blog.erwintang.com

Actress and former Playboy Playmate Katie Lohmann licks a Stormtrooper at the L.A. charity premiere of Revenge of the Sith. I’ve spent the last five minutes trying to think of something witty to write. I got nothing.

And the others…

10. “That’s it–turn the wheel left and the car goes left.”

9. “He’s getting the steering wheel sticky with taffy.”

8. “How can an adult get his necktie tangled around the gear shift?”

7. “I regret not making that 15-minute call to Geico.”

6. “Floor it, you dumb hillbilly!”

5. “At this point, would it be more dangerous to jump out or stay in?”

4. “This baby gets so much as a scratch, I’m launchin’ the nukes.”

3. “I’d be better off letting Billy Joel drive this thing.”

2. “Not often you hear a grown man saying, ‘Vroom! Vroom!’

As of Monday, there are now two Starbucks locations within a five minute walking radius to my apartment. Now this wouldn’t be a surprising fact if say I lived in downtown Vancouver or near a shopping district, but I live on a university campus.

These two Starbucks locations are fully-fledged coffee outlets. I’m not talking about coffee being sold off a cart or from a small kiosk. These are the real deals. The latest location is inside the Fred Kaiser building, the shiny new home of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The building isn’t even ready for occupation but they got the Starbucks up and running as a priority. This one closes at 4pm and isn’t open on weekends.

If I want to get Starbucks on the weekend or in the evening, I have to go to the one just east of the Forestry building. That one is open until 11pm every day.

It’s a good thing I don’t drink coffee, but I’ve been known to have a mocha frap once in a while. Lately, I’ve even had a few of those without any significant side effects.

“A new dating service has started for single people who are celibate.

In other words, they’re trying to match Star Wars fans with Star Trek fans.“

Three years ago, when I couldn’t get people to visit my site even if I paid them, I tried something which I thought was going to be entertaining.

I was sifting through all this stuff from my childhood like old books and toys. I noticed I had a lot of Choose Your Own Adventure and Find Your Fate books. I’m sure lots of you are familiar with these type of books. The story is usually about some fantastical adventure that the main character goes on. When the main character needs to make a decision, the book offers the reader several choices. You choose what option to take by flipping to the proper page. I liked the non-linear aspect of the books and back then, I’d read just about anything.

Back in the summer of 2002, I thought it would be such a waste to throw these books out. I wondered if there would be anyway to recycle them. I came up with the idea of putting the books into a blog. I’d type out sections of the book from the beginning and then stop when we got to a decision point. I’d then list the options and the readers could leave a comment to vote on which choice they liked the most. I’d continue on with the winning choice and so forth.

Of course, it never occurred to me that at the time, only five people in the world knew I had a site and three of them didn’t have access to the Internet. My initial Find Your Fate blog died a horrible, painful death. I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did.

For archival purposes, I’m going to haul out my old Find Your Fate blog again just so that you can see the type of stuff I was working on way back when you didn’t even know who I was. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the blog and then work your way up to the top.

They were serving tacos for dinner at SJC tonight. I’d been looking forward to this meal for several days now. I love tacos. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if there was a Taco Bell on campus, I’d be in big trouble.

Anyways, these things were fantastic tonight. I got three beef tacos with salsa, cheese, and sour cream. I thought last night’s dinner of fish and chips was good, but the tacos were over and above that.

I had an interesting thought this morning. I was wondering if anyone at SJC would eat their tacos with a knife and fork. SJC has residents from all over the world, but I got the feeling that if someone were to eat their tacos with a knife and fork, it wouldn’t be because they didn’t know any better. The most likely reason would be that they were just too prim and proper to eat with their hands. There are a few types like that at the College. They must have had an interesting upbringing.

When dinner started, I was thinking it was quite unlikely that anyone would eat their tacos using a knife and fork. It just seems so impractical, how the hell would you even do it? I can see eating a pizza using a knife and fork, but a taco? As people sat down to have dinner, I noticed everyone was using their hands. Would I finally be surprised by the residents of SJC?

Then the “librarian” sat down with her food. The “librarian” is a resident who is in her early 20s and is by all accounts a very nice person. The interesting thing about her is that she seems very prim and proper. She dresses immaculately at all times. She’s very formal with her clothes and comes to dinner looking very sharp. While others come to dinner in sweats, I doubt she would even entertain that thought.

I noticed that she was consuming her meal with meticulous detail. Using the knife and fork, she broke open the taco shells, carefully loading her fork with all the taco fillings. If it had been socially acceptable, I would have just stared at the whole facinating process. I’m a slow eater, but being the uncouth heathen I am, I completely finished my three tacos in under ten minutes. I wasn’t timing it exactly, but I think at the 20 minute mark, she was still working on her first taco.

Carl was bugging me to explain it to her that it’s ok to sometimes get your hands dirty when you eat. I declined.

I still believe in a “to each their own” type of philosophy, but I saw something today that I’d never seen before. I wonder how she eats chocolate bars?

The teaser trailer for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is now out. Them kids are gettin’ older.

I took my mother out for dinner tonight. We usually go a few days before Mother’s Day because the service is crap that day and it’s too busy. This year my mom got two dinners because my sister took her out earlier in the week. She’s at Disneyland for a few days, they had to go beforehand.

Anyways, after dinner, I’m waiting at the bus stop along Broadway near Heather. As the 99B is just pulling up, I see this flash of a hippy silhouette out of the corner of my eye. I only know one guy who has a hippy silhouette and it’s Greg Williams. As this blur raced by me, it grabbed my arm and I saw it was indeed Greg Williams.

“Oh sorry man!”

“Greg, come home with me!”

“I can’t man!”

Greg never stopped his running as he sprinted to catch a bus behind mine. I didn’t have time to ponder what just happened as I needed to board my own bus. I bet he had a good lunch today.

You know what I had for dinner tonight? Baked paneer tikka prathawrap with dhal curry. It was damn tasty. Probably one of the best meals I’ve had in a while. Next week is shaping up to be a culinary delight as well at SJC. Sunday night is fish and chips. Monday, they’re having tacos. Let me repeat that… they’re having tacos on Monday. Sweet. Wednesday, it’s BBQ chicken with spicy wedge fries. For dessert, it’s choice of novelty ice cream.

No time for a detailed post tonight. I have a job interview tomorrow to prepare for. This one will be quite thorough and long. This company will not leave a single stone unturned. Guessx which company it is?

In the meantime, I invite you to view the trailer from Will Ferrell’s new movie, Kicking & Screaming. Ferrell will be hosting SNL May 14th, so mark it on your calendar.