Hey, for all y'all who didn't catch word, I've left for Taiwan already. I'm posting from the Yahoo!Cafe in the Narita Airport in Tokyo during my stop over. I'm on one of their laptops now, and they've got the punctuation keys in odd places on the keyboard, it's weeeeeiiiird.

But yea anyways, I'll be in Taiwan from like May 28th - August 9th or so (basically my entire summer). For June, I'll be in Hsinchu at the National Tsing Hua University doing "research." I don't really know what all that entails, but my dad knows someone on the faculty, and they hooked it up. (It's oh so nice to have connections, heheh.) But more likely, it's probably just me messing around and trying not to distract my supervising professor while he does real work, haha. I'll be staying at the dorms there, which could be cool... or it could be horrendously boring- we shall see. But yea, Hsinchu's not too far from Taipei, so on weekends, I'll probably go back to my Grandma's place in Taipei.

Then in July, I'll be taking part in the (in)famous Loveboat- the "overseas study tour" where you pretend to learn Chinese by day and party by night, supposedly. I was supposed to go last summer, to tell the truth, but they cancelled the program cuz of SARS, grrrr... Anyways, for those not familiar, the program's nickname "Loveboat" derives from the fact that there's an unusually high incidence of hook-ups per capita among the participants, so to speak. But yea, there's two camps, one in Taipei and the other not. (I got assigned to the latter.) The Taipei camp has traditionally been the "better" one, but they changed up the itinerary for the other camp since last time, so we shall see, I guess. I think for my camp, they scrapped the part about pretending to learn Chinese, and turned it into one long sightseeing trip (, at least that's what it looks like judging by the itinerary)- I guess we'll just have to wait to see about that as well.

But yea, (the better) part of me didn't wanna spend the entire summer overseas. There were so many other things I wanted to do: see friends, play computer games, watch anime, watch movies (in theatre and on comp), go places, read, etc etc. You know what though? I realized that I'll probably miss my computer just as much as (if not more than) the people. Hahah, no offense to all y'all humans, but I think I'd have to say that my computer turned out to be my best friend, hahahaha. It's provided me with endless hours of entertainment, and unlike others, it's never too busy or too lazy to chill. =P If I could have brought my desktop with me on this trip, I would have much fewer regrets, hahaha.

Ok, enough people-bashing though. I dunno how available internet access will be, so no guarantees on posts. If anyone is in Taiwan and wants to contact me, I'll probably have a cell at: 0910-071-755

Man, I got owned this semester. This semester was the worst yet. This marks the first semester that I have not gotten "University Honors." But yea, dang, funny how you'll think you whupped up in a course, then out of nowhere pops the B, and you're just like where the heck did THAT come from? Blugggg... this one was so unexpected too: linear algebra. Linear algebra is easy, right? Yea, I thought so too; and I certainly thought that when I took every test and the exam, but I guess that's the risk of taking M340L with Dr. Guy: you never know what you're making in the class until final averages come out, and then you're just stuck wondering. Blehhhh... I so made an A in that class, I don't know what happened, GRAGGGHHHH!

Anyways, there's been a steady downward progression in my grades. First semester- 0 B's; 2nd semester- 1 B; 3rd semester- 2 B's; 4th (this) semester- 3 B's. Man, that's a straight linear progression there. If the trend continues, things don't look so good, considering I'm basically only taking 4 "real" classes next semester. Must... buck... the trend! Man, gone are the days when I can be all cocky about grades and go around thinking I'm smart or something. =/ Oh well, better luck next time, I suppose...

That last post got me thinking about toothpaste. Man, I remember as a kid, I ate a LOT of of toothpaste. It doesn't help that they used to make that Crest for Kids or whatever- the sweet glittery blue one that practically begged you to eat it. I still remember the commercial had a blue blob with sunglasses and a toothbrush for a guitar to make it look fun. But yea, my favorite was the pale green Crest; I think it was wintergreen. (They make TicTacs of that flavor too; they tie with orange for my favorite TicTac flavor.) They make toothpaste so yummy, and then they wonder why kids like it so much. Dude, sweet tasting stuff'll get you in trouble! Like antifreeze, that stuff'll jack you up! (i.e. kill you)

But yea, apparently swallowing toothpaste is really bad for you: it can cause nausea, convulsions, nervous system shock, and possibly even death (if you had a real feast, heheh). Seriously though, they always tell you that you're only supposed to use a pea-sized amount, but in the picture, they have that huuuuge squiggle over the bristles. And like they say, a picture's worth 1000 words, right? Naturally, I do the squiggle of course.

Man, I had terrible case of luck today. Hah, "luck." So about a week and a half ago, I'd made like 10 sandwiches and tossed 'em all in my fridge. I'd been eating 'em throughout the week so I could study or nap between classes instead of having to eat at the cafeteria. Well anyways, I'd finished off all but one of them, and this one had just been sitting in my fridge for a week and a half. It was a roast beef sandwich, incidentally.

So this morning, I woke up for my exam, and I thought it'd be a good idea to get some food in my system- so I grabbed the roast beef sandwich on my way out the door. And I do recall it tasted kinda funky, but I attributed it to the fact that I'd just brushed my teeth, and everything tastes weird after toothpaste. I ate about half of it before I decided to toss it. I was about 30 minutes into my exam when my stomach started rumbling. The whole incident was like straight out of Chappelle's Show: "Little did I know that that roast beef sandwich would change my life forever. Not long after lunch, I felt a bubblin'- an evil bubblin'... a bubble that to me signified nothing else but the early stages of mud butt. I had to take a dump. I had to take a dump immediately."

At first I tried to tough it out, but the pain was absolutely sapping me of my concentration. Luckily, I keep a container of Pepto Bismol tablets in my backpack. I had to ask to leave and take some medicine. Well that cured it for about 30 minutes. Then the pain came back, worse. I had to ask to leave again, and this time I did the pained, half hunched-over, limping walk to the nearest bathroom and set the demon free, so to speak. Lost about 20 minutes of test time- good thing it wasn't such a bad exam.

Battle Poker (beta version). I remember this one time, several years back, I tried to invent a card game based on DBZ. Well, long story short, I ran out of ideas, and it didn't work out. Anyways, I was in the shower today, and I recalled this little failure, and I thought it might be fun to give it some more thought and see what came of it. (Funny how you'll look for anything to do except study when exams are right around the corner, eh? heheheh.) Well this time, I decided to nix the DBZ thing and give the game a bit more of a Magic: the Gathering premise.

So after about an hour and a half of brainstorming and another hour or so of tweaking, here's what I came up with... (It's 25% Magic, 25% Texas Hold 'em, and 50% Daniel's stupidity.) To play, you'll need 2 players and 2 decks- for convenience, let's say one is red and one is blue.

(Preparation)
1. remove jokers
2. shuffle both decks
3. deal half of red deck to each player
4. each player flips over first 3 cards and keeps them there- these are his/her mana for the game
5. if a player so chooses, he/she may take a mulligan and discard that mana draw, and deal a new three- a player may only do this once

Per turn:
(Casting phase)
1. each player draws 2 cards
2. flop 3 cards from the blue deck in the center (no card burning, ever)
3. each player “bets” a mana card
4. flop 1 more card
5. each player bets another mana
6. flop another card

7. the best 5 cards (hold ‘em style) are your hand. If you have:
~nothing – mana burn equal to the number total of mana you bet
~Pair – summon creature; Face cards have trample; STR/DEF power equal to the number values of the mana you bet (you select which way) times the value of the pair divided by 4, rounded to nearest integer; creature color = suit of one of the manas you bet (your choice)
~2 Pair - same as for pair, except STR/DEF divided by 2 instead of 4
~3 of a Kind – same as for 2 pair, except +flying
~Straight – Fireball; deal direct damage to any target equal to total number value of mana you bet; dual color spell- color of the two manas
~Flush – CoP of the flush color; (no damage from target suit for rest of game), or may choose to negate and destroy all of enemies creatures of a target color
~Full House – Drain life (kinda); deal X damage to the enemy, where X is the value of the pair times the value of lower mana, divided by 5, rounded to nearest integer; gain Y life, where Y is the value of the 3 of a kind times the value of higher mana, divided by 5, rounded; colorless
~4 of a Kind – Wrath of God; bury all enemy creatures
~Straight Flush – your choice: take control of all currently summoned enemy creatures for remainder of game, or opponent takes 50 damage
~Royal Flush – opponent takes 100 damage

(Attack phase)
-to summon, place the card(s) in your hand face up on the table; bury unused cards in your hand
-creatures have summoning sickness- can’t attack the turn they’re summoned
-if you attack with a creature, it is tapped for the next turn; untap the turn after
-during an attack, you can choose to block with one of your creatures or take the damage yourself
-if blocking, creature deaths work like in Magic with STR/DEF
-after each turn, discard non-permanents into your graveyard
-if players tie on a hand, the player who betted a higher mana total that turn can choose to either get the spell or gain 5 life, the opponent gets the other
-if both players have nothing, each player deals damage to the opponent equal to the value of their high card divided by 2, round up

(Gameplay)
-each player starts with 100 lives
-play continues until the blue stack runs out, or until a player dies, whichever comes first
-if neither player died, whoever had the most lives at the end wins


...so yea, that's the beta version. You probably have to know how to play both Magic and Hold 'em for the game to even begin making sense, but I'm guessing for most of my readership, that shouldn't be much of a problem. But yea, I have no delusions of this game ever hitting any kind of general audience, but I think it might provide for a couple good laughs between me and my friends, heheh. The number of lives and how much damage everything is might need some tweaking. And hell, it might be a tremendous pain to keep up with the STR/DEF of each creature. Anyways, I'll hafta find someone to play it with me before I'll know. Anyone care to do some product testing with me? =P

I've got this problem where every time I'm sitting on the can, (you know, doing the defecation thing,) my nose starts running like crazy. Is it just me? I dunno if it's cuz my head is inclined forward as opposed to upright, or if there's an imbalance in how much I'm breathing through my mouth/nose (cuz who wants to only breathe through their nose when they're taking a dump?), or something else. All I know is that every time I get on the john, my nose starts flowing like the mighty Mississippi. But yea, I guess I should do some controlled experiments and take corrective action. This snot on the pot business has been getting on my nerves.

So it looks like blog commenting is back, courtesy of Google. Have at it.

So lemme recap the past 2 weeks or so... Two Fridays ago, I attended a play titled "Picasso at the Lapin Agile." The script (penned by Steve Martin) was quite witty, but the acting was only mediocre. But yea, the premise is that Einstein meets Picasso in a bar, and they have a bit of the ol' witty repartee and whatnot. Anyways, there were a couple of interesting notions that intrigued me greatly. The first was the comparison of a scientist's work to art- the beauty of equality, the numerical perfection, an idea stripped down to its essence and embodied in a formula... beautiful. Hah, I mean, I guess it's no E=mc^2, but for me personally, I had a similar feeling when I understood the implications of s=s0+v0t+1/2at^2, like staring into a most wondrous painting and totally connecting with what the artist was trying to say. Another interesting notion presented was that of the relativity of [eras]. Like when you're living in a time period, everyone just goes about their business normally. But from the perspective of someone in a different time period, their era has been affected by yours, changed its path due to the massive(ly important) events of days past, "bended" around them, if you will- just like how time & space supposedly bend around massive objects. Clever analogy, no?

The week following that was utter hell. This Hell Week consisted of: 4 tests and a presentation in 3 days, and paper due 2 days later. The presentation/paper was uggggghhhh. It was the final project for fluids lab; the one about the F/A-18 that I mentioned a couple posts back. Anyways, I guess group projects just tend to stress me out because you can't control how fast (or really even how much) your group members work. And when my group member was giving the presentation for our group, I kept wishing I could put words in his mouth- kinda like a ventriloquist's dummy, heheh. But dang, I hadn't felt that feeling since the old days of science fair, hahaha.

Then Wednesday of last week, Lockheed Martin hosted a dinner for all its new hires and scholarship recipients downtown at Truluck's, this seafood/steak place. Yea, the food was awesome... and free. Free-ness must be like a satisfaction multiplier of 1.5x. The corporate rep threw it down like a big ballah, haha. Naturally, I ordered the most expensive steak on the menu, heheheh. I had to rack my brains for all the small talk I could come up with for the corporate rep though; I'm just not a very good conversationalist with people I don't know well. =/

Then last Friday, I did some much needed unwinding at the GB house party. Got plenty of firewater, so primary objective completed, heheh. Then Sunday night was the BME Danceoff- "Sixteen engineers. One dancefloor. Many will 'get served.'" It was pretty hilarious since most of them weren't serious dancers. I cheered like hell and almost lost my voice. A very amusing event. Then Monday, following our semester-ly tradition, me, Junjay, and whoever else we could round up went to Korea House to partake of the weekday lunch special. I ate the equivalent of two meals. Sooooo good! (~a la Teen Girl Squad, hahaha) Ummm, I think that's it.