Mannheim Craproller

Thanksgiving turns me into a singing fool. Once I'm in the car and I hear those Christmas songs I can't help but singing... well, my wife will tell you that I'm not really singing, I'm just imitating whatever song might be playing. I could be making drum sounds or singing falsetto. I'm just as likely to be adding filler between phrases as I am to be near the melody. This happens unconsiously. I'll be driving in the car wondering what the awful screeching is, thinking that I may have to take my car into the mechanic when I realize that awful screeching is me.
However there is one phenomenon that produces sounds more awful than my voice. I call it the Trans-Siberian Crap-Roller. It may not be a song from the Trans-Siberian Orchestra or a piece by Mannheim Steamroller, but you know what type of music I'm talking about. It starts with a casio-drum beat. Then an un-holy mix of trumpets, violins, electric guitar and synthesizer starts. I half expect the Disneyland Parade of Lights to start. I wouldn't be suprised to look in my rearview mirror and seeing a giant lightbulbed turtle or a cinderella's 30,000 watt dress chasing me. Then come the orchestra hits, pounding out of my stereo like the conductor has Tourettes. Whenever this genre of 'music' comes on I switch my radio faster than if it was playing 'I Can Only Imagine' for the fourth time in an row. I dislike their sound, but they somehow have found their niche in life. Even 20 years after their album came out they still tour every December. They're the Orchestral version of Martin Lawrence. Daa-mn Gina!

foosball and fighting

We played football today against some scac guys. On the whole, they were a pretty fun group. However, one guy did get on my nerves. On one touchdown pass, he's playing safety and calls our QB is past the line of scrimmage. I was on the sidelines keeping track of downs along with someone else and we tell him that the pass was legal. He kept arguing that it our QB was past the line even though he was in the endzone, saying that our boundry cones were crooked.
Him: The lines are crooked. If they were straight, he'd have been past.
Me: We were right on the line of scrimmage looking across the field and he wasn't past. (We were 10 feet away from the QB when he threw it.)
Him: He was past! (obviously he has super vision from 30 yards away with the wrong angle)
Me: Do you want to re-do the down?
His team: No it's ok.
Me: Do you want to move the cones so the lines are straight?
Him: No... (sullenly)
Me: Then quit complaining.

The next set of downs his team throws an interception on my side of the field and luckily I had the chance to start blocking for the cornerback and the complainer and I are running right at each other. My eyes get all big because I want to block him as hard as I can, but legally. I fold my arms across my chest and we hit arm to arms. I shove him backwards with my upperarms and go past him. He gets up and yells, 'Next time you guys block like that I'm going to start throwing punches!'

What... the... H-E-double-hockey-sticks? He's taking about throwning punches? This guy wants the throw down because he got blocked playing football? I ignore him.

Later that game he's rushing and one of our players smacks him in the face and he's starts screaming bloody murder. I didn't see the play but you're not supposed to have the hands above the shoulders if you're blocking. Supposedly he tried to duck a blocker and got clocked. We had to stop the game and re-do the rules for this one guy. GRRRRRRRR. Anyone else would have not mentioned it or just told the blocker to watch his hands, but this little, hot-headed kid ruined the game for the other 16 people there. Nice work guy.

Best Buy @ 5:30 am

Sorry Jeff. Sorry Dave.
We did it... We gave in... We woke up at 4:45 to go to best buy. We were in the middle of a line that stretched about 200 yards by 6:00 am. It was quite the production. There were people giving out krispie kremes for donations. There were best buy employees with clipboards letting people sign up for computers and laptops so fewer people would get trampled. What stuck out to me the most was who was in the line. Since it made a big U around the loading dock I had a great view of the people and I would estimate that over half were Asian. The non-asians were mainly 18-45 year olds, but I saw asian mom's carrying their half-asleep kids, there were a lot of older asians as well. When the doors opened up, suprisingly most people were polite and didn't shove. What I really wanted was a 160 gb hard drive. I made a beeline for that area but found a blank shelf. What I did find was a guy with a shopping cart with at least 7 hard drives in there. The discount was only 1 per household so I wondered why this guy would shove 7 into his shopping cart. So I was stealing a glance at his cart when another guy with three hard drives in his arms leaned over to me and asked if I wanted one. Of course I said yes, then he said that he was short $10 of buying something else... basically he was scalping hard drives in the middle of Best Buy. As I gave the guy a shocked looked I was almost tackled from behind. After completing a full 360 as the person shoved her way through the crowd I was suprised to see it was an old lady about 5 feet tall. All three of these lovely people were asian. The day after Thanksgiving should be renamed 'Pretend you're in a communist bread line day'. The day after the day after Thanksgiving should be renamed, 'fill out your rebate forms day'.
I'm thankful that my Grandparents decided to immigrate to this country.

The American Dream

Our country has long held dear the mythos of the American dream. People who rise from rags to riches by hard work and luck. The American dream.
I believe that Arnold his perhaps the most famous person living the American dream. A body builder who barely spoke English moves to the United States and not only becomes an a-list actor who commands millions per movie, but becomes American royalty by marrying a Kennedy. Oh yeah... now he's Governor of California.

However, I wanted to point out another person who is living the American dream. Wilmer Valderrama. Wilmer (AKA Fes) was born in Miami but grew up in Venezuela. When he moved back to the states in 1994 he learned English by watching Sesame Street. His acting career hasn't taken off as fast as Arnold or some of his castmates. So far his only notable movie has been 'Summer Catch', but to truly understand the magnitude of Wilmer's body of work we need to examine People magazine rather than IMDB.com. Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jessica Alba, Mandy Moore and Lindsey Lohan; American dream indeed.

Update on the Soap Opera

Official English Title: Amor de Tarapacá
Chinese Title: 紫藤戀 (purple vine romance)

airplane movies

Just a list of what i watched yesterday

King Arthur
I, Robot
Collateral
The Bourne Supremacy
Alien vs Predator
Anchorman
A Cinderella Story

Then I slept for 13 hours.

Coming home

We leave in about 8 hours to go back to the states.

From Bandung to Jakarta
Jakarta to Hong Kong
Hong Kong to Taipei
Taipei to Seattle

ETA Noon on Tuesday. I think Tuesday will be 38 hours long for us. Nifty.

Passing the time

To combat boredom, I've finished Final Fantasy 2 and 9. I've read a star trek book, a dragonlance book and various short books lying around the house. I've read Isaiah. I've watched horrible hong kong movies. I'm semi-addicted to a Mandarin Soap Opera. It's not translated, but I can understand, 'I don't know' and 'I'm sorry'. Thankfully most of the dialogue uses those two phrases.

These are the facts I've gathered.

This handsome man owns a wine shop which eventually closes down. He is in love with a girl who is dating another man. He perms his hair. His mom looks unbelievably young. He has a lot of close-ups. His father is dead.

This is his step-sister.

She is in love with him. She killed her step-father. She causes trouble. She lies a lot. She got a man who liked her killed because she was acting sucidal. Avoid her at all costs.


She may or may not be engaged to a man who tries to look a lot like David Beckham. This man fell off a building and was in a coma for a year. She likes the handsome guy from above but can't admit it because of her ambigous relationship to mr beckham. When she smiles she looks like my sister-in-laws matron of honor.

That's about it folks. I think the title of the soap opera is "love's purple bamboo"

As to the elections. My personal opinions don't matter much so I won't write anything. However, looking at the news from the satellite dishes, the world seems to have given a collective shrug. For some reason I was expecting anarchy and rioting in the streets. I expected to turn to Jordanian Television and seeing people predicting the end of the world. Nothing... none of that. Interestly, the opinion pieces on the news channels from Singapore supported Bush. However the reasons were economic.

If you're really fed up with the US, move to Canada. Everyone loves Canada.



Traffic suprises me here. Not only are one way streets and lanes optional, but you can fit a family of four on a scooter. Sorry for the bad photography, but this scooter was going 20-30 mph and only about 2 feet away from our car.


I don't know what this is either. My job is to eat it and pray it doesn't give me runny poop.


Finally,
The family.