BlaringSmelly

Ask those who’s friends with my sister Betty, they’d describe her as a sweet, considerate, and fun person. Like her older sister, she is small frame and slim, and yes, very cute. But try to mess with her, she’ll teach the poor sucker a lesson and then some.

Last Friday Betty was taking her usual route home. She made a u-turn near American Club on Beian Road (北安路). A white guy in his SUV thought that she cut him off, pulled right next to her car. He rolled down the window, with his upper body reached out of his window to bang on Betty’s trunk with all his might.

After a long week at work and now stuck in traffic, Betty was rather exhausted and was going to ignore him. But the guy parked his car in the American Club, walked to Betty’s car, which still stuck in the dead traffic. The guy started banging on her passenger side window as hard as he could.

Bad idea. Betty kicked her car door open and started

“You fucking white trash, what the fuck do you think you are doing? you fucking bullying a little girl like me? you fucking think you can get away with this? you fucking sob! …..”

The guy didn’t see this coming. He was shocked and started walking back to the club. As he was leaving, Betty was pointing and screaming at him as loud as she could. The crazy afternoon traffic seemed to quiet down. Many passersby and male drivers started gathering to her side and ready to help.

Betty was on fire. Immediately she took down his license plate number and called the police and her boyfriend. The guy escaped to the American Club. Betty saw him inside, she pointed and continue screaming

“don’t you run away, you try to bully girls, you think you can get away with it, you threaten me like that? You better explain it to the police!”

She had no intention to leave the scene. Eventually the guy came out. As soon as he showed up, Betty resumed her yelling at his face. The white guy was huge, tall, and muscle. Betty didn’t care. She was “like a crazy mad dog” at the time, as she described to me.

The guy couldn’t do anything other then trying to get on her good side. He went “oh, come on babe!…”

“fucking shut up!” Betty was furious. She cut him off before he could finish his “smooth talks”

The guy started to apologize. “oh, I am sorry…”

Betty went “fucking you are sorry…you will be so fucking sorry for yourself when I’m through with you…you fucking trash! and you just fucking wait for the police, and you think you are a big guy, so you can threaten a little girl like this, you are fucking wrong, look at the huge hang print you left on my door, you asked for it…”.

The guy rushed to the car, attempted to wipe the handprint off the passenger side window. Betty went over and pushed him away from the car as hard as she could. It was not easy as the guy was, according to her words, “freaking heavy and big”. Still, she managed to push him away as gathered crowds taking pictures of him with their cellophanes.

The guy took off with his car. Still pointing and yelling, Betty went “it’s only the beginning!”

A little later, both police and her boyfriend arrived. The guy however was nowhere to be found.

Betty went to the police station to file a suite against the guy damaging her car. All the police were doing their best to help out. They tracked down his name, address and also found out he is an American. He won’t be able to leave the country until the court trial is over!

The guy asked for it. He not only rudely bang on her car the first time, after finding out she was a girl, he came back and bang on the window the second time. She wanted to teach him a good lesson and have him apologize to her in court.

Bravo my young sis, for standing up to a bully and made him run with his tail between his legs.

Behold, Jon’s Transformers belt.
Jon can match his outfit with the red or the black Transformers belt plate, pretty kick ass.

Anthony Bourdain is a New York chef turned writer, adventurer, and host of my recent television obsession “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations”.

The last episode I watched Anthony takes on China. He started in Beijing then ended his tv journey in rural Sichuan. During his visit, he attempted riding bicycle as the locals do, experienced Chinese medical practices, seated through a solemn calligraphy lecture, and had his inner ears cleaned (in his word, ‘probed’) in public.

Toward the end of his odyssey of cultures and exotic cuisines, he joined a farming family in rural Sichuan for dinner. The family exhibited their warmest hospitality with everything they can possibly offer…a feast of vegetables and pickled dishes produced from their land. The scene of Anthony enjoying a meal with the family in the humble farmhouse touched me deeply. It was the most memorable moment for me of China episode.

I love the show because there’s no holding back or fear of consequences. I wish one day I can travel and see the world like Anthony’s on-screen personality…well, minus the chain smoking!

Bunch of us gathered up by Lake Union for this summer’s first kayaking in this sunny Saturday morning.

Being my first kayaking attempt ever, I was excited and wasn’t sure what to expect. I didn’t want to get too tired from paddling and I wasn’t sure if I’d get bored. Turned out it was such a relaxing and wonderful way to explore the area. We teamed up 2 people in each kayak. Slowly we paddled our way toward downtown area. There were many kayaks just like ours; speed boats and sailing boats passing by, water planes taking off, and Ride the Ducks “ducks” loaded with tourists. We even spotted 2 seals poking their heads out of the water just few feet away from us. They were checking us out for few seconds then took off before any of us was able to capture them on camera.

We had lunch upstairs of the kayaking rental. The restaurant doesn’t look like much but the food was quite good. This is so fun. I can’t wait to kayak again.

The time was 8 pm, the place, Chapel. Dan, Max, Tom, and I were working on a good buzz for the Massive Attack show happening later the evening. Apparently so were most people there. By around the show time, the black / Goth dress coded crowd that had the place filled were all gone. We quickly finished our drinks and headed out as well.

The show was quite good. The group performed many of their all-time classics such as Angel, Future Proof, Teardrop, Black Milk… Such an experience to listen these songs I love so much performed live.

I couldn’t find much about the show online; only this interview with the band a day before the show.

For no particular reason or previous arrangements, today 5 of us showed up at work wearing green shirts. What’s even weirder is 3 of us are designers and there are only 6 designers in the company!

Carl created a fancy photo album using Smilebox for this odd occasion.

Speaking of Smilebox, making online scrapbook is one heck of a neat idea!

To celebrate the successful launch of our new project, the team was invited to an afternoon yacht trip, courtesy of our CFO.

We took off from the Yacht Club by UW around 2:30pm, took a nice stroll over to the Lock in Ballard, then to Lake Union, and slowly made our way to Lake Washington. From there the yacht went full speed for a good 15 minutes until we reached Kirkland.

We docked the yacht and walked about 20 paces to Yarrow Bay Grill. Not sure why we stop for more food and drinks, the yacht had a full bar of liquors and the beers and soda that 14 of us can’t finish even if we tried. Plus the fries, burgers and fish & chips we had as we were making our way here.

I had fun and didn’t do anything stupid. Hooray!!

Every Tuesday, Cori, Matt, and I would have pho for lunch. We did that for the entire time I was at my last job. Then one by one, we left the company in seeking of new opportunities. Somehow we all ended up working at the other side of town, not far from each other. Today, for the first time since we went our separate ways, we had our pho reunion.

We still cracked each other up with random comments and jokes. It is good to see the old gang.

Few days ago Narisa put together this set of us ex-Martini employees’ portraits on flickr. They were taken way back when we were working at Martini. Somebody found a pair of goofy glasses. Narisa had us wore the glasses and took our pictures. She sent out an email to us all. All the sudden there were ripples of emails from everybody saying hi and wishing everyone is doing well.

Those were the times we worked long hours and meeting impossible deadlines. We were constantly exhausted and stressed out. Looking back, it was also when some of us developed the strong friendships that have kept us together until now.

A friend was generous enough to spare me a ticket to see Dave Chappelle’s stand-up on Sunday night at Paramount Theater. Being a huge fan of Chappell’s show on Comedy Central, this was possibly the most anticipated show I’ve being to in ages.

There was about 45 minutes delay before the program started. Likely we had access to the VIP room for better services on the drinks. And even though the VIP lounge was crowded, it was still a nice get away from outside which was just packed with people everywhere.

The show was a join up of stand-up comedies and musical performances. The opening comedian was pretty good. But Chappell totally stole the show with his fast and edgy bits. Every now and then he would interact with the audience and pull out some funny materials right there. The whole house was going crazy for him.

The second mystery musical guest was Erykah Badu. I really enjoyed her performance…not just her music, but the whole presentation. She first appeared on the stage with a hat covering most of her face. She carried herself ever so elegantly on the stage with this beautiful dotted red skirt and 5-inch golden high heels on her. In honor of her pretty lady charms and one great performance, today I wore my high heels to work.

One more picture from the successful Sunday event.