Author: shun

Bryan Updates

Hmm… where to start…

Bryan is now becoming more and more precise in focusing and then grabbing something he wants. Prior to last week, he couldn’t control his hands even if he was obviously interested in something. With this new ability, Bryan is also starting to realize that he can cause an effect on something he touches.

Speaking of grabbing stuff, Bryan has one hell of a grip. Just today he grabbed my skin (what adults would other wise characterize as “pinching” ) and held on to it pretty tight. I couldn’t shake his hand off! That hurt like a biatch. And then he did it again with something else he grabbed on my desk. I actually had a hard time taking it off of his tiny little hand. I guess there’s a good reason babies should have good grips.

At almost five months, Bryan is also increasingly alert and aware of his surroundings. He will respond to sounds, precise movements and the ability to track them has also dramatically increased. Grace also noticed that Bryan now knows he should be sleeping when we put him on the bed, turn down the light and put a nice thick blanket on him. Very nice.

Since I am on the topic of sleep, it reminds me of a weird dream I had the other night. I dreamt of Bryan crying for some reason one night. But the weird part is, as soon as I opened my eyes and turned around, Bryan immediately started crying (in real life)! Spooky.

Back to Bryan…. He really wants to be able to sit up (so that he can see more stuff). But he can’t balance himself yet. Heck, he can’t even roll over! So now every time we put him on our laps, he tries to sit up as much as possible, or else he’ll make this weird sound until we let him sit up. What a jerk, huh? This applies to when he’s being bathed, when he’s playing and sometimes just right before he naps.

New Mac Browser — Shiira

I have been test driving a new browser made by a group of Japanese geeks programmers called “Shiira“. It’s basically Safari with some nice features under its hood. Or… maybe it should be called Safari 2.5.

The best thing about this browser is its sidebar feature. It’s like using Safari with Concierge for free. Another feature I really like (though never actually use) is “Tab Exposé”. The feature basically turns all the open tabs in the browser into little thumbnails, much like what Foxposé does in Firefox. With a faster processor, the browser can even micmic page turning by using animation. It’s a nice but really unnecessary feature though.

Shiira Tab Exposé

Shiira page transition effects

I got used to the browser pretty quickly because the developers made it very easy to adopt this browser by having all the Safari functionalities already there, including access to Safari’s bookmarks! It also feels like Shiira launches and loads pages faster than all the other browsers on the Mac platform. Firefox is a dog compared to this Japanese import. Oh, and this puppy has yet to crash on me yet. Damn, those Japanese know what they are doing!

Unfortunately, Shiira also shares Safari’s downside on poor memory management. I can’t blame them. After all, Shiira shares the same render engine as Safari (and probably a few other things too). A nice full day of work out with this browser hogs almost 300MB of RAM (though its initial RAM occupation is far less than any other browser).

Whatever Apple Touches Turns to Gold

There’s a nice article on the BusinessWeek blog about Apple revolutionizing the retail check out operation.

“BusinessWeek has an interesting blog entry on Apple’s ‘iPod Express table’, where they streamline the sale of iPods in their store. From the article: ‘But the best part was that the Apple Geniuses behind the table had wireless gizmos for scanning credit cards, and Apple had worked out a totally wireless, paperless checkout process, called EasyPay. Once scanned, they advise you that the receipt will be in your inbox within an hour (since I’m already a registered Apple customer, they didn’t even need to take my email or other information).'”

But of course the process is not without its fair share of issues.

The Symbol portable computers proved to be glitchy, although lots of customers weren’t paying with credit cards .Swiping credit or ATM cards sometimes often took several attempts, and re-booting the devices was not uncommon, further slowing the check-out process. Staffers also had to take care when entering the customer’s e-mail address for the receipt– one typo and the e-mail would bounce.

At the same time, at least one store had an unsightly collection of shopping bags underneath the display table, giving the operation a thoroughly unprofessional appearance.

Regardless of the minor hiccups, Apple seems to be improving everything it touches. Rock on!

via [Slashdot]

Pork Belly

I was giving Bryan his daily routine bath at its routine hour (at around 7PM), except this time I didn’t bother to change to shorts. There comes times when you feel confident in doing something routine enough that you just know nothing can be messed up. So as I sat on that tiny stool, trying harder than usual to bend over to wash Bryan’s hair, immediately I felt uncomfortable with something. And that something is giving me a hard time, hurts even, to bend over further to the normal position at which I typically give Bryan bath.

It turned out that it was my stinking fat belly. No more jeans.

The belt in my jeans unnaturally restricted my belly from getting out of my way like a nice pair of shorts with elastic waist straps would. When you can’t give your child bath bending over, that’s when you know you are too FAT!

I actually don’t eat that much (anymore). I mean, the only thing I don’t do is exercise. Where’s the crime in that? God I hate skinny people. It’s true, I used to be one.

I gotta look into that “cut the calories” program. Rumor has it that it’s going to be big. Or maybe this is a good time to go vegetarian full time!

But meat… so… hard… to… give… up… Hmm… Meat…

Korean Film Fest at Home

Michelle loaned us a few Korean movies after returning from her trip in Bali and Hong Kong. Today I managed to squeezed in “Love, So Divine”.

It’s a romantic comedy about a young seminarian who’s studying to become a priest and met a girl during his training before the ordination. The relationship changed both of their lives (or else there’d be no reason for this film). While the plot and the acting were poorly executed, it reminded me of just how strong the presence of the Roman Catholic Church is in South Korea. This is the type of story only possible with South Korea as its backdrop among all other Asian countries (OK, maybe Philippines too). I have yet to meet a Korean who is not a Catholic! Despite Buddhism’s overpowering influence over Korea in the past couple thousands of years, it’s surprising and interesting to see how fast and strong the Roman Catholic Church took hold in South Korea in recent history. I wonder what the history is behind that.

Love, So Divine

A couple of days ago, I also watched “My Tutor Friend”. It’s another romantic comedy with character developments much like, probably the most famous Korean comedy feature, “My Sassy Girl“. But it didn’t quite reach the emotional and comical effects of “My Sassy Girl”. But then again, “My Sassy Girl” is now the golden standard to which all Korean romantic comedies are compared to.

This movie is about a rich high school boy (who’s flunked two grades) and his relationship with his tutor. And of course, something sparked somewhere in the story. This film has a kind of cartoony characteristics to it. The way the shots are framed and composed reminded me of manga. There were a few shots where I just laughed out loud for a few seconds. One scene at the end made me rewind a couple times because it was so funny in a cartoony way. The film is a nice chick flick, but it’s not something you’ll remember telling your friends about. “My Sassy Girl”, on the other hand, is just fricking awesome. I should watch that again.

My Tutor Friend

Car in the Shop

So I dropped the car off at the nearest AAMCO on El Camino Real this morning. Without a car to get back, I took the VTA bus. Not knowing anything about the public transportation system in Santa Clara County, I Googled and found a great website with a nice trip planner.

Since waiting for the bus was such a boring event, I decided to time my journey back home. It took roughly 10 minutes waiting for the bus, that was after I just missed one as I crossed the 8-lane street. But the ride itself home only took about 16 minutes with the bus stopping a number of times in between. A 10-minute car-drive took about 30 minutes to travel with public transportation. I have a new found respect for those who have to take public transportation, as I did in NYC, on a daily basis. I can’t imagine how long a one-hour drive would be on a public transit…

The mechanic was supposed to call me back today on the status of my poor Infiniti J30t. But I guess they were too swamped with all those cars that were already on the lot when I arrived this morning (at least a couple dozen).

Better luck tomorrow.

Dental Visit

Stopped by the dentist today… The assistant must have taken a dozen or more x-rays of my teeth. They said this is part of the procedure required before anything can be done to my fractured tooth. That, plus 10 minutes of the actual dentist peering into my mouth, lectured on the importance of flossing (which I do), cost me $220. And no, I didn’t even get my tooth fixed.

But they gave me a quote for a list of things to work on in the following visits:

Tooth #8 (upper front-right tooth filling) — $360
Tooth #9 (upper front-left tooth filling) — $360 (also chipped when I was a kid; needs to be redone)
Tooth #20 (cavity) — $290
Tooth #29 (cavity) — $290
Tooth #2 (cavity) — $380

Total: My left arm and right leg (or $1,680)

In Thailand, I can get all that done, plus mouth cleaning and whitening for less than 1/3 of the price with the same quality and standards (Thai dentists that I know of are almost exclusively trained in the UK or US). But then again, I am in America. And I pay the price for it.

Panicked. I Googled some more and made sure those online insurances WILL cover some of the operations. For those of you who are unemployed and looking for an individual or family plan, Deltacare dental plans in the San Francisco Bay Area is probably the best bet. There are other ones like Aetna, GE (and some cheesy one called “Patriot” ) simply aren’t as popular among dental offices I called. But everyone seemed to know Delta.

With insurance, my initial visit with all those x-rays would have been free (on paper anyway; I’ll find out the next time I visit a different dentist). And those front tooth fillings would cost, at maximum, $150 each. Big difference. So that’s my $220 lesson for today.

The catch is, of course there’s always a catch, I can’t make any appointments before February 1st, 2006. For some reason, insurance companies like having rules like that. The rule says, if I signed up after 21st of any given month, the coverage doesn’t start until the 1st day of the second month (meaning, skipping one month). SO STUPID! Argh… I am sure there’s a “good reason” for this kind of rule. But it sure as well un-human centered. And I thought these kinds of rules, especially when it comes to healthcare, are supposed to make things easier for the patients.

So I paid $170 to sign up for both Grace and I (don’t think Bryan needs a dentist anytime soon just yet). Hopefully the savings will add up to at least that amount.

Tomorrow I take my car to get checked up. Let’s see what the damage is there. But for sure, it seems like $600 – $800 worth of repair is in order. ARGH! I can see in America (or any country really) how the poor can easily become poorer with no healthcare. They just can’t win with or without insurance (since the really poor simply can’t afford either).

Movie Nights

Home movies are godsend especially for people with young kids at home. We watched a couple of movies this past weekend.

Jackie Chan and his latest attempt at movie making, “Myth“, fell short of his earlier work. He’s getting too old for fast and complicated actions, and the plot of the movie wasn’t exactly interesting. The only good thing that came out of this movie was having beautiful actresses only Jackie Chan can get in poorly made Asian films — Korean actress Kim Hee-seon and Indian model/actress Mallika Sherawat. Jackie Chan is known to fast track unknown actresses to stardom by having leading roles in his movies. But whatever, the movie sucked. Don’t waste your time on it unless you just want to see a bad movie with Jackie Chan and beautiful girls.

Jackie Chan's Myth

Another movie we saw (at Widodo and Hanny’s house) was “Saving Face“. This movie more than made up the time we wasted on watching “Myth”. Although there were a couple of logical flaws in the plot (really extremely minor though), just about everything else in the movie was superb — the acting, the humor, the story, cinematography, directing… etc. It’s a very funny movie with shweet lesbian make-out scenes. The movie is essentially about Chinese culture’s sensitivity to having “face”, or public opinion of you among friends and family. It’s a really well made film with some unexpected twists and turns (this even applies to all the comical relieves of the plot). Why can’t all Hollywood movies be more like this?

Saving Face

On a related note, “Steamboy” finally came through from Peerflix. Though I won’t have a fancy case and cover art to go with it, I finally get to see it as 2005 ends. I was actually expecting other titles like “Spirited Away”, “Madagascar” and “The Incredibles” to become available before “Steamboy”. But whatever.

Brush with Greatness

Reading the story of a couple of programmers meeting with bigwigs at Apple Computer vividly reminded me my own brush with greatness at Apple Computer… A tale of what might have been. Although I didn’t meet with Steve Jobs myself, I was grateful to have met the head of the hardware division at Apple.

The story is a bit lengthy (more like, REALLY lengthy). But it’s a nice read for geeks who want to kill time. I personally just picked the parts I wanted to read and skipped around.

via [Gus Mueller]

A Christmas Proposal

At around 12AM this morning as Grace and I prepared to watch a DVD, we got a surprise Christmas present from Chee-hoi, one of the last remaining bachelors:

On Dec 25, 2005, at 6:55 PM, Cheehoi Chua wrote:

…I proposed to Fiona and she said yes! She’s moving to bayarea next month!
woohoo!

😯 !!!!!!!!!

HOLY SMOKES! He’s done it. He’s decided to take the plunge tie the knot with Fiona! An equally shocking development was to find out that she was moving to the Bay Area within a month! Woah.

It took me a couple of weeks of agony in going through the “how I know if she’s the one….” stage. I went through some counseling with a few people on that one.

And of course, this blog entry wouldn’t be complete without my reply to this great news…

Congrats! OH MY GOD! HOLY COW!

You sure fricking kept your cool when I was taking you to the airport, JERK!

Grace’s so happy that she can’t even take a shower…

Fiona, Grace is looking forward to your moving here… Chee-hoi, welcome to the married-men’s club (almost). I will show you the secret hand-shake when you tie the knot.

Chu

Congrats! 🙂