Mild Amusement

Let's pretend that you're at work and you're on a teleconference call with a bunch of people. Since you're on a conference call, that means that there are folks in different physical locations. It doesn't really matter whether you're in two different rooms in the same building or in two different countries, the important part is that you're not actually in the same room. The other salient point in that first sentence is that it's a "tele"-conference call, meaning that you're mainly relying on the audio, and there may or may not be video. For the sake of argument, let's say it's one of the older pieces of technology that doesn't include video conferencing. So, you now have a situation where you've got at least two physically-separated locations, and you have people on either side who can't actually see each other. This is not an uncommon situation, and there are decent odds that you've been in a situation like thi...

As I've pointed out before, the Mild Wife is amused by the fact that I am nerdier than she is. Her short-hand for it is, simply, that I " like Star Trek ." Of course, she still encourages this particular habit of mine, although sometimes she does so unintentionally . For one, it doesn't really do any harm, and for another, she's just encouraging me to partake in my hobbies. Now, that isn't to say that she doesn't appreciate this particular fandom at all. For all that she teases me, there are still things that she wants to partake in. One good example of this is the movie, " The Matrix ." She knows full well that it's one of those movies that has a bit of a following, so she has some interest in watching that movie (it certainly doesn't hurt that I've talked it up a bit). So, we've resolved to watch this movie so that she can partake in that particular bit of nerdom (for the record, the Internet says that's a word ). The ot...

A little while back, we were hanging out with some family friends. As it so happens, we've gotten to the point in life where a lot of our friends have kids, so this particular outing involved some little human beings (side note: this is quite possibly my favorite description of children). In this case, the little human beings involved weren't that little, as they'd already started elementary school. Still, the fact that they were little will become relevant, and hilarious, in a moment. Over the course of the afternoon, we eventually started watching some television. I don't think everyone was watching, but the television set was on, so a few folks were paying attention. I want to say it was set to sports of some sort, but I don't honestly remember. Basically, people were generally involved in conversation with each other, but those that weren't actively speaking had something else to distract them. One such distracted person was one of the smaller humans, an...

The other day, the Mild Wife and I decided to make a cheesecake for a family gathering. Neither of us has ever made a cheesecake before, but both of us happen to enjoy eating cheesecake, so we figured we'd give it a go. As she often likes to point out, we should know how to make the things we like to eat (why wait on other people if you can help it?). So, we (read: she) found a recipe online . This particular recipe was from Better Homes & Gardens, which is not a publication that I read very often. Still, necessity makes for strange bedfellows, so there I was, happily reading the online version of that magazine. It's worth noting that the reason the Mild Wife chose this particular recipe was that it had less cream cheese than some of the others that she'd seen. You see, she'd joked many moons ago that if I ever saw what actually went into a cheesecake, I'd change my mind about eating it. I don't like tons of butter in my food, and I don't have a par...

The Mild Wife pointed out the other day that I seem to like cooking special meals. Sure, I help with the usual day-to-day meals , too, but the ones that really stand out in her mind are the meals or items that tend to take a bit of extra prep work or that we don't cook very often. I'd never really thought about it that way, but I can't really fault the logic. I do like to make risotto , for example, and that can take a while to prepare. Well, one of the items that I've added to my repertoire was roasting a turkey. The Mild Wife and I decided to make one for ourselves last year, and I was largely in charge of the process. She definitely helped, but like I said, it was largely my operation. Fortunately enough, it came out pretty well, and we were happy with the whole process. In fact, we were so happy with it that we figured that we could make the turkey for a larger family meal the next year. This year was "next year," so I had to replicate the success f...

I'm not the biggest fan of Daylight Saving Time. For one, I get up really early to begin with, so it's not like it does me any good to have sunrise be off by an hour. There are pretty good odds that I'm going to get up when it's dark no matter what the clock says. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly to me, it doesn't really seem to work (as a quick example,  see the last item on the History Channel's article ). Basically, we spend all this effort to try to get a benefit, but it doesn't seem to materialize. So why bother? Regardless of how I feel about it, though, that's how everyone does things where I live. It's not like I can wage a one-man boycott of Daylight Saving Time. I will inevitably have to meet with someone, either for work or for pleasure, and bad things would happen if we had two different ideas of when 10AM was. Basically, I have to play along because time is one of those things that everyone relies on. So, when it was the app...

My parents like to cook , so they spend a fair bit of time working with recipes. My Mom likes to try new recipes, so it's not uncommon for her to decide to make a new recipe out of the blue. I've seen her make biriyani at home, for example. We don't have cultural roots in that part of the world, but she figured it'd be fun to make, so she tried her hand at it (I liked it well enough). The interesting bit, though, is that they try to perfect certain recipes. Once they've tried it once or twice, they'll try to get the flavors and the textures just right. It often makes for some good meals, because these are people who care about how the food comes out. In general, that one fact tends to make the end result better. The funny thing to me, though, has always been just how striving for perfection shows up in day-to-day life. Specifically, overhearing my parents talk about what they want to change for a particular dish leads to some comically precise discussio...

It's funny how work settings tend to play out. For the most part, everyone tends to dial things down, because they don't want to cause drama or otherwise rock the boat. That doesn't mean that everything has to be entirely bland, but you also hear a lot fewer off-color jokes. It's just safer that way. Still, every now and then, a situation calls for some wacky humor. In this particular case, one of my coworkers was dealing with someone who just wouldn't stop talking. I wasn't there for the actual conversation, but apparently this person didn't catch any of the social cues and insisted on continuing the conversation. He just kept right on droning on, hoping to achieve some goal in the process. As you can imagine, said coworker was not particularly thrilled. She looked around to see if anyone else could bail her out of this situation, but alas, no one was to be found. She was stuck. Many hours later, she would then recount this tale of woe, and lament t...

It's not much of a secret, but I tend to have some awfully nerdy habits and hobbies. I used to have a standing chess game with a coworker , fercryinoutloud. There's really not much I can do about hiding the fact at that point. If he looks like a nerd and talks like a nerd, he's probably a nerd. That said, I am not one hundred percent nerdy about everything. Frankly, I'm not even sure that's possible. I'm not sure I could read for hours, play multiple games of chess, watch several hours of science fiction television, AND write a bunch of code in a single day. I still have to eat and sleep, after all. Heck, I have a day job, too. Basically, for all that I am a nerd, there are certain areas of nerd-dom that are foreign to me. One such area is Dungeons & Dragons . I know what it is in general, but I've never played a single game. I don't know that I have any objections to it, I just never got into the game. I'm guessing a part of it was that I di...

Every now and then, the Mild Wife and I will comment how some people just ... act funky. Whether it's because they were never taught any better, they simply don't care, or circumstances in life have forced them to operate at a different level, they just do things that the rest of us don't consider acceptable. The simple, short-hand description that we use for someone like this is " hoodrat ." Now, you don't have to actually live in the 'hood to act like a hoodrat. There are rich people that have no manners and have no class. Basically, we've found that the term is still relevant even if we don't live in a super rough part of town. As a case in point, I will point to a recent Costco trip. The Mild Wife went this time around, and she remarked that she will never again go on that particular weekday at that particular time of day. It was a madhouse. There were tons of people there, and everyone was trying to get their groceries. People were bumping...

As I've been writing these blog posts over the years (amazingly, it's been over 9 years now), I've noticed that there are certain things that keep coming up. It's possible that I just find certain things funny so I write about them all the time, or maybe I do actually have certain things happen to me surprisingly often. Either way, there seem to be certain themes that routinely make me chuckle. Today's post involves one such theme: food and diet. If you don't understand quite why I say this, let me remind you of a few recent posts. First, there was the puny salad that I had for lunch while volunteering . Second, I point you to the time that I accidentally grabbed a bowl of chili, and only chili, for lunch . The last exhibit in my case that food-related hijinks are a thing in my life comes from an unusual pairing with potstickers . Like I said, we tend to have some food-related laughs around here. The latest in the string of food laughs came up when I went to...

This story starts out with a pretty innocuous event: a grocery run. We were going to host people at the Mild Abode, so we went to the store to pick up groceries. The Mild Wife had actual done a really good job of planning ahead, so we didn't need to pick up tons of items. Still, we didn't have every last item we needed for the shindig, so we headed to the store. Now, I don't really remember all of the items we needed, but we did want to buy a bigger rice cooker. You see, the Mild Wife and I usually just cooked for ourselves, so it's not like we needed mountains of rice for the two of us. However, making enough rice for a party using our small rice cooker would've meant having to cook several batches, and therefore spend forever cooking. No, we decided. We would rather just get a bigger rice cooker and make it all in one go. We actually had two stops to make, and the rice cooker was supposed to be a purchase from the second stop. However, when we were walking thr...

The new Mild Abode has had its share of fun , but it's also meant a fair bit of work. There was a lot of packing and unpacking to do, we had to handle a bunch of administrative details, and there's just the effort in getting familiar with a new place. There are pictures we want to put up on the walls, for example, so we have to figure out where to put them and how we're going to hang them up. Basically, it's not just fun and games. In particular, we have a kitchen that is new to us. I mean, it's not like we were going to lift and transport the stove from our old apartment. For one, there was the small detail that we didn't actually own that stove. For another, could you imagine the cost involved in uninstalling, transporting, and reinstalling a stove ? It's not like you can just pick it up and put it in the back seat of your car. So, yeah, we have a new stove. For the most part, that's fine, unless the appliance or kitchen item in question has a qu...

When the Mild Wife and I first moved into the new Mild Abode, we had some adventures with cats. One of them seemed to be making a case for being adopted , even going so far as to sneak in while we were moving all of our furniture. The other item that caused quite a bit of snickering was that we discovered one of these cats was named "Walter," but we were unsure of this cat's gender . Well, friends, I have updates. The show goes on, and the laughs keep on coming. First of all, we did unravel the mystery of Walter's, erm, identity. After a little bit of eagle-eyed squinting, the Mild Wife determined that Walter's name was, in fact, appropriate. Needless to say, there was a fair bit of laughter when she reported her findings, as I knew that she'd had to get creative in order to ascertain Walter's gender. I mean, it's not like she had taken the stray cat to the vet. It's actually taken a little bit of time for us to adjust to the cat's "ne...

In case it's not apparent from my last name, I have an Asian heritage ( it's not the only one , but it's in there). I'm not super traditional about everything, but I do carry enough cultural knowledge that I understand some of the basics. Hell, the Mild Wife and I made sure to have a wedding banquet when we got married. Basically, I know enough to understand the traditions. It's funny how this plays out, though. I mentioned the Mild Wedding, so I obviously believe in nodding to the big traditions. However, the ones I notice the most often are the small ones. For example, I usually tap my fingers to the table whenever someone pours me tea. It's actually enough of a habit that I will do the same thing if someone pours me a beer or a glass of wine. I know full well that the habit is only customary for tea, but it's always made sense to me to express thanks for other beverages, as well. I mean, you're pouring me a beer. Why wouldn't I be grateful? ...

There are some games that are timeless. I'm pretty sure that in thirty years, kids will still be playing tag. Sure, they might be doing it in jet packs on some distant moon or something, but they'll still be chasing each other around trying to avoid being "it." It's a simple game, with a simple premise, and at the end of the day, it can be all sorts of fun. Well, I would argue that Connect 4 is also one such game. In case you haven't had the pleasure of playing it before, it's sort of like Tic Tac Toe. You and another player alternate turns, trying to get  four of your pieces in a line before your opponent does. The line can be horizontal, vertical, or diagonal, so you have options. I remember I enjoyed playing the game as a kid, and it always seemed fun. I didn't always win, but given that I liked playing the game, I must have won enough that the process wasn't onerous. Basically, I have a soft spot in my heart for playing Connect 4. Well, ...

Last time, I mentioned that during the process of moving, the Mild Wife and I almost ended up with a new cat . The whole thing was a bit surprising, but it all turned out well. We just picked up a few laughs in the process. As it turns out, though, this would not be the last time that this particular cat led to lots of laughter in our lives. As we were moving in, we met a few of our neighbors, and we chatted with them for a little bit. The Mild Wife was actually much better about being social than I was, but we exchanged pleasantries with our new neighbors nevertheless. Usually, that also involved a telling of the cat tale from the previous blog post. I mean, it's a pretty funny story when you can proclaim that you are literally a cat herder. Moreover, we suspected that the cat may have belonged to the previous tenants. There was something suspicious about the fact that the cat kept trying to get into our apartment, and that it did so on at least two occasions. So, we asked the...

The Mild Wife and I moved a little while ago, and the whole process led to a few amusing stories. Of these, the funniest one probably involved a cat. Yes, a cat . Cats and I have an interesting history (see the linked post for details), so that fact alone should give you some idea how this is going to go. So, without further do, let's get into it, shall we? First off, we didn't move everything all in one go. We moved some of our smaller items first, before a large move that included all of our furniture and the like. As you can imagine, we made sure to use every manner of container that we had in order to move the smaller items. We had boxes, crates, and bags that were all put to use. Heck, if we could've found a way to use Tupperware to move things, we probably would have. In the process, though, we met one of the neighborhood cats. There are apparently three of them, but one of them was far friendlier than the other ones. In this case, it showed up on our front door a...

A little while back, I told the harrowing tale of mismatched coasters . If you remember, the Mild Wife and I have a set of green and orange coasters, and we alternate the colors. Now that I'm writing about it a second time, I realize full well that the alternating colors are simply a choice, but still, that's just how our brains work ("our brains" may or may not have more to do with my brain than hers). You wouldn't a run of the green ones knowing full well that there were perfectly good orange ones to be had, would you? Still, we looked high and low for the missing coaster. We checked all of the places we could think of: anything and everything near the kitchen, underneath the dining room table, underneath the coffee table, the desks where we do work, even the nightstands. We knew that it hadn't just walked out, but we could not for the life of us find the thing. It had apparently gone missing, and we had a mystery on our hands. Well, friends, I am happy ...

The Mild Wife is very, very good about wearing sunscreen. She's almost religious about it, making sure to apply the stuff whenever we head out. It doesn't matter whether it's sunny as all hell or it looks like a dreary morning. She will still apply sunscreen. It's good for you, so it makes sense (side note: I recently heard that Baz Luhrmann "sunscreen song" again, and it really resonated with me as 30-plus-year-old). She also reminds me to wear sunscreen myself, because if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. I mean, I get it. It's not like I want to get sunburned or to get melanoma .  In fact, I usually try to avoid damage from the sun, even if I occasionally fail and end up with really weird tans (see exhibit A and exhibit B ). The problem, however, is that I just haven't done it often enough where I've made it a habit. I do so haphazardly, and the results are understandably erratic. So, you can imagine the fun when ...

One of the classic conversations amongst a group of people who spend a lot of time with each other is where to go grab food. It happens with significant others, it happens with classmates, it happens with coworkers. In fact, it happens so often that enterprising folks have made websites, apps, and features that all solve this problem by randomly selecting a cuisine or restaurant for you (seriously, just Google something like " lunch decider "). In my case, this conversation started up among a couple of coworkers who happen to sit near me. They were talking about where to eat lunch, and a third coworker hopped into the conversation. Eventually, I was sucked into the conversation, and a tangent about nearby lunch places ensued. That's when the magic happened. One of the guys I work with couldn't remember the name of one place that he was referencing, so he grasped strands of his memory to come up with the name. I can't promise that I'll reproduce it perfec...

A long time ago, I remember walking by the common area on a floor where I didn't work. It was interesting to see their various artifacts and practices on display, in particular because they didn't necessarily line up with what I was used to with my team. It was like visiting another country, and I was a sightseer that got to visit for a little while. This was a while ago, so I don't really remember the little things. However, I do remember that they had a communal puzzle. The whole thing was set up on a table in full view of the entire team, and I got the impression that people were encouraged to work on it whenever they had a free moment. What's more, there were other completed puzzles in various places, so I could see that this wasn't just a whim. On the one hand, this puzzle thing made total sense to me. I was the one who had an ongoing chess game with my coworker , remember? Spreading the fun around seemed perfectly reasonable. On the other hand, though, ...

At some point, the Mild Wife and I decided that we were best served by prepping all of our meals for the week in advance (this practice is often described as "meal prep," which is why I titled this post the way I did). I don't quite remember the details of the conversation where we decided this or how we settled on this as a good option, but it was one of those things where we both sort of knew that this was a good idea. Now, at the end of the day, all of this is all about pragmatism. If you want to save yourself a bunch of time, you don't cook every day. There's an overhead involved with cooking your meals; you have to chop, wash, grab pots and pans, and so on. If you batch it all up, you can get some economies of scale. Sure, you still have to take out pots and pans, but you only do it once per week instead of seven times per week. The same holds for prepping the ingredients themselves. I can probably chop seven onions at once faster than I can chop one onion ...

I don't usually spend tons of effort on breakfast, what with getting up early in the morning ( with occasionally hilarious results ) and trying to get to work with as little fuss as possible. Most of the time, I just have a glass of milk or a cup of coffee to go with some sort of carbs. Some days, that's a reheated waffle. Other days, that's a slice of bread or toast. Either way, it's a pretty simple meal. As a result, I usually find it a treat to have anything more substantial for breakfast. Let's say the Mild Wife and I are out for breakfast or brunch. I'm going to take full advantage of the menu, and I'm going to order something a little bit more elaborate than toast (side note: French toast is usually near the bottom of my list). If it has chorizo, bacon, tortillas, or eggs, then I'm definitely going to take a second look at the item in question. In fact, eggs are pretty high on my list. I know that, all things considered, it's not a particul...

This is one of those rare posts about work. I don't usually write much about my 9 to 5, in part because there's almost always something more amusing going on in my non-work life. In fact, I try to find  something amusing in my non-work life to write about because it sort of forces me to look at life a certain way. If life outside of work is legitimately devoid of any and all amusement, the fix to that is to have more fun, not to write about work. Still, there are rare occasions when something amuses me so much that I'm willing to bend my rule. This, as you can probably imagine, is one such occasion. First, let me start off with a little bit of background: in some offices, there is the practice of Tie Tuesday . If you've never seen it in practice, people at workplaces that don't enforce business attire show up with a tie on. It's like the opposite of casual Fridays, and people do it for no other reason than to spice things up a bit. I'm guessing it also a...

The Mild Wife and I are fans of online shopping. On some level, the convenience of it all is hard to beat. I mean, you sit there at a laptop (usually), and you decide that you want a particular item to show up at your doorstep. In terms of actually having to do something, all you really do is point and click. Hell, you're going to walk to and from your doorstep anyway, since you're going to leave for work or head out at some point or another. The other thing that's helpful is that you can quickly and easily edit what you shop for. The Mild Wife and I give ourselves a small allowance to spend every month, and deciding how to spend said allowance is much easier when you have a virtual shopping cart. In a real life store, you would have to wander around the store looking for any item that caught your eye. You would then, in theory, throw all of those items into your cart/basket, and then sort through them all once you were done picking. You'd have to mentally juggle pri...

I'm not a huge soccer fan, but I do have an appreciation for the game. I know who Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are, for example. I mean, so do millions, if not billions, of other people, but I at least follow the sport enough to know some of the major stars. Hell, I even have a favorite goal,  courtesy of Zlatan Ibrahimovic . Now, as you probably know, the World Cup is happening right about now. For anyone who enjoys watching soccer, this is a big deal. For one, it only happens once every four years. You know that saying about absence making the heart grow fonder ? It's like that. Imagine if the preseason was three years long. You'd be awfully curious how your team played in the "real" season, wouldn't you? Now throw in the fact that your team isn't just for your local city or even the state/county. No, it's for the entire country. There's quite a bit of pride and fandom that gets mixed in with the whole thing, with good reason. Personall...

Everyone has their quirks . We are all unique individuals, so we're bound to come up with little things that we do that work for us but that aren't necessarily common. In my particular case, I tend to get very curious about things. If you say something that I've never heard before, I'm going to either ask you about it or look it up myself. There's no real explanation for it, since there's no requirement that I get more information about the topic at hand. It's just how my brain is wired. The interesting thing about this is when my quirk coincides with someone else's quirks. In this particular instance, we're talking about the Mild Wife. She likes to watch YouTube videos of some women in the beauty industry, so I've overheard lots of commentary about things like foundation. It's not immediately applicable to my person, since I don't wear make up. Also, I am entirely ignorant about the finer points of foundation or brushes. However, given...

Language seems to be something of a fluid thing in my life. For one, I have a mixed heritage, so  I speak more than one language . The ability to speak Spanish is just one of those things that I've inherited from my family. Sure, the accent can throw me off , but I figure I'd be fine if I have to be in South America for an extended period of time. Similarly, I've started to learned some Kapampangan from the Mild Wife's side of the family. It's not a language that I'm familiar with, but I'm learning bits of it for the same reason that I learned Spanish: I'm around it quite a bit. Interestingly enough, I've realized that some of it actually sounds vaguely like Cantonese. Kapampangan has an interesting way of explaining family relations, to the point where the same word is used for both "older sister" and "older female cousin." However, the word sounds roughly like "ah-che," while the Cantonese word for "older siste...