New all-purpose semi trekking shoes

Bought them because I really needed a new pair of sneakers after I left my old one muddy and woozing water in Hawaii.

699 NTD. Made in China. I'd think it's all worth it if they last 2 years.

And now there's light

I made a huge decision and had my eyes Lasiked a week ago. Here's what happened so far.

2/16 The big day
All in all, it's a funny sensation. I was told to stare at this red dot which was actually orange, and I could feel the doctor cutting on the surface of my eyes and flipping open the flap he made with the cuts. The red dot became a big orange rim right after the flipping thing. When the laser started hitting, I could see light blue sparks surrounding the orange rim. The whole procedure probably lasted 30 minutes. When I walked out of the operation room, I could already see much farther, if only all blurry.
After getting home, all hell broke loose. I heard from a friend that she just went directly to bed and woke up to clear, sharp vision. Not such luck for me. The pain was so bad that couldn't fall asleep, even with the help of a painkiller. I was wondering to myself why the nurse told me it's normal to tear up but I didn't seem to be doing much of that. I sat up in the bed, and the tears came streaming down as if from a collapsing dam. So I lied back down. The really bad time lasted about 2 hours, and by 4 hours there were only mild irritations. Hail to the rapid healing powers of eyes.

Bloodshot eyes after the surgery. This is in fact caused by the cuts.



Silly-looking eye shield. Need to wear them during sleep so the fingers don't go to wrong places and do bad things. I feel like an NBA hotshot.

2/18 First post-surgery exam
Doing well. R: +1.2, L: +0.9. Slight inflammation. Couldn't see clearly with my left eye, but the doctor said it was natural since it was worse than -1.0. Would take longer.

2/23 Second post-surgery exam
Inflammation gone. R: +1.2, L: +1.0. Still had trouble seeing clearly with my left eye. Doc told me he overdid a bit on purpose because weak eyes like my left one almost always regress after the surgery. So for the time being I am far-sighted in that eye and that's why I can't seem to focus properly on anything. Sounds good to me.

A week from the surgery. The blood is going away a bit. It feels funny to go to bed seeing everything so clearly. I have to tell myself not to poke into my eyes to remove the nonexistent contacts.

這是鼠的年!! This is the year of the rat!!

It is amazing how machine translators are offering good jokes these days. That's why you get things like 這是鼠的年 when people try to say this year is the year of the rat. Such literal translations always seem right when you convert them back to the source language, which says "this is the year of the rat", but anyone who speaks the target language is always in for a laugh when they see the translation and also when they see how 新年快樂 (happy new year) can be translated to "new year is happy."

Hail to machine translators. That's why I still have a job.

A hell of a way to wake myself up

Had the most horrible dream ever while waking up this morning. It's a sure sign telling you it's time to wake up when you can experience such wrenching emotions in just one dream. So I did. If that's a punishment for sleeping in (and getting an email from your boss wanting to discuss your working hours online but she's already off), I'll try to wake up earlier next time...

Kauai, Hawaii trip – Map

Last but not least, the map highlighting where we've been.

Kauai, Hawaii trip – Local specialties

Wild chickens: These well-fed creatures could be sighted everywhere. Obviously leading a comfortable life.





Spouting Horn




Poipu Beach: the beach and the snorkel gear rental.





Bridges



Tree tunnel




Sunset




Fruit stands




Funny plants: Signature plant, cactus (?!), tree roots and Cook Pine (I don't think they've been trimmed...).







Kekaha Beach: the only sunny spot on the whole island on that particular day.




Spiced-up signs

Kauai, Hawaii trip – Climb your rear end off to get to the top of the world

After the strenuous and slimy trail of Kee Beach, you'd think that no one remotely sane would want to do something similar. But trust me, time does weird things to your mind. And let's face it, the view and fun were definitely worth it. So we took off for Waimea Canyon 3 days after we got out of the muddy goodness. To get there, we had to drive all the way up along a winding mountain road, which obviously was foreign to a lot of Americans. Being Taiwanese, I felt adequately confident that I would fare pretty well.

The entrances of a handful of trails span along the road heading up to Kokee Museum. Apparently a lot of people chose to stay there overnight, but we figured one day was probably quite enough. We chose the Nualolo-Awaawapuhi loop since it was highly recommended by the old lady working at the museum. (Seriously, how bad could it be if a 65-year-old lady could do it?) With the last experience in mind, we bought new hiking boots and brought lots of water/drinks and (ah-ha!) bug spray.

The first mile was torturing. The slope was steep, and the fact that I couldn't seem to get enough air didn't exactly help. The chef tried to morph into my personal cheerleader but still failed to wean me from every-10-min breaks. But here's where the mystery of human bodies kicked in. When you tortured yourself long enough, you simply stopped feeling the pain as much.




We walked on some narrow paths dangerously close to the cliff and arrived at the first outlook hours later. It was something that I've definitely never seen before. Quoting a friend, you'd just feel very close to the sky. And here the rainbows showed up once again (as they did from time to time on this island), and I could barely believe my eyes when one of them was making a trail of raining showers on the sea (or the other way around. Oh who cares, minor scientific details). The whole scene was so breathtaking that I hated the idea of moving on to the returning trail even more. My new boots were not exactly helping either by giving me hell. They were men's boots and therefore about 1 size too big. I don't care what those motivation coaches say, but when you hurt yourself by making each step, it's really hard to forget the pain and to work up the motivation. At that moment, I just wanted to lie there and play dead.







But you've got to do what you've got to do. The only consolation was, you could hate what you've got to do with all your heart. I had no idea what kind of sadistic twisted pervert could have planned such a route, but the return trail was heading all the way uphill. If there were Armageddon, we were hiking it. The only good news appeared to be the absence of mosquitoes—even though I did remember to bring the bug spray this time. Detecting that my battery juice was drying up, the chef volunteered to carry my backpack for me. I felt bad. But that only lasted like 3 minutes. The truth be told, I was running out of energy (no bunny prize for me). After another 3 hours or so, we saw the best view EVER: a car parked at the exit.



A lady from Canada with her son offered to give us a ride back to where we parked our car, and I tried not to behave too desperate when I took the offer for us. The chef later said that she probably wouldn't have made the offer if he were hiking alone. Uh duh! Who'd pick a 200-pound strapping male instead of a fragile helpless petite brunette in this case scenario?! Now you know we shorties can work our charms too.

On the way down, I got carsick. I guess that was a pretty suitable wrap-up for such a devious trekking experience. I would just classify this along with the parasailing flight in Borocay under "Must Do, Not Again."

Kauai, Hawaii trip – A muddy day to remember

I still don't know what we were thinking, but we decided to take on our first mountain trail at the Napali Coast, starting at Kee Beach after days of raining. In retrospective, that day started as shittily as possible. Never a morning person, I was understandably grumpy when I was forced to wake up and rushed into the convertible we rented. With at least 5 things in my hands, I threw my sunglasses and the necklace I bought the day before onto the dashboard. This was not some ordinary necklace. It was consisted of beautiful delicate bright blue beads with a yellow flat pearl disk as the centerpiece. Most important, it cost me only $20. All the reasons to love something. When I was done dumping down all other irrelevant things into the backseat and turned around to put on my trophy, it wasn't there. I worked up a fit of hysterical obsession, trying to figure out how something physically incapable of evaporating could disappear in the three seconds that my head was turned. After searching the dashboard and the passenger seat for 30 minutes and attempting to cram my fingers into the small slit between the dashboard and the windshield glass, my personal chef finally managed to convince me two things that I refused accept: one, the frigging stupid car ate my necklace, and two, I wouldn't be able to squeeze my fingers into a space 1/4 their sizes to reach for something I couldn't even see.

Deprived of a psychological closure, I acted like a mature grown-up and sat there sullenly until we got to our destination. Kee Beach is actually at the end of the highway that loops the entire island. From there, you walk. And so we did. To be fair to the trail, it was quite fun. I could hardly think of anything more fun than walking on a muddy trail that made you slip 3 times and gave you a muddy butt to prove that you did. Since it has been raining, the mud and water were simply unavoidable. No matter how we tried, they just got everywhere. And by everywhere I meant everywhere. Well, maybe not for that nimble smug guy jumping and shifting balance beside me, but I was definitely covered by mud from waist down. The hell of all this was, it really got kind of fun after a while. With wet and muddy pants, we learned fast that trying to keep clean was as futile as Don Quixote with his wind mills; might as well just tread through the water holes and enjoy splashing each other and spotting a creak where we could clean ourselves up. To be damned, I forgot the bug spray that I brought for this trip and left it in the condo, and the only logical outcome was me being eaten alive by colonies of mosquitoes. Ironically, all that mud on me didn't seem to deter them one bit.

When we finally got back to where we parked our car, it was getting dark. We didn't have much time to celebrate how we did a splendid job getting back before sunset. Out of exhaustion and some pure black magic working against us, my chef locked the car key in the trunk. The doors were unlocked so we had access to the inside of the car, but these goddamn convertibles just didn't have a button that could release the trunk lock. We stood there for some time, helpless and clueless, while good people passed by offering opinions as to how to open the trunk. None of them worked. And the mosquito bites on me were adding up at an alarming speed. Miraculously we didn't yell at each other. I guess we were beyond exhaustion to do that. We decided this was the time to call in cavalry, but the problem was, ah-ha, the cell phone was in the trunk! So I geared into the Shameless mode, and approached a couple to borrow their cell phone. This couple of good Samaritans offered not just their cell phone but the car rental phone number and a ride to a bigger town on their way back. We were dropped off at Hanalei, with the mission to call the car rental road assistance again on a phone which they could get back to us. So there we went again, barging into a restaurant and asking the owner if we could borrow her phone if we dined there. She graciously agreed. An hour or two later, the locksmith showed up like an angel. He drove us back to that deserted end of road and popped the trunk through some device hidden in the panel on the passenger side.

Along with the locksmith went some $130, refundable by the car rental. Honestly I didn't care anymore. I just felt like kneeling down and kissing the locksmith's feet when I heard the most wonderful music of "click". And guess what would be our next challenge. Get the hell back and take a shower. You got that right.

Kauai, Hawaii trip – Where we stayed

The place we stayed at is a condo called Kapaa Shore right on the beach front. I didn't know what to expect before we got there so I brought everything I thought I'd need. Turned out they had pretty much everything: clean towels, dish washer, detergent, garbage bags, clean sheets, laundry basket, blow dryer, outdoor pool and hot tub, grill… You name it, they have it. It's a home away from home. Except you don't have to clean up when you leave.

The beach right outside the condo was a bit rough, plus the weather always seemed a bit too wet and cold for me to go for a dip, but the view was awesome. For the next trip, I'd go for a condo anytime.

Done deal

And it's a done deal now. I just signed the contracts and sent them out in the mail. For better or for worse, this is what I will be doing for the next several months or longer. Hopefully everything turns out alright. My fingers crossed.

I ♥ geeks

While I was reviewing some movies on my facebook, I had this epiphany: I like geeks! Be them a quirky girl looking for her Mr. Right, a high school misfit befriending other weirdoes or even a glasses-wearing nerd that chops off other people's limbs for a feast, I just love them. People say you like things because you see reflections of yourself or projection of aspirations in them. So deep down I feel like a blood-thirsty unpopular outcast longing for someone as weird as I am. Great. Now I feel so much better about myself. :-D

Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain



This girl has a gnome taken around the world to encourage her dad to leave his prison of home and sadness. She comes up with creative methods helping or punishing other people and falls for a guy who works in a porn shop and enjoys scraping discarded Polaroid photos from under photo booths.

Napolean Dynamite



The one-ton TNT seems to always have 3 seconds' delay in response and his mouth is always open forming a perpetual moronic look. His uncle sells breast enhancement products and his best friend shaves his head because a fever makes him feel hot. And then da bomb dishes out this amazing out-of-date dance that totally blows your mind.

And finally my favorite, Kevin of Sin City



Kevin wears preppy clothes and always has glasses on. His smile is ever-polite while he chops limbs off of living humans for a feast. This taciturn guy never speaks a word. He just indulges in his little hobby and actually seems happy when someone shares his liking by chopping him up. How's that for a change from the puppy-eyed Frodo. Totally altered my impression on Elijah Wood.

Not above a hangover

Because I suck at drinking, usually 2 beers will send me under the table (I progressed from one, so I'd say that's a 100% improvement). For the same reason, I always thought that I am not as affected by hangovers as others are. Come on, there is just not enough alcohol in my system to give me one! Is there?

After one pineapple mojito and some retrospective thinking the next morning, I finally realized I was so wrong. All those queasy feelings I got when I woke up could not be contributed to age and slowly but steadily sliding health. So fine, one drink is enough to give me a hangover. Even though I feel sober before going to bed.

Is that going to make me give up my occasional indulgence? Get real.

And I popped the question – No, not THAT one

After two happy years with my current job, it came to the point where I either move on or lay down and wait to bore myself to death. The driving (dark) force behind this urge is of course the plans I have for my life, and for the time being the long and winding road appears to lead me to another country. Or at least I try to trample down all the grass and make my way there. The last straw is what we are doing these days at work – almost nothing. It really saddens me that something that used to give me excitement, gratification, sense of achievement, stomach aches, panic attacks and dark circles now seems to give me only one thing: boredom. When you have a job, you really hope there's something to work on.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not thrilled to get out. I like my boss and I generally have great times working with my colleagues. (Well, maybe I'm too clammed up to really get to mingle with them, but that's not the point here.) That's why when I popped the question at my boss asking him for discharge, it wasn't as easy as I hoped. I felt bad leaving the team at such a bad time, but honestly leaving is just a matter of time. What he said kind of made me feel worse and better at the same time: "My fear just came true. I know I can't keep you here and I'm happy for you. It's a great loss to the company. There are people out there who have a good eye on talents. Good for them. Too bad you are leaving the company so early. I was considering you as a candidate to lead the team if I am assigned to cultivate another market." Whoa. Didn't see that coming. It's always nice to know that you're appreciated, but then that's sadly not enough to keep me there.

That's one thing done. Now I'll just focus on keeping my fingers crossed that the new company will follow through with the offer.

New revelation on who I really am

I hate changes. Not those that I am prepared for. I hate them when I have plans set and suddenly am told to take another route. If I foresee possible changes, they don't count. So maybe in fact what I don't like is being out of control. Yeah. The control freak talking here. Sometimes I just feel that I'm getting a little too good at this "analyze me" thing. Reportedly potentially annoying. But hey, everyone has a right to happiness, right? So figuring out the problem is the answer, right?

How to know your mom rocks and will be the Queen of the Universe

You know your mom can whoop your ass and blow you away when:

10. it takes her 0 seconds to OK your moving out to somewhere 4 bus stops away.
9. she knows what a "bike tote" is when you have absolutely no idea.
8. she seems to know way more Korean stars than you do and can make a detailed list of which films they have been in.
7. she looks up films and drama flicks on the internet. No one ever taught her how to do it.
6. she could swim for more than 1 hour without breaks.
5. she builds a perfectly-crafted sturdy makeshift crib for her grandson in one day.
4. she bookmarks the Playboy site just because she thinks you "might be curious."
3. she stays calm when you tell her your bf is a different race.
2. she doesn't flinch when you then reveal that he's 7 years younger than you.
1. she stands on her head and forearms steady like a rock while you wobble and roll around wildly like an egg. She's 61.

May the Queen have mercy on us all.

Screen name calling

Since online chatting software is almost indispensable in my line of work, a neat scene at the workplace is everybody typing madly away on their keyboards. People normally don't talk, they type. When you spend more than 5 minutes speaking to a colleague, you feel guilty making all that noise. With this trend comes an interesting phenomenon, which I'll simply dub "screen name calling." In effect, some people enter a line in their name display to describe how they feel or think. Most of the time you will learn what kind of pet they have, how old their acquaintances are and some other tidbits of their lives, but sometimes you can see pointed statements. And then the guessing game ensues. Is it me or is it the girl in front of me? Or the guy next to the girl in front of me? It's alright if you don't give a damn, but unfortunately 99% of human beings are not designed this way.

As far as I am concerned, screen name calling is probably a very good way to blow off some steam. Other than that, it doesn't have much use. It doesn't get things fixed because no one really wants to stand up and say, hey, that ass is me, isn't it, and it definitely doesn't make people happy if they suspect they are the target, and they would in turn make you even unhappier than you already are. But then, I was boldfaced enough to ask someone some time ago if her screen name complaining about noises was about me. It was not. And I am so thick that I might not even know when it IS about me. So what do I know.

Weird dreams

#1 The Flying Snake Ladies
I went out with my big sis, and she came up with this novel idea of a flying device for me: a dried snake around my torso with a big balloon attached to it. I asked her, are you sure this is safe? She said, sure it is, can't you see that thing is dead? So we took flight and started soaring above the busy streets. The good feeling didn't last long. I felt the snake moving and I panicked and called for an emergency landing. When we got back on the ground, I found that damn thing is turning alive. I screamed at my big sis, why the f--- did you say it's dead?! It's producing blood on its own and it's coming back to life!!! And then I started sucking on the snake in a heroic effort to drink its blood dry (and keep the snake dead). The thing was pissed and bit on my cheek. My last thought was, damn, my cheek is getting numb. If I die from the venom, it's all my bib sis's fault. And man the snake blood is nasty.

#2 50 Cent and the Big Fish
So I was hanging out with 50 Cent. (Yes, THAT 50 Cent. Don't ask me why some rapper whose face I don't even recognize would do cameo in my dream.) And we were talking and walking in this Chinese garden with a tall shelter-like building that's common in Chinese architecture. And then I saw a small pond that's carved out of stone at a turn of the corridor. We went over to find a gigantic fish in the pond. It's so huge that it couldn't turn or even budge that much in the pond. And it's covered with moss that has turned the creature completely green. I said, oh my god, look at that poor soul. 50 Cent said, yeah, that's too bad. And then we turned to walk away.

Don't ask me to explain these screwed up dreams. I have no idea what they are about.

10 years from now

I went out with two ex-coworkers for a dinner date last Sunday. According to what I was told, we were to meet in a bookstore where they wanted to pick up some travel books for an upcoming trip to South America. When I got there, I got a call. It was E telling me that she's in the department store close to the bookstore and I was to meet them there. Turned out she had been stuck in there for the past hour and had picked out a few things that she liked. When I met up with her and T, her best friend, T asked me to join forces with her and stop E from buying any stuff. I didn't get the picture at first, but toward the end of the night, I finally did. It took only 3 hours for E to spend 70k on 3 things and try to get a friend of mine that I haven't seen for a year who happened to work for a boutique there to give her extra discounts. And these are just the consolation prizes she got for not buying a bag she wanted.

T and E have always been idols of mine. They are in their 40's, smart, sharp, strong, unique and accomplished. Most of all, they are not just material girls. They have depth. Which I don't. That's one of the reasons why I admire them so much. I have envied how they have found the professional love of their lives and are making (relatively) big bucks out of them. Something I'm not sure I'll be able to achieve when I hit 40. And man, they can SHOP!!! So will I be there 10 years from now, burning truckloads of money without blinking just because I can (and maybe because I'm loaded) and attempting to coerce some discount out of a friend of my friend? Hmm… tempting… but I'm not sure if these all come in a package. Can I take only the part where it involves truckloads of money?

Repetition kills brain cells

I'm not sure if it's because of the nature of my job, but I'm having less and less patience with anything repetitive (or dare I say, redundant). When you have to make a living dealing with repetitive things and being "detail-oriented" (a.k.a. obsessive compulsive), any other repetitiveness outside work is simply unbearable. Like when they play these awful whining songs on the radio. I'm not against pop songs. No, in fact I love them just like I love my junk food. But for god's sake, do you REALLY have to sing those same two words 5 times to wrap up the whole crap?! Even if you're trying to hypnotize me into buying the crap, that's just some overkill that'd drive me out of my hypnosis. And do you REALLY have to say “welcome! You can try on anything you like” every 1 min?! Honestly, I got the point the first time you said it, and I definitely don't feel any more welcome the more you say it. Yes, you are paid to say that and are just trying to do your job, but they might as well put a PA system there to do it. At least I'd know it’s a damn machine and it can't help it.

Knowing more is better… or is it?

Knowledge is power. That's why people encourage you to get more and more of it. But are we really happier? A research just found out that the blood people have been getting during surgeries probably helps little (see here). Oh what irony. All the while we thought we would be fine because of someone else's “greater love,” their love was backed up in our veins stinking our systems up and starving us of oxygen. It's sad that good intentions just aren't enough anymore these days. No wonder there's the saying “to love something is to know nothing.” Now that you know one more tidbit of info, there's just one more thing you'll have to have in handy: mobile human blood bank before going into the operation room.