Mapping our way to the Golden Gate Bridge the old-fashioned way

While Chris was visiting this past weekend, we decided to visit the Golden Gate Bridge. I drove and he (in theory) navigated. I kept asking what the exit was and he just said it was the last exit before the bridge. As we get close to our destination, I ask "Is this the exit?" He replies "Yes".

But it wasn't. We found ourselves on CA-1 South for a while before we had an option to turn off to reverse direction. All the while Chris is trying to access a map on his cell phone (web-capable but not quite a smart phone). With his phone, it takes him a while to navigate the map (I assume it's because of the map refreshing each time he moves in one direction), and so after a while I realize something:

"You know, there are some actual maps over there." (Referring to the slot on the passenger-side door)

At first it seemed like Chris had forgotten how to use a real map, but his apparent confusion quickly becomes fascination: "Look at all the detail I can see without having to zoom in!" "There's so much stuff on here!" "You have to blog about this." (Here ya go, Chris. Happy?)

With the help of the good old-fashioned map, we finally made our way to the parking lot near the foot of the bridge and were rewarded with a spectacular view on a beautiful day:

Taiwan High Speed Rail

While we were in Taiwan, my family took advantage of the Taiwan High Speed Rail quite a bit. On January 23rd, we took it down to Yunlin county from Taipei—a journey I've made over a dozen times in the past either by traditional rail road, bus, or car. These methods usually took around 5 hours (and sometimes twice that when hitting really bad traffic).

The high speed rail took a mere 1.5 hours to get us to Chia-yi, followed by a 30 minute car ride to our destination. Not only was it fast, but it was comfortable, fairly clean, and fun. They had a food and snack cart that came through from which I bought a katsu-don (pork cutlet with egg and rice) meal for 120 NT, or about $3.60! It was pretty good and a great deal (of course one of my aunts thought it was "robbing the bank" to charge so much). One nice little "feature" they had was a pull-down screen to shade from the sun, similar to airplanes but made of nicer materials:

The experience reminded me of how fun traveling by train can be. You get to get a sense of the towns and countrysides you pass through in far greater detail than from a plane, and without the hassles of getting to airports (which are usually not as close to the heart of major cities) and passing through security checkpoints. And, at least with the THSR, the trains were punctual. Here's a little video I recorded while on the train:

The only downside of the THSR is it reminded me of how underwhelming rail travel in the U.S. is.

Inauguration Day, 2009

I'm in Taipei, Taiwan right now—on the day of Barack Obama's Inauguration. I'm ever-thankful for getting CNN here and their thorough coverage of the events that are taking place on the other side of the world.

January 20, 2009 started for me a little earlier than most Americans. I spent most of it walking around with my family, and wearing my "I'm fired up! / He's ready to go" Obama t-shirt.

All the walking around, not sleeping a lot last night, and having arrived in Taiwan just two nights prior have made me thoroughly exhausted.

But I'm also energized and excited to witness this moment in history. The past few days, I've been trying to grasp the enormity and significance of this moment. The best I can do is to say that it's a momentous reaffirmation of the American Dream—the opportunity to imagine a better life and to pursue that vision. Today, America and its people begin a new chapter. One where we can imagine our nation's return to a brighter future, and can reshape how we and the world perceive us as a country and people.

Goodbye 2008, Hello 2009!

While the past few years have seemed to just zoom by, 2008 really stands out in my mind as one of the most eventful ones. It saw me as an MBA student at MIT Sloan, working at FriendFeed, visiting Japan and Germany, moving back to the west coast, and get back into regular WingTsun teaching and training.

In the second week of the year I was interning at a 3-month old startup. I quickly realized that FriendFeed was a special place and that I'd love to work there full-time. Which is what I'm doing now (a little sooner than expected). After spending much of my four years living in NYC and part of my first year of business school trying to figure out what job would be right for me—something that has the potential to impact people's daily lives, that I could be passionate about and that wouldn't make me depressed to spend most of my waking hours doing—I'm happy to have finally found such a great fit.

This year will inevitably be a historic one because of Barack Obama. I found myself engaged and curious about the U.S. election process and government policies. It was inspiring to see this man who had blazed his own path make history as our first African-American Commander-in-Chief. I truly believe this to be an important step in American history because of the instant credibility it lends to the dreams of present and future generations of American children, regardless of race. Obama inspired many of us this year, and of the many inspirational speeches he gave, the one he gave in Virginia on the eve of the election stands out: Fired Up? Ready to Go!.

In personal life events, I got to watch Brett Favre play live for the first time (though they lost a game they should've won). It was particularly meaningful since I got to share the moment with my Dad, who's also a big Favre fan.

2009

My New Year's Eve was not particularly notable, but I was happy to get to spend it in New York. We watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, grocery shopped, then ate dinner (Indian food) and hung out at a buddy's apartment in Fort Greene (Brooklyn), where we played "Dig" (a speedy version of Scrabble), watched TV, and consumed snacks and beverages.

I've had enough resolution attempts to realize that my list doesn't have much variance: more music playing/writing, try to improve Chinese, play more basketball/tennis, read more, ... I used to get frustrated at the slow progress I make in each of those, and wonder whether I should just give up something. But I can't. So here's to continuing along the path in my areas of interest. Maybe one of these years they'll have their 'hockey-stick' moment. Maybe it'll be 2009.

Swollen Uvula (aka hanging ball thing in the back of your mouth)

So i awoke on the morning of January 1, 2009 really dehydrated. Mouth and throat were ridiculously dry, and worst of all, the hanging ball thingy in the back of my mouth was swollen. It was pretty much in contact with my tongue, which made swallowing hurt (since I was trying to swallow the hanging ball thingy). So i searched Google (on my iPod Touch) for "hanging ball throat" and found out that it was my uvula (from latin root uva, meaning grape).

Then i searched for "swollen uvula", and the first result was: http://swollenuvula.blogspot.com. It has just one post that perfectly described what i felt and said that I should eat ice cream! Now i'm not especially crazy about ice cream, but having to consume it for medical purposes is a pretty awesome concept. :) It said orange juice and throat drops are good too.

What I've Learned in 2008

Esquire is my favorite magazine, and what first got me into the magazine is when I first read one of their "What I've Learned" interviews, where they interview prominent people about the things they've learned in life. So here's my "What I've Learned" in 2008, either through my own experiences or those of friends:

• Do what you want to do, not what you think you're supposed to do or what you think others want you to do. This has been a work in progress for me, as I used to fall into the trap of doing the latter. But this year I've made big strides in this department.


• When it comes to tough decisions, going with your heart can't be wrong.


• The best way I've found to de-stress or clear my head is with good music.


• Sleep is good. If you can make time for it, sleep more. My dad advocates 8.5 hrs—I've found that being closer to that number is better than being further.


• New York is the best city in the world. I've believed this for a while, but now that I'm over a year removed from being a resident, it rings even more true.


• Macs are better than PCs. I've had one of my most frustrating years as a PC user, and finally decided to give Macs a try. It was a good decision. (@MichaelMorrissey–this recent development has no bearing on our disagreements on Apple VS IBM in 5th/6th grade.)


• Always, ALWAYS firmly negotiate a price with a locksmith BEFORE he performs his services. Otherwise be prepared to hear an absurd number.


• When sick, just because you feel all better doesn't mean you're fully healthy yet. Take it slow.

Follow-up thoughts on being a Mac (1+ month in)

Just wanted to follow-up on my previous post with some things I forgot to mention and my impressions now that I've been using my MacBook Pro for over a month.

One of the biggest positives of OSX is no longer having the lame Flash bug I had on both Vista machines I was running. This annoying bug only played flash videos for 2 seconds and without sound. It effectively made it impossible to watch most online videos, including YouTube! It's amazing when things work as you expect them to.

The lack of a right-mouse button on the notebook itself hasn't been as bad since I use a USB mouse at work that has a right mouse-button that works fine (without any configuring on my part).

I was frustrated that tabbing with the keyboard seemed to always skip dropdown boxes. Thanks to writing this post, I forced myself to finally try figuring it out and a google search helped me find some help in changing this. I just activated it so haven't used it in normal browsing yet, but one thing i've noticed is that when tabbing to the dropdown box i don't seem to be able to expand the list of options, only cycle through them. Hopefully there's a way to do that, but i'm too tired to search for that answer right now.

All-and-all, i'm pretty surprised how quickly i adapted to using my MacBook Pro and OSX, and it's amazing how clunky PCs feel to me now. So far, the MacBook Pro has proven to be a more elegant machine, and OS X has not surprisingly been a far superior OS to Windows.