I been walking so much?

Sunday

Struggled through breakfast again.

I went to mass at the Holy Rosary Cathedral, one of the oldest churches in Taiwan. Really beautiful. Mass is given in English by an Italian priest. I was wondering if the place would be half full. Catholics and English speakers aren’t exactly numerous around here, but it was packed. The answer: Filipinos, who often come to work as domestic workers, are very Catholic and often, I would guess, speak English better than Chinese.

Another thing that’s nicer about mass rather than just a walk around in beautiful old churches is the time to sit and absorb it. Holy Rosary is really nice. I went to mass in the Koelner Dom back in 2002. It was nice to sit there.

From there, I walked around, getting some papaya milk at the Kaohsiung Milk King and then sitting by Love River and reading for a bit.

A quick tour of Yancheng’s temples, lunch at the City of Steamed Glutinous Rice, and then I went back the hotel. They took me back to the train station.

I had dreams of the most efficient tourism route ever for this trip. I was doing pretty well. Lotus Lake, in Zouying is close to nothing…except the high speed rail station, so I’ll just go early, drop my bag in a locker and then walk around the lake, I thought. Brilliant plan, except for the fact that the HRS station doesn’t have lockers. The two things a train station should have–take note if you’re planning on building one–are trains and luggage lockers. So I ended up walking around the lake for a few hours with my fairly heavy bag. My knees are not happy.

The trip back was as smooth as the way there and the MRT connections once I got back to Taipei were fast, so I was back in my room ~22 minutes after I got off the train.

[1] There were a whole lot of bikes–I might have seen dozens–set up with bullhorn barns and a single gear. I’m a big fan of this style and I was happy to see so many of them in Kaohsiung.

[2] The best chicken you’ll ever taste, as made by Joy Restaurant in San Mateo. I’m now determined to make my own 3 cup chicken/ mussels.

I didn’t get any photos of these things. Sorry!

• yummy season: A sign for Subway had these words along with a lot of chinese characters. It is yummy season
• ninja cupid: a shirt I saw on the subway said this along with a few chinese characters and a depiction of what is apparently a ninja cupid. I am definitely buying one of these if I see it.
• boring pie: a cookie/ biscuit-like product with this name and the slogan something along the lines of “get out of boring time.”

Note: I carry my camera around a lot, but I can’t always get a photo of everything.

One of the weirder wikipedia pages: list of people who have disappeared.

The older ones are full of mystery and are pretty interesting. The newer ones are largely kidnapped kids; kidnapping kids is not interesting or fun; kidnapping kids is sad.

What’s with having 12 months? Does that make sense at all? Years and days make sense–they are determined by the behavior of the earth, but months? That’s just silly. I vote for ten 36.5 day months.

And while we’re at it, 24 hours? Why not 22 or 28. At least 28 is a perfect number. All 24 has going for it is that game [1]. Come on, split up the day into 10 hours, each of which would have 10 minutes, each of which would have 864 seconds [2].

Throw out those old archaic systems. Who’s with me?

[1] It is a fun game. Who’s up for a 24 tourney when I get back??
[2] No, not 10 seconds. The second is already the SI unit of time.

Driving into Ubud from Kuta when I was in Bali, we saw a lot of floats in the street. We asked the driver and it turns out that there was a parade that day commemorating the day. We got various stories about who it was for, whether it was for anyone at all. It was an annual parade, or it was for the husband of a woman we talked to, or it was for a baby that had died a couple weeks prior. Or it might have been a combination, a planned parade but when the baby or the husband died, they became part of it.

The plan, we learned, was to parade these floats about a kilometer and then burn the floats. As it was tradition, all the men, including my group, all wore sarongs.

Some floats prepared on the road.

Everyone turned out, it seemed.

It took quite a bit of coordination to lift each of the floats.

There was a lot of noise and excitement as the parade started.

On some of the floats, younger boys road up top.

There was a music group from the local school marching along with instruments from the gamelan tradition.

People who didn’t walk along the route with the parade watched as it went past.

At the end of the parade route at the cemetery area, all the floats were lined up around the edge of the area. Every family in town prepared an offering which were then placed in the floats before they were burned.

After a lull in the excitement there was a lot of yelling off to one side. Suddenly I realized that the locals had dug up some (apparently recently buried) bodies. Wrapped in thatched blankets, they were rushed over and placed in the floats amid a flurry of yells.

This man was the man with the matches, one presumes an important person on this day.

One float with offerings lined up around it and in the back.

Everything goes up in flames.

Man Charged With Beheading Hotel’s Duck:

Police said Clark — an auditor in the Office of Inspector General — tore the duck’s head off near the hotel’s atrium pond Saturday and then told witnesses: “I’m hungry. I’m gonna eat it.”

“It sounds like there was quite a bit of alcohol involved,” police Sgt. John Wuorinen said.

On the bus, seen on a young woman presumably going to work:

WHAT DOES “FUCK” MEAN?
F = FOREVER I LOVE YOU
U = UNHAPPY WITHOUT YOU
C = CARE ABOUT YOU
K = KISS YOU WITH A HUG
I GIVE YOU BIGGEST F.U.C.K.

Oh, Taipei, how you amuse me.

I could easily spend 3 months being amused by the signs here. Here are just a few I’ve seen.

[Some of the signs are hard to read in this size. Click for larger versions.]

Taiwan

There are signs everywhere, many of them lighted. They can easily fill your view.

Beef and beer, how can you go wrong?

Lobster and beer, is the only improvement, I guess.

On some signs, the iconography is unusual:

On some signs the language is–how should I say this–awkward. (Note, the screen they’re referring to has never been on that I’ve noticed).

Yes, they go fast, I get it! 39 m/ min fast!

Announced Tuesday along with the iPod Touch and the other things is the best designed cake in the world. It can hold 8 billion songs. 8…billion…songs…

Is the skin eating food or is the skin the food? I’m confused.

There is something about chicken restaurants. Thumbs up! You’re about to eat me!

“The best saporous fried chicken in Taiwan”. Where’s my dictionary? Is that a word?

“Super chicken” is the newest superhero…you can eat.

I know where I’ll go next time I need some mockery.

Hello! Damper Baby!

“Deep flied pork cutlet”. I’m not putting words in anyone’s mouth.

Some bring out the giggly high schooler in me.

Summer BEER Rock Festival

Beer
SUMMER
Rock
Festival
ACTIVE
->Activity Girl With Dream
Active girl has inside herself to be confident, fulfilled, happy and healthy. Active girl Power! is the power to speak your mind, to stand up for yourself, and to know what’s right for you. We want every girl to know: you are unique, you are valuable, and with your Girl Power! you can succeed. The future is yours.

Indonesia

No “tipping” <wink><wink> Ah yes, I see.

The only I saw can be disturbed aviation safety was me taking the photo of the sign.

Car maintenance shop, but in Indonesian!

Sort of like a Walmart but in Indonesia.

a) I dislike change. It ends up my floor because my pockets get too heavy. I had $41.68 on my floor as of this morning.

[Also, the Page Mill branch of the Stanford Federal Credit Union has a coin machine like those at Safeway but no commission! You get a receipt from it to exchange it for cash or deposit it.]

b) I have a lot more stuff than when I moved to California just under 4 years ago. It’s still manageable but barely. I can also be brutal when it’s time to pack up in terms of what I throw out and what I keep. Like today I threw out my coke can birdman costume (after it had sit on Craiglist->free a few days, I should note) even though it took me a ridiculous amount of time and energy to make but I knew I wasn’t going to use it again.

also:
c) I’m moving to Taiwan, well, now.

Thanks for the good suggestions. Here’s who I ended up donating too.

• local 1/4 Catholic Charities CYO, San Francisco Archdiocese They provide a variety of good services to people in San Francisco and San Mateo (my) county.
• national 1/4 American Red Cross national disaster relief fund. I think the Red Cross does really good work and you never know when the next disaster will be.
• international 1/4 African Medical and Research Fund I like that they’re doing research into malaria, which is a major problem, in addition to many other major problems (HIV/ AIDS, TB, safe water, etc.)
• international 1/4 Compassion International A suggestion of Colin last year. Worthwhile services for impoverished children in the developing world.
• international 1/4 South Africa Development Fund They sponsor a wide variety of worthwhile programs of all different sorts in my ancestral home.

Yup, that’s 5/4. I ended up finding more worthwhile charities than I originally was going to donate to so, I just ended donating more.

I saw Superbad last night. It’s really funny and uses some dirty language.

I give it four fingers and a thumb.