Random Observation/Comment #543: Being a local to me means being in a loving community. The TT Addicts gathered at the usual happy hour Friday night for some competitive exercise and $4 beers. Harpoon IPAs, Radeburgers, Heffeweisens, Heineken lights, and beer with Sprite flowed generously for hours. Our drink preferences were acknowledged with eye contact, a head nod, and a huge...
Random Observation/Comment #500: I’m a half-kilo blogger. That’s a lot of time writing… Milestones – What a feeling you get when you reach them. Pride. Elation. Serenity. Fulfillment. Thrill. High-five-ness. Hunger (well, I’m always hungry). It’s been 6 years since starting this blog and each entry I published was a milestone in itself. At least I’ve felt the same emotions...
Random Observation/Comment #495: Overnight 0 degree camping in the Catskills will grow hair on your chest. Ladies, you have been warned. I’ve gone camping before, but I’ve never done it in freezing conditions. I’ve also never gone with such an awesomely prepared group like DBA (Destination Backcountry Adventures run and led by Dave DiCerbo). As a spontaneous and over-trusting type,...
Random Observation/Comment #417: I love table tennis almost as much as I love mashed potatoes. That’s a lot of love. I don’t have a gym membership, I just go to SPiN NY on weekdays after work (5:30-7:30pm) and play with the usual table tennis (TT) junkies. It covers my cardio, core, legs, and overall mental focus for the day. I...
Random Observation/Comment #411: Life is about trying new things and retrying old things. I guess life is just about trying? No, that’s too complicated. Life is about not thinking about trying. Time-lapses are a series of photos that are strung together and then sped up to condense something like 700 photos into 12-seconds of video. What you’re left with is...
Random Observation/Comment #405: The brain needs exercise too. Keep it healthy by challenging yourself and shielding it from stressful/dramatic situations. I don’t think I’ve ever completed a full crossword until September 2013. My gf, who is a crossword guru, started doing them in college in order to help with insomnia. She’d casually finish a Tuesday Newsday in 10 minutes and...
Random Observation/Comment #404: I live a life of metaphors. Puzzles make me whole. There’s nothing better than finding that 1-in-1000 piece that connects perfectly to another. I feel my heart’s pace rise and pupils dilate from that joy of feeling those notches line up and sink in. By themselves, they’re all just meaningless blobs of ink, but together, they tell...
Random Observation/Comment #397: “You know what I do when I get mad/sad/unhappy? I stop being mad/sad/unhappy, and be awesome instead.” ~Barney Stinson I haven’t written a poem in a very long time, but someone asked me why I’m never mad or really lost control of my emotions, and I felt the best way to answer was through an analogy and...
Random Observation/Comment #360: On the surface, the most simple things look mundane and uninteresting, but diving deeper, even the most simple things can be its own art form. JP, my photographer friend and table tennis coach/rival, shared his experience with photography and art with Credit Suisse earlier this week. I was so inspired that I felt the need to summarize...
Random Observation/Comment #339: Scuba certified! Triumph moment of May is going to be tough to top for the coming months… I’m addicted. Scuba diving is everything I’ve ever wanted from an activity and so much more. The underwater blue realm is stunningly beautiful and It’s surprisingly relaxing (when you’re not being chased by sharks). It’s like being transported into the...
Random Observation/Comment #323: Good deeds make me happy. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling that temporarily overcomes the general pessimism everyone else has about this lonely world. Baby kittens wearing hats also make me happy. They’re so cute… The Challenge Show appreciation to strangers who have done a good deed.
Random Observation/Comment #319: “Learn to love your career or change your career. You can’t maximize your productivity if you don’t enjoy your work.” ~Laura Stack in What to do When There’s Too Much to Do Sleeping takes up most of my life, so I like to think of ways to make these experiences more involved and enjoyable. Here are some...
Random Observation/Comment #285: I used to think life was a series of phases, but now I see I’ve just arbitrarily dissected my life in hindsight to rationalize/justify some of my past decisions. Presently, I only see my matured body live to explore and discover the wonders of this life. Maybe this too is a phase… We are contributing to the...
Random Observation/Comment #245: I haven’t written here this month yet. This is horrible. I guess I had way too much fun on my trip with friends to reflect. I will keep this short and simple so I can make the clock for this month. Although writing is incredibly liberating, I feel like I needed to do it here to spread...
Random Observation/Comment #216: Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. The masks come on, but so many other masks come off. People can stop living like they have a stick up their butts and just have some fun. As a tribute to this Halloween, I will write a story. It’s supposed to be scary. It was just like any other...
Random Observation/Comment #214: This year’s Zombiecon was epic (in every sense of the word). It was the best Zombiecon I’ve ever attended – not because there was a lot of alcohol, zombies, zombie hunters, and scared bystanders – but because my closest friends joined in on the fun. Surprisingly, we were only a part of the zombiecon bar crawl for...
The NAB presents itself as a multitude of different concepts for students, faculty, alumni, and New Yorkers. To some, it is a beautiful architectural achievement which is comparable to the innovation of the Cooper Union Foundation building across the street. To others, the building brings some frustration with functionality and accommodating to new environments. However, with either perspective, the building...
The easy path would have been to take the Credit Suisse well-paying IT job in Manhattan, and start my life as a young professional with a bright future in finance. I saw all of my EE graduates tempted by these delicious dangling treats, and many of them gladly following the flow and natural subsequent phases. It was a difficult decision...
Random Observation/Comment #200: As a tribute to this 200th post, I will do a little happy dance. *Does the happy dance*. You didn’t see it, but it was actually performed. With the amount of time and effort I put into this blog, I think I could have written a book by now. Actually, a lot of the material is relevant...
Random Observation/Comment #197: I’m fairly strange and I invest my time into very weird hobbies, so it shouldn’t be too outrageous to hear that I have had a dream diary for 8 years. I actually started in high school just as a personal side project to see if I could control my dreams. I had some fairly wild thoughts while...
Random Observation/Comment #191: Contrary to popular belief, I am not obsessed with desserts or sweets in general. I have a sweet tooth (somewhere among the carnivorous ones and passion towards cherry tomatoes), but it had always been geared towards cheesecake, ice cream, and cookies. This new project for Rittersport chocolate is not because of some endorsement they are paying me...
Random Observation/Comment #187: There will always be new hobbies that distract me from my careers, but the most important thing to remember is to choose the ones that yield the most gain of personal satisfaction with respect to time. Throughout this past year, I’ve found that time, not money or power (or lack thereof), was the true value of my...
Random Observation/Comment #186: I love cooking because I tend to taste a little bit more than I should while making the meal. Cooking for myself makes me half-full before I even have the plate prepared. There is a level of laziness in presentation and utensils when I’m really just trying to learn by keeping track of past mistakes and successes. ...
Random Observation/Comment #176: Fuji-san was such a remarkable experience that I compare every hiking scene to the rollercoaster of hardships and appreciation for nature throughout the entire journey. From the exhaustion and freezing cold to the final reward of watching that Heaven above all clouds, I had truly stretched my boundaries of emotions. Every short-breath I took and lactic acid...
Random Observation/Comment #118: I used to be awesome at CS. I still am, but I used to be too. I remember when I started playing beta 7 about 9 years ago with a dialup modem and trackball mouse. I lagged like crazy with 300+ ping, and I would always get spikes when my mom got a phone call. Whenever I...
