IT'S amazing how infectious music is. I thought in the j-rock category only Luna Sea, The Pillows (who brought us the FLCL anime soundtrack, of course), and a few others could trojan their melodies into my head again and again, but lately I've been humming a few singles from Plastic Tree a lot. on the web, people seem to say everyone knows this band, but few have heard their music. do you know anything about Pura-Turi? lemme know if you do ;) although the vocalist's got a soft voice, even for an alternative band, and usually looks like a goth schoolgirl in photos, when their electric riffs come on and he's screaming regret-laden lyrics at you, it really pumps me up, makes me want to just let loose and yell from my car, cube, shower. so today i'll share some of that with ya: (my favorite is the last one, "nukegara")

plastic_tree_-_sink_01_-_sink.mp3
plastic_tree_-_tsumetai_hikari_01_-_tsumetai_hikari.mp3
plastic_tree_-_tsumetai_hikari_02_-_buranko_kara.mp3
plastic_tree_-_zetsubou_no_oka_01_-_zetsubou_no_oka.mp3
plastic_tree_-_zetsubou_no_oka_02_-_nukegara.mp3

f u r i k u r i !
-- 2:03 AM

TODAY i took my car to the auto shop. it's been, what, maybe three weeks since it started making noises. not the hyperactive bird-chirping that my engine belt was making during winter in pittsburgh, but a rather "wooden" sounding slow creaking -- like i'm sitting right in the bowel of a sea-faring ship being tossed by ocean waves -- which creeps up when i'm accelerating into a turn. the noises make me realize that i've probably been too inconsiderate to my nissan with my own crazy driving. if i don't want my ride to bail out on me in the midst of those three-lane changes, then i best have it checked out at the shop. so my coworker suggested a place to me, an inconspicuous shop owned by a man named Zuccato. my mind immediately conjures up images of sly mechanics answering car questions with suspicious, wide smirks (especially after Aki's "carburator" story)... but i trust my friend's good judgement, and after lunch arrived at the shop. mr zuccatto himself -- not a tall man, but he has mass and wore a gruff look -- greeted me and wanted to take a test drive. around the block we go and into an empty parking lot, but he was still having trouble sensing the problem. so how about this, i said, you stand outside the car and i'll make it happen. since i'd gotten used to compensating my steering for the noise, conversely, i could summon it at will. it took but one turn before he quickly said, ahh i hear it, definitely something with your front axel, maybe a cv joint. well, i didn't want any hassel, just my car healed. i left the car with him and told him to do whatever he needs to do. within the hour, he calls back to give me some price estimates, says yep your your cv boot was busted open and the lube has leaked dry -- oh man, that's from my notorious drive on that rainy pittsburgh night. and just a couple of minute-hand trips around the clock later, he called again. well i'm done, that was easier than i thought, you can come pick it up. amazing -- and i had feared having to wait a day or possibly the weekend for that darn fix. and when i returned to the auto shop, he took me into the office to show me. see, here the computer says it should've taken me two hours, but not really, he said with a wide smirk, it's wrong so i'll charge you one f-cking hour. i grinned back. awesome, and i appreciate it, sir. and that made my day. a mechanic i can respect, and my precious car back. ;)
-- 1:31 AM

my fingers hurt, and i'm happy about it! no.. i haven't turned masochistic since the last time you saw me. if i were, moving out to california would totally be the wrong choice =) no, actually, i've been trying to get back into playing my guitar. i took classical for a couple years as a kid and haven't touched it since high school. moving out here i decided to ship it with me; i feel some sympathy for anything that's been sitting in the closet for 4 years. hmm.. but this time, i'm going for less spanish and more modern stuff. not that it really matters what i start out with, i've cleanly forgotten everything i've learned before anyways. ;) i'll go for a few practice rounds and maybe try some j-rock tabs.. and see how it goes. maybe, even get an electric someday! but for now, i'll continue to practice and keep alive those little red x's on my fingertips from all the string-pressing.
-- 1:25 PM

i should've posted this yesterday.. but i'd gotten lazy and went home and slept early. =) my living room still needs a sofa. i would've already run out and bought something if i wasn't being so frugal and choosey at the same time. instead, i've been scanning the classifieds on craig's list and hoping to find a good deal on a leather couch, something black and comfortable, not too new and stiff. i finally found an ad yesterday that looks promising; some guy in san jose was selling a pair of sofa and loveseat, eight or nine hundred dollars, a pretty good deal considering the loveseat was just as big as the sofa and could sit two or three people. so i emailed the guy, asked if he'd be home that afternoon. yes he'll be in from 3 o'clock onward, he replied. well, i figured, i shouldn't run off in the middle of work so much. i decided i'd take off a bit before 6pm to see the couch at his place. and thus began a strange drive..

first, i dunno why i wasn't using common sense. maybe it's because i haven't been out driving much at 6pm lately, smack in the middle of rush hour. but as i left work 15 minutes early, thinking that would be just enough time for me to get to the place at six, and entered the ramp close to work onto highway 101, mentally my jaw dropped. traffic backed up.. cars snaking forward for quarter miles to come. boy, gonna be a long drive. i pop in a bob dylan cd my coworker lended me, acoustic folk music from the young days when he was still 21 or 22 years old, although at the time i couldn't tell at all from his worn, mature voice. i merged onto the freeway lane, relaxed, and juggled the brake and gas pedals like everyone else.

twenty-seven minutes later, i finally get to the exit to the sofa. this guy must live way out in the san jose suburbs, cuz i've never been so far south in this city. i followed the exit out, made a left, now i'm on the road that should lead to sofa's neighborhood. but this guy really does live in the southern-most edge of san jose. his street was the last street at the end, the street sign barely visible. but i didn't know. i drive for about 5 mins and started guessing maybe i missed something. then all the scenery around me became bare hills and farmland. i checked my road atlas. yep. gotta do a U-ee.. *quack...*

by this time i'd given up being aggressive about making it to the sofa on time. i was starting to enjoy the dylan cd anyways. so it came as no surprise when i pulled up to the guy's house and he tells me that somebody already put a down payment on it.. just 30 minutes ago.. and six people had been interested before *him*.. bah, good furniture goes fast around here. i should've known better. next time i see a nice couch, i'll be out that door like *that*, riding down the stairs and into my car batman-style, flames coming out of my tailpipe. *slow traffic keep right* =) but in the mean time, what a bummer. and to add insult to injury, san jose's always gotta build highways that are somewhat parallel but they intersect. i'm heading out of the sofa 'hood, about to turn back onto hwy 101 north when hwy 85's ramps show up and decide they'll all have a square dance. the ramps were literally, 101 south, 85 north, 101 north, swing your partner 'round and 'round. traffic's merging everywhere, i get confused, before i know it i'm driving cluelessly north on 85. this is wierd, i don't remember an extra highway being here.. and at the same i spot some traffic lights zooming by above my windshield. what kind of a highway has traffic lights..?

ack, no reason to complain.. i've been on 85 before and i knew it'll lead back to 87, which'll take me through san jose downtown and back to work. i keep on this road and it'll be cool. and suddenly it became more than cool, it was surreal. i followed the road as it curved from slightly south to slightly north, and i'm hit by the gleaming sun and gorgeous view of the western santa clara mountains. the light from the sun was just right, just warm and thick enough to bath the sky and paint the mountains into rows of silhouttes fading into the horizon, like an intricate shadow-puppet backdrop. boy, that alone made the whole drive worthwhile. and a lone airplane was skidding across the sky, leaving a trail of thin man-made clouds. wish i could've been high up there to see the miniature world below.. finally, traffic going back wasn't too bad, and in no time i was back in santa clara, with the familiar rugged hills of the east bay area in sight, waiting at an 8 lane intersection to make a left turn into nvidia, watching stampedes of cars on both sides of the road overflow like hugh arm ants across the road overpass. man, what a strange place califnornia is. oh well, made it just in time for dinner!

today's post was brought to you by the letter L and the number 3.
-- 9:48 PM

ack.. i was just glancing through my blog, thinking about something to post, when i realized, there's the sprint pcs guy looking back at me in the ad banner above, holding out a samsung phone and smiling as if he knew the depths of my daily concerns could be solved with p-c-s.

me: dammit, my code won't compile!
sprint guy: i see the problem. you've got cellular. *hands me a sanyo phone* here, you should switch to sprint pcs with the new pcs vision technology, so you can look at pretty stamp-sized pictures from the web and regain your inspiration. oh, and get a haircut too.
me: thanks, sprint pcs man, i feel a hacking storm coming!

i think the only sprint pcs commercial i've ever liked is the one with the worm-aliens from Men in Black.* but despite that, i still end up watching the whole thing whenever one comes on.

* - site might ask u to install some random macromedia stuff, case you wanna know.
-- 11:14 AM

brain-dump time! (for whatever reason the theme from classic batman runs thru my mind as i type this... nah-nah-nuh-nuh nuh-nuh-nah-nah bat-man!) so i was just on my way back home to san jose from a city called redwood shores, home of a might companny called Oracle, further north along the bay area. and i decided i wanted to swing by work and jot down some ideas. now Oracle's campus is almost what i would call the perfect information-age embodiment of, oh what's the word.. impending presence, or eminence if you will. each of its building is a castle tower that stabs upward from the low skyline of redwood city, together forming a circle of modern-day silver spires. now of course it doesn't conjure the same level of power and austerity as the view from the foot of the well-missed world trade centers, nor the sense of wonder at human toil and success as a tour through the highrises of midtown manhattan does, but walk up to one of Oracle's glimmering buildings and peer into its minimalist but modern-chic high-ceiling lobbies, and i can't help but be impressed by the amount of success attainable from 1- and 0-bits of a computer, simple low and high variations of voltage in some machine that apparently some people around the world value enough to put down billions of dollars for.

so what was i doing up in redwood city? i was having dinner tonight with a few friends, jane, rebecca, and albert -- the latter two being from cmu and albert having been my freshman roommate whom i haven't really talked to in three or four years. but he works so hard out here -- i wish i could have that amount of focus on my work, but well more on that later. at dinner i ask them if they'd like to go see an opera. in fact one of Puccini's creations called Turandot had just started playing at the SF opera. jane surprised me a bit saying she had seasons pass to the SJ opera (that's really cool tho =), and i think i overwhelmed the other two by the subject itself. perhaps it seems like i'm conveying an image that i can't live without planning something with someone every weekend (which is quite contrary to my usual nature, independent as i am =) but on the other hand i'm just trying to get to know ppl better. it's hard to find interesting peeps sometimes, even in the bay area. there are interesting ones you'd rather observe or gossip about, and there are interesting others whom you'd want to converse with and learn about. i've been just trying to establish some friends out here whose brains i can pick, much like my interesting, sometimes subtle friends from cmu.

as you'll be noticing, my style of writing reflects all those idealism floating in this head of mine. =) perhaps you'll get used to it as well, and find some interest in seeing the world as i imagine it. for example, as i was walking into my building in nvidia to write this, i noticed the janitors had just mopped the floors of the lobby. the water hadn't completely up yet, so you could still see the strokes and the rhythms in their work, which really reminding me of the art of chinese calligraphy -- but specifically of my trip to beijing last year when, on tour of one of the huge public parks in that city, i noticed an elderly man practicing calligraphy on the floor tiles of a garden's path, his two aged but dexterous arms writing out each chinese character perfectly, with ancient poetry as his verse and water as his ink. and as he started each new line of poem, the previous line would slowly be fading away, or perhaps the stone beneath was selfishing melding the poety into itself. if i could see my coding job in the same light as i see the janitor's weekly chores, ephemeral strokes weaving together forming some form of art, perhaps i would be a very successful engineer. but for now i'm satisfied just to share the imagery with you.. and don't get me started on the bright lights currently turned in this office! for some reason at nearly two in the morning all of the office lights on this floor are turned to their fullest. i feel like straight out of the eerie scene from the truman show where the set's "daylight" totally turns on in the middle of the night, much to the surprise of jim carrey's character!

a friend of mine from troy was afraid of something bad happening tomorrow in ny, on the anniversary of 9/11. i say let's all be cautious tomorrow, but don't let any fears get us down. we should give our thoughts to the victims of 12 months ago today, but to keep a high outlook too. when i said to my friend, if i don't see you online tonight, have a fortunate and safe day tomorrow, she said, "I WILL! and thursday and everyday afterwards!" i think that's just the right attitude to have these days. let the past -- whatever shade of white, gray, or black it is -- launch you into a positive future. and before i head out, i do hope everyone has a safe week, and may you continue to be around your loved ones for a long time to come. =) nite
-- 2:41 AM

wellz... tonight I've been messing with the template for this blog. took away all those extra empty lines, but i think i'll put some of them back as now my page is quite short! i'll prolly tweak the colors too. right now... it look so... Office XP-like.
but anyhow, to the left in the green, i'm gonna list songs i've been listening to. perhaps i'll somehow find a way to actually link it to my mp3s, so you can see what i enjoy. i'd love to share some of my musical horizons, so don't be afraid to try them out!

hm... random thought of the day -- well, since i use google *all* the time (some of you have heard me quote "google knows all!" more than a few time) i couldn't but wonder, if google's spell checking feature, where they automatically correct typos in your searches, will ever detriment the spelling skills of young American schoolchildren?

Theyr genraxion maight groe up thnkin it's perfectlee okay to wriet this way!

or maybe it's just me... oh well. if you're bored you can try copy'ng the previous sentence into google. me? it's gettin late and i gotta get up tomorrow to head to san francisco tomorrow for the Chocolate Festival at Ghiradelli Square! =)

therefore, i bid you goodnight!
-- 12:42 AM

Ooh... this is my discovery of the bold button. yes, i realize i'm easily entertained.
-- 11:18 PM

Eh... It's the first entry into my blog and I've already developed a block. Or rather what I wanted to say a few moments ago has now fleeted from my memory. I think I was about to send out a few general vents. Well, I miss my friends back in Carnege Mellon University (CMU) where amidst rush and confusion I graduated three months ago.

Unforunately at my full-time job at nVidia (sorry, i can't get you free geforce cards -- we don't make 'em ourselves!) work is often pressing and ppl are generally pretty focused. -- ahh, you'll notice i'm getting more relaxed now since i've shed my typing of all uppercases and an occasional punctuation. -- but i guess my refreshing visiting to the east coast (yes, for me, after two months of no rain in cali, some showery weather did cheer me up a bit. i'm like that =) has reminded me a bit about how i miss college life. out here in the 'real world' the lines between work - life - play is so distinct i'm having trouble balancing it at times. ahh, i imagine my social life (out here in cali that is; my friends online are totally awesome) is like a snowball that as it picks up pace it grows and gets going. so i'm just ranting here a bit but i'm not concerned. and thank you to those of you who've tried to move my butt out of the office at night through loud, albeit typed words. =)

Anywayz.. i'm gonna stop right around here and i know this is pretty boring but my blog will pick up soon. i've got plenty to say but i think it all works better when i'm inspired and on-the-spot. so don't be surprised to see some random ravings from ideas i get during bored hours at work as well. and finally, a friend of mine at cmu informed me about a critical health condition that has befallen one of her friends. my heart's with that person, and if you get around to it, perchance you can pray for them too, and although you probably don't know that person, you can send the prayers to me and i'll forward them.

good night all for now. i'll prob post some time tomorrow!
-- 11:15 PM