Year in Review

My sucky, shitty, baddy 2006 is going to come has come to its inevitable demise in a few hours time. I am glad it's all over.

At least 2007 can give me some false hopes for some time. My new year resolution is to stay alive.

Happy New Year.

Now get back to work.

UPDATE:

Now the New Year has come, the party is over, the reality begins to sink in. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, it's just another freaking year except you are getting older, stupider and uglier.

Year in Review

Life always comes to a bad end, let's just try enjoy the journey...

If you cannot get online, get on9. Severed undersea cables can't stop you from getting on9.

If you have existential issues as to why you blog, worry no more. Sina has come to the rescue. It is going to release a compilation of posts in a dead tree publication called Why Weblog? or Why We Blog? or whatever. It may just be the answer to your question "Why the hell do I blog?" If you have real or imaginary existential issues, I suggest you to read Sartre and Camus.

Saddam Hussein was hanged while Bush was in bed asleep. See life always come to a bad end.

Dow rose more than 16% for the year and topped 12000. Finance is the industry to be in.

Movie Review, again.

OKAY, this is a movie review, albeit a poorly written and untimely one.

Yesterday, we used the magic card that's called Queens library card to check out a few movies. So far I watched two, and hence you know how boring my life can be. Both movies star some old men, namely Steve Martin and Harrison Ford, as in Shop Girl and Firewall.

Firewall is supposed to be a thriller, but I really don't find it thrilling except maybe the part Ford uses a juice blender to kill one of the guys. I think Ford killed all the bad guys. The movie simply lacks intelligence that one would expect from a movie starring Ford and more so playing a computer security expert in a bank.

Shop Girl, based on the same name novel written by Steve Martin, is about a clinically depressed young woman working at Saks in Beverly Hills. No doubt, Shop Girl is Martin's wet dream. And may I add most men's. It's a nice little story and the performance of the three characters are good. For a moment I thought I was seeing the Matrix as Mirabelle's apartment is always so green. Shop Girl is the kind of movie that I won't borrow but end up enjoying it.

I borrowed Firewall and my wife picked Shop Girl, apparently she knows me better than I know myself, sometimes.

DS Action

DSC_7125
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Here is Mr. Harry, practicing his little muscles. Holding the stylus, making the minis move. He should be playing Super Mario vs. Donky Kong. The game probably isn't the greatest but I guess it's okay. Honestly, what do I know about games?

Mountaineers

DSC_7276
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Alex with the rest of the mountaineers.

Waiting in Line

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Originally uploaded by rnj97.

C Lift

DSC_7297
Originally uploaded by rnj97.

Hunter Mountain

Here is Mr. Harry taking his first ever Explorer class at Hunter Mountain.

Hunter Mountain

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas.

Alex and Harry were pretty excited so they really got up early today. They usually get up early anyway.

Santa gave them a pearl white Nintendo DS, and for Harry, a Mario vs Dong Kong 2 march of the minis and for Alex he got the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team. Other than these carpel tunnel and seizure inducing games from Santa, we gave them more traditionally dangerous toys like ice skates and tennis racket. Also they got plenty of presents from my sister and from our friends.

They are happy and I am happy.

We got the Brain Age and my brain age is a solid 72 years old, I think that's pretty correct, mentally I am 72 years old.

Breaking: Person of the Year is Me

Just in case you missed the December edition of the Time magazine, yours truly has been selected Person of the Year 2006. I am not kidding you. I got to be this Person because I blog, google, youTube my time away every day.

I am going to put my new found fame as Person of the Year on my resume so I can increase my chance of landing a job with The Firm where for 2006 the average employee, scratch that, on average, an employee got paid $622,000. I am not sure if this statistics average means anything.

Further readings:
The Bonus Army by Henry Blodget 12/20/2006
Goldman CEO's $53.3M Bonus Breaks Record by The Associated Press 12/20/2006

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DSC_6985

I have to resort to post from flickr to get the vertical working. I don't like it. One good thing is if you load picture directly from blogger, it actually let people to the hyperlinked original size picture. I don't think that was the case before. But somehow they messed up the flip vertical thing.

It's been 2 Years

It's been quarter of a century two years since I finished F.5 in Hong Kong. And here I am sitting in the park with my wife and 2 boys.

UPDATE 12/18/06
Added are two pictures from the reunion.

[on a totally unrelated note: I don't know if it's just me, I think now Blogger doesn't like to compile with the 90 degree counter-clockwise flip veritcal EXIF. I hope I got the technical right. What I mean is vertically shot pictures with auto rotate fail to appear vertical when loaded to Blogger.]

Week in Review

It's just like the last week or the week before except:-

Christmas is ten days away, have you got all your presents ready? I don't think Wii can be found anywhere unless you consider the ripoffs at eBay. Even the handheld DS Lite is out of stock now. So as much as I would like to poison my kids with electronic toys, I think I will fail miserably this Christmas. No, I won't buy a PS3.

The Dow is edging up as it "should be" in year end. I think it's reasonable and customary for the Dow to run up in year end.

After 3 years and some $7 millions, in a 832-page report, the British police concluded the death of Princess Diana was indeed accident. I am not sure if that's time or money well spent.

Latest job data: Yoko Ono's driver is paid a salary of $150,000 to $200,000. Ms. Ono's driver of ten years demanded $2 million or he would kill Ms. Ono and her son and himself. And he had the balls to tell that to Ono's lawyer. The 50 year old was arrested.

UPDATE:
Again, thanks to global warming, this week's weather has been balmy.

Eric and Sid: read and download whatever you want, knock yourself out...
Operation Paget (this link talks about the operation, 9 page pdf, not the findings of the operation) produced a 832-page inquisition on Diana's death (ok, her lover and her driver, a total of three). The Iraq Study Group Report, on the contrary, is only 84 pages. I think there were almost 3,000 American servicemen deaths in the war against terror in Iraq. The Iraq Study Group Report headed by James Baker can be downloaded here, free.

Rockefeller Center Christmas

We had a hard time finding free parking on the street so after circling the area for like 30 minutes, I broke down and had our van parked into a garage.

Rockefeller Center Christmas

Alex looks the happiest when he's with Mom.
I think Harry was actually hiding behind Alex and Mom in this picture. According to his pediatrician Harry weighed the same the year before. Usually the fillflash washed out the face, so this time around I dialed down the exposure 0.7 stop and it worked out better.
The 18-70 is not a pro grade lens by any stretch but I find it surprisingly capable and versatile. If I stop it down to f5.6 or f8, and shoot it in decent lighting, I think the result is pretty acceptable. That said, I don't mind getting some real nice glasses like the Nikon 17-35 f2.8 or the Nikon 17-55 f2.8 DX. But you make good use of whatever you have (and continue to long for something you don't have).

Tooth Fairy

I never knew there was a Tooth Fairy until Alex reached a certain age. Harry just helped Alex "extract" his loosening top front tooth by hitting him in the mouth. That's typical Harry behavior.

He planned to leave his tooth in his tooth purse underneath the pillow for the Tooth Fairy but on second thought, just like last time, he didn't want the Fairy to take the tooth. So he wrote a note, he wants the money as well as the tooth.

Here's what Alex wrote to the Tooth Fairy:

Dear Tooth Fairy:

Don't take my tooth. But please give me at least more than $2.00.

Talking about Tooth Fairy, Thomas Harris' Hannibal Rising is out today and got incredible bad reviews. I read Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal; the first two were better than the last one. And if there is any truth in the reviews, this latest one may be the worst. And yes, it's going to be yet another Hannibal movie starring 22-year old French man Gaspard Ulliel as the young Hannibal.

Subway Reading

Wiggles' Greg Page is calling it quit. The very likable yellow Wiggle is leaving the band for good because of a rare disease that often leaves the 35-year old light-headed. According the the New York Times, his departure saddens many moms but seems to have little or no impact to the band's target demograhics, namely the toddlers. I must say I like the Wiggles too. Before Alex and Harry got suckered into the whole Japanese animation thing, they liked the Wiggles, especially Alex. He even went to one of Wiggles' concert in Madison Square Garden.

Masi Oka or better known as Hiro Nakamura in the run away NBC hit Heroes, has an IQ of 180, graduated from Brown with major in math and computer science and minor in theater. At age 10, he made the cover of Time magazine as one of a group of Asian America whiz kids. I like the Heroes show some what, I guess if I were 17 years old, I would like it more. More from the Times.

Moon

Aim for the moon: if you miss you will fall among the stars. Or so the teacher told you.

Kissena Park, Flushing

December 2, 2006.

It's End of the Year Folks

It's end of the year, and you know what you have done. Basically it's like last year or the year before: nothing except getting older and getting stupider that much for sure.

It's also this time of the year that big or small media organizations try to give out awards, for the most part self-serving gimmicks to boost traffic or attention. Top 10 songs, Top 10 movies, Top 10 websites, Top 10 people, you name it. Since I don't get any awards or nominations, I say they are all bull$hit.

The Webby Awards is perhaps the only one I know that is kind of meaningful, or perhaps not.

Talking about year end, that makes me think of a very famous or to some infamous Cantonese saying about how a whore spends her New Year....forgetabouit.

Fort Totten

Bird Watching 

Bronx Zoo

Bronx Zoo

Bronx Zoo

Bronx Zoo

This Week in Review

This is Movie Week.

Not that I saw a lot of movies, but I managed to blog more than I saw, dangerously so.

Murdoch decided to let public opinion trump freedom of bad press. He pulled the plug on the Juice man's "If I Did it." Western civilization has hopes.

Daniel Craig, the seriously bad-ass (to quote my friend Mikey) latest 007 lost out in the opening weekend to Happy Feet, a cartoon.

Happy Feet, a cartoon or computer animation if you prefer, whatever, is boring. I tried to enjoy it but I just found it totally boring. When you are a parent, you are bound to bring your kids to see one of these stinkers. Adults should be banned to review kids' movies. OKAY, Harry says he likes the movie, what can I say? Ticket was $6.75 each for first show. The animation was actually impressive.

It's Thanksgiving, I took a week off to prepare for the dinner. I did a turkey at 425F for 2 hours plus. The result was agreeably good.

Happy Thanksgiving

I don't know, if I am the pilgrim or the Indian here but I am serving the turkey. This is turkey prior to 2 hours of 425F high heat.

Thanksgiving is about pilgrims, the Mayflower, Indians, turkey and Christopher Columbus who mistook North American Natives as Indians from East Indies.

My Thanksgiving is about eating, family and friends, counting my own blessings and hopefully some shoppings.

UPDATE:

I am like preparing the Thanksgiving dinner now...

Rocky Balboa

Guys, if you are old enough you know who Rocky (1976) was, yours truly small time blogger certainly does. This winter, Stallone is bringing back the dead, resurrected Rocky for the 6th time. The 60 years old Oscar winner Sylvester Stallone is going to reprise his role as Rocky Balbo in you guessed it, Rocky Balbo (2006) Christmas this year. People always like the story of an underdog. I don't believe I ever watched the first Rocky on big screen, I was too young back then. I did remember the one Rocky fought the Russian guy. I saw it in Hong Kong with my post secondary friends, in a theatre in Mei Fu or Ocean Terminal. My memory is hazy, you know the side effect of getting old.

As if Rocky 6 or Rocky Balbo is not enough for nostalgic baby boomers then we will have Rambo in 2008. Stallone is bringing back Rambo in Rambo IV: In the Serpent's Eye. Just like Coca Cola, Stallone realizes change is not necessarily good, you do what you good at and stick with the original formula of success. You can tweak it a little like adding Diet Coke to the mix but don't overdo it. Or Stallone thinks there are still room for Rocky and Rambo besides characters like 007, Jason Bourne and Scientologist Ethan Hunt.

Rocky Balboa, I think is a true underdog story both on screen and off screen. I hope Stallone pulls it off just to show that elderly people can still be relevant.

Casino Royale

Jay Maidment/Sony Pictures

Before there was Ethan Hunt, Jason Bourne, there was Bond, James Bond. Amid all the controversies, manufactured or not, Casino Royale is opening to pretty good reviews. And Daniel Craig seems to be on his way to quiet his critics. I have yet to see the movie to form an opinion.

UPDATE:

I did see the movie.

It was good but not as good as I wanted it to be. It's definitely more physical than the previous Bond movies I remember. I am not a Bond fan so my memory of Bond is pretty limited to Brosnan. I remember in Die Another Day, the special effect in which Bond kind of "snowboarded" his way to safety really made me laugh. The special effect was awful and out of place with the whole Bond's franchise. Right there, Bond lost its credibility. Craig's Bond, if anything, put some serious muscle and action back to this old franchise. Craig, more than once, showed off his physique on screen, which I must say, almost reminds me of the young Arnold Schwarzenegger (okay, may be two sizes smaller but you got the idea). The first half of the movie got some awesome actions despite a bit mindless but not so much toward the second half. The second half Bond plays the 007 version of The God of Gamblers or Du Shen (1989) minus the Hong Kong style of humor, sort of, okay maybe not Du Shen as there's no cheating, it's just that it involves high stake card games and bluffing.

Daniel Craig is not Piere Brosnan, he is just another Bond, James Bond.

For who: People who like action and excitement. Children: The film is rated PG-13, so don't expect anything seriously adult. But I won't bring any 7 years old to see it. It has a ball whacking torture scene that involves a very naked 007. If you are into outlandish gizmo and gadgets, invisible car anyone? Then this one is not for you. The only gadget in the movie is a cardiac defibrillator.

UPDATE:

How could I not mention the very lovely Eva Green? She plays Bond's love interest in the movie. I think the New York Times says something to the extent that she proves that her talent is bigger than her breasts. Considered that a compliment. I must say I didn't know she starred in Bertolucci's softporn Dreamers (2003), I didn't see it as I was not sold to this arty farty kind of movie anymore, if I saw it I must have remembered her. She is probably the only Bond girl who appeared totally nude in a major motion picture prior to casting as a Bond girl. This being a work-safe blog, I am not going to link to her arty soft-porn stills from Dreamers. I may just need to check out Dreamers just so I can better understand her body ... of works.

My Blueberry Nights

Photos Macall Polay/Jet Tone Films

My Blueberry Nights, Wong Kar-wai's first American movie starring Jude Law, otherwise known as the combed-over who screwed his kid's baby-sitter and singer-songwriter Norah Jones. If you are a Wong fan, then you've probably heard about this movie already. If not, like yours truly, you can read about it via the New York Times article The Master of Time: Wong Kar-wai in America by Dennis Lim published November 19, 2006.

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Thank you for the candies, Ching-mei.
More Ching-mei.

Milton Friedman (July 31, 1912 - Nov 16, 2006)

American economist Milton Friedman was dead at 94.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_friedman

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/business/17friedman.html

Democrats control Congress

Now with Democrats having total control of the Congress, should Americans expect change for the better in the years follow? Or we shouldn't expect anything. It's not like the Democrats really have anything appealing, I guess it's just people who are fed up with the war in Iraq. People voted the way it was to punish the president.

Rumsfeld was the first to honor the "stay the course" no more, he quit. Now that he's out of the way, I wonder if anyone is going to right the course given the mess we are in in Iraq....

The Washington pundits and career politicians need to come up with a solution fast. We owe it to our troops and the Iraqi folks to get out of this jam.

Wall Street

I always believe Wall Street is in the business of making rich people richer and along the way, these masters of the universe make themselves very rich too.

Again, big bonuses were expected for 2006 according to a New York Times article.

Here are some interesting statistics that probably will make you green with envy:-

Just out of college first year, total compensation including base, bonus and long-term compensation for ...
associates, from $200,000 to $270,000;
analyst, from $105,000 to $145,000.

In 2005, Wall Street accounted for 4.7% of jobs in New York City but 20.6% of the wages.... A top hedge fund manager took home 1.5 billion, while a top 25 manager could take home $130 million.

Anyway, a top hedge fund manager at Goldman Sachs by the name of Raanan Agus still drives a Honda minivan. That kind of makes of feel better I guess.

Are you One? Are You Two? Are You Three? ...

Birthday Boy

Birthday Q&A ...

Harry being in a public school in Queens, his classmates are mostly of Asian decent, if you look at the picture, you almost thought it's a "Chinese" school. Flushing has plenty of Korean and Chinese immigrants. It's Harry's birthday and his classmates got to ask him questions, like what's his favorite TV show? what's his favorite color? Does he have a sister? Does he have any pet? When you were kids you asked interesting questions, when you grew up, you asked boring questions, like how much you make? what car you drive?

Birthday Q&A

Pastel Karaoke Is on 158th Street and Northern Boulevard

The New York Times is determined to put and keep Flushing on the map.

The paper first reported on October 9 a young man got killed just outside Pastel Karaoke on 158th Street and Northern Boulevard.

Then today the paper reported the incident again but erroneously said it was 157th Street. Now I live on 158th Street, and I feel like the Times just took the edge off of my street and frankly I am not thrilled. 158th Street earned its street cred by having a murder and the Times can't tell the difference between 7 and 8?

More Flushing news here.

Wishlist

Computer:-
A MacBook with a least 1GB of RAM, scratch that, make it a MacBook Pro with 3gb of RAM...
iPod:-
A 30GB iPod video is nice.
Camera:-
A Nikon D2Xs or A Canon 1DsMkII, or both
Lens:-
Only professional prime lenses or zoom lenses. A half dozen will do.
Tripod:-
Some Bogen or Gitzo will do.
Ballhead:-
Some Bogen will do, Arca Swiss or Really Right Stuff would be great.

BREAKING: MacBook just updated the Intel processor to Intel Core 2 Duo, whatever that means. It's said to be 25% faster. Details see http://www.apple.com

Games I play

Galloping Pigs. A rather simple game that even I manage to play with my children.

The Book of Classic Board Games. This has been hard for me. I just played along with my children. Whatever they said I believed and then I pretended I knew how to play.

Scrabble. We have the classic edition. This is an easy game in the sense that it's easy to understand the rules. When it comes to knowing the words that's a different question.

Monopoly. I think we have the classic edition as well. I never played Monopoly until now.

I never enjoyed playing any games. It's just the kids love them. I am a pretty boring person.

Alex now knows how to do a bit of algebra.

2a + 20 = 30
solve for a
and he knows the answer is 5

Kissena Park

Kissena Park again.

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shot with my good old manuel 50mm f1.4. I really love the lens. It's just better. Except I got into focusing, and metering problem with my Nikon D70. Either I get a D200 or I get a 50mm f1.4 AF for easy and faster focusing.

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Here Mr. Harry is cutting up the spiderman playing card carton.