Mild Amusement

I've said it before, but people in my family tend to have a sense of humor .  Jokes & gags are constantly flying at family functions, or even when all three of the Chang siblings are reunited (e.g., the " I Know You, Chang " bit).  It keeps things light, and keeps everyone on their toes.  I've been the butt of more jokes than I care to admit. One very interesting side effect of this, however, is that this often leads to people getting funny nicknames.  We crack jokes, something has that ring to it, and next thing you know, that becomes someone's nickname.  Over time, I've managed to come up with a few favorites.  In no particular order: "Travesura" (it means "Mischief" in English) This one was given to a particularly mischievous kid from the day care, because he would constantly get into some sort of shenanigans or another.  My brother & I were talking about how mischievous he was, and one of us said, "this kid's like ...

A couple of weeks ago, I was heading out to meet up with some friends.  I wasn't exactly looking forward to the drive; it was a rainy Friday night, and I was leaving right around rush hour.  Still, it made the most sense for me to leave at that time, so I steeled myself for the journey. However, as is wont to happen in my life, plans very quickly changed.  The mother of a couple of infants from the day care was home with a sick child, and she was going to be late to come pick up the other two.  Now, she knew full well that she had to bundle up a sick child, get both herself & the sick child to our house, pick up two more children, and then march right back to her house with three little kids.  Still, she didn't even question this plan, because that's more or less what parents do. My mom, on the other hand, realized that I was headed in the same direction as the children's house.  So, rather than making this lady jump through all sorts of hoops, my m...

I'm not much of a soda drinker these days.  I used to drink far more of the stuff when I was in school, but soda just doesn't hold that much of an appeal for me anymore.  Sure, I'll feel like having some every now and then, but my drink of choice on a day-to-day basis is definitely not soda. And over time, I've realized that I prefer some of the sweeter sodas.  In particular, I've found that I like orange Fanta (side note: I was really tempted to start this post with, "I don't always drink soda, but when I do, I prefer Fanta," a la the Dos Equis guy ).  I know it's not common for that to be someone's favorite soda, but then again, I've never claimed to be all that normal. So, given my uncommon preference, I was pretty happy to find out that the vending machine at work has my soda of choice.  Unfortunately, I know all too well that "uncommon" doesn't necessarily sell well.  I walk by that vending machine every single day, a...

I'm around little kids a lot, so I get to talk and play with them a lot.  And little kids act on pure emotions, so they often say and do things without regard to what other people think.  Most of the time, it's just a conversation.  Every now and again, though, I am privy to absolute hilarity.  Don't believe me?  Check out the first and second installments in this series. My usual caveat applies here; by no means am I making fun of the toddlers (that'd be more than a tad mean).  I do think that some of the things they say are amusing, though.  And in the spirit of the blog, I do some extra typing. So, without further ado: Dad: "Hey, don't touch tia's flowers.  She works hard on getting them to grow" Kid: "I'm not touching them.  I'm picking them up" The verbal sleight of hand caused more than one (muffled) chuckle in the room. (This little girl is old enough to go to school, so she usually doesn't join us.  Today, th...

I recently moved into a new cubicle at work, so I've been trying to minimize the amount of noise I make.  As part of that effort, I've been using my headphones more often when I listen to my daily slew of podcasts.  I use a desktop at work, so that means that my headphones are connected to a tower that sits on the ground.  Fortunately, the headphones have a long enough cord that they'll reach me, so that's not a problem. What is a problem, however, is that there is no place to rest the ear buds when I step away from my desk or otherwise stop listening.  If I place them too close to the edge of the desk, they'll fall right off.  To further complicate things, the long cord also means that there's a non-trivial pull on the ear buds towards the computer on the ground.  Even resting the headphones a few inches away from the edge of the desk can be problematic.  And I don't want these things falling/lying on the ground, so I have to be very careful about m...

I have to admit, traffic patterns have always confused me a little bit.  There are times when there is congestion on a highway long past the actual obstruction (e.g., an accident) being removed.  It's almost like there's residual traffic, as a warning to everyone that "a bad thing happened here."  There are also times when there are a surprising number of cars on the road; for example, did you know that the east-bound lanes on both the Bay Bridge and the Caldecott tunnel consistently see a lot of traffic around noon on Saturdays?  Where are all of these people going?  You figure they can't ALL be going to lunch, and if they were going on a weekend trip, they would've left earlier in the morning. So, with that as a caveat, perhaps you could excuse my confusion when there was a surprising amount of traffic going West on the Bay Bridge (i.e., into the city) a little after 7PM on a weeknight.  Generally, if I've left the office that late, I don't see...

A couple of weeks ago, a buddy of mine had an extra ticket to the Cal-Oregon game .  For those of you who don't follow college football, Oregon was ranked #1 in the country at the time.  They have an offense that is scary good, and they've run up the score on more than one team this season.  Also, Cal isn't exactly a powerhouse this season.  So, the potential for a blowout was definitely there.  Put it this way: Oregon was favored by 20 points by the odds makers in Las Vegas. But surprisingly, the Cal defense hung tough against that vaunted Oregon offense.  Now, I'll readily admit that Cal cheated .  Still, they played well above their usual level to even keep the game that close.  What's more, the Bears (that'd be Cal, for those of you who REALLY don't follow college football) looked like they might take the lead at the start of the fourth quarter. Couple all of this with the fact that the Bears were playing at home, and the fans in the stadi...

I mentioned in a previous post that the Spanish I speak is slightly different than the Spanish that most people speak in Argentina.  There are always regional differences to the way a language is spoken, so this wasn't surprising.  And other than blowing my cover as a local, the diction wasn't a problem. There was, however, one case where this resulted in a bit of amusement.  To me, the word "chicos" has always meant something akin to "kids" or "young 'uns."  I'm not alone in thinking this, either; I'd say at least part of the Internet agrees with me . So imagine my amusement when the driver on our very first cab ride kept referring to my travel companions as "chicos."  The Mild Ex was also pretty amused, as she likes to give me a hard time about being older than she is.  I was a little surprised, to be honest.  I'm not usually mistaken for the oldest person in a group.  In fact, most people who don't know me ver...

The way I see it, there are generally two ways to travel: you plan everything out in advance, or you play it by ear and figure it out along the way.  I wouldn't say one way is necessarily better than the other, but obviously the method you pick makes a difference in how you spend your time in your destination.  In the case of this last trip, we decided to go with the second option. Now, that's not to say we completely avoided any planning.  We had a rough idea of where we wanted to go, and how to get there.  In the spirit of having an adventure, though, we didn't book any hotels or buy any tickets in advance.  This also gave us a little bit more flexibility in case we had to change plans mid-trip.  All in all, we felt fairly comfortable with this plan. And then we landed.  Argentina's previous President passed away a couple of days before we arrived.  We actually had heard the news, but we didn't think anything of it other than that it was a ...

As part of my Argentina excursion, we went on a trip to Aconcagua .  Mind you, we didn't actually climb the thing, but we did get close enough to see it and basically do a day trip up there.  The really interesting part of it for me was that for the majority of this trip, I was one-eyed.  Yup, I was the one-eyed man. First, a little background.  I assumed the sun was going to be out and I'd need some sort of sunglasses to deal with that occurrence.  I don't have prescription sunglasses, so that meant that I needed to wear my contacts.  I'd already brought them and all of the associated gear (contacts case and solution), so I was all set.  And for the first hour or so of the trip, everything was coming up roses. However, we were walking around, and I rubbed my left eye.  It's not like I was gouging myself, but the motion was enough to disturb my contact.  If you've worn (soft) contacts before, you know that this occurrence isn't a very big...

As some of you may already know, I was on vacation to Argentina recently.  It was a good trip, but even before the trip started, we realized that I was the only brown person.  Why is that important information, you ask?  I'm the only one of the three who speaks "fluent" Spanish. For those of you who are astute or curious readers, you might wonder why I used quotes for that last sentence.  After all, I was born in a Spanish-speaking country, I speak castellano  (read: Spanish ) at home, I took enough classes in high school to bone up on my grammar & general literacy, and I've been known to use it when communicating with coworkers in Spanish-speaking countries.  So why the quotes? Well, seeing as how my job was to translate things to English while on this trip, I kept doing so.  Often times, I would do this in front of someone who was speaking Spanish to me.  And then a few seconds later, that person would magically start speaking English to...

Whenever someone starts talking about their horror stories in the kitchen, I am always reminded of my buddy who managed to screw up pasta.  Pasta is one of those meals that's supposed to be easy to make, even with limited cooking ability.  In its most basic form, it's easy to prepare: boil some water, throw the pasta/noodles in the water until they cook, take the noodles out, throw pre-made sauce on it, and enjoy.  In theory, it should be almost impossible to mess this up. Well, let's hypothesize a situation where one is a college kid who wants to play some video games while he waits for the water to boil.  Let's further postulate that the video game console is in an adjoining room, rather than in the living room.  Given this hypothetical situation, it's theoretically possible for said college kid to forget all about the pot of water on the stove.  After enough time, the water would completely evaporate, but the stove would still be on.  And if the st...

As I have mentioned once before , I have had more wedding adventures lately.  The last wedding I attended was particularly awesome, because it was surprisingly profitable for me.  Yes, I know that sounds a little odd, if not shady, so let me explain. For this wedding, we had to travel to Winnipeg.  As it turns out, my friend's boyfriend passed through Winnipeg once long ago, and he made a stop at a local casino.  Out of sheer nostalgia, we decided to pass through and check it out.  Normally, I'm not much of a gambler, but the groom told me, "look, I can't go, but somebody should gamble a little bit.  At least one bet, that's all I ask for." Well, orders are orders, I suppose.  I threw down 20 bucks at the roulette table, fully expecting to lose it.  Oddly enough, I didn't, so I hung out for a while.  People were waiting for me, though, so I eventually got impatient and doubled on what I had left.  The end result was that I walked out...

I've attended several weddings recently, because apparently at I'm at an age where this is what people do.  Not me, mind you.  But lately, it's not uncommon for friends of mine to tie the knot.  Regardless, this means that I've had more wedding-related adventures lately. Start with my friend's wedding a few months back.  I've known the guy since middle school, and we have a bunch of mutual friends.  So, they figured since we were all in town, everyone minus the groom would get together for brunch before the wedding.  That was fine, only we discovered during the course of said brunch that one of them (a girl) wanted to go shopping for a different outfit.  Now, the rest of my party happened to be composed entirely of females, so they agreed to help her shop.  Seeing as how we had carpooled and one of them was my ride, I agreed to also tag along. Now, I've been shopping with girls before, but it's not like I'm a connoisseur of female fashion. ...

As I've mentioned before, I try to eat veggie meals twice a week.  And when left to my own devices, I often resort to the same thing .  Well, I figure I should eventually do something about this, and I had the perfect opportunity to do so a couple of weeks ago. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I had already knocked off one veggie meal.  I was left to my own devices for lunch, so I figured I'd make myself a veggie meal to finish off my weekly requirement.  Rather than grabbing eggs (incidentally, we happened to be out of eggs), I boiled water to cook frozen veggies.  I threw some rice in the rice cooker as I did that, to get that going at the same time.  My plan was to sauté the veggies just a little bit, and throw a little bit of sauce on top.  It wasn't going to be life-altering or anything, but it would've fed me and ensured I ate a veggie meal. It doesn't take very long for those frozen veggies to be ready, so I had to quickly grab a p...

At one point during the road trip, we ended up stopping in Valentine, Nebraska.  It's a fairly small town, and it doesn't really have any attractions other than the name.  Still, it happened to be on the way, and we were tired of driving that day, so that's where we stopped. Anyhow, after dinner, we figured we'd grab a drink somewhere.  There were a couple of bars near the hotel, so we just walked over to one and headed in.  Since we were in a town we didn't know, we more or less randomly picked one - this place called George's Corner Bar. The first thing we noticed was that it was pretty empty inside.  It happened to be a Monday night, though, so we figured that it wasn't unreasonable for the place to be a little empty.  Still, we both pulled up a stool and ordered a drink.  However, I look fairly young, so the bartender asked to see my ID, and commented, "you're a little young, aren't you, son?"  I do look young, but it's been a w...

At one point during my recent road trip, we stopped off in Sioux City, Iowa.  There wasn't anything we really wanted to see or do there, but it wasn't too far out of the way, and we figured we'd check it out.  We were more or less passing through from South Dakota to Nebraska, and we chose to go through this particular city to get there.  I suppose being hungry and wanting some lunch didn't hurt, either. It was almost a decision we came to regret.  We didn't really know the town, so we just drove through downtown and then a nearby area to find something to eat.  We finally settled on a Mexican place.  It wasn't really a restaurant, because you didn't go inside.  It was like a really big food stall, with some benches outside.  It was pretty deserted when we got there, but we ordered some food and sat down to eat. Now, there were a few other people around, but they weren't very chatty.  My friend doesn't exactly blend in at a Mexican restau...

I went on a road trip with a friend through many of the Midwest states recently.  Neither of us had been to Mt. Rushmore (South Dakota) before, so we figured we'd check it out.  And since we were in the neighborhood, we'd stop by as many nearby states & attractions a we could.  We finally settled on flying in to Minnesota, flying out of Montana, and figuring out the rest as it came up. It was a good trip, and I had fun.  During this trip, though, I came to respect the name " Xlerator ."  For those of you too lazy to click on the link, it's a normal-looking automatic hand dryer.  Let me assure you, however, that these things are most definitely not normal. I'm not even sure I remember where I first saw one of these devices (maybe my brain is just trying to block out the memory).  Regardless, I had just finished washing my hands, and I moseyed over to the hand dryer.  It turned on, and when it did, I thought that it seemed to be blowing air ...

A while back, my sister sent me a link to a YouTube video.  Specifically, she sent me a link to the  Airplanes song by B.O.B . (side note: it took me a few minutes of researching both the artist's name and punctuation rules to determine the proper way to end that last sentence).  I liked it after the first listen, so I tucked the song's name into the back of my head for future reference. Now, when it comes to music, I don't usually download songs right away.  I usually wait a little while on them, just to make sure that I really do like the song in question after listening to it multiple times.  It's sort of like making sure it'll stand the test of time, only "the test of time" only takes about a week or so.  In the meantime, I end up going to YouTube if I want to listen to that song.  In fact, that's the other part of the test; if I find that I'm constantly looking up the same song, I should probably just go buy the track. Yes, you read that co...

When I was younger, my mom would send my siblings and I to a different room if we were bawling or throwing a tantrum.  Her reasoning was simple: she didn't want to deal with it.  So she came up with a very simple solution; the tantrum thrower in question would go to the other room, and let the tantrum run its course.  She would go about her usual day, and at some point, the kid and the adult would meet back up again to carry on with their day, minus the shenanigans. Now, you might think that a kid throwing a tantrum would be a poor choice for someone to leave unsupervised.  Heck, I know a similar thought has crossed my mind before.  However, my mom somehow made it work.  She managed to convince all three of her children that a trip to the crying room was not an invitation to cause mischief, despite the fact that we were in a foul mood and we technically had no direct adult supervision in that moment.  I'm not even sure that she had to put the fear of...

I've heard it said that fear is a good motivator, and to a certain extent, I agree.  It's not that I'm trying to be all Machiavellian about how I deal with people, but I think that there are certain things you should be scared about.  For example, if you have a kid, you should be a little worried about screwing up how you raise him.  It's that little bit of fear that drives people to be good parents, I think.  You want a good way to constantly keep the kid's best interest at heart?  Be scared of screwing up. Anyhow, I've found that this mentality is applicable to other aspects of life (I don't have any kids floating around anywhere).  In particular, it reminds me to be good about having my morning snack.  See, I usually try to have a fruit around 8AM, because it keeps me going until lunch time.  It's also a good way for me to maintain some balance in my diet, as it's a built-in time to have some fruit every day.  However, that's also righ...

I happen to be the oldest of three siblings, so when I was growing up, I was often tasked with helping out my younger siblings.  Not that they were incompetent or incapable by any means, but that's just how it goes when you're the oldest child.  Among other things, I've helped my siblings write papers, prepare speeches, prep resumes, and write code (my sister's major was very similar to mine).  Let's just say that it's not a rare occurrence. Still, my sister managed to surprise me.  She's into arts & crafts type stuff, so she's constantly working on different projects.  That's not my thing, but I can appreciate the work she puts in.  She also knows that I'm generally far less capable about these things than she is, so it's not like we talk about the details of the construction or anything.  Nevertheless, she randomly asked me for help on one of these projects. It turns out that the project in question was this  origami box thing that s...

As I was sitting at work on Friday morning, a friend asked me what I had planned for the weekend.  Well, truth be told, not too much.  My recently-married friend was having a very informal party to celebrate the wedding on Saturday, and I was planning on playing basketball with some friends on Sunday.  But otherwise, I was planning on a slow weekend to rest up and catch up odds & ends.  Alos, the Mild Ex was heading down to Disneyland (I couldn't go because of the afore-mentioned wedding party), so I was left to my own devices to entertain myself.  I didn't have a problem with that, but I figured it wouldn't exactly be an action-packed few days. Now, I had sniffled a little bit through lunch on Friday, but I was thinking it might be an allergy attack.  And under most circumstances, even a little non-allergy sniffling goes away after a good night's rest.  In fact, I don't even count the sniffles as being sick unless it lasts longer than a day. ...

My parents got me a watch for my birthday, and I finally got around to getting it fitted to my wrist last weekend. It's a decent looking watch, so I figured I'd start using it every day.  In fact, as soon as I got it fitted, I put it on and walked out of the store with the watch planted firmly on my wrist. Now, I haven't worn a watch in a long time.  I used to have one that I liked, but the battery went dead on it.  I got lazy about replacing it for a little while, and shortly thereafter, I had grown accustomed to using my cell phone to tell the time.  In fact, I use my cell phone as an alarm clock, as well, so I really don't need any other devices to tell time.  It's not that I have anything against wearing a watch, it's just not a habit for me at this point. So, the very next day, I got up to go to work, and went about my usual routine.  Note, my usual routine doesn't involve "put on a watch," so I went about my business and completely forgot...

I think most of you already know that there are kids constantly running around my house, so I have a halfway decent idea of what toddlers and young kids are interested in these days.  Cartoons are always popular, it's just a matter of which cartoon is popular at the moment.  Lately, that's been Dora the Explorer .  Boys, girls, barely walking, preschool age, it doesn't matter; they all seem to derive some enjoyment from Dora. Now, if you didn't bother to click on the link, Dora is brown.  She speaks Spanish, and the show randomly throws in words in Spanish that little kids can learn.  Since I live in a state where Spanish is fairly common, most parents approve of their kids learning at least a few words.  It's a little surprising to me how popular the show is, but the kids that come here are from all kinds of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and they all seem to like the show. Now, from a revenue-generating stand point, everyone wants to cash in on this...

Today's post begins with a story.  A couple of summers ago, there was an ice cream social/mixer thing at work.  All of the relatively new employees were invited, including the interns.  I was there, and so were several of my coworker-friends.  Anyhow, I was there talking to one of these friends, when a random intern interrupted our conversation and started making small talk.  Normally, that's no big deal, and it's actually encouraged.  This guy, however, looked straight at my (female) friend, and started out with, "you look really familiar, do I know you from somewhere?" Odd first line, I suppose, but whatever.  As he kept talking, though, it became increasingly apparent that he was trying to hit on the girl.  I had a hard time keeping a straight face, but to my credit, I managed to do so.  Eventually, she extricated herself from the situation by introducing him to me, and leaving me to deal with this guy (thanks a lot, by the way).  W...