Flight to Malaysia got delayed. It was a logistical nightmare. It's about 7 hours after we got on the plane before we were able to get into a hotel room. We are soo... soo... tired.

Two random links I'd like to share today.

First, one of the things I miss about being in California is having Arnold Schwarzenegger as a governor. Really tho, you miss out on great quotes like, "Your political base will melt away as surely as the polar ice caps -- I can guarantee you of that. You will become a political penguin on a smaller and smaller ice floe, drifting out to sea. Goodbye, my little friend." This came from a speech on how to make more vehicles green friendly.

Second, right before I logged on to my own Xanga there was a featured post that I could kinda relate to. Since Yukino's birthday is right around the corner.

It's good to acquire knowledge about medical plan options. I've done enough research in the last couple of days to at least sound like I know what I'm talking about.

My general impression is that HMOs are dangerous. PPOs and Networks plans are very similar and pretty good bets. POS are somewhere between HMOs, and PPOs, essentially like an HMO with less beauracracy. Indemnities are old-school health insurance plans. And  HSA are good for healthy young people.

Also learned recently that it's not good to laspse on your health insurance or life insurance. Companies can potentially use that against you to withhold payments.

All good stuff to learn. 

My feet plant back into Bay Area soil. This is one of those
moments, those rare moments when I put just about everything I had going on at
the time on hold to take care of something else important. I messed up a little
before I left, and consequently got my fiancée upset. I wanted to be sure she
was okay with me going back, because it means a lot when I have to leave her
during a period when she really wants me around.

On the BART. I forgot I don’t call it the metro. I got a
call from my mom. She asks that I take a grapefruit leaf with me before I go to
the hospital. I had forgotten that that was a family custom we followed for
visiting someone seriously ill. I vaguely remember having that in my pocket
when I saw my grandpop.

As I sit on the train, it shrills in fury and speed through
the tunnels. I’m starting to get tired. God, I hope I don’t fall asleep, especially
not during an important moment. I’m reminded that depression can make you feel
tired. I don’t know. Recently, even before this, I was frequently tired.

It seems I can’t stay up as late anymore. Not like I use to.
Drifting away to sleep at critical moments has been a weakness of mine that I
absolutely abhor. It seems to indicate that I’ve grown insensitive. I fear that
my most recent lifestyle and work style has changed me from an overly caring
idealist to a cold selfish hypocrite. I seem to preach a lot about the way I want
to live my life, and the way I would like to see more people in the world live
theirs. I look to se how much I have deviated. Am I not true to myself… who I
am… who I was? Or did I just see myself in a much better light that I can truly
be.

At times I wonder whether it was my prior job that changed
me. Or whether it was my drive to be a more practical minded person that cared
about his career, about finances, and material things. I definitely had a
tenacious work ethic in my younger academic days. I’m not sure what it is.
Probably not any one thing then. But I’m looking for balance. Not backward.

Mousse drove my back to my folks’ place. A place I once
called home. We chatted into the night. He told me about all the hysteria he
has gone through recently. It was painful, but I think he’s better now. It
helped to hear the recent good news. P has more time. He’s a good man.

God damn it! I'm really frustrated about preparing taxes. It's become way more complicated this year.

I prepare taxes for my dad too, which was fine in the prior years. But this year he had over 50 stock sales, several of which I need to account for the purchases lots on multiple dates, wash sales, and adjusted cost basis based on wash sales. It's a f*cking accounting nightmare. I've wasted my whole weekend, and it's now 1 AM in the morning. I want to tell him to take his stocks and shove it up his arse! Man... Family...

I'm still not done.

I start work tomorrow.

I'm groggy.

I'm irritated.

Rarrrragh!

I've never really been a avid stamp collector. Just off an on, when I see some nicely illustrated stamps, I hang on to them. More an more, I found it more interesting to buy the collectable stamps even if it's to pay my bills with. They look better than the simple flags, statue or liberty, or other icon of America.

Now that the Star Wars stamps are coming out. I'm definitely going to try to secure myself a full in tact sheet.

I am officially starting something new. The same sort of ambivalence arises like many other important moments in my life when I’m transitioning. I look on my experiences. I look on the good times. I look on to how I’ve grown. I look to the future. Who will I be 5 months from now? 5 years from now? What direction do I want to take my life?

There are so many complications in my life right now. I need to keep my head up. My heart up. And my pace moving forward.

I joined a new online social network today. This one looks pretty interesting because its more prefessional and career oriented. I recall Clef mentioning that there needs to be better way to go about career connections, and I think linkedin is a pretty good prototype.

Had one of the most wonderful conversations with Yukino last night. It was one of those reminscent of my college days. Not the "studying for exam" talk but the intellictually wholesome types of talks. The kind were you take a topic of interest, talk through ideas and opinions, and have dialogue that makes you really think about the world. I miss those.

The discussion began with mergers and acquisitions. A friend of ours works at Tellme which was recently acquired by Microsoft. We both agreed that was a smart decision. A news clip a while back showed that they could benefit from that knowledge, and Tellme has already established itself with products for companies such as Verizon. It is both important for Miscrosoft to expand it's reach to have Window's Mobile as the OS for most mobile phones, as well as introducint new OS and application functionalities.

We also noticed that Google bought Gapminder, a very nice information visualization (infovis) and business intelligence (BI) tool. Although pretty flashy, Yukino thought that it was an inferior copy to Spotfire. She has some basis to make that statement, since she's taking a class from one of the founders of human computer interaction (HCI) research. Her concern was that releasing software products to be distributed freely can be very damaging to people who make their livelihood as engineers, designers, and IT reserchers. I didn't quite feel that it was harming society to do so, as I felt it was pushing both innovation and a more free market. I tended to have the economic philosophy that in the end it will reach an equilibrium. The producer has a range, they buyer has a range. And trade happens when they overlap. Althogh I did agreed in one aspect with her which in many cases these non-tangible things, like software should be valued more than tangible items, like rubber bands and staples. If you spend $1000 on office cabinets versus $1000 on a computer with software... It's just no comparison.

My orginal perception was Microsoft is firmly establishing itself a software company of the corporate world, while Google seems to be establishing a foothold as software for the masses. Look to it's simplified and free version of so many products. But what I never had a good understanding of Google's business model. How can it continue to buy up companies for huge amounts of money and distribute items for free, expecially since not all of those items have ad revenue. A light bulb finally came to my head when Yukino explained that some aspects of Google's model is not all that different from Yahoo. If you position yourself as the main portal to the internet, they you build loyalty with the consumer and they are more inclined to spend time there longer.

Then our chat continued into effects on human anthropology. The effects of the physical industrial city landscape of the future. How we will be living our lives It was almost a breath of fresh air to be able to have open and profound conversations that way. It reminds me why I like the folks of my alma mater so much. They talk like that. They are interested and open minded. They care. They have an opinion. That's what I missed from my academic time, and that's where much of my strongest experiences at that stage of my life were.

So back to the whole social networks topic. I'm very fortunate to be linked in to great people and great friends who share that type of thought. I took my college as an example, but there are many many people from both my younger years and my professional careers who I can relate like that in some way. I like it when we can bring up the most random topic, and find something interesting to day. Cheers to everyone who is also l(in)ked (in).

Have you heard of the golden pig?

Apparently there is a popular belief that babies born in this coming year of the pig will be especially lucky, intelligent, and healthy. And as one would guess… this creates a baby boom and lots of complications. Heard this over internet radio.

And here's another piece of news mentioning that people may have the wrong year... All this could be a marketing ploy. A snippet of text is shown below:

"This lunar year, however, is fraught with an especially strong dose of astrological Viagra because it is believed to be the Year of the Golden Pig, which - depending on the astrologer you consult - comes once every 60 or 600 years. Either way, it's a rare pig.

Or is it? Serious Hong Kong practitioners of the ancient art of feng shui, or geomancy, have debunked the notion that this is a golden year, writing it off as a commercial invention fostered by shopkeepers to boost business. The next golden pig year, they say, will not come around until 2031."

I'm In!