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This weekend's been a lot of fun. On Friday, Raymond flew up to interview at AST. Unsurprisingly, he aced his interview. In fact Raymond answered one of his interviewer's questions so fast, that the interviewer ran out of things to ask and admitted that that's never happened to him before. Raymond postponed his return flight until Sunday and hung out with us over the weekend.

On Saturday Raymond, Kenny and I drove up to UC Berkeley to visit David, Richard and Minh.

Then today Minh and David came down to visit us, and the five of us checked out Minh's luxurious apartment in San Mateo and had Chicago pizza in Palo Alto. Then all of us minus Minh went bowling at Palo Alto Bowl. That place is a bit run down with its lanes scratched, and a scoring system on crack.

Bowling was hilarious. The system would often not recognize our second throw, so it would give us three throws in a frame. I knocked down nine pins in a frame, but it scored as a spare. In another frame, the system completely skipped my turn and gave me a generous strike. Kenny got a strike in the last frame, which got counted as a double strike. Raymond's instant gutterballs made the system give him free retries out of sympathy. And one of Kenny's throws carried over to me, so I started a frame with 7 pins.

I quickly realized why we were the only people bowling there. :)

Another billing period for my family's AT&T wireless plan just ended, and I thought it'd be fun to take a look at how many minutes everybody's been using. Here is the data in a nice graphical format.



My mom looks like the most consistent user, with about the same percentages in the daytime and night & weekend categories. Aaron and I are almost mirror images of each other- him dominating peak hours when he's calling friends and scheduling hangouts, and me with time to chat mostly only at night and on weekends.

The fact that I use more monthly minutes than Aaron and my mom combined is interesting. Although probably 85% of those minutes are used talking to a certain person, part of the reason my usage is so comparatively high is definitely because I don't have a usable landline.

Gas prices in my area climbed a further 14 cents to $4.23 in two days, and there's no indication that the end is in sight. Everybody's disgruntled, and businesses and airlines are finding it ever more costly to operate -- and passing those costs back down to the consumer. At this rate, we'll soon be seeing gas selling at $5 a gallon, and even that will quickly become a distant memory.

But Chris Pummer, a writer for MarketWatch, remains optimistic. He cites eight reasons we'll rejoice when gas hits $8 a gallon. Undoubtedly the changes and innovations brought on by these continuously rising gas prices won't happen overnight, but I do think more progress is to come. For one, I'm seeing more people riding bikes, and I'm looking to buy a pair of rollerblades for commuting to work. =)

My parents and Priscilla came up over the Memorial Day weekend. Unfortunately Aaron couldn't come, as he was at a youth retreat.

On Saturday we attended a wedding for Johnson and Mimi Ng up in a beautiful location in the Oakland hills. I forget how I am related to Johnson, and I don't really know him but apparently he knows my family. I liked the fact that it was a small wedding - probably less than 100 guests - but I am accustomed to Christian weddings, so when the female minister (who was dressed somewhat like a hippie) said "We are gathered here today in the spirit of love," it felt a little... odd. =)

Sunday was Priscilla's birthday and our 1.5 year anniversary, so I took her on a surprise trip down to the Monterey Peninsula. Our first stop was the Old Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey, where we spent half an hour walking the wharf and getting the iconic clam chowder bowls. From there we hopped onto the coastal part of the 17 Mile Drive where we stopped at half a dozen points and took lots of gorgeous pictures since we're both so good looking and all.

Finally our trip ended at the white-sand beach in the city of Carmel, where we watched the sun set behind the rolling hills caressing the ocean's profile, and the waves crashed gently upon the sand at our feet as the dying sun lit the sky in one last fiery blaze of passion.

Then we walked along the shore in the near-dark despite her protests that it was too cold. Man, I'm such a great boyfriend.

My favorite letter in Scrabble is by far the X. Worth an entire 8 points, the X is one of the highest scoring tiles in the game (the others being J for 8 points, and Q and Z both worth 10 points -- all having an occurrence of 1). I've found that more often than not, a well-placed X can change or seal the outcome of a game for the lucky player who gets it.

Despite its high point value, the X can be combined with any vowel to form a two-letter word (AX, EX, OX, XI, and XU). It's therefore possible to lay an X to form words in two directions. Put the X on a triple-letter space and it gets scored as 24 points in each direction, for a total of 48 points for this one letter alone. Not too shabby, methinks.

Last week I had the opportunity to meet with some of the guys from my fellowship for a time of sharing over dinner at Google. They meet every other Wednesday to share with each other how they're doing spiritually and whatnot. Drew works at Google so he gets us free dinner and we find a conference room. It was great fellowshipping with those guys and obviously there are some things better discussed when there aren't girls present. ;)

It was also my first time on the Google campus, and aside from getting questioned by a security guard on the way in, it was pretty cool getting to finally see the place.

Then last Friday I saw Iron Man with some of the same guys. I'd never gotten into the Iron Man story so I didn't really know what to expect. Fortunately that movie really rocked what little expecations I went in with. The storyline, character development and acting were superb. Robert Downey Jr. is one of the most colorful actors I've seen on the screen!

Since Priscilla left her job at Unitone for a better, less-dramatic one at National Technical Systems, she gave herself a well-deserved week of rehab-- err, vacation-- and decided to visit me with her parents from Friday to Tuesday of last week.

On Saturday we drove up to San Francisco to check out Pier 39 and Coit Tower. The scenery at Pier 39 was not as unique as any of us remembered. The place looked like a section of Universal Studios with its chain restaurants, a bungee harness you could bounce around in for $10, and even an NFL shop. Seems like it's become just another tourist trap without any semblance of real culture. Fortunately we found some folks selling 30 minute motorboat tours for $5 and got to see a good deal of the Fisherman's Wharf area.

After that we drove up nearby Telegraph Hill, atop which is Coit Tower. We spent considerably less money there (around $16 on admission for the four of us), but I enjoyed it more than Pier 39. From the top of the tower, which puts you higher than everything else except some skyscrapers, you have a great panoramic view of the city.

During the rest of the time the Pangs were up here, they were having meals with old friends, taking a ton of pictures, and washing my dishes for me. I had a lot of fun, and it was kind of them trying to serve me in any way they could.

So far Priscilla has been up here twice (the first time with Audrey). My dad and brother were up with me the first week, and my mom is flying up tomorrow and staying for a few days. Then my parents up are coming up for somebody's wedding in May, and we invited Priscilla to fill Aaron's spot since he's going to be away at a retreat. With all these people continuously visiting me, it doesn't really make sense for me to go back and visit now. I guess I'll have to wait until people stop visiting me. =)

Right now there are two summer movies I'm looking forward to seeing: Hancock and The Dark Knight.

As proof that I've been out of touch with TV and theatrical movies, I hadn't heard of Hancock until I stumbled upon a stolen whale clip from the trailer on Youtube, which led me to find a (still stolen) full trailer. I like most Will Smith movies, and this one looks like it'll be pretty funny.

As for The Dark Knight, I really enjoyed Batman Begins, and the 5-minute Joker teaser I saw when Priscilla and I went to watch I Am Legend was pretty cool. I have high expectations for The Dark Knight; I hope I'm not disappointed!

Wow, I haven't written anything here in almost a month. This past month has been busy, exciting and tiring. Here's a recap of what's happened:

Priscilla and Audrey drove up at the end of February to visit. They slept over Friday night and Sunday night and I made food for them that they didn't really like (cough, ingrates!). While Audrey was down in Monterey visiting a friend, Priscilla and I explored the Sunnyvale City Center, visited CCIC Mountain View, and stayed at home making food and listening to online broadcasts about relationships.

Work at AST is going well. I'm definitely keeping busy. Last week I even got to interview an applicant over the phone.

My replacement officemate is a guy named Dave. He's pretty chill, and we're always making fun of each other. Unfortunately the higher ups have seen fit to relocate him as well, which will make him the second officemate who's left me. I guess I have a knack at scaring people away...

AST has already started my application for a government security clearance, which is interesting because a lot of people don't have theirs started until they've been here several months. As part of the process I got my fingerprints taken. I guess I won't be robbing banks any time soon.

I've also visited a few churches but at this point I like Great Exchange (GrX) the best because the messages have really spoken to me. They have a dozen young adult small groups so I should be able to find one that fits me. This Sunday I had lunch with one of those groups at this Korean tofu house, and they paid for me (despite my protests). I'll check them out this Thursday; they meet at 7pm at one of the guys' apartment in Sunnyvale. I've also been going to Transformers, the young adult group that Steve and Shirley host at their place every other Sunday.

Other than that, I've been doing a smorgasbord routine of shopping for home furnishings and groceries, cooking, reading, web surfing, working out and eating with people. I've been pretty tired lately, but I think the main reason is that I still haven't gotten out of the college mentality of going to bed late. Once I force myself to get over that, I'll be in good shape.

Yeah, we know he... or it, rather.. is a hack job built on simple pattern matching. But could it have been written any sloppier?

Frequently when I'm taking a break at work, I'll play the "word jumble" game with SmarterChild to keep my unscrambling skills honed. SC does a decent job. Most of the time. Unfortunately it seems like the game is programmed with only one accepted answer, as I found out when it rejected "mutagen" in favor of "augment."

Also, the engine has a filter for "bad words" that takes precedence over everything else, including games. Note the following transcript from a session of word jumble, and emphasis mine:

SC: Here's a good one: IKINLLG.
Me: killing
SC: That's way uncool.
Me: ok (I'm sorry, apparently I have an obsession for killing)
SC: Well think about it then. (Thanks for the lecture)
Me: word jumble (Restarting the game)
SC: You still haven't answered this one: IKINLLG.
Me: dunno
SC: The word is KILLING.

Unfortunately I haven't found a good textual word scramble game elsewhere. (If anybody knows of one, let me know!) Maybe I'll have to write my own one of these days. ;)