Artery Clogger... Yum!

We often don't know what completes us in life--until we see it. I NEED this!

Joy #98 Fresh, warm sheets

It's Winter, chilly and it's storming outside. It's bedtime and you have freshly washed and dried sheets, pillow cases for your goose-down pillows and duvet for your 600-fill goose-down blanket. The sheets are still warm from the dryer. You have a queen-sized Sealy pillow-top bed. You crawl in and gasp in pleasure. Mmmmm.

The Oxford Dictionary defines these items as comforts (noun) |ˈkəmfərtz| things that contribute to a fuck-all amount of physical ease and frickin' well-being.

So, this is what it feels like to save a life

I just saved someone's life, and I don't even know his name. I was cramming for a Social Psychology midterm and decided to take a break. I was on my way to buy a cigar in Berkeley when I came across some sort of ruckus--there was a homeless guy that looked like he was choking. There were people there but no one was helping the guy. Was he faking it? If I try to help, will he bite me? What diseases can I catch from him? Why wasn't anyone helping? The choking looked pretty real to me and no one was helping him, so I sucked it up and went up to him and asked if he was choking. He didn't reply, which is a good sign. People who are really choking can't breathe, so they can't make any sounds, not even a cough.

Shit, I learned the Heimlich maneuver way back in Boy Scouts! I got behind him and did what I could remember about the Heimlich maneuver. But it wasn't working!!! Oh fuck. I'm going to kill this guy. I didn't know what else to do so I did it harder. Zeus was smiling on me that day and the guy coughed out chicken and bones and lived. Whew.

It wasn't until after the police arrived that I noticed how awful the guy, and now myself, smelled. I went home to change and shower and went back to the library. But man was I wired. I was shaking and breathing heavily. Happy, still scared and not able to study at all! 90% happiness and 10% fear? Or was it the other way around? I dunno but I felt pretty good. I felt like I had canons for testicles--and they weighed 5 lbs each. Who cares about the midterm? It no longer mattered to me. People who know me know that I am quite melodramatic when it comes to school grades. In the larger picture of life, getting a "B" on a midterm doesn't really matter. It wasn't a big deal anymore. I saved a life!

I'm definitely going to sign up to renew my CPR certification now. And, FYI, below is how you perform the Heimlich maneuver.

1) From behind, wrap your arms around the victim's waist.
2) Make a fist and place the thumb side of your fist against the victim's upper abdomen, below the ribcage and above the navel.
3) Grasp your fist with your other hand and press into their upper abdomen with a quick upward thrust. Do not squeeze the ribcage; confine the force of the thrust to your hands.
4) Repeat until object is expelled.

Sucks to be this guy!

Hurrrm. Awkward.

Joke of the Day #4

Three women die together in an accident and go to heaven. When they get there, St. Peter says, "We only have one rule here in heaven: don't step on the ducks!"

So they enter heaven, and sure enough, there are ducks all over the place. It is almost impossible not to step on a duck, and although they try their best to avoid them, the first woman accidentally steps on one.

Along comes St. Peter with the ugliest man she ever saw. St. Peter chains them together and says, "Your punishment for stepping on a duck is to spend eternity chained to this ugly man!"

The next day, the second woman accidentally steps on a duck and along comes St. Peter, who doesn't miss a thing. With him is another extremely ugly man. He chains them together with the same admonishment as for the first woman.

The third woman has observed all this and, not wanting to be chained for all eternity to an ugly man, is very, VERY careful where she steps. She manages to go months without stepping on any ducks,

But one day St. Peter comes up to her with the most handsome man she has ever laid eyes on.... very tall, long eyelashes, muscular, and thin. St. Peter chains them together without saying a word.

The happy woman says, "I wonder what I did to deserve being chained to you for all of eternity?"

The guy says, "I don't know about you, but I stepped on a duck!"

Quote of the Day

"Women need to feel loved before they have sex, but men need to have sex to feel loved."

Billy Connolly

Tiny Food

Tiny food. Supposedly delicious. Just one word--why?

Sperm in Your Pee

In a physiology class I took years ago, we once had to analyze our own urine. One of my classmates was alarmed by something in her sample. She stated that it looked like an aggressive cell attacking everything near it and was concerned that it might be some sort of disease.

Well, upon further inspection by a few students and the professor, it turned out to be sperm! It took all of 3 seconds for her to go from pale to a shade of deep red. While the whole class was amused by this, she then went on to explain herself. "My boyfriend works really early and he likes to, um, you know, before he leaves for work." Hilarity ensues.

Note to self, sperm in your pee is normal, nay, healthy. I, unfortunately, did NOT have any sperm in my pee.

Mocked by a Gypsy Woman: Moscow, Russia

Around the World in 60 Days: Moscow and St. Petersburg









Some Observations:
1) Nuclear reactors are located right next to living areas! It's a normal part of the landscape.
2) On the highway, I see cars pulled over selling stuff. People will stop on the highway or fight traffic crossing it to reach the cars to buy stuff. Reminds me of China.
3) And like China, the idea of waiting in lines is foreign to them. You essentially need to squeeze your way to the counter. If you wait in line and leave just the slightest gap, someone will cut in front of you.
4) Okay, without getting myself a lot of hate mail, the women, they, um, dress sexy. Usually braless and sometime braless with a see-through blouse. I was, of course, thoroughly offended.

Pickpockets: The Red Square is to die for. Beware of pickpockets though. A gypsy woman holding a baby got her hands into my hidden pocket. It's a zippered pocket within my front pants pocket. She actually got a hold of my passport. I felt it and knocked her hand away. I instinctively shouted, "Hey!" She didn't let me off so easy though, because she then proceeded to follow me around Red Square shouting "Hey!" mocking me. Man, I never wanted to smack a woman so badly in my life. The fact that she was carrying a baby didn't help either.

On Tour: We took a tour to see some sights just to avoid some of the logistics of planning the routes. This is the first tour I've ever been on where we actually left 2 guys behind. We left them at the war memorial monument. To the tour guide's credit, we did wait for at least 10 minutes.

The Bureaucracy: Doing anything takes a long time. Checking into the hotel took over an hour because we had to register each person individually (20 minutes a pop). They are typing pretty extensively on their computer, I just don't know what they're typing. We also had to register with the local governmental agency in every city we were in (OVIR registration). Usually the hotel will do it for you. The only problem was that the hotel was misplacing passports! We saw more than a few irrate tourists. Even buying a SIM card for my cellphone required them to make copies of my passport and Visa...

The Food: According to CNN, this year Moscow was voted the most expensive city to live in. It is, but not the food. The food prices were pretty decent (at least compared to the likes of Tokyo and New York) and yummy. The borsch was good, the pork leg we had in Drova was fantastic, the bliny was tasty, and we had real stroganoff in Propaganda.

The Metro: It handles a million people a day. It is beautiful as well as efficient. But, there is a learning curve. I learned how to read Cyrillic just to be able to decipher the station stops.

Around the World in 60 Days: Intro

How it started: Initially, this trip started out with just climbing Mt. Elbrus with Chiang and Gabe. What the frick is Mt. Elbrus? It's one of the "seven summits." I'm trying to climb the tallest mountain on each continent. In this case, it's the tallest mountain on the European continent located in the Caucasus range and close to Georgia and Chechnya. Trip length: 2-3 weeks

My friend Navid was going to be in Europe. Why not meet up with him? Trip length: 5 weeks (it's a long story, but I was originally going to do Mongolia).

Later on, I find out that my dad wants to do some business in China, so then I decide to meet him there to help with the market research and business plan. Trip length: 7 weeks

When I was booking my tickets, I found out that I have a 4 hour layover in Tokyo. Because it was a student ticket, I could extend the layover at no extra charge. I'll also meet Lloyd here. Trip length: 8 weeks

By the time all the changes and itineraries were hammered out, I went way over my budget. I'm not working, so I had to borrow money from some generous friends. Foolish? Indeed. But, um, life is too short.

Itinerary: I made a bunch of changes along the way, but here is the final outcome.
Mt Elbrus, Russia
Moscow, Russia
St. Petersburg, Russia
Tallinn, Estonia
Madrid, Spain
Barcelona, Spain
Prague, Czech Republic
Gothenburg, Sweden
Stockholm, Sweden
Warsaw, Poland
Budapest, Hungary
Beijing, China
Shanghai, China
Xiao Xin, China
Guangzhou, China
Tokyo, Japan

Summary: The trip overall was very good. I ran into some minor problems (more on this later), but I met a lot of cool people, saw a bunch of interesting stuff and took lots of pictures. But I found that I burn out pretty quickly with urban city travel. Traveling is some tiring stuff. I need doses of nature. I got tired of museums and churches; taking photos; getting that sunrise shot; figuring out the language, customs, metro and airports of every new city you go to; etc.

Frozen Manhood: Mt. Elbrus, Russia

Around the World in 60 Days: Mt. Elbrus, Russia

Logistics: The difficulties started with getting the Visa from the Embassy. The form is 2 pages long and asks for pretty extensive information. Even a cover letter is required listing your contact info, itinerary, etc. On top of this, you need a Visa Voucher. Basically, you can't go to Russia on your own, you need to be offically "invited." The Visa Voucher is documentation of this invitation (in our case, from our climbing guides). When you get to the Russian embassy (they close at 12PM) it's a teeny room and there isn't room for a line and no number to take--you find out who was there last. If someone else comes in, you say they are next after you. They also grill you pretty hard. Why? Where? Who? For me, I didn't staple my passport photo to the form, so I had to get out of line and walk around looking for a stapler to borrow. I finally found one in a coffee shop. They, of course, had one there but I could not use it. I go in and get back in line. I barely made it in time before they closed their doors at 12PM! Probably the most difficult Visa I've ever applied for.

Getting There: We departed from San Francisco and after an all-day layover in New York, we got kicked off our plane. The problem was that we would arrive a few hours earlier than stated on the Visa. We were told by our climbing guides that we would simply have to wait in the airport for a few hours. Apparently not. The Visa start date is firm. Oh well. So, we missed our connecting flight from Moscow to Minvody in the Caucasus. Normally, rescheduling flights is a straight-forward affair, but today was a bad day for our airline--they had cancelled a few flights, so there were about 700 people in line with us to rearrange flights. The line went outside and wound around the JFK parking lot. Yay. After a long wait, they only had 1 Moscow flight per day from NY. We were placed on standby for the next day. Better yet, the airline didn't know where some of our bags were. A few said it made it off the plane, then others said they couldn't get it off in time and it was in Moscow. Ugh. So we spent the night in New York with Chiang's family. Long story short, we were able to get on the flight to Moscow and managed to get last minute (but pricey) tickets from Moscow to Minvody. Turns out, the missing bags were in Moscow. Note: there are 7 airports in Moscow, make sure you know which one you are going to.

Our domestic flight had a strict baggage limit of 20 kilos total--yes, including the carry-on. We were way over with our climbing gear. So, to save some overweight fees, we put on our heavy jackets and stuffed the pockets with stuff. The flight was uneventful, except for the fact that the bathroom was freezing cold! However, the nice thing was that the Minvody airport didn't have as much security as I expected, given the fact that there was a hostage situation involving Chechens a few years ago... All in all, it took us 4 days to get to the base of Mt. Elbrus (Azau). After much ado, we actually made it in time for the climb. Whew.

Azau: We were fairly close to the Georgian border and their border patrols. We were simply told "don't walk too far from the hotel. You might run into a Georgian border patrol--and they could give you a hard time." I think we were over a hundred miles from Chechnya, so we were okay on that front. Besides, I had a map indicating the local kidnap zones, and we were pretty safe. The lodge was nice, except for the coils poking me through the bed. Ouch.

My Nuts: As far as climbs go, this was the easiest of the 3 of the 7 summits I've already climbed. Although 12 people had died on the mountain so far this season, the mountain is considered relatively straight-forward. It was an 8-day trip (compared to 3 weeks for my last climb). We had some poor weather going up but had absolutely beautiful clear skies on summit day (see pics). On summit day, we left camp at 1AM and returned by 4 or 5PM. We only needed our ice axes for the final steep grade. Chiang and I made it to the top but Gabe had trouble breathing and had to turn back. Oh, and it was cold. The thermometer said -20 F. This is not including the wind chill factor. My toes were warm because my boots cost $600--it was the best damn money I ever spent. However, all my other appendages were frozen. Because it was cold and you drink a lot of water to counter the effects of altitude, I had to pee quite often. I have to remove my outer glove shell (otherwise you can't find your zipper fly) and find my fly, reach through my thermals and find my pecker. Needless to say, your pecker freezes within seconds and it goes numb. Thereafter, it doesn't matter how hung you are, you're blindly groping for it with abrasive glove liners (which are pretty thick themselves) and after a few pee stops, it, um, starts to hurt. It gets a little easier after the sun comes up, but until then, your thingy never really warms up before you have to pee again. This is, however, par for the course in mountaineering :)

Lessons learned: Pre-date the Visa unless you are staying 30 days, in which case, you don't have much of a buffer. And, we would have flown directly to Minvody from Munich instead of doing a domestic flight from Moscow. This way, you avoid the baggage limits.

Words of wisdom:
On toilet paper - This is John Wayne TP. "It's rough, tough and it don't take no crap off nobody."
On making repairs with duct tape - "If it can't be duct, it's fucked."
On questions of whether to bring a piece of equipment or not - "If you've got it, pack it."


Sunrise on the mountain.


The sun hitting the Caucasus range.


The group climbing. I'm the guy in the ugly yellow boots.


Me.


On the summit of Mt Elbrus!!! 18,513 ft.

Fart absorber--exactly what I needed

This baby here supposedly absorbs both the smells and the sounds that come from eating too much frank and beans. And the world rejoices at the freedom to fart at your desk. I cannot wait to try this out.

Polargrizz killed in the far north

Here is a pic of the first cross-bred polar and grizzly bear ever discovered in the wild. Legally shot by a sporthunter, no less.

Jet Li's Last Movie?

Click here for the newest trailer

I'll love Jet Li until the day I die, but if this is really is last movie, I so hope this movie showcases more of his WuShu (a la Fist of Legend) and less wire work.

Joy # 67 Dreyers ice cream dibs

Oh Dreyers ice cream dibs, how do we love thee? Let us count the ways. 1) You are yummy. 2) For us dieters, we can limit ourselves to just 3 (okay, maybe 8) pieces at a time. 3) You are yummy.

Pet Peeve #15

PEOPLE WHO TALK ALL IN CAPS!! YAY! Now, stop screaming in my ear.

Finals and my 1st all natural hallucination

Finals was painful for me. I was a bit overloaded this semester and was severely behind in my reading (300 pages of boring theory in one class). I paid for it with my sanity. For a week, I lived in a world where time existed in fleeting spurts, where crossing over into dreamland happened without notice, where living outside your body is possible.

All-nighter/Exam #1: The thing about Berkeley is that there are limited facilities for 24 hour studying. Here we are, right before finals, and there is only one room to study in past 2AM. Almost every chair is full and I estimate about 70 people. Oh, and we share 1 toilet. At around midnight, they ran out of toilet paper, and soap has been missing for weeks. Waiting 30 minutes to pee was unbearable so I went over to a friend's place to study. Her apartment has a few two-table lounges and plenty of bathrooms. Lounge 1: these 4 people come in and each one had a voice that would put Josh Groban to shame. Lounge 2: finally, some peace and quiet... an hour later, the fire alarm goes off. Everyone has to leave the building. Turns out my friend's neighbor had a little fire in their kitchen. I finally got into my groove at around 5AM.

All-nighter/Exam #2: Fairly uneventful. I'm starting to feel it now though. It's getting harder to stay awake. My hands are starting to shake and my eyeballs are bokko dancing.

All-nighter/Exam #3: The double expresso and Vivrin pills are kicking in. I'm awake but I'm a walking zombie. I have no idea what day or month it is. But, I'm able to memorize the fact that Piaget's theory of concrete operations states that coordinated mental actions that fit into a logical system creates greater unity of thinking... A bit after this, 6 naked white girls run through the library cheering and screaming. I'm awake now. Note to self, bottle nake girls, sell it and make millions. 4AM, I push on the bathroom door to find that it is locked. Who the #$@! locked the bathroom? I go back 10 minutes later. Crap, it's still locked! 10 minutes later, I go back again and it's still locked. I'm going to bust some caps! I then look down and noticw there is a damn doorknob. Ugh. I go in, wash my hands and go back to my seat to study. Shit, I completely forgetting to go pee....

All-nighter/Exam #4: I'm a walking menace. The double expressos and Vivrin have stopped working. All they do now is make my heart pound like a 120BPM techo rave. My eyes are shutting on their own and my thoughts are Owellian and paranoid. At 1AM, I have my 1st hallucination. I see a little mouse dancing out of the corner of my eye. It's brown with little white spots. It is not cute and not very nice. At 3AM I'm having trouble drinking from my Nalgene bottle and am spilling water all over myself. Hilarity ensues. Man, I am so not going to be able to read 300 pages before the final... All thoughout the night, I can feel myself floating out of my body to look down at myself sitting in a chair trying to study.

Moral of the story? Caffeine is some scary stuff.

Naked People and Finals

No time for a proper post, but I'm in the Main Stacks Library cramming my ass off for my 3rd final right now. About 2 minutes ago, 6 naked girls just ran through the library cheering. Hmm, nice tan lines.

I'm awake now.

All my base are belong to you

Geek love--not enough of it in this world.

The Joker gives Batman a boner!

Yes, this was really published and "boner" means a "stupid mistake." It's still ha ha funny though.

Semester Experience Essay for Educ 198

I love Cal! I just realized this a week ago. Prior to that, I was apathetic—almost indifferent. A number of years ago (how long is my secret), I dropped out of Cal a few weeks into the Fall semester. I just didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. So, among other things, I went to work for Ebay. Here I am now, older, but not much wiser. However, I am more committed than ever to finish my psychology degree.

What does X years in the corporate world make you? Cocky. I envisioned myself joining a slew of clubs and making tons of friends. I’d get straight A’s and graduate Summa Cum Laude. I would just have a lot of fun. So, I joined six clubs and the RSF gym. I signed up for four upper division psychology classes and this Education 198 course. Needless to say, I was in for a rude awaking. I didn’t realize that I had literally forgotten how to study or even write a formal essay. I was reading twice as slow and absorbing half as much. I studied my ass off for my first mid-term and got a “B.” I literally spent most of the semester grabbing my ankles and trying to relearn how to study, how to write and most importantly, how to be a student. All I did was study and go to class. I never went to any of the club meetings or to the gym. I was lonely and too distracted to really make friends. I felt like an outsider. I couldn’t relate to any of the “kids” and they couldn’t relate to me. I have gone in to the bookstore twice to buy a Cal sweatshirt and twice I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I just did not feel like I was a part of the school.

Finally, towards the end of the semester, I started getting better at studying. I started to make a few friends. I stopped telling people how old I was. I just added my seventh friend on Facebook.com (how in the world do people get three hundred friends in their profile?). Just last Thursday, I was having lunch at the Bear’s Lair on a beautiful sunny afternoon. Someone rolled a piano into the plaza and started playing Beethoven. Shortly afterwards, they had a lady sing jazz while the guy continued playing. That was cool. On the way to class, I passed through Sproul plaza and there was a group playing Taiko Asian drums. Nice. I also stopped by a booth protesting civil rights violations in North Korea. Most of the interesting political issues are represented in this plaza. Amazing. Later that day, after running up the fire trail and catching the most breathtaking sunset ever, I was walking home and I came across a group playing Brazilian instruments and doing capoeira in the dark. I got goose bumps and knew at that moment that I was smitten. All of this had been going on right under my nose. It took me until a week before finals to appreciate it.

I am so excited about the fall semester. I’m going to do things differently. I’ve got my groove back now. I won’t overwhelm myself with classes and I will have free time to take in all that Cal has to offer. I’m in love with Cal and I won’t let anything get in the way again. As for advice, don’t overload yourselves, at least not in your first semester. Take the time to check out what Cal has to offer. You’re in college only once and I think Cal is special. Remember, grad schools want well-rounded people. Lastly, put your ego on hold and really take the information in the green reader to heart. All of it is important, but my favorites were the sections on how to study and how to manage your time. Oh, and I finally went out and bought my Cal sweatshirt. The cool new grey ones!

Today's secrets

I wet my pants

I bought this Nalgene OTG bottle because I needed something slim to hold fluids. I preferred something in lexan so I could use it for *ahem* juice and not have it smell like scotch, er, apple juice, forever. I liked it, until one day I stuffed it into my backpack and the top popped open (there is a simple tab that opens it). I had 16 oz. of fluids emptied into my backpack.

I didn't know this until I felt my ass get wet. My psych books are all messed up now.

Verdict: This thing is not very well designed.

Finally, the Motorola Q

Purported to be announced May 22. I just wet myself...

Any masochists out there?

I started working out again last week. I don't care what people say about exercise--if anyone says they love it, they have got to be lying. If they say it's fun, they're crazy. And if they're excited to wake up at 6AM to run 7 miles, they can't be trusted. It feels like atonement for past sins--I hate it. I can totally understand the feelings of accomplishment, being in shape, etc. And even I feel good about myself after a long run. But, it is NOT fun. Me, I only do it because I have to:

1) I have an efficient metabolism. It sounds good, but it isn't. It essentially means my metabolic rate is slow and I have high rates of fat storage. I'm essentially a fat slob without exercise.
2) I love food.
3) I am going to try to climb Mt Rainier (Washington) in June and Mt Elbrus (Russia) a week after that and I need to be in tip top shape.
4) I love food.

The good thing about living next to UC Berkeley is that finding a hill is not hard. So right now, I run from my apartment, uphill through campus, up the fire trail (not all the way yet) and then back down. I hear the view is to die for, but I wouldn't know it yet. It's about 1 hour 20 minutes and 6.8 miles round trip right now. My knees are hurting a bit and my legs shake after every run. Yeah, I'm pretty out of shape. I'm not going to disclose my weight--let's just say I'm not exactly attractive naked right now. And please don't picture it (eeww, too late). Well, at least be generous....

A hard drive crash and a fresh start

I have a Powerbook that I use as a journal (no, I'm not a Mac elitist, I just like the fact that Mac OSX runs on BSD). I like to keep notes on my travels, experiences, gripes, etc. Memories are fickle and mine have been going as of late. Unfortunately, my hardrive died a few weeks ago and I lost a lot of my journals for a good portion of my life. So, I'm starting this blog to motivate me to reach in and pull the memories back out. And, it's an automatic backup (yeah yeah, I know, you should always backup your stuff anyway--I learned my lesson). The funny thing is, I lost my harddrive right before mid-terms. All my lecture notes "poof" gone. But, that's another story. So, I'm going to simply recall memories once in a while and complain. Yeah, lots of complaining.