Though I’ve been quietly rooting for them since the second round, I’d like to publicly throw my support behind the Pittsburgh Penguins in this year’s NHL playoffs. Yes, I realize it seems like a shallow move to only now declare my stance after the Pens have played 12 playoff games (winning 11 of them) but hey, they play an entertaining style of hockey.
Well, I better not write too much more or else my thoughts will turn back to memories of the spring of 1994 and then I’ll get misty-eyed.
Based on just a few questions that I answered over the phone, it took only a couple hours for a mortgage broker to tell me how much home I could buy. I was good for the high end of the range I asked for. Actually, he said I could borrow much more. That’s kinda scary.
Anyways, for what I asked for, my monthly mortgage payments wind up being half my income for the month. That’s no fun. That amount, however, is based on a 25 year term. If I go for a 40 year mortgage, it goes down about $300, which puts it into the “slightly more reasonable” category.
Sometimes, it’s no fun being an adult.
In a previous post just below, I mentioned how I thought it might be interesting if I mentored nerds in high school about what’s in store for them in the near future.
Over the weekend, I was able to discuss the matter with my lovely sister, while we dined at a Mother’s Day dinner. She was kinda skeptical as to how I might officially describe this “mentoring program” to school officials. She’s right I suppose, as I can’t imagine how it might go over if I march into a high school office and say, “Give me your three biggest nerds. It’s mentoring time.”
I think I need to start off by naming it something more legit, like perhaps, “life coaching for exceptionally academically gifted students”. In any case, my sister said she’d run the idea by some of her friends who are high school teachers. No one can accuse me of not trying to give back to the community!
Last but not related, the archives have been updated to the right.
I realize that the archive links to the right are about a month behind. In the process of getting my computer fixed, I rolled back the state of my system to before I had Visual C# installed. I need that to make a quick fix to the archiving program I wrote. I’ll install Visual C# again tomorrow and update the archives. Thanks for your patience!
In other news, who managed to catch Samuel L. Jackson in Iron Man?
A few days ago, I was on a bus, which is a place where you can sometimes find me. This particular route took me past the local high school. At the stop for the school, a young man in front of me got off the bus. He had almost missed his stop since he had his head lowered, attention fully into a book in front of him.
When he passed by the window to my side, I got a good look at him for the first time. He had almost comically uncombed hair. He wore glasses with large frames and lenses. His clothes were of a practical nature. His pants went down only to the top of his ankles, leaving his socks exposed. My last glimpse of him was the squinty expression on his face.
Of dozens and dozens of high school kids that I’ve seen get off this bus, I had never seen him or anyone like him before. He kinda reminded me of myself. Ok, so perhaps I had slightly better fashion sense than my bus doppleganger but there was a lot of familiarity there. I was just as awkward as this kid in high school.
I began to wonder about his life. Was he smart? Yeah, I think we can safely assume that he is indeed intelligent. Does he have friends? How does he get along with the other kids? Does he get picked on? Does he have a girlfriend? What does he do for fun? What’s his family life like? What does he have planned for after high school?
I have no idea why, but I really wanted to know more about this kid. It got me thinking later that there should be specialized mentors for people like myself and this kid, in the high school years. There should be nerd mentoring. Grown-up (or nearly grown-up) nerds like myself should mentor fellow and younger nerds in high school. At the very least, we should be able to tell them there’s a bigger world out there where they’re appreciated for who they are and what they’re capable of. At the same time and this is obviously less important, the mentors could also work with the mentees on social skills.
I wonder how I could start such a thing. It would be kinda weird if I marched into some school office and said, “Give me a list of the three biggest nerds here. I gots me some nerd mentoring to do.” Would a school even officially sanction something like that? Geez, I wonder what their parents would say. I might have to do this clandestinely. “Chris Hansen from Dateline? What are you doing in this house?”
In any case, my bus doppleganger, whatever your situation is, I hope you’re happy and cool being you.
Nearly every day, I’m reminded that I’m getting old. My nose hairs have started to turn white and/or gray. Now, not only are they super long, they’re super senior citizen-like.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FcBnaLjxY4&hl=en]
It’s Tuesday, which means another set of songs get released for Rock Band. I’ve skipped on the last few weeks of offerings but not this week. I will make no apologies for downloading “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race” by Fall Out Boy.
Despite being released on April 25, I only saw Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay this past weekend. I saw the first film in its theatrical run four years ago. It was surprisingly funny and had a clever social subtext to it. I have to thank Phil for driving us to the theatre that night.
Since the first movie came out, I’ve been a big supporter of the movie. Yes, it was funny and made me an even bigger NPH fan but that’s beside the point. Most importantly, it’s a rare example of a “traditional” Hollywood comedy where the two main leads weren’t two white or black dudes. The entire movie was wonderfully carried by an Asian and Indian actor. Unfortunately, there have been very few other movies like this since.
Ever since the sequel was announced, I’ve been very excited about the second movie. Somehow, Hollywood decided there was more money to be had in the Harold and Kumar universe. Have there really been two movies featuring an Asian and Indian actor that didn’t have to do with martial arts?
If I could get on my soapbox for a moment, I believe you’re Asian or Indian, you kinda owe it to the principle of cultural diversity to go see H&K 2. Not only will you be supporting a good cause, the movie is actually quite funny, features hot naked chicks, and we get another wonderful performance from NPH (“Everytime I see a bag of Hershey’s Kisses my balls get so wet“).
John Cho will appear next as Sulu in the next and highly anticipated Star Trek movie. Kal Penn is currently teaching two undergrad courses at the University of Pennsylvania, entitled “Images of Asian Americans in the Media” and “Contemporary American Teen Films.”
In the meantime, go see Harold and Kumar 2!!!
I had another post topic all lined up but I just got out of the shower (I’m Asian so I shower at night) and I was just overcome with this sudden, strong craving for liquid sugar in the form of a soft drink.
This is weird because my blood sugar isn’t low and I’m not hungry. I just to taste sugar in a liquid, cold, and refreshing form. I wonder if this is because I’ve lowered my sugar intake for about three months now. I’ve stopped consuming any refined sugar when I can. The only soft drink I have is Coke Zero. I don’t drink coffee anymore so that means I don’t consume the four packets of sugar that came with every cup of joe. I am perhaps guilty of eating Tim Horton’s chocolate dip donuts, which contains 9g of sugar and 8g of fat each, though it’s way better than the 40g of sugar in a can of regular Coke. I do, however, limit myself to about one donut per day.
The craving has lessened a bit since I got out of the shower. I actually have no Coke of any kind in the house. Not a single soft drink of any kind. I was an angstrom away from walking to 7-11 to buy some Coke but I decided not to. Instead, I drank a bottle of cold water and chased it down with some Starbursts I found behind some sofa pillows.
When I get to work tomorrow, I’m just gonna slam some regular Coke Classics. Then I’ll probably be all fidgety and unproductive until about 2pm.
It’s been a while since I’ve published a new post under the “Brush with Greatness” series. I think the last time was when I saw Pierce Brosnan downtown. I’m probably wrong on that.
Anyways, it’s time for a new entry. It turns out that a current resident of St. John’s College sent in an application to the CBS series Amazing Race and was accepted as a participant. She’s from Alaska and apparently the Amazing Race folk were quite impressed by video entry. The only reason that she did not appear on the show was that neither of her parents wanted to go on the show with her. Unfortunately, she could not find another suitable partner and thus had to bow out.
And to think I’ve had sushi and played Rock Band with this person many times in the past and this has never come up in conversation!