Netflix has two enclosures: one as a mail and another as a DVD cover. On the DVD cover, it has a bar code on it. It’s this bar code that you need to make sure that it gets inserted into the mail the correct way so that Netflix can scan the bar code computationally through their assembly line when it receives the mail.

One time I didn’t insert the cover into the mail correctly (I had already sealed the mail before I could re-open it), my mail turnaround was much longer, because it got thrown into a bin where staff would have to open the mail by hand and scan it in.

It’s easy to measure the timing because Netflix will send you an email notification when it receives your DVDs.

One thing I notice about Netflix is that they really do have a large movie selection from new releases to foreign movies. They are efficient enough to cater to any type of movie audience while offering attractive monthly fees, starting with $8.95 plus streaming.

Happy watching!

It’s hard to believe that I’d start a blog way back in the fall of 2004. More than five years have passed since. I haven’t been blogging much lately but have written a few notes on my Facebook, as pretty much everyone is using the Internet and I’m becoming more cautious of what I’m writing here as people seem to be nitpicking pretty much over anything. But I think I shouldn’t be concerned about that and just write for myself. So, I hope to be more forthcoming this year. :)

I seem to be accomplishing most of the goals that I listed last year, which was rather simple and that I want to take life at its face value, and ofc, keep contributing to my work at Google, which has been both productive and fulfilling, kept me busy for much of the time. Last year, I pondered about why we’re here and our purpose, leading my belief to the philosophy of existentialism. To extend that thought, I also thought about physics and realized that everything’s a reflection of light. Without light, we simply can’t see anything including ourselves. So, we’re in this visible light spectrum and since light is made of some electromagnetic properties (photons and quanta) that actually bend toward gravity (mass), that creates time and space. We’re all moving along on this timeline, and thanks to technology like the Internet and computers as a tool, we’re able to record events and express our thoughts through talking, videotaping, or writing. With those recorded media, we’re able to rewind and remember our timelines. All made possible by light.

I’m actually doing a lot of snowboarding (gone to Lake Tahoe and Colorado) and my skill has been improving steadily that I can do some air jumps and rotations. The highlight of 2009 was traveling to five different countries—Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong—and managed to meet a few deaf people along the way. We really do exist all over the world, though not as many as other group identities.

I believe in the next few years, we’ll be more connected than ever, thanks to social networking like Facebook and Twitter. With enough smart motivated minds, we will make some serious progress that will be unprecedented by any time in the past. Equal rights in marriage, better/more education, tools, networking, and transparency will lead to a better management of the economy. No one is going to fix the economy as if he has a magic wand but I think with enough information and assistance, we’ll better able to manage our money and take responsibility for ourselves and our actions.

My goals for this year is pretty much the same except I’d like to be more focused on a few certain things, to make efforts at, and bring my dreams closer to reality. Much of that will be improving my coding skill and outputting more like blogging and taking pictures. Shedding light on my timeline.

Finally, to close this birthday post, someone very important is turning 55 in two days. That’d be Steve Jobs. He was struggling with his health last year and got a liver transplant, and he’s said he’s feeling better. Great. This is written with a Macbook Pro. And iPad is just gonna rock. You just wait and see.

Maybe it’s the Winter Olympics that has gotten me conscious about my own body and I’m starting to see some flab around my tummy, so I’m thinking about getting back into shape more seriously and running too. Out of all workouts, I’ve always felt that running is a tough workout and gives me a good cardiovascular exercise despite how simple it looks. On that thought, I remember the 12k race I ran in the 98th Annual ING Bay to Breakers event. It was pretty fun and my time wasn’t too bad at 1:07 and placed 474 out of 2,070 males between 20 and 29. One thing I remember from that day was that I didn’t just run 12k alone. I had to ran abt 3 miles from a friend’s place where I was sleeping over the night before and another 3 miles to meet my friend after the race was over. So, I ran a total of 13 miles on that day. I felt like I was just running all over the city and despite that, my legs still felt great and felt like I can run some more. I was in a good shape, I supposed. So yeah, I think it’s time to get back into shape.

As I first started on the game, I didn’t quite get what the game was all about (I think I was 9 years old) but found out that it’s about building zones, transportations and growing in population, so soon enough, I was completely hooked. I played obsessively, all night on it and ofc, my mom couldn’t understand the addiction. One thing, though, was that I would run out of money and would have to wait for annual year to get taxes so I could build more zones. I looked up in my old Nintendo Power magazines (I have the first 12 subscriptions) and found a cheat code to get 20k every time I ran out of money. Delightfully, I built new zones, destroyed not-so-developed zones, put in all trains (which lessened car pollution), built airports, stadiums, and fetched more money till I reached the metropolis level at 500k population. I remember how simple the game was and how neat the panning/zooming was, even for a SNES.

Then, there was a PC revolution, so I got on that, and there was a new game called SimTower. Again, I got hooked on the game and kept adding floors and rooms till I got a 5 stars rating and over 100 floors built. It was beautiful and the graphics was good too. Then, another game, the Sims, came out and I tried it out but didn’t find it as appealing as the other two because it wasn’t progressive (people were even unpredictable in the game too!) to me and it was more of goofing around than learning, I suppose.

Back at the school, I told my friends about those games but they didn’t share the same fascination as I did and they’d rather play Super Mario Bro or Street Fighters. One time, my friend objected that I didn’t play it fairly because I used a cheat code to achieve 500k population and I thought about that. While it wasn’t probably very ethical, what mattered to me was that I used strategic thinking on how to obtain the secret code and to apply it in a game and there’s a certain motivation in myself that I indeed wanted to achieve the highest level, however it would take, in the least amount of time so I thought that’s more important.

Now that I’m much older and living on my income, I find myself using the same strategic thinking—in coding, finding solutions, using shortcuts, and basically surviving through this life and to accumulate wealth by ways of investments and savings. To come think of it, the current state of economy now affords us to earn money off the Internet instead of having to work in a farm or factory somewhere that was probably common only one generation ago. I’m just thankful to my parents who didn’t deter me from playing those Sim games and that I was constantly tired during the daytime. I’d like to think that all those times have paid off. :)

Liked how this pic turned out.

Examples of the use of “petabyte” to describe data sizes in different fields are:

* History: According to Kevin Kelly in The New York Times, “the entire [written] works of humankind, from the beginning of recorded history, in all languages” would amount to 50 petabytes of data.[1]
* Computer hardware: Teradata Database 12 has a capacity of 50 petabytes of compressed data.[2][3]
* Telecoms: AT&T has about 16 petabytes of data transferred through their networks each day.[4]
* Archives: The Internet Archive contains about 3 petabytes of data, and is growing at the rate of about 100 terabytes per month as of March, 2009.[5][6]
* Internet: Google processes about 20 petabytes of data per day.[7]
* Physics: The 4 experiments in the Large Hadron Collider will produce about 15 petabytes of data per year, which will be distributed over the LHC Computing Grid.[8]
* P2P networks: As of October 2009, Isohunt has about 9.76 petabytes of files contained in torrents indexed globally.[9]
* Games: World of Warcraft utilizes 1.3 petabytes of storage to maintain its game.[10]

Petabyte - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

When it comes to adopting a child, you can be sure that there are lots of procedure/factors involved to have a successful adoption. One tiny misstep in the procedure could make adoptions go awry. I’ll give an example. My parents needed to get their fingers pressed for the application. The agency was able to get my dad’s fingerprints but not so for my mom. They were having a hard time getting a clean copy from my mom’s. Why? because my mom had worked 15 years at the Capitol Records (EMI Manufacturing) factory in Jacksonville, IL on checking the quality of cassette tapes. She had to make sure that tapes were properly packaged before they get inserted into plastic boxes. All of those checking had pretty much smeared my mom’s fingers. She also had to quit because the job was giving her carpal tunnel syndrome, in which she got a surgery on her both wrists. After unsuccessful prints, my parents had to drive up to Chicago and stop by a FBI office to meet with a FBI-trained officer and get fingerprints. They did manage to get them but barely. So if that didn’t happen, I won’t be here typing this post.

Often the reason for parents deciding to adopt a child is because they couldn’t have a child of their own. That was precisely the case for my parents too but there is a story to this. Both of my parents were sterile but how did they get to be like that in the first place? My dad, in his younger days, had a serious car accident that could have cost his life but he was fortunate to live. After he woke up from a 3 days coma, doctors asked him several questions. One of them was asking him how many kids he’d like? My dad replied 10. Doctors had to say that he couldn’t because medications they gave him had made him sterile. As for my mom, she had an unfortunate incident back in her school days. She was in the shower area and her friends were playing around and accidently bumped my mom. She fell hard on the slippery floor, hard enough that the blood came out of her uterus. She was brought to a hospital and after recovery, her ovaries had been damaged, leaving her sterile.

The next story is how my parents met. My mom had been married to her first husband but the husband cheated on my mom because she couldn’t have children and he didn’t want to adopt a child, so my mom divorced him. One reason why my mom decided to marry him in the first place was because one, he was charismatic and two, he could speak well, which means he can talk with my mom’s parents who were hearing and didn’t know any sign language. In this way, my mom was trying to appease her parents. My dad was at one time seriously dating one lady and after realizing that the lady had stated that she’d like to have kids someday, my dad had to break up with her. After a while, with deaf community being small, it didn’t really take long for my parents to find each other and they started dating. Funny, both of my parents were worried that one of them might break it up because of their inability to conceive but eventually, they found out they were both sterile. So, with that fact behind them, they got married after only 3 months of dating. 4 years later into their marriage, they finally adopted a child, which would be me.

What People Buy

People only pay for what they want or need when the price is low enough to be a greater value then the alternatives. Think about your own buying decisions: When the need or desire is great enough you buy when it’s not you don’t. If the price is too high, you look for an alternative or go without. Sometimes the need or desire outweighs the reality that you can’t afford it, hence the financial mess (debt) most folks put themselves into. But when the value is bigger than the other offerings, they buy.

Link

My post - The American Dream

And god, I need to re-work my website…

via Esquire.

via roxy

The more important question we should be asking ourselves is that since we’re already here, the question is what are we doing with ourselves and time? I’ve been thinking about that as I drove alone for 7 hrs one way to Los Angeles and San Diego. Well, I think I’m closer to the truth than I ever have been in my whole life. I’d like to throw in an excerpt from Wikipedia.

“Quality,” or “value,” as described by Pirsig, cannot be defined because it empirically precedes any intellectual constructions. It is the “knife-edge” of experience, known to all. “What distinguishes good and bad writing? Do we need to ask this question of Lysias or anyone else who ever did write anything?” (Plato’s Phaedrus, 258d). Likening it with the Tao, Pirsig believes that Quality is the fundamental force in the universe stimulating everything from atoms to animals to evolve and incorporate ever greater levels of Quality. According to the MOQ, everything (including the mind, ideas, and matter) is a product and a result of Quality.

Since we’re humans of reason, capable of using languages to communicate and numbers for math, I believe that we’re all on path of Quality which supposedly gives meaning to our life. Value is to be found in the Quality. It’s been said that we can detect one person’s value in a matter of seconds whereas by their appearances, websites, writing, skills, etc. We don’t really have to say anything; we only have to show our ‘Quality’. If our Quality is not good enough, then we’d have to study and try to improve ourselves. It’s no surprise that doctors and lawyers are regarded highly because they really have to spend a lot of time in school and studying.

It’s Quality that both sexes use to gauge one another. You can call it an evolution if you want. We can easily measure one’s value. It’s probably true that women place more value on intelligence, education, and sense of well-being while men tend to value on beauty more. For that, women try to show their value by putting on a dress, makeup, etc to look presentable while men don’t really have to do much except for being successful in career and able to take care of himself. Women can sniff men’s Quality and if it’s not up to their standards, they’re not gonna waste their time trying to attract the guy. I’d have no chance if I was up against Brad Pitt or Tiger Woods because he has a much more Quality than I do. So, what to do with guys like myself? There is a turnaround to this. The word is self-confidence that I am confident in being who I am and know that there is no one else like me. So, if girls wanted more ‘Quality’, let them go. There are other girls who will dig my Quality and together, we’ll have a meaning in life along with our common goals and exclusivity that will only exist within us, not even with Brad Pitt.

This is not all about dating as Quality can be found in anywhere including purchases (car, house, food, etc) and we try our best in whatever we do such as work, sports, hobbies, etc. If we’re happy with our Quality, then towards the end of our life, we can look back and appreciate our life and eventually rest in peace.

The pic here:

Before I share my opinion on this, one guy named Vic couldn’t have said it any better:

The sidekick found its humble beginnings in the deaf/hard-of-hearing world, and it has always been a text-based communication champ. You will not find a device that is easier to use for IM, rapid-fire email.

I had a Sidekick 2 a month after it came out and it served its purpose well. Contacting my friends through IM was my only option as using the cell phone is just plain fruitless. Consider that the “sidekick” plan was quite a bit cheaper than the blackberry plans as well as unlimited data plans. If this continues to be the case, it will continue to be the champion of instant text-based communication simply because of its physical format.

Even my Palm Treo 650 and Blackberry Curve cannot match the IM superiority of the sidekick, and it is something I sorely miss at times. Unfortunately, with the physical format being superior, the software and hardware has since the 3rd sidekick lagged one step behind in intuitive nature. We’ll see if Microsoft can change things around for the better.

That’s right. Out of all devices I’ve owned, I’ve yet come across a device that is more friendly typing than Sidekick does. Admittedly, I got caught up in the marketing hype and got on the iPhone’s bandwagon. While iPhone is nonetheless a great device, it’s definitely not designed for speed thumb-typing. You have to cautiously press on virtual keys and there is a certain lag between letters for them to appear correctly on the screen. There is almost no lag on Sidekick and I can type as fast as I could—purely from my muscle memory. The word I would use to describe Sidekick is the functionality. Research has shown that less than 5% people who purchased apps on their iPhone only play it more than 3 times. Pure entertainment and a waste of a few dollars—much to both Apple and developers’ profits. The new Sidekick has a GPS, 3G, tight integration with Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. A ping of a SMS or email is all you need to initiate a data transmission to your favorite app for communication. The best feature may be its screen resolution at 854 x 480 in a landscape mode in addition to its unbeatable form factor. iPhone’s screen is only 480×320. Nothing delights my eyes more than the highest pixel resolution available. Since it is a keyboard-based and isn’t a touch screen, it has handy keyboard shortcuts that get you straight to the selected app in one single action.

On May 13th, you and I have a hot date.

Twenty-seven years old
Twenty-six years old
I turn 25 today.
The Existence of 24 years old on this Planet Earth.

I’m actually writing this post on Facebook’s notes. I’m not sure why but it’s probably the social vibe behind this app that is going on (with 175+ million users having signed up) and this awareness that I’m not the only one hitting on a keyboard. It’s almost like writing on a typewriter in a busy newsroom, only figuratively. I also really like the font typeface and its size - gotta send props to the designer who chose the font. I don’t even know what’s the font face - looks like Tahoma family to me, though.

To my amazement, I found out that I’m not the only one to do this type of post. Matt Mullenweg who created Wordpress as a open source blogging software, also does the same thing - see his. He’s a Dvorak typist too. Not too long ago, I started to type pretty comfortable in Dvorak but had to stop because I sometimes needed to type on others’ keyboard to communicate with them and their layout is in QWERTY, so I would get stuck and have to remember how to type in QWERTY again. So, no good there.

Since I’m aware that my birthday is in Feb, I tend to wait and think back while people get busy bringing in the new year and making resolutions. And I started thinking about what I would like to say in my self post, so here this is.

It’s been more than a year since I moved here from Washington DC. It was an exciting time, thrilled to be working right in Googleplex, made a full transcontinental move to the west coast. And I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. Wouldn’t replace for anything. It was hard to believe that I could be walking into a room and see the CEO or founders there. But now, I’ve gotten used to the sight and don’t get as excited as before. This year also has been a year of consciousness/awareness that I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about who I am and how we all come into existence. Moreover, I think this year, more or less, marks the first time that I’ve come to terms with myself. I wasn’t always so proud of myself like being the only Asian in my class for most of my life and had some people making fun of my not-so-rounded eyes and my penchant in school. Before, when I looked at myself in the mirror, I was like, so this is an Asian-looking guy yet I don’t feel one bit like an Asian. Now, I don’t feel that way anymore and feel proud to be myself. I am who I am. I can’t imagine wanting to be someone else.

In terms of consciousness, I’ve tried to increase awareness in this capacity and how decisions we make may affect us. Sometimes, I do wonder if I even exist. The answer is yes and you do exist too. What you see is what you get. Activity on Facebook, pictures we appear in, comments we made, news we read. We know what the Golden Gate or Washington Monument looks like, we know how burgers from In n Out taste like, we know who is now the President of the U.S., and we know we can’t live without air and water. That’s existentialism. We exist, though how do we want to spend this present time is up to us.

As for my goals this year, well, not much, really. Just enjoy life and hang out with friends, also do fun stuffs like snowboarding, traveling, and seriously learn how to surf. The big thing will be the southeast Asia trip and Deaflympics. So, till then, take lots of pictures, blogging and being myself.

Lastly, I’d like to close this post by saying early happy birthday to Steve Jobs who will be turning 54 in two days and to wish him the best in his health. He was born an orphan here in Mountain View, CA. Cool.

The best is yet to come. :D

2. I’m not much of a talker myself, so if you find me pretty quiet, don’t feel offended. You can be assured that my thoughts are almost always running at 100 mph per hour. If anything, I’d rather coding, writing, reading, or actually be doing something.

3. I’ve come to realize that emotional intelligence (or street smart) is as important as being smart in school. That said, my dad has a way better EI than I do, unfortunately.

4. My dad has many great stories when he was younger like he rode motorcycle across America and into Mexico. I think his life sounds better than mine already.

5. I try not to be judgmental but I’m capable of asking questions that would reveal who/what you are in a matter of minutes.

6. My 3rd grade teacher made me sit outside in the hallway because I made fun of her signing skill. It wasn’t very good at all, in fact. I hate it when teachers think their ASL is wonderful just like these girls who think their voice is great but is completely off-key. Know what I’m saying?

7. There are four men that I’d very much want to meet: Tiger Woods, Rick Reilly, Steve Jobs, and President Obama. (not necessarily in order)

8. I found out what I was made of after I spent ten weeks summer internship in Miami, FL. I knew nobody there, woke up at 6:30 am every day, did not miss a single day despite 1 1/2 hour of commuting, worked out a lot (they had a workout room on the third floor) and at the end, they held a farewell party for me and gave me appreciation award, which was unexpecting.

9. I’m a huge Honda fan. Huge. My dream is to own a ‘01 Prelude SSH, then S2000, and lastly, an NSX. I currently drive an Element and used to own ‘04 Civic Si hb till I totaled it.

10. Sometimes, I can’t believe I work at Google and help push doodles onto homepages. I consider it a privilege and will never take it for granted. I’m lucky to have a great team, also.

11. I used to work in Google datacenters. Great experience. Hardware they have there is both innovative and brilliant. I project-managed 5 people and moved all racks out of an old datacenter. It was a hell of work. One cool fact: a script to install a thin Linux OS to machines after they were repaired was written by an engineer who is deaf.

12. I coded a web app that served as a lunch menu interface to collect orders and votes for restaurants. Still in use after two years. Awesome.

13. On Google’s main campus, I like to stroll thru different buildings and see different office cubicles. I like to read notes and papers posted.

14. I read Calvin and Hobbes comic daily.

15. I plan to attend Deaflympics in Taiwan. Hope to see you there!

16. I think it is an interesting fact that some of technologies were invented by people with hearing loss. Thomas Edison, of course, invented a better longer-lasting light bulb, worked on carbon transmitter, which gave a way to the invention of telephone by Alexander Graham Bell whose mother was deaf and his wife deaf. Vint Cerf invented TCP/IP protocol that made the Internet possible. I don’t think it’s a mere coincidence and I’d consider them to be Outliers too.

17. I’m good at making or giving gifts. I have a way of making it more than it is. Thoughts are priceless.

18. I like to write in composition books. I have one at my desk, in my backpack and at home. A habit that’s started recently last year. Google stocks them as office supplies.

19. I love Chipotle burritos.

20. I’m starting to like to drink coffees and teas. Signs of maturity, I suppose.

21. I want to buy a new lens for my camera.

22. If I ever get married, I will not even think about a divorce. Not an option, which means I’m selective about women. I do not want to become a statistic with 50% of marriages ending in a divorce unless infidelity is committed (it won’t be me).

23. I want to move to Korea and live there for 2 years or till I become fluent in the language and can read newspapers with ease. I was born there. It’s time to develop my mother tongue.

24. I think I’d like to live in Chicago. A bricked townhouse in downtown. Don’t have to be huge but comfortable. Use alternate transportation more such as biking and getting on trains. Bike to parks, go on trains to see museums, play golf, and fly on last-minute weekend fares out of O’Hare airport.

25. My lifelong goal is to help move my sister and her family to the United States and live close to each other. We’ve been apart long enough and for my niece to have a good education/life. Both my sister and brother-in-law are deaf.

It’s not Warren or Susan or Otis or Samuel or Tricia.

It’s “The.”

As in Attila The Hun or Alexander The Great or Zorba The Greek.

The web is getting saturated. It’s no brainers that the web is THE platform. Doesn’t matter which OS you’re using, just as long as you’re on the web. It reminds me of unix environment where its philosophy is to do one thing and do it well. I think the Web is quickly coming down to that too.

Twitter is the microblogging or real-time updates.

Facebook is the social networking app to be a member of.

Google is the search engine to go to.

Gmail is the webmail to use (at least to me.)

Flickr is the photo sharing website to upload pics.

Wikipedia is the online encyclopedia to go to.

Amazon is the place to do online shopping.

YouTube is the website to upload videos to.

You get my drift.

Ofc, Barack Obama is the President now. :-)

I suppose it’s hard not to be thinking about economy since that’s the hot issue right now, with 2.4 million jobs being lost—the most since 1940. Yikes. So, I’ve been thinking what economy really is. At first, I thought it is just a cycle that if studied and know how it works, enables you to become rich and have a great life, or in other words, living out the “American dream”.

Let me say that economy is purely abstract. It only exists as math in your head. Numbers. It used to be based on the value of gold till someone realizes that’s not necessary and break off the valuation. That’s because there are enough goods, services, and possessions created that apparently, people want them badly enough. Dollar simply provides the means for it. Want a Porsche? then you’d have to work your ass off till you have enough to afford it. Want some hot flesh lap dance and more some than that ? Pay some fat dollars. Nothing to do with gold. Just numbers.

Price is simply the amount that you would be willing to pay for it. Marketers are expert in pricing their items in such a way that it’s not too high that customers won’t pay nor too low as to lose the profits. They aim to achieve profit margin as wide as they can. No buy? then lower the price (called a sale) till customers say “hey, this is pretty affordable. I can purchase this.” A sale is made—seller gets money and the buyer is now one happy customer with the wanted good.

Inflation is defined as a rise on the general level of prices of goods and services but why does it keep rising every year? The answer is money supply. Plainly summarized, Federal Reserve Banks supply money to banks, then banks loan to businesses. Businesses make sales, get profits, and pay back the interests to banks. Then, banks supposedly pay the money back plus interests to the Federal Reserve Bank, which obviously isn’t the case right now. They need a bailout from the government, which is sad. The more money the Federal Reserve issues, the higher inflation will be. Because there are now more money in the end and someone who’s able to garner cash can afford these. Hence this common phrase, “Rich gets richer, poor becomes poorer.” That’s why you keep hearing economists saying that it’s necessary to keep growing your wealth ahead of the inflation rate due to a greater money supply now.

What smart people would do is to find a job that pays steadily and at the same time, gives them a sense of rewarding feeling that it isn’t too much of a chore to come to work everyday. Then, with the right kind of investments that grow steadily, they become financially independent and no longer need to work because they would have gained enough money that pays itself via interests, dividends and to cover their living expenses plus some extra to enjoy such amenities such as traveling and seeing friends/families. One obvious reason why the government convince people to become home owners is because that’s where banks make the most money, via the mortgage interest.

Credit cards work a lot like a bank loan except it doesn’t require the same level of approval that banks take. It is purely buy it now and pay later. But at the consequence of a much higher interest rate than bank loans. If you got yourself unable to pay back the amount and fall into a debt, well, you’ll have to keep working and that won’t be too pleasant if you happen to be 60 years old now and cannot enjoy life as much. Recession occurs when people stop spending. The economy cycle stops flowing. So, the government has to get creative and inject more money supply and hope that people will once again happily spend. Then businesses can make profits, banks get interests and pay to the Federal Reserve. Everyone is seemingly happy.

So, to me, economy is simply a way to make the most out of your life, enabling you to accomplish things that your previous generation couldn’t. Just remember that it is purely abstract and can only go as far as your American dream take you to.

National Treasure No. 1 Burns
Namdaemun gate on Wikipedia

Unbelievable.

These use a board, obviously, but how they maneuver is different. Skateboarding uses wheels, snowboarding - no wheels but on snow, and ofc, surfing on water. They have two things in common - they require you to have a strong sense of balance and spatial direction - forward, back, left, right, and rotate. Without those, you can’t go anywhere.

For starters, skateboarding is ideal to start learning how to board because it’s most accessible - a board with wheels is all you need while you need a far more equipment for snowboarding and surfing. Snowboarding is the most expensive because you need to buy a ski lift plus insulation for cold weather. If you’re scared of water, forget about surfing! If you dig water and big waves don’t scare you (not scared of getting drown), surfing is fun but is the trickiest largely because it is unpredictable, you have to read/measure the waves right to make a good catch. To me, surfing is the most exhilarating because you get 100% immersed into nature by its body of water and if you get to carve the wave, nothing is greater than that and you can feel nature carrying/pushing you.

From the technical aspects, I’ve found skateboarding to be the hardest. You need to learn how to do an ollie, which in my opinion, is the hardest trick to learn but once you master it, tricks become much easier and you can go over any kind of step like stairs and how high you can jump depends on how fearless you are. Tricks add up there - kick flip, kiss on the rail, so on.

They’re all fun to try and involve different kinds of nature but one thing is that you gotta have a solid foundation - sense of balance and spatial direction, which is knowing where you go and to anticipate the next step/move.

Happy boarding. :-)

It’s a cool movie. Basically, they’re trying to change the misconception about deaf people being dumb because in the past, the word, deaf, was always associated with dumb and that hearing loss had to be fixed. They were tired of seeing how Hollywood movies would cast a deaf person to play a role of self-pity or some dumb person, so they used a good-looking deaf lady and made a sexy scene out of it in order to change the world’s perspective on deaf people.

I want to share something funny that’s happened at my work. Not a long ago, we hired a new co-worker and he sent out an intro email and I replied back to his email. Turned out that we have some similar interests and we chatted a bit. Then I went out on a vacation. When I got back, he IMed me that he had learned that I’m Deaf and he didn’t know that I was. So, we as deaf people have come a long way since then.

The five spiritual faculties - faith, energy, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom - are our greatest friends and allies on this journey of understanding. These qualities are most powerful when they are in balance. Faith needs to be balanced with wisdom, so that faith is not blind and wisdom is not shallow or hypocritical. When wisdom outstrips faith, we can develop a pattern where we know something, and even know it deeply from our experience, yet do not live it. Faith brings the quality of commitment to our understanding. Energy needs to be balanced with concentration; effort will bring lucidity, clarity, and energy to the mind, which concentration balances with calmness and depth. An unbalanced effort makes us restless and scattered, and too much concentration that is not energized comes close to torpor and sleep. Mindfulness is the factor that balances all these and is therefore always beneficial.
~ Joseph Goldstein, in Seeking the Heart of Wisdom

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