i flipped a coin and it landed on its side

it is a personal belief of mine that whenever one is faced with a dilemma, he should grab the nearest coin, flip it, and let nature decide which of the two lemmas (HAHA) he should go with. consequences are not supposed to be something one should worry about because consequences happen in the future, and after four years of physics, i think i am safe to believe that the future is probabilistic. no matter how much time you spend in planning out your life so that you can avoid making decisions that will lead to a bad consequence, there's no certainty that you will end up with a good one. for every 99.9% of certainty that you've made the decision that will lead to a beneficial consequence, there is a 0.1% of uncertainty that might just completely screw you over. the reverse is true: for every 99.9% certainty that something bad is about to happen to you, there is a 0.1% uncertainty that might just save the day.

every decision i've made in the past twenty-two years of my life had been made by a coin. every decision that the coin had made, strangely enough, had landed me on some sort of comfort zone that i am very grateful for. i guess if a man does not stray from the path that nature prepares for him, things will work out one way or the other. this is a path of comfort that everyone follows. it might not be a path that maximizes happiness or minimizes suffering, but it's a path that always gives a zero at the end of the day. for every +1 of joy you get, there is a -1 of pain, and vice versa. it's a very stable path, but it's also a boring path.

during my years in college, i've always wondered whether it is better to live a life +1/-1 kind of life, or to live a +5/-5 kind of life. the latter would be a sort of a rollercoaster ride. you live a life that is filled with lots of joy and pleasure, but also lots of deep shit that you have to deal with. and i mean, REAL deep shit. i've always wanted to try to live this +5/-5 life, but i've never had the guts to. i'm always afraid that once i stray off nature's path, i'll never be able to go back to my comfort zone. the path that nature provides for you has plenty of inertia; you have to exert a huge external force in order to change your trajectory, and this is not easy.

but my mind's made up. i do not wish to spend the rest of my life in my current comfort zone. at this moment, i can see another zone that requires a bit of patching up, but a potential comfort zone nonetheless, and i intend to reside in that zone instead. last week, i started exerting some external force to alter my trajectory toward that new zone, albeit in small increments, and i plan on continuing to do so. i do not think a huge, sudden force would be a good idea because if there's anything i learned from thermodynamics, it's that adiabatic system has no heat flow, and for this case, i certainly want to avoid any kinds of heat flow. in, or out.

wish me luck.

CHANG MEETS THE ROBINSONS

i have a big head... and little arms!

watch until the very end. this is a MUST-SEE. MUST. for chang's sake.

damn, i miss sam

these are the kinds of conversation i haven't had for so long.

caedere: when i look at pictures of myself b4 this summer i somehow feel like i'm looking at a different person
[e1n]: well
[e1n]: less horny
[e1n]: cuz you're getting laid now
[e1n]: you actually have a sex life
caedere: well mostly with myself now coz it's a long idstance relationship

[e1n]: i think you'll need more than just a 12-pack.
caedere: dude, like kristin put it...
caedere: i'm asian... one try and it's gone.
[e1n]: dude
[e1n]: you might only last 2-3 minutes
[e1n]: but give it 10 minutes
[e1n]: and you're ready to go again
[e1n]: for at least 3-4 times
[e1n]: after that you'll pass the hell out, but hey
caedere: hahahahaha yo tell u what
caedere: try using trojan if u have a chance
caedere: that explains why american sex's longer
[e1n]: you cant feel a thing xDDDDDDD

roadkill

my chicken wing still got two feathers on it. does that mean i'm lucky?

pig in, chick out

so according to the lunar calendar, we are now in the year of the pig. last year was the year of the rooster. i am of a chinese descent, but i never get this whole thing with animals representing years. does that mean that this year i'm supposed to worship the pigs and not allowed to eat them for the whole year? and that last year i wasn't supposed to devour chicken but make a shrine for them instead? if that's the case, then i guess i was disrespectful to the animals because i've lost count on how many chicken i devoured last year, and that this year i started the new year of the pig by barbecue-ing pork with my officemate joulien. we BBQ'd some chicken too. think of it as signalling the end of the rooster and the beginning of the pig. it's too bad that they both ended up in our stomach and later on got excreted and flushed down the toilet.

it's a shame, really

why only 12 animals? so they've got the tiger, the ox, even animals like dragons that don't really exist. why not bring in the elephants? or the giraffes? did these animal not exist when they set up the lunar calendar? they've got a rat, a monkey, why not chinchillas? or hamsters? or parrots? i wonder why animal rights activists haven't rallied together to protest to the chinese about discriminating thousands of other species from their lunar calendar.

i was born in the year of the rat. in november, to be precise. my mother said i'm a water rat or something. what the hell is a water rat? did they really have some amphibian rodents back then? i think we should all be able to pick what animal we want to be associated with. me, i'm gonna pick 1984 to be the year of the panda. and if i were required to associate a worldly element to the animal, i will then become a drunk panda. i can't believe that the chinese forgot about the pandas! they, of all people in the world, should know best about pandas! they were the ones who started the ruckus about how pandas are on the brink of extinction, and traded the remaining pandas with other nations as a sign of peace. if pandas meant that much to them, then they should at least put a darn panda in their lunar calendar.

what's the deal with red envelopes, anyway? after new year's, everyone always talks about how much money they get off the red envelope. i've never gotten any since i was fifteen or so since my parents told me i'm way too old for red envelopes. wikipedia, on the other hand, did not mention anything about red envelopes being age-dependant. does this mean my parents lied to me? should i trust my parents more? or should i trust wikipedia more? do i pick a trusty internet resource over the two people who have raised me for twenty-two years? i'm having a dilemma here. just now a girl messaged me and asked how much i got from the red envelopes. she said she got a couple hundred bucks. i said i got none. nada. null. and then she offered to give me a red envelope, but only a penny.

i read that sentence a few times, and then i asked myself: am i that pitiful? do i really need a penny that bad? i glanced over my shoulder and looked at the collection of pennies i've accumulated from buying by daily lunch that usually costs $4.76. i get FOUR pennies a day. do i really need your penny? maybe not. i have enough of them sitting around unused that if every single one of my friend gave me a penny, my room would be a fort knox of pennies.