Violin Recital

This afternoon, I helped out at a coworker's son's violin recital. Her husband went out and bought a digital mixer with built in HDD and some nice microphones just for this. I probably could have put together a system with unused equipment at church. I helped him set up the two microphones and sound check the trim levels.



It was just him and an accompanist on piano. I think it was his first recital so it was pretty good (some intonation and rhythm issues). He had two huge music stands with pages and pages of sheet music taped together. I thought soloists had to memorize their music for recitals?

The worst part was that I am still a bit jet-lagged. I had to get up this morning at 6am for NewSong sound and ended up dealing with a flat tire (see below). The recital didn't start until 3pm and I was having problems staying awake. Since I was sitting near the front, I didn't want people to see me close my eyes for too long, or even worse, nod off and slam my head into the mixing board.

Another Flat Tire

The front right tire on the Z went flat this morning while I was driving on the I-5. By the time I pulled off the freeway in Santa Ana, the tire had come off the rim and was smoking.



These are the 2nd set of front tires on the Z. The original set were replaced when Nissan had to admit to an alignment problem which wore out the front tires prematurely. Since there's almost 20k miles on this set, I should replace both front tires: Bridgestone Potenza RE040 225/50/P17. Last time I had to replace both rear tires, it ended up costing over $500.



Even worse, I think the flopping tire ripped off a plastic shield on the inside of the fender, exposing a fluid reservoir and some wires. The bottom edge of the airdam is flayed so I should replace that as well... probably end up costing me another $800. The car is fun to drive but not cheap to maintain. :(

Irvine Sunset

From work parking lot at ~5:20pm

Engrish

Saw this at a Chinese supermarket in Chengdu (it's a plastic cup)

Bacon!

Speaking of food, I just had 3 slices of crispy bacon plus scrambled eggs and hash browns from the cafeteria. Despite all the Chinese food I had last week, sometimes you just need to get some bacon.

Sichuan Food

Just about every dish I've eaten in Chengdu is spicy. Not just a bit spicy for flavor but burn your tongue off spicy.


In Chengdu, as in most Asian cities I've been to, the streets are lined with small eateries. This one only had eight tables. For RMB27, we had three dishes + a bucket of rice.

Stock Option Backdating

Wow!

November 30 2007: 6:59 PM EST

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) -- A former executive at chip-maker Broadcom will plead guilty to obstruction of justice and cooperate in a federal probe of company stock option grants, the U.S. attorney's office said Friday.

Former Vice President of Human Resources Nancy Tullos, 56, was charged with instructing a subordinate to delete an e-mail that contained evidence of stock-option backdating by Broadcom senior executives and board members.

The plea agreement and details about the charge were filed Friday in U.S. District Court.

Tullos was scheduled for arraignment on Monday, but her sentencing is not expected soon. She could receive a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison.

10 years! I wonder how long Nick will go to jail if found guilty.

Paid Lounge

Unlike Leon, I don't have enough miles to get into Cathay's lounge in Hong Kong. Since I have a ~6 hour layover, I decided to use the pay lounge so I don't hurt my back sitting in the cheap gate seats. It costs HK$350 for 5 hours of lounge use, including a 2 hour nap or 15 minute massage; I went with the nap which is scheduled to begin in 20 minutes. It's pretty similar to the Cathay business class lounge with couches and a buffet, including a noodle bar. I was going to take the train to Central Hong Kong (HK$100 each way) but figured I couldn't get up to Victoria Peak and back to the airport in time.


From 2005. One of these days I'll get a clear picture of HK from Victoria Peak.

Toll Road

When I arrived from Hong Kong, PMI sent their car/driver to pick me up. He took the toll road back to the office and there was no traffic at all; this was about 2:00pm on Tuesday. This is likely because the the fee for our 20 minute trip was 40-50 RMB which is more expensive than the 73/133/241 toll road back home. Traffic is usually pretty bad in Chengdu so the toll road probably saved 20 minutes of travel time.

When you get on the road, the toll worker in the booth handed you a plastic card. I think this has information on when/where you entered the toll road. When you exit, you hand the card back and they calculate the toll based on distance. It's a pretty clever process and eliminates the need for toll booths on the highway itself.


This was the only traffic I saw on the toll road

More Meat

There are a lot of bicycles in China and people transport the strangest things. We saw some old guy carrying long rebars with one end on his bike and the other end on a two-wheeled cart; it looked very difficult to maneuver through the heavy Chengdu traffic.


More meat being carried on a bicycle. There must have been 3-4 slaughtered pigs on the back. The photo isn't too clear but you get the idea.

The office manager was sick yesterday so no lunch was ordered. Four of us ended up going to a hole-in-the-wall dumpling place that only had 8 tables. They had about 14 types of dumplings listed on their menu and prices were 2-3 RMB for 8 dumplings. In the US, 8 dumplings would probably cost you $5 or ~37 RMB. They were a bit on the small side but pretty good.


The "kitchen" at the back of the restaurant. There was one guy making dumpling and a girl (daughter?) waiting on tables.


Menu with English description. The English was actually pretty decent except for the "cow meat" and "pig meat" and item #6: Unwearied effort however cow meat stuffing... absolutely no idea what that means.

Expiration Date

I am stuck behind the Great Firewall once again. Good thing I can still use my work VPN connection.

On the Dragonair flight in from Hong Kong to Chengdu, they served us a prepackaged OJ as part of lunch. This time, I checked the date on the container first:

EXP: 11.12.07 08:52

Wow, expiration hour and minute. I debated (with myself) on whether that meant Nov 12 or Dec 11 but ended up drinking it anyway. The chicken w/noodles was exactly the same as last time back in August. Don't airlines change their menu once in awhile?

Last night, I bought a bottle of iced tea from what looked like a convenience store. I pulled it out of a small fridge but as usual, it wasn't cold. Maybe they're trying to conserve electricity. The expiration date on the cap was 20071009.

iTunes Sharing

While logged in to Hong Kong International Airport's WiFi network, I pulled up iTunes and there was someone sharing 50GBs of music. There were lots of Chinese and Japanese Pop but surprisingly, some Hillsong stuff as well. Too bad OurTunes is not working anymore... :(

Crazy Flight

I just flew in to Hong Kong from Los Angeles, and boy are my arms tired. :)

This time, the flight took a bit over 15 hours. The pilot said they were trying to avoid turbulence over the Pacific so we flew almost the entire way over land. The flight path went up the coast of Canada, across Alaska and Siberia, then down through China to Hong Kong. I think we flew right over Wuhan.

Since I had to rearrange my flight at the last minute, I lost my aisle seat and sat in 45E this time. I 45D was a Vietnamese girl that lived 11 years in the U.S. but didn't speak much English. She tried talking to me in Vietnamese and Cantonese but we ended up using Mandarin. In 45F was a Filipino guy from San Antonio. He seemed okay at first but turned out to be a freak. I usually can't sleep in planes... I even tried Tylenol PM again. During the 1/2 half of the flight, I was watching movies. After six or seven hours, I started to nod off, then the guy pulls out his 17" Gateway laptop. He was already overfilling his seat and hogging both armrests but with the large computer, he couldn't type very well. He even asked the person in front to not recline their seat so he can type; it was a young girl in a carseat. Since the cabin was tight, he ended up banging me with his elbow quite often. I tried to move to the left side of my seat to give him room but that didn't work. For about 30 minutes, he even had his elbow firmly planted in my armpit. Finally, after 2 hours of trying to sleep but being constantly awakened, I asked him to either move a bit to the right, or try to move his elbow in since I haven't been able to rest. The response I got was pretty much, "I'm not touching you! You're the one touching me! Why are you freaking out!" What, did he think I was lying? Then he started cussing at me and dropping f-bombs and God-d***. Huh? He also said, "What, you want me to lose 10 pounds right now?!" I think there is a DSM IV diagnosis in there somewhere.

Anywho, he was working on some PowerPoint slides (butt ugly ones with ALL CAPS for some seminar about email lists). I think this is it here: www.mlbfunshop.com. The tone of the website reminds me of late night TV infomercials, especially this line:

Fact #4. With large and responsive opt-in email contact list you don't have to worry about creating your own products (if you don't want to). Amateurs lose sleep over the product… Products are a dime a dozen. Savvy marketers focus on becoming masters at building massive high quality opt-in email lists FAST.

Products don't matter... riiggghhhhttttt. Like I'm going to buy the next piece of crap from some spam email.

Memorial Service at Rose Hills

Memorial Chapel


Reflecting Pool


Lots of flowers


Gravesite Service

Job Fair in China

I wonder if Broadcom has a booth somewhere in there...


(SnapChina.net)

Memorial Service

Funeral Service for Mrs. Chiang Hsiang Chi 齊張薔卿 will be held on Saturday, November 24th, 2007 at 3:00pm.

Memorial Chapel
Rose Hills Memorial Park (map)
3888 Workman Mill Road
Whittier, CA 90601

Scanner

I bought a $50 scanner so I can digitize some old analog photos.


Here is a really old photo of me with my grandparents, parents, uncles, and sister.


My sister and I


Grandma with my dad and uncle. This was probably taken in Chongqing around 1945. Grandma would have been about 28 in the photo.

Grandma

Grandma passed away this morning. She was brought into the ER this past Saturday and we (Nancy, Rebecca, Addison, and I) got a chance to see her Saturday night in the hospital.

Weddings

I went to two weddings this past Saturday. My cousin Diana got married in the morning and a friend from church got married in the afternoon. My sister came down from Portland with Rebecca and Addison for Diana's wedding; they stayed in my apartment so I was on the couch again.


Where am I? This is not my bed.


Diana & Gary


Diana's bridesmaids (two of them are my cousins)


Sandra & Randy

In the course of taking these photos, I realized that the 3x zoom on my Sony W-5 is pretty lame. I've been thinking of getting a new camera anyway so I ordered a Panasonic TZ3 today. It's still a compact camera but has a 10x optical zoom and 7.2 megapixels. It also has image stabilization so no more blurry pictures!

A-ha

OK, back to music videos. I have stuff in English too, although it's mostly from the '80s.


I thought this video was so cool when it came out in 1985 (I was still living in Canada back then). Kinda reminds me of Weird Science -- make/draw your own girlfriend. :)

Did they have any other hits other than this one?

Anaheim Ducks vs. Dallas Stars

Well, I guess I'm glad that I got the tickets for free, since I'd be mad paying $20 to watch this game. Since Henry owns the Ducks, they frequently give out free tickets, usually single seats, right before the game. I managed to snag the last two tickets for tonight's game; I was trying to get more for Leon's kids but only the two of us went this time.

To summarize, there were a lot of fights and lots of scoring by the Stars. We left during the middle of the 3rd period and the score was 5-0. The Ducks did not look like defending Stanley Cup champions at all. A co-worker went to the game as well; it's her first time watching hockey, live or on TV.


We sat right next to the championship banners in section 405


Zambonis!

Death Threats?!

Who says finance is not dangerous?

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The analyst whose downgrade of Citigroup Inc sparked a broad stock market sell-off on Thursday said she has received several death threats stemming from her research, the Times of London said.

Meredith Whitney of CIBC World Markets Inc late Wednesday downgraded Citigroup to "sector underperformer," saying the largest U.S. bank by assets might need to raise more than $30 billion of capital and cut its dividend.

Her downgrade triggered a 6.9 percent drop in Citigroup's shares on Thursday, leading to declines of 362 points in the Dow Jones industrial average and 2.6 percent in the Standard & Poor's 500, the biggest drop since August.

SWI'T Live

Somebody commented favorable about the SWI'T music video so here's a live performance from 2002. They sound a bit different outside the studio. :)


The kid rapping looks like he's 12 years old

Car Wash

I had the 4Runner washed today. I'm not sure when it was washed last; I've been hosing it off every couple of weeks to rinse off dust and dirt. It was especially dirty today since it was parked uncovered during the SoCal fires the past two weeks. My sister is coming Friday for cousin Diana's wedding and borrowing the 4Runner (can't fit 3 in the Z) so I thought I'd get it cleaned up a bit.


Same place I took the Z to get washed the day before the SoCal fires

Since I didn't have a coupon (everyone else seemed to have one), they charged me $12.99 to wash the 4Runner. It was $1 extra for a SUV. The guy that dried my car looked like he was 60+ years old so I gave him a $2 tip.

Anyhow, the car looks a lot prettier after the wash. I remember when we bought the car in 1999 (it was a wedding gift from the in-laws), Shirley wanted the blueish-purple color. We went to 4 or 5 Toyota dealers before we found one; everyone had either white, silver, or black. I think the paint color is officially called Autumn Sunset instead of simply blue or purple. However, nothing beats the 1980 Datsun 810 station wagon I drove during college. The Nissan brochure listed the color as Creamy Apricot but I thought it was closer to peach. What an ugly color for a car. :)

Inside the IVC PAC

I took some pictures inside the Performing Arts Center during rehearsal last week with the Treo.


From near the back of the stage. There was a lot of lighting which made it kinda hot on-stage.


View from the balcony. There was only one row of seats on the balcony for some reason. The yellow walls on-stage is actually a movable acoustic shell (Wenger Diva) that cost >$100k.


Here is part of a performance from May 2, 2007 at the Barclay Theater. I didn't know where to upload audio for Blogger so I used iMovie to add some titles and exported it as a QuickTime movie. I was playing the 1st Trumpet part; you can hear some of it during the first movement.

Everybody Get Down (Part 2)

Here's a group that probably no one's heard of: SWI'T (Song Will Tell). I posted something about them back in February 2006 but all the links are now broken. There are actually several good songs on their one (and only) album. My favorite track on the CD is 너와난 하난거야... no idea what that means or what any of the lyrics say. Of course, how can you not love a Hotel California remake by three Korean girls?! :)

Unofficial MySpace site where you can hear some of their songs.


What's with Asians and blond hair?

就要我滋味 - 劉亦菲

Wikipedia Biography

Born at Tongji hospital in Wuhan, China on August 25, 1987, Liu's birthname was An Feng. Her father was a university professor while her mother was a dancer and a stage performer. They divorced when she was 7 years old. After her parents' divorce, Liu lived with her mother, Liu Xiao Li and her name was changed to Liu Xi Mei Zi. She began modelling at the age of 8 and was trained in singing, dancing and the piano. Moving to the United States in 1998 with her mother, Liu lived there for four years. She returned to China in June 2002 to pursue an acting career and adopted her stage name Liu Yi Fei. In September 2002, she was accepted into the Performance Institute of Beijing Film Academy at the age of 15, She graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in July 2006.

Run For Your Life

It looks like this Koda Kumi video was shot in LA. Then why does the girl say, "We've been already at your house!" at 44 seconds into the video? Can't they find somebody that speaks English in LA?!

Trumpet Fanfare

Tonight was the first concert at the IVC Performing Arts Center. First on the program was a trumpet fanfare piece for about 50 trumpets. One trumpet can be plenty loud; 50+ trumpets is ridiculous. I'm not sure how it sounded overall since I was standing with 10+ trumpet players playing the same part; there were 5 parts in total. The group ranged from high school students to retirees to professional musicians. We were told to instruct any audience sitting directly in front of us to cover their ears.


Backstage before the performance. The conductor was about to take a picture with his cell phone before I handed him my camera.


The Performing Arts Center. What a lovely shade of red.

Late for church

I was running a bit late this morning. We were supposed to meet at 7:20am but I didn't leave the apartment until 7:00am. I was driving the Z at about 95mph on the 55 freeway when a(n?) Acrua TL blows by me. I thought, "Wow! That guy must be really late for church!" I didn't want to drive >100mph so I lost him by the time I got to the 57 freeway.

It turns out it was our keyboard player.

LEGO Mindstorms NXT

The mail room delivered my Christmas gift today. I quickly went home and opened the box, install the software on my Mac, and tried to build the demo machine. This is different from the LEGO blocks I had when growing up. I just had a box of blocks that I built random things with. Nowadays, LEGO pieces are all pretty unique and there are long instructions for each build. Actually, the instruction booklets are very similar to those from another Scandinavian company, one that sells a lot of cheap furniture.


This was what I started with in the Start Here! box. The goal is to build a three wheeled vehicle and run a demo program in the NXT controller, which is a 32-bit ARM7 microprocessor.


After about 30 minutes, I completed this. At least I think I completed it since there were three pieces left. Arg! It's exactly like putting together IKEA furniture. It did work though. Taking it apart afterwards is about as difficult as putting it together. A lot of the connector parts were very small yet fit very tightly.


Here are the remaining pieces in the kit along with 4 physical sensors (touch, sound, light, and ultrasound/distance). I haven't tried out the software yet but it seemed to install fine on my Mac. I'm using my Mac since there is Bluetooth connectivity in the NXT controller unit an only my Mac has a Bluetooth module (from CSR though).

Wind Symphony Rehearsal

Irvine Valley College cancelled classes yesterday due to the wildfires but we still had to attend rehearsal. Grand opening concert for the new performing arts center is next Tuesday and I don't think we're 100% ready, especially me. We have another rehearsal this Saturday to go over the physical transition between the choir and the wind symphony. Then there's one more rehearsal Monday night with 50 trumpets for a trumpet fanfare piece.

We did get to rehearse in the new hall however. The actual main stage is a lot smaller than I thought it would be. The building itself is pretty big, much bigger than the Irvine Barclay Theater but there are a lot more rooms at the side and back. The wind symphony barely fits onstage and there are very few seats in the audience. The rehearsal was three hours long; when I got back to my car in the parking lot, there was a new layer of ash.

SoCal Fires

Our CEO sent out an email about the fires this afternoon. The fire got within a block of our San Diego (Rancho Bernardo) office and our old campus in Irvine, occupied by Blizzard now, was also threatened. In addition, several employee's houses were burnt to the ground.

I took some pictures yesterday morning from work. You can see where the smoke started to block out the blue sky. By yesterday evening, the whole sky was filled with smoke. The fire situation is a bit better in Orange County today but a lot worse in Los Angeles and San Diego counties.


Looking NE from the parking lot


Looking W from the parking lot


Looking W from 4th floor conference room. You can barely see a Southwest jet landing at John Wayne airport from the south. Usually they land from the north but the Santa Ana winds were blowing towards the ocean.


Looking N from another 4th floor conference room

Easy come... Easy go

All the gains in Broadcom stock in the past few weeks got wiped out in a couple hours. It's times like these when I don't like working in corporate finance, i.e., subject to trading blackout periods.

With ~600M shares outstanding, that's more than $3B that got wiped off our market cap.

==========

Arg! It got worse today (10/24/07 11:05am). Now we're trading at ~$33, down almost $10 from the high yesterday.

Fire: NASA Satellite Image

NASA satellites continue to capture remarkable new images of the wildfires raging in Southern California. At least 14 massive fires are reported to have scorched about 425 square miles from north of Los Angeles to southeast of San Diego.

These latest images, captured by NASA satellites on the afternoon of October 22, show the thick, billowing smoke coming off the numerous large fires and spreading over the Pacific Ocean. Fire activity is outlined in red.

Dry, drought-stricken vegetation and Santa Ana winds, which can reach hurricane speeds, have contributed to the devastating effect of these blazes. The National Interagency Fire Center reports that the Santa Ana winds are expected to continue through Wednesday.

Christmas Gift

I just bought this for myself for Christmas... $250 from Amazon.com.

Earth, Wind and Fire

No, not the music group. Today has been a bad weather day. The Santa Ana winds started picking up around noon. Everything was fine this morning but by the 2nd service, the wind started blowing over the tents we set up for church. There was a lot of dust in the air and everything was a bit hazy... kind of reminded me of Chengdu.

Due to the wind and dry weather, there are several fires burning. The news is showing a large fire in Canyon Country which is around Santa Clarita. I also heard from someone at church that two out of three border crossings with Mexico was closed due to fire; it took him 5 hours to get across. Finally, there is a fire north of Irvine that's burned 3,800 acres. This is actually quite close to home and the air is thick with smoke and ash. The wind is supposed to continue until Tuesday.

The weird thing with Santa Ana winds is that it will gust up to 60 miles/hour in a narrow corridor. We get some of it in Costa Mesa but it actually follows the 5 freeway in a northwest direction. I talked to Leon earlier tonight and there has been no wind in Torrance.

USC MBA Interviews

Out of the 15 resumes we received, the list was narrowed down to 8 and I ended interviewing all of them yesterday. Out of the 8, I decided to call 3 of them back for 2nd round interviews where they will talk with 6 more people. I've been doing this for about 3-4 years now and it still is hard to choose candidates. I've been asked to go back to USC for three more events. It's a long drive from Irvine but I get $40 in mileage reimbursement each time... :)

While I was in school, I used to hate my classmates that would have multiple offers already, yet still interview with the same companies that I signed up for, effectively blocking me (and others) out of job offers. Of course, I didn't interview that well; I probably did all the things I tell people not to do when they interview. We knew that during an interview, it's not what you know but how you interact with the recruiter. At the time, I thought that was lame. Give me a computer and I'll show you the Excel models I built! Boy, was I stupid.

I often joke with my interview buddy, another senior finance manager with a MBA from USC, that we probably would not get any jobs at Broadcom if we interviewed today.

Clinton Fundraising

First Norman Hsu, now this:

Los Angeles Times article

NEW YORK -- Something remarkable happened at 44 Henry St., a grimy Chinatown tenement with peeling walls. It also happened nearby at a dimly lighted apartment building with trash bins clustered by the front door.

And again not too far away, at 88 E. Broadway beneath the Manhattan bridge, where vendors chatter in Mandarin and Fujianese as they hawk rubber sandals and bargain-basement clothes.

All three locations, along with scores of others scattered throughout some of the poorest Chinese neighborhoods in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, have been swept by an extraordinary impulse to shower money on one particular presidential candidate -- Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Dishwashers, waiters and others whose jobs and dilapidated home addresses seem to make them unpromising targets for political fundraisers are pouring $1,000 and $2,000 contributions into Clinton's campaign treasury. In April, a single fundraiser in an area long known for its gritty urban poverty yielded a whopping $380,000. When Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) ran for president in 2004, he received $24,000 from Chinatown.

Poor Chinese immigrants don't give money to politicians. Something is fishy...

Money. Every two weeks I get mugged on my paycheck by politicians. This progressive tax rate stuff does not make any sense to me. Fine, I'll pay more taxes if I make more money but why should I pay a larger percentage as my salary increases? Why not a progressive sales tax? Pay 5% tax on your burger, 10% tax on a computer, and 20% tax on a car. How stupid would that be yet that's what we do on payroll taxes.

As I keep telling Leon, "Quick, send your kids to public school. I'm paying for somebody else's kids to go to school with my state taxes; may as well be your kids."

Long day tomorrow...

I'm interviewing 8 MBA students tomorrow at USC. My interview partner just called to cancel so I'll have to do all 8 by myself. I had originally planned to have him do the last three in the afternoon so I can call in to a meeting at work. I guess I won't be able to attend the exciting allocations meeting. :)

Each interview is 45 minutes so that's 6 hours total; maybe I can cut each one short and take short naps in between. I'll probably be so tired by the end that I won't even hear what the candidate says. Never interview last on the schedule!

Fantasy Football - Week 6

I'm in a strange situation where I'm rooting against one of my players, Plaxico Burress on the Giants. He is on my team in a league that I've already won for this week but on the opposing team in two other leagues. I'm leading by a very slim margin in those two leagues. If he doesn't play, then I'm 3-0 this week; if he does play, them I'll probably be 1-2.

Somewhere in China...

My parents are on a tour in China with a group from Canada. They sent me their itinerary a few weeks ago but they didn't call me or my sister before leaving. There was no answer when we both tried calling their house on Monday; later I figured out that the dates on the itinerary are local dates so they actually left on Sunday.

Anyhow, I called their hotel in Chengdu this morning and managed to get a room number. Of course, it was the wrong room but at least I reached someone in their tour group. Maybe I'll try again when they get to their next hotel; there are 13 hotel on the itinerary.

They should be heading to Jiuzhaigou (九寨溝) today. I hope they're flying there since it's a 10 hour bus ride.