MWAW (2)

The last piece has been archived.

What now?

CC so stuck at CC 421...

:-D

Poncho is safe and great and Samad's is expecting to re-open in a few days!

Praying

Poncho, please come home!

Some magic

Hurray to vlookups!

The symbols

i guess it's all about β, γ, φ, and ψ now.

MWAM

Ebbing.

And flowing.

A whisper

"Si j'en ai perdu la tête, je t'ai aimé et même pire.
Tu es venu en sifflant."

Oh Z., you took my breath away.

Phew...

Alright...temporarily done with 6055. One down, one to go!

Simple as that

How could one NOT fall in love with Jennifer Lawrence?!

Mid-October

Pensando en ti.

Hmmm...

J'avoue qu'il est mignon. OK, très mignon.

Facing the music

"Morally inconsistent." That's indeed what it is.

The adjustment

i am being upbeat.

The long wait

First day of release, and #16 is in transit.

My TB/AR--i know i need to hang onto something, or the idea of you will be...forever LOST.

"Slave to love"

This is a night dedicated to M.R.

A sign

You know you've become a fan when you correctly identify the L/A combination. (Well, another L/A pair--i think it's coincidental yet reinforcing.)

Day 1

Enjoying this solitude. Tremendously.

A nice breather. Soothing music. Complete focus on work--i knew i'd like it!

Peculiar, way too peculiar

THE motorcycle boy reigns.

A break

Sábado Negro. i'd like some more rain.

Some confession

That was M.R. at 32 (or -ish). Hot, sexy, dangerous in an almost surreal fashion and...in an era long gone. (How i miss the '80s!)

Damn, if smiles could kill. M.R. > L.S.K. That is for sure.

Thursday morning

Another rainy day. Dark clouds hanging low.

On my way to work, some woman a few feet in front of me suddenly whirled around with a loud "Seriously??" The guy who just walked past me yelled back, "Are you serious?!" And the woman shouted, "You walked right into me!!"

A lump of heat colliding with another. Ripples of fury threatening to hit me.

But i blocked it with my umbrella. i feel invincible on rainy days.

Falling into place

A sunny Sunday morning. A new beginning.

Hmm

Flying under the radar...

Seriously

Data cleaning is a necessary evil.

...emphasis on evil.

F.M.

So much fire, such madness--F.M. was so alive.

Hmm, "Pretending that you are still around..."

Some mock reviews

2/09/2013: "The Dark Knight Rises" ★★★★★

2/10/2013: "Resident Evil: Damnation" ★★★★★
The irreplaceable L/A combination!

The end

You know, sometimes, delaying it doesn't prevent it from happening.

To Allen Toussaint

Seems like "Solitude" is going to get me through yet another day. So serene, refreshing, and beautiful.

Hmm...where is everybody's Mississippi?

An excuse

i kept telling myself, it was for a good cause, it was for a good cause. The five minutes and the contribution, for a good cause...while deep inside i knew it too well; i was doing this for you.

Not my best brake.

Am i really aging?

Dazed. Drained. Brutally jet-lagged.

Flight notes

(7:25 a.m. EST)

Despite the engine's soothing humming, i am having trouble falling back to sleep.

When we were taking off, I thought, this is it, the much-dreaded flight, the scary 15 hours to come (while I could barely make a 20-min car ride).

The upgrade is worth it.

According to the real-time flight tracker, we are no longer over the Anarctica but somewhere near northeast Russia. Almost half way, and some 34,000 feet/10,363 meter up in the air.

Outside, it fluctuates between -80 to -75 F. Far beneath us, there seem to be endless rolling hills. Some land of ice, snow, or whiteness. Well, whiteness in the dusk, though.

Whether it is -80 or -75F, it sounds like a region of temperatures we human beings certainly wouldn't feel like being exposed to, since we'd die of hyperthermia within ten minutes.

So let's not get exposed, please. Thank you, Mr. Captain.

(10:09 a.m. EST)

Over the Sea of Okhotsk. A name I've only heard of in geography class. The exoticness.

Six more hours to go. Fav music mode = one song repeat. And onto the next one.

Dozing off. On and off. Between brief, dimmed sparks of consciousness and the far, far-away land.

All of you, please guard New York till we get back. We will take the next shift.

(12:20 pm EST)

Incredible stunt in Premium Rush. Do bike couriers really ride like that?

Four more hours.

(1:00 pm EST)

What would I be doing today? Therapy, and more data, probably. I am used to the pattern now; breaking the pattern contributes to my insecurity.

Currently playing: Paula Cole's debut album, This Fire. Paula, I need the energy in your anger.

(2:30 pm EST)

I wonder what the girls are doing. We are so far away from you two now.

(3:40 pm EST)

Will be descending soon. Hello Taiwan, we are back.

A pause

Too much i can't breathe.

...tombe pour vous

Peut-être.

Day 54 (Normal Day 2)

Rehabbing. Am i seeing some dim light at the end of the tunnel?

Reality and beyond...

Nova Scotia--you are on my map. You and AR.

Way of life

Stretch. Relax. Let go.

Resolution 2012

Es hora de seguir adelante.

Resuming...

Une pause de cinq mois et je suis de nouveau sous ton charme. Peut-être que je ne vous ai pas oublié.

One quiet night

TB/AR...vous me manques beaucoup...

Epiphany of the day

If it's at least one cup of milk per serving, then milk allergy could be the answer!

The main pre-move activity

Can't say i am not enjoying the mental (and physical) sorting and organizing at all. It's interesting how human beings categorize differently.

Attention seeker

Hmm...can't help baring it all huh? You must be extremely lonely.

Summer twist

Unseasonably cool, but tremendously appreciated. Gotta love these days!

Hate to tell you this but...

Well, i guess you can't force it--the heart wants what the heart wants.

Painful realization

i can't agree more with T.G. that, although saddening, the MI/DB parting "has run its natural course." That said, i am struggling to see whether it was the missing common grounds, or the ever-unfulfilled expectation. But M., whatever the answer is, my heart still aches for you...

Sunday afternoon

The distant Damn Yankees beyond the humming of the air-conditioner. The tipsiness that's coming too strong. Way too strong. The room dancing. The warmer-than-usual cheeks. Maybe flushed. Definitely Hot.

And you, S. Sexy as hell, and as ever. Yes. Spinning, spinning all around you.

(Sigh)

Entering a phase of endless manual paper shredding/tearing...

Another update?

Can't believe July 2012 opens with a few unexpected turns and opportunities. Blooming! Funny that this is not even my birth month but yours.

Overwhelming, but certainly not overwhelmed :-)

Desperately

...in need of a halt.

Must learn to embrace uncertainty, and perhaps the fact that the luster is tapering off. Huit et ensuite neuf.

Already crushed by the fast train and the first-person heartbrokenness. Mais oui, j'ai besoin de se défouler...et vous devez être fort.

KR #7

Crashed...and burnt.

Let it be you

Where is it next, we wonder?

...no drifting. The dawn of all dreams. i feel like grasping the exact moment when Shopgirl cries, "I wanted it to be you...I wanted it to be you so badly!"

¡Pobrecita!

Ha sido una semana de su corazón solitario y sus lágrimas silenciosas...es el momento de decir adiós... ¡Un verdadero adiós!

Trop beau pour être vrai

Oui, c'est déjà presque fini...(mais je sais qu'il est un peu trop tôt pour célébrer)!

Status update

Revision, triceps, revision, triceps...what an inconceivable duo.

The resistance

i may go nuts once in a while these days, but you see, D., you are still not the center of my universe. You never will be :-)

Always "Black"

PJ20!

My way of headless following :-)
/watch?v=pOM-h-bCHVA&ob=av2n

Current status

Entangled, but i so want to be spinning...

On K. S. and B. W.

i have an urge to draw a heart with "FOREVER" marked in it, add a vertical line through the middle, and then write down K. S. and B. W. on either side of the line - as if a trick like this would actually prevent all of us (yes, "us") from the possibility of a someday that once was a heavy heartbreak. (The lid was pulled off too soon, so the steam is now gone. What's to rekindle? Unless...)

Authors are not gods but story-tellers, that part i am well aware of, but it is very unlikely that we can deny that authors OWN the story. They can have it their way - however they want it developed, or most importantly, ended.

i say, if that much dreaded someday did come, i would, i definitely would put up a fight. In my own way.

"You"

Well, sometimes i wonder if "you" being a different pronoun from "I" or "she" or "they" is a conspiracy of the language itself. No gender indicated, unclear singularity/plurality - "you" is a master of disguise all right :-)

Frankly...

i know this is really n.o.m.b., but none of whatever you are doing now will "fill the emptiness." Been there, done that. All the charade doesn't mean that you've moved on, but you got time...you'll get there.

About "Linspirational"

So...with the Knicks' 7th win and now back to .500 - the lesson is you need to be a better version of yourself each and every day!

Okay...

i really think i may have blown it...if there is a next step, i will be very surprised. Damn!

Worst case scenario

So what? Just deal with it!

To January 14, 2012

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." - Martin Luther King Jr.

80's music always!

You are flying in half an hour, and won't be around for a while. i know my 80's music will fill the emptiness - let the music start!

Hohoho, at this very moment, it's Milli Vanilli and "Blame it on the rain." It's just like the old days, with me and my music 

Make no mistake

You don't own your children and their thoughts, and most certainly not mine. You come here and provoke a fight, i will stand my ground.

(R.W. was so right when he made the statement, "Some water is thicker than blood.")

Oops

Well, this shall not be the conclusion note of the year, but i am seriously fed up with these few months of your vanity and pretense. Please stop being pathetic, and quit pretending to be the person that you are not.

My advice

When you scream that there are hundreds of cars going towards you, maybe it is you that's been going the wrong way.

Dumb as dumb can be

...biting the bullet.

Wish granted

Wish of the year: You want a deadline, you got a deadline! (But leaving a quick note as a post is sort of cheating.)

Truth be told

Turns out that we are all running away from something, somewhere, and/or someone.

Just a thought

People always say "you've got to move on," but sometimes i feel that by doing so we simply left too much behind.

Bidding farewell

i understand that Death eventually will take away all of us - yes, Death, king of darkness, end of everything, of all worldly connections, precious or sad. Death is among us; people die all the time. You've seen it on TV and in the movies. However, when Death turns to those close to you, then this "certainty" becomes cruelly, painfully unexpected.

Grandpa left us on Monday, February 14, 2011, a few days after being rushed to the emergency room one early morning and later to the Intensive Care Unit. At first, it seemed that he might have been able to make it, but his heart and lungs were rapidly failing. He had so much difficulty breathing even with the oxygen mask. Still, his death was not an expected ending of the hospitalization. The following week, each time Mom and i spoke over the phone, she cried hard, and so did i.

That was (Saint) Valentine's Day of 2011.

Seven weeks and a half later, on Friday, April 8, 2011, grandma passed away too. Two weeks before her death, she first complained about some lump in her throat, and was diagnosed of Lymphoma Cancer. The doctor said it was terminal. At the hospital, she did not respond well to the aggressive treatment, lost her appetite and suffered internal bleeding in her stomach, so the treatment was stopped. Grandma asked to go home, the doctor also agreed that home was a better place for her to...leave. She hung on for one more day at home, with her children and grandchildren around her. Dad said Grandma closed her eyes in peace.

Within two months, Mom lost both her parents. i think Dad understood the loss better, because he buried his father a long time ago when he himself just turned a father, and then his mother (my paternal grandmother) in 2002. In Mom's family, somehow the relationships were much tighter and closer. Mom has five other siblings, each married with children. i grew up with cousins my age; all the hanging out was irreplaceable. The get-togethers, the sleepovers, and the holding hands. Mom's family still gets together very often. Now we share the same grief. To me, Grandpa and Grandma were the closer grandparents of all three (my paternal grandfather died before i was born). They had always been the loving, caring grandparents.

i didn't make Grandpa's funeral, and very likely, i will miss Grandma's as well. So Grandpa, Grandma, this is my own farewell to you two: "Goodbye, Grandpa, and goodbye, Grandma!" i know i will be missing you a lot. It's not the "Goodbye!" we grandchildren always yelled at the end of each visit when the car pulled away - it is now a real Goodbye, a Goodbye that will no longer be smiled and waved back at, a Goodbye that can't be unaccompanied with sorry tears, and an end-of-everything Goodbye...

阿公再見！阿嬤再見！

The similarities

Didn't realize until last night the similarities between you and you, the part about not wanting to let go, and about not being able to be true to oneself...

Sad but true

In an event like the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, it is proven again that there is simply no Superman in our world.

Going against the big bully

Well, it all started with the opera singing in the office. AGAIN, for the N-th time. Sometimes it is opera singing right next to you, opera singing in the open lab area, or recorded opera singing on the computer. In general, it's opera singing...for praise. (Frankly the singing was not the only problem. i also hated the part when we were asked to look at the drawings.)

i am self-righteous, that i know for sure, and this time it's definitely personal - but i do not at all regret going against BT, especially after what he said: "Well, I've been here fifty years, so I forgive you."

Case closed

Phew.... Not exactly a milestone, but close.

When exactly...?

Even without an Internet search, i knew this was definitely going to be one of the questions Harry Potter readers ask one another:

"At which point did you cry while reading the Harry Potter books?"

When did you? i did for the first time when Dobby died. So...six and a half? After that, it was quite obvious that there was no need to stay strong :-)

Too late...

And you thought the storm had passed? Guess what, it's just the beginning. Some things are better left unsaid - you've gotta listen to Wiseman Sam.

Time for some cheerleading

You need to believe that one sentence or one paragraph a day is at least some progress...perhaps down to an article read, or even just an idea.

Of course you don't get to run before you learn how to walk.

A quick note...

It's now one day before the targeted completion of my first draft...i think my brain just shut down.

Well, the good news is, i didn't say it was non-rechargeable.

Frustration

Many of us try very hard each day to reduce, reuse, recycle, but BP actually destroys so much with just one oil spill. Damn.

Word of the day...

"Anthropophagus" (man eater)

Silent complaint

Just because you __________ doesn't mean you can __________.

Never before...

Uncomfortably restless and uneasy.

Note on 4/19 (Mon.): Still trying to figure what the cause is. Could be Mimi's upcoming dentistry.

Phasing out

Instances of daily communications switching into personal as opposed to work account, all because of watching the GW launch video. Hmm.

Note: Hmm, something similar happened last September.

A start

If you want an end, then you need a start :-)

First week back at work

A stiff neck and random, excruciating shots of pain at the beginning of the year? How awful! (Sigh)

Just a comment...

Dexter is now scarred.

The beauty of poetry

W. left me an offline message (about the news), and concluded it with a link to Rupert Brooke's "The Hill," which was stunningly beautiful. When i was reading it earlier this afternoon, it froze the time.

i told him i never thought i would fall in love with poetry. In college, fiction was my favorite genre; i couldn't really see why people would want to read or write poems. They were riddles to me - beautiful riddles at most. In my senior year, with a strong passion, i turned to literary criticism. i stayed up at night, read, read, and...read - Foucault was the caffeine that kept me going. Now i realized it was because i was young, and possibly because of the need to hold on to something concrete.

Over these years, though, i began to appreciate poetry and its condensed elegance and subtlety. It seems that somehow, in the process of "middle-aging", my perception of the world (or the texts more precisely) has also evolved, not necessarily for better, but the difference was there. i am now attracted to the charm of stillness: a moment, a glimpse, an image, an emotion, things that were unsaid but present.

To those who bring the world poetic catharses, i salute you!

Crossing over

i never thought this was gonna happen.

Long, long ago, when S switched to Firefox and advised that i do the same thing, i kind of laughed at the idea. But at some point of my life, i, a faithful (a euphemism for "stubborn") IE user, seemed to have gradually "crossed over" to Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, or...should i say, to...non-IE.

Yes, gradually. (My resistance it was, the italic pause.) Obviously, i wasn't resisting something better; i was simply afraid of change. A static mind, and mental laziness, that's what it was.

No questions, no challenges - no transcendence. Lesson learned.

Be daring

Life is, in most cases, truly not as complicated as we thought it would be. It's just that the clues are not always obvious.

Some quick notes on burning calories

Turned out that the Stairmaster, exactly like the name says it would be, is the master. No, even beyond that, it is the KING!

Imagine this: When you go at Level 40 for half an hour (which is easy), you lose about 230 calories. Nothing else beats this, not the Treadmill, not the Elliptical, not the bicycle.

* (Added the next day) Newsflash: i didn't enter my weight, so the 230 was for people who weigh about 150 pounds! But anyway, the Stairmaster is still No.1.

The soothing greyness

To fall asleep and to wake up to the sound of pouring rain - that is a perfect cycle. i am just so in love with this untainted beautiful greyness. It is...

My city.
My rain.
My kind of gloomy weather.

Facing the "unassigned"

i've only recently come to a sad realization....

You see, the way i was raised may have hugely impeded my approaching of unassigned tasks. i am good following dates, but what i really need to do is set dates. Of course, this probably has a lot to do with my personality - meaning i should not try to blame it on others :-p

The truth is, in terms of THE unassigned task, it's easy as cake to answer a question, or to solve a problem. Now, finding a problem that is worthwhile, and raising a meaningful question...that is indeed priceless. (NO, you did not just steal that tagline from MasterCard!)

Are you aware of...?

Awareness is the key; i am really beginning to believe so. It's all about knowing, or not knowing.

A Thursday afternoon

Either i was extremely weak today, or soft songs just don't get you far on treadmills.

Sunday evening

...the beginning of the end..., or, the beginning of the beginning.

Something funny...and something else by the way

Yes, i should be working hard on eliminating items on my to-do list (which is already two months old!), but this funny thing came up again, and i really couldn't help wanting to talk about it. Before going into details, i need to provide some background information. i (we) have been following five different shows these days, and they are:

• Mondays, "The Closer" on TNT
• Mondays, "Heroes" on NBC (both of us) (okay, we are officially "fading away")
• Wednesdays, "Lost" on ABC (both of us)
• Thursdays, "Ugly Betty" on ABC
• Thursdays, "Grey's Anatomy" on ABC

Of course, oftentimes things came up, and we had to miss the show. But thanks to broadband technology and the incredible generosity of all these television networks (haha), now we get to catch up on missed episodes online.

So...earlier this afternoon, i was watching last night's "The Closer" on tnt.com, and i noticed this thing again on its Full Episodes page. At the upper right-hand corner, there is a button that says "Boss coming? DRAMATIC PAUSE". When you click on it, you'll be brought to an Excel spreadsheet so that when someone walks by, you'd look seriously buried in work. What's even funnier is...the humor doesn't just end here, if you read the spreadsheet, you see columns like "% chance your boss saw you goofing off", "% chance you'll be fired", "% chance your boss even cares", and notes such as "Data complied by a guy well on his way to being fired himself", etc. You'll have to see for yourself!

This reminded me of the humor of a shareware program i played in college, a game that is quite similar to 1a2b in Taiwan. One night, i was on the computer playing the game, and i heard footsteps approaching the door. It could only be my dad checking up on me (to see if i was really working on something serious i guess), so, by instinct, i hit the ESC button, and the scariest thing happened! A monkey showed up on the screen, jumping here and there, and then the dialogue bubble behind the monkey said "You're gonna get caught!" Gosh...now looking back, i could laugh and think of it as "humor", but back then it almost gave me a heartattack!! lol

By the way, my personal rating goes like this:

• Mondays, "The Closer" on TNT
• Thursdays, "Ugly Betty" on ABC
• Wednesdays, "Lost" on ABC (both of us)
• Thursdays, "Grey's Anatomy" on ABC
• Mondays, "Heroes" on NBC (both of us)