blog.Xumo

Today my climber friend from india (getting his PhD here) invited a bunch of us to his home to enjoy an indian feast cooked by his parents visiting from india. His family was awesome and super generous. I’ve never had such good indian food in my life; just thinking about it makes me hungry. there was alot of ‘home style’ dishes that are never seen in restaurants because they are apparently considered too common, but because they aren’t in restaurants, i’ve never had them.
I wish i remembered the names to all the different dishes and drinks they made; man, was it tasty.

Yesterday I wanted to buy a coconut from Ralph’s. Although Von’s (aka safeway) has sentimental value to me due to my close proximity to one back in norcal, I much prefer Ralph’s to Von’s after they put in those robot cashiers. No more waiting in lines of 20+ people at that outdated Von’s. The future is now.

However, the future failed me yesterday. All i wanted was to buy a coconut, and with coconut in hand, my target acquired and mission almost accomplished, i stroll to the checkout stations all content. for some reason, all of san diego wanted to do their grocery shopping yesterday, and lines (at least 20 ppl per line with 4 lanes open) of people were piled up along each of the registers. “Ha,” i said to myself as i continued towards the checkout machines of the future. 4 of the 6 machines were out of commission and like the boring registers, and there was a massive line (if not longer than the registers) for the self checkout. Disappointed, i put my coconut back and walked out of the store.

I then went to CVS and bought an arizona green tea. All was well.

I just watched Across the Universe (black friday purchase). I went into the movie with pretty low expectations, but im not gonna lie; i liked it.

Anyone who is a Beatles-phile should have been pretty excited for this movie to come out, only to be severely disappointed by the soundtrack. Obviously covers of the Beatles are in no way going to match the caliber of the original, but I did not dislike the music.

The cinematography of the movie was well done, part modern magic, part Yellow Submarine, and part cheezy 70’s color warps (which could have been toned down a bit, but def added to the 70’s feel).

At times, the acting could have been better, but for the most part, it didn’t detract from the movie.

The story wasn’t spectacular. It didn’t reinvent anything, and the story has been told time and time again: The rich kid delinquent who realizes the harsh realities of life after being drafted; the rich, naive kid sister who realizes the harsh realities of life after everything is taken from her; the “janice joplin” character; the “hendrix”; and last but not least, the scrappy poor kid who was abandoned by his father before he was born only to search him down in a far away land, have no interaction with his father save 5 mins near the beginning and 5 at the end where they magically bond… oh and he is best friends with the rich kid and falls in love with her sister…

The movie was kinda like watching a musical chick flick with elements of the movie Rose, random clips of Platoon and youtube videos of Hendrix, scene elements from Titanic, and a tribute to Yellow Submarine.

For what it’s worth, I don’t regret my purchase, nor do i feel i wasted 2 hours of my life.

Fav part? the strawberries.

Happy Thanksgiving ;]

Black friday shopping is a pretty good representation of what the socal-norcal drive is like on a holiday.

I don’t know too much about how exactly the economy works, but I really hope that the people working on it do. Similarly, I don’t know too much about Java on Macs, but I hope the people working on it do.

Java running so darn slow on my Powerbook vs. Economic recession:
I don’t really know about the infrastructure of the (technology/economy), or if the problem is even something that can be fixed. What I DO know, however, is that I think that this is a faulty and inefficient process that I would like fixed, regardless of its possibilities.
Perhaps running slow is better than it not running at all? But that seems like such a retroactive way to look at it.

My point here isn’t really that things are pretty bad right now. It’s that usually when there is a problem, someone is trying really hard to fix that problem- except in the case of my powerbook, I think people have long abandoned improving such an ‘archaic’ system.
Maybe that’s whats wrong with the economy? It’s a 586 running in a dual core world (or is it quad core now?).

As I sit at home munching on Cocoa Puffs, preparing for a long night due to that exam, that project, or that paper, I hope that some guy in congress (or wall street, detroit, the finance industry, etc..) is losing sleep trying to some up with a solution to fix the problem.
I also wonder what they are munching on.

I must say that I’m really grateful for rss feeds. I always shove my blogging to the bottom of the pile, choosing instead to do my work (priorities) or just waste time/ relax. Blogging in itself doesn’t take too much time, but thinking about the content for the day is (or seems) pretty difficult. My priorities for blogging is definitely my photoblog, but even so, the blogging is kept to a minimum. My regular readers have dropped to an all time low since the peak from before I left to Qinghai and Tibet. I can’t believe that I was able to shoot a photo a day at that time, going out in the middle of the night if I didn’t have anything extra from previous photos. My lack of a regular blog is precisely the reason why I’m so thankful of rss feeds. I can still post on my blogs knowing that the rss will faithfully notify the few readers I have left that the once-in-a-blue-moon posting has occurred.

Printing cover pages has always been something that bothered me when working on campus. Before the actual thing you want prints, a page with your name, date, file name, and a bunch of random stuff that I’ve never read comes out first. This page always seemed utterly useless to me. I never wanted it, and I don’t like taking it. I don’t to leave it there or throw it away since it feels like such a waste of paper. And I don’t use it for scratch paper (I’m not sure why, but I just don’t like writing on the back of it). I just never know what I should do with it. Most people just leave it on the table or throw it away in the recycling bin, but it’s still a big waste of paper. BUT, the other day I found an option that allowed me to turn the cover page printing off. I’m not sure how long this option has been available, but I’m super stoked about it:

awesome.

I was thinking about this the other day when eating at the new Burger King on campus: how convenient a 24/7 fast food place would have made late night studying and/or shenanigans. So loosely ordered from ‘most wanted’ to ‘not as much wanted, but still nice’, here they are.

10 Things I wish we had (or knew about) on campus when I was a first-year (and is there now):

1) 24/7 Burger King: The 1$ value meal is pretty awesome. It’s not really THAT cheap when you actually thing about it, but the feeling you get when you can order an apple pie or a Whopper Jr. with just $1.08 on hand is pretty satisfying. The microwave heated apple pies of theirs are something that I’ve been somewhat addicted to in the past few weeks. Whopper Jrs. are good for a quick bite after a lecture from 6-9pm right before going climbing. The frozen yogurt, although watery tasting, provides a cold snack for those days when… you are craving a cold snack.. ;P There isn’t too much that is really that great about Burger King’s food, but the convenience of it all is worth it. I would much rather have a Jack in the Box (99cent tacos!), but hey, I’ll take what I can get.

2) A Piano: Ever since I got my piano, I’ve been wasting a lot less time on the internet, or rather the time I used to spend on the internet has been transferred to playing piano. I think that’s a good thing ;]. I recently found out that there is a piano in the library that we can use, and I wish I knew about it when I was still living on campus; however, I seriously doubt that I would’ve gone to use it.

3) Hopkins parking structure: Parking on campus is pretty bad, even with the new parking structure(s)… Hopkins is right next to where I was living though, giving me a higher probability of being able to get a parking spot w/o having to walk across campus.

4) Tapioca Express: It’s not exactly finished yet, but we are soon to have TapEx on campus. I really craved pearl milk tea all the time when I lived on campus, so this would have been really nice. But it’s probably a good thing that it was not readily available to me at the time. Now, I rarely ever have pearl milk tea.

5) Bear Garden, a.k.a. Beer Garden: We have this event where they give out free beer and free food every so often. I wouldn’t have been able to drink the free beer at the time, but free regents pizza is pretty exciting. (I have yet to attend one of these, but I would have been more motivated to go when I was on campus.

6) The new Price Center building: Basically, this is where all the new food stuff is, Burger King, the Sunshine Market, soon to be TapEx, and the Indian food and Greek food places that I haven’t eaten at yet. Well, since BK is open 24 hours, so is this building. There are sofas and tables and computers around to relax or study. It’s a pretty nice place.

7 & 8) CSE and EBUII: The Computer Science and Engineering building and the Engineering Building Unit II are nice places to study when not wanting to be in the library.

9) Combat training room: I really wish I knew about this my first year. It’s a room with heavy bags and speed bags, and no one is ever there.

10) The Giant Stone Bear: Technically this was built the end of my first year. But it is just so darn awesome. Oh, and you can boulder it. ;D

I’ve been looking to get a digital piano, and I’m torn between getting a cheaper lower end vs. a more expensive higher end. The “lower end” pianos aren’t even bad, it’s just the notion that I can get a more realistic sounding piano that’s holding me back. At the moment I’m looking at the used options, but I can also get a new one for just a little bit more money, and I won’t have to deal with the whole ‘was it worth it’ feeling (well, ‘a different was it worth it’ feeling). I’m itching to play, but I think I’ll give it another few days before I make a decision.

edit: I am now a proud owner of a yamaha p-85. hooray!

I just realized that I can blog about my photoblog. How exciting!

Here is my latest photo:
A Step to Senbazuru
‘An ancient Japanese legend says that anyone who folds a thousand origami cranes will be granted a wish by a mythical crane. November 5, 2008.’

edit:
Here is my latest photo:
A Tibetan Deity