BlaringSmelly

My coworker Ian hosts Crab Day every year. It’s an entire day of catching crabs and eating them. Four others and us gathered at the Shilshoe South Pier for the crabbing portion. Later, 23 people will show up at the nearby Golden Garden Park to feast on our morning catch.

For bait, we brought cans of cat food leftover from previous shrimping trip and razor clam leftover from our last clam digging trip. The smell of cat food brought back memories of that miserable journey in pursue of spot shrimps. The flashback made me really appreciate the sunny day we had to be out about on the pier.

Mike caught the first 2 crabs. Both crabs cling tightly to a piece of seaweed. They were too small to keep. Took Mike a while to loosen their tight grip in order to throw them back to the sea.

Ian pulled up another pot. In there was a much bigger bright red rock crab. We were able to keep that one. Unlike the Dungeness crabs, we are allowed to keep both male and female rock crabs if they are larger than the legal size.

Later on we caught several more rock crabs but none of them were big enough to keep. Other people on the pier had some luck catching Dungeness crabs. We however were strictly rock crabs.

We left around 1:45pm to go to our weekly puppy visit. I wonder if the others had better luck catching more crabs. 23 people sharing 1 crab is hardly a feast.

This trance group spun a good show last night. The energy was good; people were high from the music not some crazy stuff. The venue had just the right amount of crowd so we can actually dance and not being trampled.

Good time.

Once a while, some random encounters give me new perspectives on how far alone technology has advanced. I stumbled into MyHeritage.com and had some fun playing with its face recognition tool.

First, upload your photos for scanning. In less than 30 seconds, detected human faces are highlighted from uploaded photos. They are cropped and ready for further analysis.

There are couple things you can do with your photos on My Heritage:

Look-alike Meter

Ever wonder if you are a mama’s boy or daddy’s little girl? Look-alike Meter tells it all. I’ve got both mom and dad’s facial features, but a little something more from mama.

Celebrity Look-alike

It generates a list of celebrities you might or might not agree that look like you. At best it’s cheap entertainment and ego boost. I uploaded 2 photos and one came out I’m 80% Jada Smith look-alike. The other one I was more Caucasian than Asian. I like how the process of matching for resemblance goes beyond ethnic boundaries.

Last Friday I was heading to Post Alley to meet up with some coworkers. Halfway there a guy stopped me, he wore a clean blue tshirt, friendly face, nice biceps, looks normal.

“Excuse me miss, may I ask you a question?”

I nodded.

“How old are you?”

How odd, that’s the second time in two consecutive weeks a random guy asked me this question! The first time was last Wednesday. A black kid walked by, stopped me and popped the same question.

This time I got curious, I said to him, “You know, I’ve being getting this question a lot lately. What’s up with this?”

Of course he didn’t have an answer for me. I have to wonder why and how it came about that asking a woman’s age became the icebreaker.

I can’t speak for everyone, I know I’m flattered when someone checks my ID or acts surprised when I reveal my real age. But for a stranger on the street to ask me how old I am, I immediately associate this person with illegal activities. Criminally offending an underage is a big no no. People go to the big ass pounding jail when they cross that line. And that’s why he is checking my age.

What about other women? Would they be intrigued by random guy’s out of nowhere age survey? What kind of responses would the guy get? Is there study to show the success rate of guys scoring any woman this way? In my head, I can’t simulate an outcome that’s to the guy’s advantage.

Shortly after Erich reported his company’s legendary 9-hour all-staff meeting marathon, the company I work for scheduled Tuesday our first quarterly meeting of the year. We were promised food (the unhealthy kind), drinks (2 alcoholic ones and unlimited soda and water), and 2-hour free play at Game Works.

The real meeting was kept under 2 hour. We were (or at least I was) entertained by customer story shared by support team, hat tossing to new employees, cash and reward giveaways, short video montage of popular games from studio and people behind it.

Then Game Works time!

Her voice has the quality of dream and poetry. Keren Ann sang L’illusionniste in French so beautifully. When I hear it for the first time at last.fm, I sworn there was a tingling feeling inside my heart.

A blog I came across describe Keren Ann’s music as serene, not melancholy. That was very well said and very much how I felt when I listen to her music.

The photo used on Keren’s last.fm profile is my favorite of all her portrait shots. Photographed by Lisa Roze, she has the appearances not all that you’d expected. And yet that’s exactly how i would imagine her to be like.

Saturday morning on my way to Green Lake, I got off Aurora/99 from Green Lake Way exit and stop at the first traffic light. A wheelchair person was slowly and steadily crossing the street in front of me.

As you can see from the map, a triangle shape island is located in between crossing from A to B. The wheelchair person made his way to the island but couldn’t continue the 2nd half of the crossing. An old man in his big old car stop right on the crossing line. The disabled access to the cross line was completely blocked as well. The wheelchair person signaled his intention to cross the street. The old man moved his car few feet forward. With him already illegally stopping on the cross line, there was no room for him to go further without driving into the street traffic in front of us. So he backed up a few feet, that put him right back to here he were.

The whole time there was not a single vehicle approaching his lane or behind his car. But he refused to backup behind the cross line where he as a driver was supposed to be in the first place.

The wheelchair person waited and attempted to steer his wheelchair perhaps around the vehicle to cross the street. But there was just no way with the old fool and his big car there, not budging a bit.

Eventually the light turned green. The big old car carried its apathetic driver away. The wheelchair person had to wait for the next red light to finish his crossing.

It’s no news certain people simply shouldn’t be driving. What I saw that day was mere reflection of one driver’s indifference to regulations and lack of courtesy to other people. Unfortunately there were too many drivers on the road that’s exactly like this one. There was time I was one of them. Since I started riding motorcycle and taking public transportation, I found myself under the mercy of careless drivers. These days I’m more aware of pedestrians and cyclists when I’m driving. Other people’s safety should be again and again emphasis to new drivers. It’s our nature to do what’s convenient for ourselves. But for the sake of everyone else, we need harsher punishments for irresponsible drivers.

It was almost a sure thing we’d be spending our Presidents Day weekend at Whistler. I was told that was the busiest weekend of the year for Whistler. Partially due to the holiday crowds from the U.S., also because some race happening in the following week.

We had no luck getting a room in Whistler on Saturday, so we ended up spending a night at Richmond. Inspired by Anthony Bourdian’s recent Vancouver episode, we headed to Vij’s. The restaurant, according to The New York Times review, is “easily among the finest India restaurant in the world.”

Vij’s doesn’t take reservation. We arrived the restaurant 5 minutes before 5:30pm opening time. Already there was a line formed outside the restaurant entrance. The early birds got seated right away. We were too late and had to wait for another 1.5 hour. The head chef and owner Vikram Vij was in the restaurant since the opening. It was almost mesmerizing to watch Vikram’s constant movement from table to table. From greeting guests, taking orders, serving appetizers, to signing his cookbooks, there was no doubt he ran the restaurant and provided a heck of a dinning experience.

The Chows joined us for dinner. Between the 4 of us, we were able to try a variety of dishes: duck breast in spiced mango reduction, beef short ribs and red wine curry, wine marinated lamb popsicles, and Fennel and zucchini dumplings in pomegranate curry. Later the desserts were served with a thin sheet of silver on top.

These were certainly no ordinary Indian food. We enjoyed our meals. But best of all was to shake hands and talk to Vikram. I mentioned my obsession with Anthony Broudian and his show. Vikram shared the days he spent with Anthony while they were recording the Vancouver episode. He recalled Anthony smoked, drank, and cursed so much during the 3 days shooting. If I ever get to hang out with Anthony Bourdain, I think I might cave in and start smoking.

Sunday was a good snowboarding day at Whistler. The snow was quite soft, but the weather was so sunny it was almost too hot to wear the heavy winter gear.

On Monday, we had breakfast in the hotel restaurant. After we were seated, Ktula signaled me the person seating on the right side of our table was Ang Lee. I used my peripheral and right away recognized that was Mr. Lee. Ktula and I were making faces back and forth to “discuss” if we should approach him. We decided to respect his privacy and didn’t do anything. Later I checked with our waitress if that’s really him. She didn’t know but she checked his signed bill and went “Yup, that’s him.”

Heard something rather depressing today. In a meeting, a project manager asked to hire several production artists, one of the top executives went “Isn’t that what Janet and Copper are doing?”

Seriously, that sucks. I learn to live with family and friends’ blank look when I explain what I do, or “The PhotoShop go-to gal” remark. But when it’s the people whom don’t have the slightest idea what they are paying me for, now I’m really depressed.

What is a UI designer to do to get some respects? Hanging on my cubical wall are 5 on going project wireframes, black & white printouts of lines and notations. Back to back in my outlook calendar are meeting requests for upcoming usability testing.

I populate internal wiki with competitors’ UI analysis. I study leading online application trends and design patterns. I work with pm on features specs and infrastructures. Then prepare style guide, mockups and documentations for development team.

My current reading is O’Reilly’s “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web”; the next lineup is “Killer Web Content” by Gerry McGovern. And by the way, I’m enrolled in the UW’s User Centered Design graduate program starting January.

So which part of what I do qualified me a production artist?

Between mom and dad’s visit and works, I completely spaced out on my own birthday. When the monthly birthday cakes arrived the game room at work, I didn’t even blink or bother to read the email announcement. It was Narisa who went “Janet! You didn’t tell us it’s your birthday!” then I realized the date didn’t even register in my head.

Regardless Matt & Bill’s attempt to lure me out to happy hour and a quick drink for my birthday, I had to skip this week’s happy hour due to parents duties. But I promised next week we’d resume our weekly off-work routines.

Friday afternoon, Tab, Narisa, and Tulika took me to Pike Market Crumpet Shop for my birthday. According to Tab, Crumpet is a type of British pastry. It is toasted until crisp outside and still fluffy inside. Then spread with melted butter, and your choice of jam, honey, or something hardy like egg or smoked salmon. I tried one with marmalade topping and fell in love with the texture and the heart-warming sweetness in the mouth. Because it was Tab’s treat, I didn’t want to go crazy ordering whatever. But next time I think I’ll also try their famous tea.

In honor of my birthday, Dad wanted to take me somewhere ‘fancy. He asked me to find “the fanciest Chinese restaurant in town”. Knowing my parents, the trendy Pan-Asian fusion restaurants are NOT Chinese restaurant in their definition. Fancy and their idea of Chinese restaurant just don’t go together. So I went ahead and decided on somewhere I know it’s going to serve good food but nothing fancy, we went to Chiang’s Gourmet at Lake City Way.

Traditionally in my dad’s family, noodles were served during birthday celebration. Naturally Dad ordered a seafood noodle soup, mom chose a salt and pepper fish fillet, and I pick a bean curd skin and mushroom dish. The food was excellent, the 3 of us cleaned up everything on the table.

Just when I thought the birthday that I almost forgot was over, I received a biggest bouquet of flower in my life, a box of almost too pretty to eat Neuhaus chocolates, and couple other gifts. I am fortunate to have friends and family to remind me of my special day and really made it memorial for me. I don’t’ take such privileged for granted.