The Smithy Code

Hee. Ok, so I thought that The DaVinci Code was overrated, but I did follow the recent copyright case with a degree of interest. It's all over the news now, but I'm still thoroughly tickled that the judge embedded his own code into his 71-page ruling. The Smithy code is a pretty awesome name. See, I could never do that. The Changy code just sounds lame. Plus it'd be a super easy code that could be cracked by monkeys.

Mon oeil!

Yesterday, I must have burst a blood vessel in my eye or something. The bottom half of my right eye was bright red. (I did take a picture, but I won't assault you with it right now.) Today it looks somewhat better; the eye must be absorbing the blood, but the redness seems to have migrated to the middle. I look kind of evil and rabbit-y. I'm strangely fascinated by it.

Then Cliff sent me a link to a cow eyeball dissection, done by the Exploratorium. Which is, you know, what you want to see when your eye is bleeding inside itself. But it actually is pretty neat. I watched the video for a bunch of the steps.

And I know that I used my title expression incorrectly, blah blah blah.

Oranges

I love oranges. They are my favorite fruit, and I don't even really believe in picking superlative anything. But I noticed that I eat them really fast. Kind of too fast. Basically, as soon as I have the fruit peeled, I inhale it, so that I can wash the orange oil and peel gunk off my hands. Usually the way this goes is that I run over to the fruit bowl by the kitchen sink, grab an orange, bite a hole in the peel, tear it open with my hands, and with juice dribbling all over, suck up each segment while barely chewing. It takes less than a minute. I've seen my reflection in the mirror above the sink after I finish, all hunched over and panting. I Eat Too Fast.

So now I am trying to eat oranges slowly. Today at lunch I had an awesome orange that was perfectly ripe, such that the peel basically fell off in one piece. And inside was a wonderfully well-formed mini-me; the little segments were just as tasty as the larger fruit segments. I dropped a piece on the floor and it made me sad. But the rest of the orange tasted good so it made me happy.

Mmm, citrus sinensis ovary. Get in my mouth.

Boys in gray sweaters

I saw a cute boy in a gray sweater today. I love boys in gray sweaters.

But beyond that, the whole weekend was good. On Saturday, Megan and I went to Vik's Chaat Corner in Berkeley, and gorged ourselves on deliciousness. I'd never had bhatura cholle or masala dosa, and both were supar yummy. I want to go again, um, tomorrow.

Today (Sunday), I met up with the lovely, original, and inspiring Zully and Lynn, for fun in SF and H&M. I got a shirt and a necklace. I'm not wearing the necklace right now, on top of my scrubby pjs, really. Ok fine, I am.

It was after H&M that we passed by the Clift Hotel, where I saw the above-mentioned boy, probably a doorman for the hotel. He had a fun little faux-hawk and was cute anyway; add the gray sweater and I was like, oh mans. I love boys in gray sweaters.

Ooh! And I slept in until almost 11AM this morning. I was so proud of myself. If I had a cute boy in a gray sweater to cuddle up with, that would be frickin' awesome. I would stay in bed until noon.

Chinese Fancypants

Tonight I attended a dinner and awards presentation at the Four Seasons in SF. The dinner was part of a group called the Committee of 100's annual conference. Although I didn't know much about the organization before the event, the evening was interesting and fairly enjoyable. And there were yummy desserts.

The Committee of 100 is a Chinese American interest group, promoting cultural exchange, advocacy, and discussion on US-China relations. Membership is by invitation, and they seem to seek out Chinese Americans who are leaders in their fields. Some members, including Lisa Ling, Jerry Yang, and Jenny Ming, were at tonight's dinner. (So how did I get to go? A family friend's company is a sponsor, so they had some comp tickets.)

Also present was Leroy Chiao, a former NASA astronaut I met when I was in second grade! I have a photo clipping from our newspaper, of second-grade Stefanie sitting on a step in the auditorium of my elementary school, listening intently to him and rocking some 80's style. (Well, not really rocking and not really fashion, more like too-short pants and an Otter Pop sweatshirt or something.) That was back when he was just beginning astronaut training and hadn't been in space yet. Since then, he's flown on four space missions, the most recent being a six-and-a-half-month stint aboard the International Space Station. Neato bjeato! I wanted to try to find him during the dessert reception, but couldn't find him. Oh well. Instead, every time I turned around, there was Jerry Yang. He has really puffy hair.

Thomas Friedman, a writer with the New York Times, was also a guest and honoree at the dinner. He's currently working on a follow-up to his book The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (which I haven't read), and mentioned a list of eight "middle class jobs," which he said would replace those that are currently being digitzed, outsourced, and automated. While the list isn't Brand New Information or anything, I thought it was a nice, succinct list of traits for competitiveness:

1. Great collaborators - people who know how to work across
organizations, countries, and populations.
2. Great leveragers - (I'll give him a pass on using the stupid L word) - people who know how to use technology to increase efficiency and productivity.
3. Great synthesizers - people who know how to bridge trends and technology to create new markets.
4. Great localizers - people who can recognize a trend/technology, and apply it locally in a small business.
5. Passionate something-or-other McPassionatepants - ok fine, I became momentarily distracted by a tiny creme brulee in a Chinese soup spoon and I missed this one. But it had something to do with passionate people and local something or other.
6. Anything green.
7. Great explainers - people who can clearly explain and model the perpetually more complex world.
8. Great adapters - people who can always anticipate and stay ahead of the digitization, outsourcing, and automation.

My initial thoughts: go go green, and go go SBDC! Makes me excited again for our Economic Summit. Also, the list made me feel good about myself for the silly reason that I think I'm at least half of those things. Half's not bad! Thank you to Vincent and Grace for the invitation.

Substitute Earth Day

Today I went to the Oakland Earth Expo, (I was actually tabling for work,) the city of Oakland's showcase of how their agencies, businesses, and organizations are trying to fulfill the UN's Urban Environmental Accords. Anyway, I picked up lots of beautiful, interesting, inspiring information, so I was crazy pumped up about sustainable development and resource conservations and what the individual citizen can do save and maintain the evironment.

Then I come home and run inside to share the info with evar-body, and see that my brother has TP-ed my sister's room with an entire roll of TP. Oh the waste. At least she cleaned it up neatly and said she'd use it as tissue or to clean up stuff.

I also got sunburnt. Oh well. As fun as having no tan lines was this winter, I suppose I'm back on track to becoming the multi-shaded lattice that is Stefanie by the end of the summer.

Since I'll be in my wilderness class on Saturday and won't get to participate in any Earth Day festivities, this will have to suffice. I'll post some of the recipes and interesting tidbits of info later.

Supar Busy.

After a fun weekend of wilderness first responding, Berkeley Thai Buddhist Temple brunching, and IKEA playing (couldn't find a link for the plant I bought), work has been punching me in the face.

But check out what I'm working on! I'm excited about it. Clif Bar is involved!

One million punches to the face

To everyone who was driving on I-880 S between Oakland and San Leandro this afternoon around 3:30 PM, I want to punch you all in the face.

Pressure!

Oh mans, the pressure. My sister linked to my blog from hers, so I'm no longer floating around in complete virtual oblivion.

So. An Interesting Thing I Learned Today : you can buy oatmeal in 25 lb. increments from Bob's Red Mill. That's even more than the biggest box you can get from Costco, I think. I'm imagining a turgid blob of oatmeal, blobbing down the street, spreading regularity amongst the friendly folk. What do they ship it in, a giant drum? Dry oatmeal is quite voluminous.

Another fiberrific link: win a year's supply of Kashi!

I have a title!

The parallels are all there. I like to eat, sleep, and run too.

Hello World!

I just drank 32 oz. of water and applied chapstick. This is going to be good.