Saturday, March 28, 2015

A bad patch

On 92 East Bound exiting to Foster City, there is a pothole which was recently patched. I know because every time I drove on it, I hit a bump, and it was worse than before it was fixed. I noticed many people, including myself, tried to avoid droving on it if we could help it, which in high traffic hours could have been dangerous.

I wonder if it and how it could be fixed up again.

Sometimes, a bad patch is worse than not patching at all.

Vintage

As we were in our rental Nissan Altima driving around the Kauai Island, I took a look at the three-button car key laying in the cup holder, and thought that key-less cars were becoming the norm nowadays.

"Pretty soon my car would become vintage." I marveled. I drive a 2004 Honda Accord, which still use the traditional car key.

Jack said: "Vintage would be over 25  years."

He thought about it and continued, "I remember when people used to drive those cars such as Chevelle, Impala, Corvear, and they were pos (piece of sh**). Now people drive them as if they were vintage. They are vintage pos."

Photos of the past and present

Found these photos from the computer.
Lake Tahoe





Fetch

Me and my toy fox


Looking this way



Ocean blue

Spring poppy
Kauai coast


Sunday, March 8, 2015

Have you ever

Been so fatigue that you don't want to read anything, write anything or do anything productive? You Just want to veg. That was how I felt last night after a week of hard work. I felt, somehow that, I earned the privilege of doing nothing.

I was fortunate to have worked with many very smart and good people along my career. Some of them I call my mentors, and we became friends.

One afternoon long time back when I was still a new college grad, I was chatting with our architect, Mr. E.,  who was one of my mentors. Mind you, most new college grads are super chatty because they have so much to learn about everything.

I said I couldn't stand my cousin, because he was so lazy.

He asked, "How was he lazy?"

I said, "on weekends, he would sleep until noon. It's such a waste of time, because when he got up half of the day is gone."

Mr. E. said something like this (which I couldn't remember exactly): Why was it a waste? He needs to sleep, then he should sleep. Life is a dance. Take it slow and enjoy as you go.

At that time it was an eye opener to me, because all my life, people were telling me to work hard and don't waste time. I guess it was just a different perspective.

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Napoleon's army and the Italian flag?

Jack found "War and Peace" the 3.5-hour movie on Amazon, and one weekend evening we watched it on our bedroom TV. Jack was half way through the book and he said the reason why the book was so long was Tolstoy described every little thing in gory details, like how a general gets on a horse. I'm still hovering around the 12% mark of the book, and it'll probably take me 5 years to finish if ever.

How one could pack a 1300-page book into a 3.5 hour movie, I don't know. The screenwriter and director must have done a great job, because all along the movie, Jack said it was very close to the book.

When Pierre went to the battle field with the army he funded and witness the battle. We saw that the French infantry was charging toward the Russians, and I saw something strange. Why were the French Army carrying red, white and green flags?

I was pondering that I was pretty sure the French flag was red, white and blue, and Jack said: "Why are the French Army carrying the Italian flags?" 

I said: "Yes, I was just wondering about that."

Jack said: "Oh, it's the TV light bulb messing up the color. It turns blue to green!" Since the new blub was installed, we tried spending hours adjusting the color of the TV in vain.

I was inspired to read the book after watching the movie and read a couple of pages the next day.

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