Random Brain Dump

Suzanne and I been talking about taking a cruise for a while now; finally we spent this past spring break visiting Caribbean on Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas. We were first-time cruisers– so everyone was excited, especially the kids. For the parents, it was our second time visiting the Caribbean, but first time for western Caribbean.

On our second morning, we docked at the island of Cozumel. Katelyn went on a submarine ride with her cousin Malia while Suzanne & I took Allison to downtown for a bit sight-seeing and shopping. I had originally booked an excursion hiking to the Mayan ruins at Tulum, but canceled the last minute to spend time with Suzanne & Allison instead. It would have been a good trip with lots of photo ops. Oh well, next time…

In Grand Cayman, we visited Stingray City– a famous sandbar in the middle of the ocean where stingrays congregate. The excursion was over-booked and so we were first sent to a beach with beach chairs packed like sardines. I took the opportunity to test my new water-proof case for Suzanne’s camera. An hour late, we finally boarded the boat. The boat ride to the sandbar was enjoyable, the water was aqua and just beautiful. No doubt that Grand Cayman is the playground for the rich– huge spectacular mansions dotted along its shorelines as far as the eyes can see.

Many boats already anchored there by the time we arrived. The water was waist-deep at the sandbar. We were given chunks of squid to feed the stingrays. While putting on my snorkel one huge ray swam up and rubbed my legs– I was startled but that was really cool. Suzanne was also at first a bit nervous at their “friendliness.” It was real neat to see all these rays all around us and be able to touch them. The coolest thing was feeding the rays, as they swim over your hand and their mouths sucking away the squid from your hand like a vacuum. No wonder the guide asks us not to stick our thumbs our while feeding!

I tried taking pictures and videos of the rays under water but let’s just say my first stab at imitating Cousteau wasn’t a success– among the excitement and all the action, I managed a total of 1 decent underwater photo. 🙂 The videos were crude but still pretty neat. All in all, it was a very cool experience. It would’ve been even better had it’d not been so crowded.

Next, we visited Dunn’s River Falls and its cascading waterfalls. It’s apparently a very popular tourist attraction in Jamaica. A local guide would take a group climbing the water falls. The climb wasn’t very treacherous but enough danger to make it exciting. It was overly crowded but Suzanne & I had fun anyway. There were lines like Disneyland.

The last port was Labadee, Haiti where we spent the entire day with the kids on the beach. The place was secluded and very pretty. Because it was private property it lacks the tourist traps and commercialism. I really enjoyed my time there.

The dining on the cruise was great. We enjoyed the service of our friendly Indian waiter named Freddy. But by the 5th day I had enough of fine dining– would’ve happily traded my steak or lobster for a bowl of pho. I guess there’s only so much of fine food a simpleton like me can take!

There were plenty of activities on the ship.The kids naturally enjoyed the pools the most. Suzanne & I tried wall climbing. I participated in a volleyball tournament– our team placed 2nd. There was a surf machine that makes artificial waves, but I never braved the crowds to use it. The whole family tried ice-skating. We were depleted most nights after a day of fun activities.

One nice thing about cruising is minimal planning: either for food or activities. It’s all inclusive. Each night, we look forward to a nice sit-down dinner and a show afterward. I even got to try some new food like parfaits. It’s not as good as Donkey made it out to be (there’s a scene in Shrek where Donkey says “parfaits gotta be the tastiest thing on the whole damn planet“). The nightly variety entertainment was top notch Vegas-quality– I enjoyed everyone I saw. I was surprised at the quality production the cruise line was putting up.

With food and entertainment factored in, cruising can be reasonable in terms of cost. Another big plus is the activities for kids, basically free childcare while the grown-ups go on their excursions. I think cruises attract those who’s looking for doing most activities, visiting as many visited places, being most entertained and eating as much fine food, within a span of time. In essence: it’s all about efficiency. You can’t really beat that if that’s what you’re looking for in a trip.

The downsides to cruising, I find? First and foremost, it’s the crowds. For me, it’s hardly relaxing when I keep running into people wherever I go. Lines everywhere. Second: minimal local interactions. You’re constantly hit with tourist traps when you leave the ships. I must admit that I’m the low key back-country type of guy when it comes to vacationing. I don’t particularly enjoy overly-commercialized places. I rather chill out in a quiet place. I find our last trip to north shore of Hawaii a tad more relaxing.

All in all though, everybody had a great time. I wished I had more camera time. I failed to find enough free time to take my camera through the paces whenever I vacation with the kids. They just keep me too busy. I didn’t get up early enough to capture the sunrise as I intended– not even once. On the other hand I got tons of family photos of the wife and kids which is just fine with me.

Here are some of the photos.

This blog mentions a pending deal to convert a dozen 7-Elevens into Kwik-E-Marts as a promotional effort for the Simpsons movie this summer. Available to buy: KrustyO’s cereal, Buzz Cola, and iced Squishees.

If you’re a Simpsons fan (and who isn’t), how ultra cool is that? 🙂

I’m hoping there’ll be one nearby in the Bay Area…

Yesterday I made sure to give myself ample time getting to the regional final game between Kansas & UCLA. I also lugged my camera and my zoom lens. I was a bit worried because I was told that telephoto lenses are prohibited. I figured since I parked close by this time, it wouldn’t be too much of a walk if I have to go back to put away the camera. Luckily, I had no trouble entering HP Pavilion with it.

I first went down to the lower level to take some snapshots about 45 minutes before game time. I was trying to soak it all in before the crowd gathers and the craziness erupts. It was very neat; I was enjoying myself and happily snapping away. Kansas came out for their shoot around first, then out came UCLA. Luckily I was right ontop of the tunnel where the Bruins emerged, so I got a few shots of them coming out.

As tip-off drew near, I headed up to upper deck where our seats were located and settled in. Joe was already in his seat. The game started out pretty sloppily for UCLA. Kansas played tough defense and forced turnovers every other UCLA possessions. I was nervous but somehow the Bruins stayed close. The half closed with UCLA’s Josh Shipp nailing a 3 pointer as time expires, giving UCLA a 4 points lead.

UCLA played a much better 2nd half, forcing turnovers and playing tough defense. Aaron Afflalo was huge for the Bruins, making timely shots and stopping anything that resembled a run by Kansas. In the end UCLA won 69-55 in a prety exciting game. Here’re the some of the shots from the game.

Final Four, baby!

I took off work early yesterday to watch the double header at HP Pavilion. The 2nd game with UCLA vs Pitt was the one I really wanted to see, so I left 30 minutes before game time and figured I’ll only miss the few minutes of the game.

Was I wrong. Downtown San Jose was like a zoo, swarmed with students everywhere. The parking @ HP Pavilion was full so I had to park in downtown 10 blocks away! I ended up missing most of the 1st half but still beat Joe to the game. It was a close game, Kansas ended up edging out SIU . The 2nd game was great to watch since the Bruins won and advances to Elite 8. It was fun rooting along with a lot of UCLA alums in the stand. I woke up today and found I lost half of my voice from screaming the nite before.

I’m looking forward going to Saturday game between UCLA & Kansas. Gonna give myself more time getting there and will be lugging my camera along with me!

Despite the fact that the Bay Area is hosting the regional final of the NCAA basketball tournament this week, I was planning to catch the games on TV. UCLA is one of the four teams in this bracket, naturally I was looking forward to the games. Tickets are notoriously hard to get, so I didn’t think about going to the games until my friend Joe called and suggested getting tickets. Joe found out that tickets unused by some of the schools will be available the day before the games.

So Joe & I headed down the HP Pavilion to try our luck scoring tickets. We lined up and each got a wristband with a number which unfortunately doesn’t guarantee us tickets. It just means we’ll get a chance! We both headed to a local Cajun restaurant for lunch and returned 90 minutes later when the tickets start going on sale. To discourage people camping out and get ahead of the line, they don’t go with the sequence numbers handed out. Instead they pick a random starting number and start from there. With our luck, the random number is ended up something like 50 after our number. This means we are one of the last 50 people in a line of hundreds! Not good…

They wouldn’t tell us up front how many tickets were available. So with the line so long, we both decided our chances were slim. We decided to give up. I tore up my wristband in despair and drove back to work. Half an hour later, I got an email from Joe’s Blackberry– he’s decided to stay it out after hearing from somebody that there’re a large # of tickets available. Joe’s patience paid off as he ended up scoring a pair of tickets.

We’re going to the games. It has been years since I went to an UCLA game. Awesome!

We dressed the girls in their traditional Chinese outfits and took them to the lunar New Year parade in downtown San Jose this past weekend. It was the girls’ first time watching a parade. Despite the cold & gray morning, the girls seemed to enjoy it. The lions & dragons came up right next to the girls! Katelyn & Allison even got to pet a few of them.

There were a lot of photographers there, some of them pro’s wielding very impressive equipment around. I definitely felt inadequate. 🙂 But here are some of my snapshots. Interestingly, I encountered more Nikon than Canon users…

Katelyn had a little party at The Little Gym to celebrate her 5^th birthday, this past weekend. The kids had a blast doing kiddie gymnastic activities. Katelyn definitely seemed to enjoy the extra attention. Even Allison, who’s normally a bit shy, participated in all activities whole-heartedly. Here some snapshots from the party.

I was happy celebrating Katelyn’s birthday. She’s making great strides this year- constantly surprises & impresses me with things she learns and does. She likes to sing, loves to color and teaches me the names of all sorts of dinosaurs (most of them I really didn’t even know)! She’s getting more inquisitive and can be thoughtful at times. She’s always very active and plays rough sometime. I see a bit of tomboy-ness in her. She can write words phonetically and do simple math. Not as crazy about Dora as last few years, but definitely still way into Disney princesses. Still likes pink but shuns Barbie because she knows I don’t like her getting into Barbie. Still a picky eater, but she’s at least trying new things; she even eats brocolie now. Her best friend is her cousin Malia, who she loves sleeping over with. She’s starting to help out little bit around the house- her biggest responsibilities being setting up the table at dinner time and feeding the fishes. Her face is usually the 1^st thing I see when I come home from work, she’d run to be the first to open the door for me.

But the best thing I saw in Katelyn this year is the little glimpses of her trying on the role a big sister: helping, encouraging and protecting Allison at certain times. I simply cannot be any prouder when I see that…

Unbelievable to me that Katelyn turned 5. At the same time, it seems forever that she’s part of our lives though. I can barely remember the bk era- before Katelyn. 🙂

Happy birthday kiddo…

I customize my Bash shell with colorful prompts. But while, in a normal xterm, my prompt is displayed nicely, it looks like crap within Emacs. All the escaped color attributes get displayed as garbage characters. I finally got off my lazy butt and spent sometime looking into fixing it.

It turns out to be pretty straightforward, basically the way I fix it is to turn on ANSI colors in the shell. I add the following to my .emacs file to turn it on as part of a hook to the shell mode.

; enable ANSI color in shell mode
(add-hook ‘shell-mode-hook ‘ansi-color-for-comint-mode-on)

I was watching The Kid the other day with my girls. Bruce Willis plays a spin-meister whose job is damage control for ill-behaving famous figures. Well, it seems to me there’s a trend of damage control in real life of late…

First, rep. Mark Foley and Mel Gibson blamed alcoholism and entered rehab. Then Michael Richards, Mike Tyson & Isiah Washington both entered rehab for “psychological counseling” for whatever blame I don’t even understand. Now SF Mayor Gavin Newsom blames his affair on alcoholism and enters rehab. How convenient…

The first thing these guys do is announcing something like “I take full responsibility…” and then follow up with “I have a problem and I will seek help by checking myself into a rehab.” Makes you think if they’re all using the same image consultant. You can’t help but chuckle every time this same old tactic is employed by somebody famous.

These are desperate attempts to drum up public sympathy. I for one do not have any for these characters. They cannot be excused of their behavior just because they “acknowledge” they have a problem. There’s virtually no courage in this kind of “acknowledgment.” The majority of them are not even “owning” up to their problems– they got caught, for Pete’s sake! Plus, owning up to one’s behavior does not automatically means sympathy. They are adults, not kids…

Furthermore, using “going to get treatments” shifts the emphasis on the behavior from a character flaw issue. To a degree, these are attempts of distancing oneself from one’s own demons– a behavior is more treat-able than a character flaw. So ironically, this “taking responsibility and getting treatment” tactic actually removes the responsibility of the act itself in my opinion. Ultimately in the above cases, rehabs were used by these individuals to get a handle on their images and avoid the consequences.

Psychological counseling may help with behaviors, but how does it or anything else help with something inherent as a character flaw? Is that possible? Treatment is a way of getting help, not a convenient excuse for bad behaviors or character flaws!