Eewww!

Someone just went number 2 in the bathroom at work and left without washing his hands! I'm in the building with all the executives and there are only 12 males on this floor. All I know is that he was wearing black shoes...

Tax Freedom Day

According to The Tax Foundation, today is Tax Freedom Day. Until today, the average American has been working to pay taxes (32.7%); after today, we get to keep what we earned. Of course, in the liberal paradise of California, we get to work an extra 7 days for the government.

Nomadic Church

This weekend NewSong NOC was back at Wilshire Auditorium in Fullerton. We've been in Wilshire for over a year but we had to go back to Servite High School for the past three weeks. It looks like we may need to find another place after May so we've packed all the sound equipment into our rolling containers to be more mobile. Setup today was actually not too bad since Wilshire sound staff helped connect all the stage input lines and we were using their sound board/main speakers. We still brought a lot of stuff including both equipment racks and subwoofers. It was so easy at Irvine where all we had to do was connect a few XLRs and change batteries.

I heard we may be going to a junior high school gym. That would suck for sound... all those hard reflective surfaces. :(

Taxes (again!)

I finally got around to changing my W-4 exemptions from 3 to 0. The impact is about $400 per pay period or ~$10k for the year! Maybe that's why I had to pay so much in taxes for 2006... :(

China

I just booked my airline tickets to China for next month. My friend Leon goes over to Chengdu for week-long business trips every 6-8 weeks so I'm tagging along this time. I was hoping the company would send me to Singapore but it looks like my new job doesn't require much travel so I'm paying the $1200 myself.

The last time I was in China was in 1998 when I gave several finance seminars at Yenching University in Beijing. Since then, I've been to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand, but never made it back to China. This time, we're flying Cathay Pacific and I have a 24 hour layover in Hong Kong. I haven't decided if I'm going to take a ferry to Macau or take the MTR to Hong Kong Island while Leon visits some relatives.

In Chengdu, we're staying at the Prime Hotel. I hope their service is better than their Engrish.

Prime Hotel is located in the most numerous trade circle of Chunxi Road in Chengdu City, which is an international trade and tourist hotel. Since the foundation of it in Dec. 1998, relying on the trade chances of Chunxi Road and many surrounding modern departments, advantageous port, flexible operative mode and creative and perfect service, Prime Hotel has created the lodging rate of 80%, which has been the leader of the hotels in this city for two times. Prime Hotel has been a bark horse in Chengdu.

I almost got scammed on eBay

I was looking for a case to buy for church in order to store all the microphones we use for worship service on Sunday. Right now, we have 15+ microphone scattered in plastic bins and some of them are pretty expensive (Shure SM81 = $350/ea). Anyway, I placed a bid on eBay for $80 and ended up not winning the auction.

Then I get this email from a Kelly Williams:

Hello, You have a bid on my auction from eBay. Are you still interested? I need to sell it and the winning bidder said that he is not interested anymore. So i am willing to sell it to you for your last bid price. Let me know if you want to purchase it. Respectfully yours

IMPORTANT: When you e-mail us please include this message.

Thank you!

The email looked official with eBay logos and everything. Being the cheap Chinese guy I am, I replied, "I'll take it!" I then asked about PayPal and giving the "seller" the church office address for shipping. The next day I get this in my inbox from "eBay":

Good news! The following eBay item on which you placed a bid, is now available for purchase! Per your request, we have verified all the details of this transaction. We concluded that they are accurate. Please follow our instructions to complete the transaction safely.
...

Payment must be sent by Western Union Money Transfer to:
Seller verified name: Gheorghe Dumitru
Seller verified payment address:
Caras Severin nr.308
Moldova Noua
Romania

At first I thought eBay must be crazy to make a statement like that with words like: verified, accurate, and safely. If something goes bad with the transaction, it's lawsuit time. Then I saw the Western Union money transfer to Romania... Romania?! And who's Gheorghe? What happened to Kelly?! :)

At this point, I should have just stopped. Not wanting to pass up a bargain however, I email back and said that I can pay with PayPal. I was too lazy to go and find a Western Union to transfer money. Next email came quick (don't they sleep in Romania?):

Hi,

I send the item for you, Please make the payment.I can't use Pay Pal because my account was corrupted and I can't use it for another 2 or 3 weeks. Someone made payments with my account and now I must wait until Pay Pal will restore it to me. For the moment I can't make or receive payments. I waiting reply.

Best regards.

OK, that's pretty poor English for Ms. Kelly Williams. Now (finally) I'm thinking this may be a scam so I sent a message to the original seller through eBay and got this reply:

I didn't send that email. If you want to report this person to ebay or paypal buy all means. Thanks for the heads up.

Wow... and I thought that they were going to ship something that weighs 10 pounds to me from Romania for $7.50. Well, it looks like I'm not going to get the microphone case for $80 so I went ahead and ordered one from Jim's Music (ask for Tom) in Irvine for $123. :(

Oh well, it doesn't matter. I'm helping a Nigerian government official transfer $80M out of the country for a 10% commission.

Back to civilization...

Time Warner cut my cable modem connection Thursday afternoon. I'm still not sure what happened but there was some accounting mix up and my service was disconnected. I think my account got mixed up with the prior tenant even though my name and address was correct. I was actually worried that they cut off my service for downloading too many Korean movies or something. :)

For the past two days, I've been without an Internet connection. I spent about an hour on the phone with two different Time Warner customer service rep Friday night and they got a technician to come out today to hook me back up. To keep me happy, they upgraded my connection from the old Comcast 4Mb to a 10Mb connection at the same price. I checked with 2wire.com and it showed 9.3Mb on the speed meter.

It was kinda weird to be without an Internet connection for 48 hours. I would think of something, go to the computer to look it up, and realize that I have no connection. I was able to check email with my Treo but at ~50kb only. Still, that's much faster than my 1st 1200bps modem.

几个北美演唱会观众的英文Blog

Crazy! Evidently there is a blog post on baidu.com in China (http://post.baidu.com/f?kz=187779436) about my blog post on Jane Zhang's concert. I haven't read any of it (since it's in simplified Chinese), but someone copied my post and translated it into Chinese (message #24).

At first I thought, "Hey, this is cool!"

My next thought was, "Hey, I'm Chinese... I could have written my own post in Chinese!"

OK, maybe not.

Last Concert Video

To Be Loved

This was the first video I took with my camera. The last one is >100MB so I either need to re-encode it at a lower bitrate or find somewhere other than YouTube to upload. Since I'm lazy, I'll probably do nothing...

Some closer-up pictures Fred took with Leon's camera:

There's always an encore!

This the closing song at Jane Zhang's concert.

After the concert was "over", Jane walked off the stage. It was kinda weird since she ended on a slow song... usually you want to finish big. At this point, the audience is supposed to applaud and cheer in order to bring the artist back on stage to perform some more. At this concert however, most of the audience just sat there and some people even got up to leave. Anyway, after about a minute of awkward (relative) silence, Jane came back on stage to sing two more songs. At least we were cheering and Fred was holding up his lighted Jane sign (which he had to return at the end of the concert).

More Baby Pics

OK, just two more photos of Addison from my camera. Sometimes she has this contemplative old man look that's really cute!





==========

She's only two weeks old and has her own Blog... ;)

張靚穎 Concert

I just got back from Jane Zhang's concert at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium. The concert was great; she has an awesome voice and she's pretty cute as well. However, we probably had the worst seat in the house. The sound and lighting people set up their equipment in the middle of the orchestra section and our seats were in the row right behind them. We tried grabbing empty seats elsewhere but got bumped twice and we ended back in our original seats. The auditorium was not designed for a rock/pop concert format and they had nowhere to put the mixing board.

There was a live band on stage but they only played for the English songs. All the music for the Chinese songs were played from a CD. I think one of the sound guys was responsible for playing the right CD track and recording the concert on a CD recorder. He played the wrong CD track once (he played a song she already sang) and they had to stop and start again with the right song. Pretty funny... if you're not the sound guy. :)


Outside the auditorium before the concert... lots of people from Mainland China.


Sound equipment (and boba milk tea) which we got to see all night.


Banner on stage. She's really into dolphins. Not sure what the bottom row of Chinese characters say.


First outfit.


Second outfit. She took two breaks and we thought she was going to change again, like a Chinese wedding, but she came out for the third set with the same clothes.

I also recorded video for 4 songs with my camera. The video quality is crap since the place was so dark but the sound was really loud so it recorded okay. Each file is ~100MB so I need to figure out how to paste/share the video files.

==========

Update: My first upload to YouTube


Loving You: the song with all the high notes.

Chinese K-TV

Last Sunday, my parents and I met with their friend for lunch; she was the realtor that sold my house in Brea last year. After lunch, we went to visit her son's home in Walnut. He had some crazy K-TV system that had 18,000 songs stored and we ended up singing Chinese songs. I was surprised by how many songs I recognize just from listening to my dad practice at home all these years. I even tried to sing one but couldn't read the characters fast enough; a couple of people had to help read out the lyrics before I could sing them. :(

This was the song I was trying to sing. The original arrangement on the CD is mainly guitar... maybe I can figure out the chords and accompany myself. I have the chords to another C-pop song (愛相隨 by 周華健) so I'm practicing that one too.

解脫 by 張惠妹

愛是不夜城　回憶像星辰
熱淚越沸騰　我越感覺有點冷
變了心的人　越想越傷人
枯坐到清晨　陽光替房間開了燈

想　若結局一樣又何苦再想
傷　若讓人成長
我為什麼怕分手的傷

解脫　是肯承認這是個錯
我不應該還不放手
你有自由走　我有自由好好過

解脫　是懂擦乾淚看以後
找個新方向往前走
這世界遼闊　我總會實現一個夢

心裡有一種渴望勇敢的念頭
不要愛我的人再擔心我

Jane Zhang

Official website

Jane (or Liangying) Zhang [張靚穎] was the 2nd runner-up in the 2005 Super Girl competition (~American Idol in China). I've never heard of her before but I'm spending $100 to see her in concert tonight in Pasadena. Leon called me earlier this week to see if I wanted to go; I didn't know he was into C-pop. Maybe his Mandarin is better than I thought. Actually, Jane Zhang sings a lot of English songs (3 out of 10 songs on her 1st album is in English) so I should understand some lyrics. For $100 tickets, she better not be lip-syncing.


That's a pretty nice Shure wireless mic she's using... very similar to the ones we use at NewSong.

Infernal Affairs

I just downloaded and watched Infernal Affairs, a Hong Kong movie from 2002. Shirley actually had all three movies (IA2 and IA3) on her Mac several years ago but with Chinese subtitles (the dialog is in Cantonese). This time I also downloaded English subtitles so I could follow the plot.

The movie was really good; it pretty much won every award for both the Hong Kong Film Awards and Golden Horse Awards that year. Infernal Affairs was remade into The Departed last year by Martin Scorsese and it won four Oscars. I wonder how many American moviegoers knew they were watching a remade Chinese movie.

Portland Airport

PDX airport has free wireless LAN access, which give me something to do while waiting for my flight to board. I've been on a lot of flights between Orange County and Portland during the past year and each flight has been completely booked. Not sure if airlines are running less flights to fill up planes but I used to have the entire row by myself.

Well, at least I'm flying to SNA instead of LAX... I hate LAX.

==========

Hmm, the flight wasn't as full as it appeared from the waiting room. The seat next to me was empty and there were several other empty seats. It did turn out to be a Disneyland express flight; there were lots of families with kids going there this weekend. Wait until they see the $70 ticket price.

Baby Pics

I'm here in Portland with my parents visiting my sister, Rebecca, and their new baby. Addison was born on May March 15th in the afternoon, weighing 6 lbs 5 oz and she was 20 inches long. I had also just bought a Sony A100 digital SLR for my dad so there are lots of pictures.

UCLA-Indiana

Halftime score: UCLA 20 - Indiana 13. I thought football season was over...

New CFO

Broadcom Names Veteran Executive Eric Brandt as Chief Financial Officer

IRVINE, Calif., March 14, 2007 /PRNewswire-FirstCall via COMTEX News Network/ -- Broadcom Corporation (Nasdaq: BRCM), a global leader in semiconductors for wired and wireless communications, today announced that veteran financial executive Eric K. Brandt will join the company later this month as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer.

Death and Taxes

I hired a tax accountant this year and I just sent all my documents to him. I bought TurboTax to do my parent's taxes so I thought I would try to see what my taxes will be if I did it myself. After dropping in numbers for about 30 minutes, the result is that I owe ~$11k for federal taxes and ~$5k in state taxes. Yup, in addition to all the taxes I paid on my paychecks and stock option exercises, I have to pay ~$16k more. I knew being single and living in an apartment is bad but this is crazy. I even have to pay $1,500 of AMT taxes... I thought that was for millionaires. Sigh, I feel like I just got robbed. :(

Sh*t! I hope I really screwed up in TurboTax and my tax accountant can lower that $16k tax bill. Any politician trying to raise taxes will definitely not get my vote.

Bipolar Disorder

Woman says she bought car under influence of bipolar disorder, sues dealer

Associated Press

TROY, Mich. — She went in for an oil change, but came out with a brand-new car.

Now a Michigan woman is suing the auto dealer, saying it took advantage of her bipolar disorder to sell her the $32,000 vehicle.

Amy Berner tells the Detroit News she suffers from "impulsivity and difficulty in decision-making,'' and the dealer used that to get her to sign a $444 per month lease for a Mazda CX-9.

Berner says she had gone to the dealer for an oil change for her car, which she had bought just six months earlier.

Berner's husband says the dealer agreed to take the car back if it got a doctor's letter detailing Berner's condition. He says the letter was sent, but the dealer delivered the CX-9 anyway, and left the keys in the mailbox.

Suburban Imports of Troy says it can't comment on the suit because it hasn't received any legal papers yet.

Immigration

I just found out this week that my one and only staff's OPT visa will run out in June and she won't be able to get a H-1B visa until October. This means that she will be off our payroll in mid-June and need to leave the country by mid-August. Sigh... our only option is to put her on LOA or try to get a work permit in another country. As part of this process, I found out how much it costs for U.S. immigration the legal way.

If we decide to hire a foreign student out of school, they get a one year training work permit (OPT), then they need to get a H-1B visa. The H-1B visa costs around $5,000 and is good for three years; after three years, you can renew for another three years for about the same cost. After the second H-1B visa runs out, you can keep renewing one year at a time as long as you have a pending green card (permanent resident card) application.

If you want to work long-term in the U.S. (i.e., longer than seven years after graduation), then you need to either apply for a green card or marry a U.S. citizen*. The green card application takes 4-6 years, costs about $8,000 and is not guaranteed. The company has to prove that we've tried to recruit locally and the employee is irreplaceable. Well, no one is irreplaceable, especially in finance. Last time I posted a financial analyst opening in Monster.com, I got 30+ resumes sent to me... all pretty lame though.

Anyhow, if you add up both parallel application processes for H-1B's and the green card, toss in some lawyers, it comes out to about $25,000. Our company is pretty generous since we pay for the whole thing, including legal fees, and HR says that 98% of H-1B visa holders apply for a green card. I know a lot of people that have gone through or are still stuck in this process and they had to pay for everything themselves. I got my green card along with my parents when we moved to the U.S.; I think our immigration application took over seven years while we lived in Canada. The naturalization process I went through in 2005 cost me ~$500 and took almost the entire year. My dad's naturalization application is stuck in limbo for the past two years pending some FBI screw-up.

I guess the major problem I have with this is fairness. On one hand, the government restricts the number of H-1B visas each year and charges an exorbitant fee, and also make the legal immigration process as difficult and expensive as possible. On the other hand, if you break the law and sneak across the border or overstay your visa, people trip over themselves to give you free stuff (healthcare, education, even a green card). I have co-workers that paid a lot of money to attend CSU Fullerton as a legal foreign student and out-of-state friends that also paid a lot to attend UCLA.

Meanwhile, I end up paying 40%+ in taxes so politicians can spend other people's money on "social justice", especially here in the People's Republic of California. If people want to feel better about themselves by helping those "less fortunate", then they should pay extra taxes. I'm already paying thousands of dollars to educate someone else's kids (Leon!).

Sigh... I can't believe I'm up at 4:30am bitching about this.

*BTW, I'm single again and have dual American/Canadian citizenship so take your pick... :)

Panoramio

I found this website that lets you upload photos and attach a pointer to its location. Every so often, the photos get uploaded to Google Earth and people can click on the Panoramio marker and see your photo. I uploaded some pictures that I took on my trips to Asia.

Undelete!

Evidently OS X is not foolproof. I just managed to delete most of my Documents folder... I'm still not sure what happened. Anyway, all my song charts I made/found for worship are gone as well as my personal documents. I hope everything important has been printed out since I don't even know what I deleted. I'd better start burning backups to a CD-R.

Microsoft Vista

I bought a new Dell notebook last October that was Vista Ready. I just found out that I missed the free Vista upgrade by 11 days. Well, I guess I won't upgrade then... or until much later if I have to pay for it. I heard that Vista is a huge resouce hog but what else is new from Microsoft. I'm mostly using my Mac Mini anyway... the Dell is only for games.

A-mei

A-mei (張惠妹) is the first Asian popstar I heard of. When I first moved to Canada, I was only 8 and don't think I was much into music anyhow. Growing up in Canada, I also wanted to be assimulated into the Western culture so I didn't pay any attention to Chinese music -- it was something that old Chinese people listen to. It was after college when I first became interested in Chinese pop, after downloading a couple of A-mei songs from the Internet. Now more than half of the songs on my iTunes is either Chinese, Japanese, or Korean.

A-mei is still my favorite Asian popstar. Her voice is incredible and unlike some of the newer singers, she conveys a lot of emotion in her songs. I bought her latest album when I was in Taiwan last year but I still think her old stuff is the best. I kind of regret missing out on her concerts, many in the US. Hopefully she will still perform more concerts before she retires.

Update: Arg! I missed it. A-mei was at the Aladin in Las Vegas on Feb. 13th for the Fusion 2007 Concert. :(

A-mei sings a medley (14 minutes!) of movie songs at the 42nd Golden Horse Film Festival (2005) in Taiwan. Not sure what's up with the male MC though.

IVC Performing Arts Center

Irvine Valley College is building a new Performing Arts Center along Jefferys Road. I think the building costs ~$33M but there is no state funds to furnish and operate the building so there's a capital campaign to raise money. Here is the list of stuff you can name for a fee:

The Performing Arts Center: $2,000,000 (minimum)

Main Stage: $500,000

Block Box (Little Theater): $250,000

Music Hall: $200,000

Main Stage Lobby: $100,000

Other rooms (dressing room, green room, box office, etc.):
$25,000 to $50,000

Main Theater Seats
Box seats: $1,800
Balcony/orchestra: $1,500
Mezzanine: $1,000

Black Box (Little Theater) Seats: $500

Let me know if you have a couple of million dollars and want a large building named after you.

iPod Restore

I just restored my iPod for the 2nd time. Each time you restore, you lose all the data stored on the iPod. This time I wanted to reformat the iPod back to Windows format. The Mac can read Windows file systems but not the other way around. When I restored my iPod to Macintosh format, I could not use it on my Windows PCs. Now, all my computers with iTunes can play/modify songs on the iPod. I had ~27GB of stuff on my iPod, now I have to put it all back again. Oh well, today is a work holiday...

Stock Option Fun

The Wall Street Journal had an article on Friday about Broadcom and the stock option backdating scandal. I can't link to the article since it requires a subscription but Leon sent me the text. My sister saw this in the print edition (front page!) and clipped the article to send me via regular mail.

On Jan. 4, 2002, the chief financial officer of Broadcom Corp. tapped out an email about stock options to his chief executive and others.

"I VERY strongly recommend that these options be priced as of December 24," he wrote.

They were, and that was fortunate for recipients. Broadcom's share price rose 23% between the two dates. The pretense that the options had been granted on the earlier date made them extra valuable.

It also violated the rationale of stock options. They give recipients a right to buy stock in the future at the price when the options are granted, so that recipients can profit only if the price of their company's stock goes up. Setting a lower "exercise price" for the options gives recipients a head start on profiting.

The Broadcom correspondence, found in an internal investigation at the maker of communication chips, is just one of a number of internal documents that have drawn the attention of federal prosecutors and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents in Orange County, Calif. Prosecutors are strongly considering filing criminal charges against the former Broadcom chief financial officer who wrote the email, William J. Ruehle, and at least one other former executive, according to people familiar with the situation.

It's all fun and games until someone goes to jail.


...a thousand words

Lost and Found

I was cleaning out the interior of my 4Runner and found my wedding band in one of the many compartments. I haven't seen it for over a year. I had thought I lost it during the move from the house to the apartment but I guess I just took it off and put it in the car. I put it on my ring finger and it felt really odd.

"New" Job

There is no official rotation program at work but people seem to switch jobs a lot in the finance department. Typically when someone leaves or a new position is created, an email is sent out to the entire department with the job description and requirements; it is then up to current employees to contact the hiring manager if they are interested. Last year around this time, we went through a huge round of "rotations" and I ended up losing both my staff to the Broadband group. This time, I'm the one taking a new job.

The senior manager of FP&A is leaving the company to take another job up in NoCal so I applied for her position. After talking to the hiring manager, who interviewed me seven years ago for my initial position, I had three interviews with people in the finance department. I heard there were only two of us that interviewed so I only had to beat out one guy for the job.

This will technically be my fifth position at the same company, many of which were held in parallel. Hopefully the transition won't take too long; last time it took five months! We've already promoted the senior analyst that worked for me to take over my responsibilities. I will also only have one staff now instead of two which is fine by me. I've been working for the same manager for the past 6+ years. He says it feels like a divorce... ha, this is trivial compared to a divorce.

Incidentally, I will move to a new office this Friday. This will complete my tour of buildings A through E. I probably will keep everything in boxes since the entire company is moving to a new campus in two months.

Lease Renewal

I renewed my apartment lease today. I'm now paying $1350 for a small one-bedroom apartment. Sigh... my previous mortgage was only about $1600. This also means that I moved out of "our" house about a year ago.


This was one of the last pictures I took at the house; I'm sitting in what used to be the bedroom we used as an office. By this time, everything has been moved out or thrown away, and the house was empty. I remember spending a whole week painting the two smaller bedrooms when we bought the house in 2003. It took forever to tape all the edges and paint the corners.

I was really sad that day, sitting alone in an empty house, a half-million dollar reminder that the life I had was over. I didn't know it at the time, but now I miss the convenience of having an attached garage, our own washer/dryer, the nice carpet we put in, but mostly the feeling of being home.

In Case of Emergency

ABC has a new show this season called In Case of Emergency (ICE). Without cable, I've been mostly watching videos on my computer. I managed to download the first four episodes of ICE, mainly because of Kelly Hu. :) I watched the pilot episode and it's pretty good.


She's almost 39!

There is one scene where they explain the title of the show.

Do you know what the weirdest thing about divorce is? It's going to the doctor. There's always that question on that form that they make you fill out, who to contact in case of emergency. Yeah, when you're a kid it's simple, right? It's mom or dad. Then you get married and it's, it's simple again. You just automatically have a name to write down, that person you assumed would be there, forever. Now I see that question and I don't know who the hell to write anymore.

Sigh... I've been writing down my sister's name but she's a thousand miles away in Portland.

K-pop CD's

I received several Korean CD's I ordered from YesAsia.com today.

Kim Jong Kook - 4th Letter
Baek Ji Young - Smile Again
Fly to the Sky - Eternity

As I was opening the package, I thought, "This is crazy! I don't even understand Korean."

All the lyrics are probably depressing anyway...

SeeYa Live

English Only

I remember hearing this "joke" awhile back...

Q: What do you call someone that can only speak one language?
A: An American

At work, a lot of people share their iTunes music on the network. One thing I've noticed is that all the songs are in English. Not only that, everyone has pretty much the same songs/artists. Maybe they all copied the MP3 files from each other.

Fortuately (or unfortunately), my first language was Mandarin Chinese and I learned English in Canada when I was young. Right now I have 5998 items (17 days/30 GB) in iTunes on my Mac and I counted songs in 10 languages. In addition to English and Mandarin, which are the only two I understand (about 70% for Mandarin), I have songs in Korean, Japanese, Cantonese, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German (99 Luftballons!). I don't think you need to understand the lyrics to enjoy the music. In fact, a lot of American/British bands are really popular in Asia; I'm pretty sure most of their fans have no idea what all the lyrics mean.

The song at the top of on my current playlist is I'm Coming by Bi (Rain). He's currently on a world tour promoting a new album and was in Las Vegas during Christmas (cheapest tickets were $100).

KISS - Because I'm A Girl

My friend Leon commented on how the SeeYa music videos (below) were so depressing. I think it's all tied into the whole depressing Korean drama theme. Anyway, the first Korean music video I saw was by a group called KISS (not the Gene Simmons one) which got me into K-pop and J-pop. At least no one died in this one.



One thing I've always wondered about is the magazine cover (at 6:37 in the video). The girl's picture is on the cover but the title of the magazine is AUTOMOBILE and there is an article about date rape. It's probably just a prop for the video but still weird...

씨야 (SeeYa)

SeeYa is a Korean girl band that just released their 1st album early last year. I think they have really good voices and I like their songs (not knowing what the lyrics say... but I'm learning Korean!). However, I've seen their music videos and they're all really depressing. They don't appear in their own videos either.


(L to R) Lee Boram, Nam Gyuri, Kim Yeonji


여인의 향기 (Scent of a Woman)


사랑하기때문에 (Because I Love You)


구두 (Shoes)


미친 사랑의 노래 (Crazy Love Song)

Update: Woohoo! I found videos with English subtitles. Now it's even more sad to watch.

Ice?!

It was crazy cold this morning. I wanted to clean my windshield while driving to church at 7am and the water froze on the glass. I've never seen this happen in SoCal (other than at Big Bear). It took me five minutes to clear the ice using the defroster.

I had also left my iPod in the car and it wouldn't work until I warmed it up. The tech specs for the iPod states the operating temperature is from 32°F to 95°F. I'm pretty sure it got below 32°F last night.

7 Years

Tomorrow is my 7-year work anniversary; I started working at BRCM on 1/12/2000. Sigh... 7 years is a long time, almost 1/5th of my whole life.

Oregon

I went up to Portland during New Year's weekend to visit my sister and Rebecca. It was pretty last minute but I managed to get round-trip tickets from SNA to PDX for $270. The plan was to hang out for a couple of days and then drive to Bend, Oregon and ski a couple of days at Mt. Bachelor.


The trip up to Portland was pretty uneventful. A co-worker dropped me off at John Wayne airport (I hate LAX) after work on Wednesday and I got to PDX around 10pm. They were serving warm cookies and ridiculously small cartons of milk.


We were preparing for year-end accounting close at work so I spent the next day working from my sister's house and getting to know their dog better.


My sister's new car: Subaru Outback. It was like visiting another dimension where everyone was Caucasian (except me and my sister) and drove Subarus. Almost every other car on the road was a Subaru and they all had either Thule (check) or Yakima overhead storage units.

The drive from Portland to Bend was about 4 hours. My sister rented a large townhouse 5 miles outside of Bend. It was a really nice place with two master bedrooms. We ended up only skiing one day; I was really tired and my lower legs were bruised by my boots. The rest of the time we just stayed in the house, watching the Rose Bowl and DVDs. It was good to spend time with family during the holidays.


The base lodge at Mt. Bachelor


The weather was excellent but got windy near the top of the mountain


Me and my Columbia Sportswear ski threads (Columbia outlets are everywhere in Oregon... and no sales tax!)


Flying into LAX at noon... check out the layer of smog!

Flight Cancelled

My flight back to SNA from Portland was cancelled this morning. I even checked-in on the web last night and everything was fine. So instead of arriving in SNA at 10am, I'm flying into LAX at noon and have to take a shuttle from LAX to SNA. I probably won't get to work until 2pm and I have a meeting with our CFO at 4pm.

At least PDX airport has free wifi.