Category: Rant/Whine

Ranting and raving and whining and bitching. Oh yes!

Bits of (Olym)’Pics

I am sad to inform you that my cousin May and her partner Eva lost to the Singaporean team. Eva also lost women’s single earlier, so the US Badminton girls are all out of the running.

ETA: USA Network is now re-broadcasting May’s match with commentators. Of course, I was waiting to hear how badly they would butcher May’s long last name, Mangkalakiri. That’s pronounced Mang-ka-la-kee-ree, folks.

But the commentator went crazy there with. Mang-gala-CARRY.

Carry? Really?  How did the “I” become “A”?

The former USA Badminton president is the one going with the safe way, having known May, calling her May instead of trying the last name.

I am also sad to inform you that Thailand’s golden badminton girl also lost her match against China. It was expected that China would mow her over, but she actually won the first match and gave that lady the run for her money before losing.

Also in the news, the two hopes of Thai female weightlifters were quickly squashed. Not to mention that while one of them was competing in Beijing, her apartment in Thailand was gutted, killing her two dogs. Talk about a tough day!

Brandon and I watched the Korean swimmer kid redeemed himself from having disqualified as a 14-year-old. Remember the kid that fell in before the start? Yep, he’s not only back, but won the first ever swimming medal for South Korea. And it’s a gold. I was screaming for that kid.

More fun than watching Michael Phelps actually competing was watching his reaction during his first medal ceremony. The U.S. national anthem came on missing a few notes. At the end of the first verse, there was an awkward skip and it started over again. Brandon thought I was losing my mind, but I was singing along in my head there. I KNEW there was an extra verse in there. That little glitch didn’t register on Phelps’ face.

However, as we approached “o’er the land of the free”, the music suddenly was cut off. The camera was up close on Phelps. One second after that, he burst into laughter, along with the crowd–President Bush and the family included.

That, my friend, was an awesome Olympic moment. He sure as hell is not going to mix that one up with all the other medals he could be winning in this game.

Game on

The Olympics had begun, y’all.

I was at Katie’s wedding last night so I missed most of the celebration during the first broadcast.  However, I did catch the US and Thai national teams marched into the stadium.  And I tivo’ed the rerun to watch again this morning.

“Cousin” Nicky is reporting prolifically from Beijing on their adventures so far.  And tonight, May takes the court.  So please tune in on the computer at 9 p.m. PST (California time), Thais and Americans everywhere, to cheer her on.

LA Times Olympics Blog also got to talk to May a bit as she recap Uncle Noi’s harrowing near “great fall down the Great Wall” as well as her experience so far.

Now, back to the opening ceremony.

Holy. Mackerel!  As Brandon summed it up best, “Nobody can out-pomp the Chinese!”

The LED screen on the floor is amazing.  Performers, brilliant and are you sure they’re human?  I mean, that kind of precision for that big a group is INSANE!

This would mark the 2nd Olympics of my life time that I actually would remember how the torch was lit.  There’s the 1992 Barcelona with the archery and then this running up the wall thing in Beijing.

Suddenly, I think I heard the Londoners let out the resounding, “Aw, shit. Now we have to top THIS?”  You poor, poor Brits.

As much as I enjoyed the ceremony and I quietly accepted the delay broadcast, I must say that someone should slap a piece of tape over Bob Costa’s mouth.

The tidbits about each country marching out is great.  Good to know. Thanks, guys.  The cultural commentaries about the ceremony are also helpful.  Again, thanks.  But Bob’s “Hey, I’m a witty sports commentator guy! Hear me make what I think is hilarious injection!” not only wasn’t funny, it was disrespectful.

There were too many moments to count but notably, as the 2,008 Tai-chi masters ran into formation around the stadium, he blurted out something along the line of one misstep and that’s a cranium wreck.  Come on.

And there was more of those little comments that he made that would’ve been funny during an NFL game, but seriously, not here at the Olympics.

Talk about comments, I was also bothered about the politically laden commentaries throughout the broadcast. I understand that there are a lot of controversies. I’m sure everyone see this differently, but I thought all the political analysis and comments from Tom Brokaw before the show started was enough right there.  But not for NBC apparently.

They kept saying that the Olympics opening ceremony is one of those moment when you put everything aside and celebrate the world coming together.  But throughout the show, they kept throwing in the political tidbits.

Oh yes, here’s Sudan.  Oh yes, here’s Thailand where President Bush made that speech the other day (instead of talking about the fact that Thai female athletes won first medals in the country’s history, a fact they pointed out with other countries).  Oh yes, here’s Iran and its nuclear program.

How is this supposed to be a UNITY event when the newscasters keep bringing up the controversies every few minutes?

Oh, whatever.  We’ve all moved on by now.  After all, that was so 12 hours ago.

At this moment, it looked like the Chinese already out-gold-medaled the U.S.  NBC is keeping tabs on the total medal count, but to me, the only medal count that matters is the gold.

Thailand is coming in pretty strong this year with returning champs.  Let’s see if we can beat our records last year!

Party Central

What a whirlwind week I’m having so far!

This weekend was shock full of activities with the bike shopping and the bike riding. Work has been just nuts.  I just now realized that I have to do 3 Christmas duties BEFORE the end of October.  And then all the stuff I postponed because of the conference last month started to pile up.  I was knee deep in stuff to do.  And then there’s this business of Celeste leaving the company.

Did I mention that she’s leaving my office for a greener pasture?  Well, she is.  I am extremely happy for her, but of course I’m sad too.  She has told me not to pull some sentimental stunt like we did for Amy when I made this slide show to Bette Midler’s “One more for the road” and made everyone cry at a goodbye gathering in the office.

Instead, I made her a little slide show to Toy Story’s “You’ve Got a Friend In Me” and sent it out to everyone as an invite to her farewell party outside of the office.  So everyone can cry at his/her own desk.  Haha!

Next week, I’m helping Celeste at our event at Sony Studios, our very last thing to work on together.  Then a few days later we party with her and then she’s gone.  Not far though. Just across the street.  We’re not going to be complete strangers, I know that.

Tonight is Off the Bus party part 2.  Did you know that Cheesecake Factory won’t even take reservation for a large group?

“Are you kidding?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” Cheesecake Factory girl replied.

“I have a party of 14. FOURTEEN!  And you won’t take a reservation?”

“We don’t take a reservation after 5 p.m.  You have to come in and put your name down.”

“And let me guess, you won’t seat us until all 14 get there.”

“Right.”

We’re taking our business to Buca di Beppo instead.  Screw you, Cheesecake Factory and your overpriced food and cheesecake!

Let the power of the internet takes over again.  Anyone is thinking of doing a big group thing at Cheesecake Factory, you’d better change your mind and take it to Buca where they’re REALLY friendly to big groups.  I think I might just have to Yelp this one…

Take me to your leader

Water on Mars!  WATER ON MARS!

I am such a geek.

Oh, and the alien in my eye also hatched today.  The corner of my eye by my nose is still swollen and red but virtually painless at this point.   Yeah, tear duct infection turned out to be more of the infection of my eyelid by the same alien that used to live in my nose, it seemed.

Let me see how many times I have been on antibiotics this year.  There’s the the original nose alien in January, but I actually didn’t go to the doctor for that.  Then there’s the February flu and sinus infection.  And then another nose alien in April.  I’m starting to wonder if I have a weird bacteria living on my skin or something.

Anyhoo.  I’m off to be a third wheel at Beachwood BBQ with Paul and Lupe unless Aurora shows up with Dresden, that is.  🙂

Zapped

…badeedodah  Zapped-badeeday.

Zapped.  Zapped.  Zapped.

Completely out of energy, that is.

Brandon and I crashed out last night just before 9 p.m. after a sun-drenched afternoon in Redondo Beach at Justin & Olaina’s.  You know me.  Unless you put a beverage right in my hand, I have a tendency to forget to hydrate.  My ice cold bottle of water never left Olaina’s cooler-backpack.

So sometime before my alarm went off this morning, I woke up radiating heat without actually sweating.  By now I knew what I was getting into.  I downed a glass of water with a couple of Tylenols, threw some cold water on my face and neck, and went back to bed.  No sleep could be had.  At least my head didn’t hurt.  Thank god for that.

However, between then and when the alarm sounded, I found myself shivering…while still feeling like I was radiating heat.  That a glass of room temperature water cooled my core temperature down to a point that I get the shiver couldn’t possibly be a good idea.

I called in sick.

And I slept.  And I woke up to drink another glass of water with a couple more Tylenol.  Shivered some more and I slept.  The rest of the day was mostly nodding off on the couch and drinking water.  The shivering and the radiating went away and I got nauseated instead.  Fun.

I pretty much slept through the day until Brandon woke me up to feed me Tylenol and ask if I had enough energy to go see Dark Knight.

What did you think I say?  😉

I managed not to throw up or fall asleep at the theater.  But boy was it hard to maintain the energy to sit up like that.

Heath Ledger.  That boy knew how to go out with a bang, rest his soul.  It seriously wasn’t about Batman movie.  It was the Joker movie with Batman in it.  As a matter of fact, I felt like everyone else stole the movie from Batman.  The Joker. Harvey Dent…with whom I am totally in love currently.  Gordon.  Alfred.  And even Replacement Rachael…which is mass improvement from Katie Holmes, by the way.

Suddenly, Christian Bale wasn’t the star of the movie.  Everyone else was.

Oh, and note to the movie maker for the next installment.  Can you PLEASE stop the super low, super rumbly Bat talk?  Either that or start putting subtitle in there.  It was getting worse at the end of the movie.  It has become almost caricature of the drama and the action that we’ve been watching this whole time.  Thanks.

Brandon thinks that all of my stressing out last week had finally being released from me.  It has quietly manifested itself since Monday and I haven’t been able to get rid of it completely.  Well, the overheating was the catalyst no less, but all the sleep I’ve done today was a sign.

I’m ready for tomorrow now.

Not the Bunnies!

BBC News reports:

Rabbit ripper shocks Germany

…Rocco and Felina are among the 30 pet rabbits killed in the towns of Witten and Dortmund since last summer.

Many of the rabbits have been decapitated and the blood drained from their bodies…

…It is also unclear how the killer has been locating his victims.

Most of the beheaded pets were hidden from public view, locked away in back yards or back gardens.

It has raised the possibility that the killer has been using satellite images on the internet to find houses with rabbit hutches…

…Fear is driving German rabbit-owners to hide their pets away in the woods, like Julia, or in their garages, or in cellars.

The pet rabbits of the Ruhr Valley are being forced to go to ground, while the killer is still at large.It is also unclear how the killer has been locating his victims.

Most of the beheaded pets were hidden from public view, locked away in back yards or back gardens.

It has raised the possibility that the killer has been using satellite images on the internet to find houses with rabbit hutches.

People are sick. SICK!  Killing hapless little fluffy creatures who all they do is hop around, poop, eat grass, and look incredibly adorable.  How could you!

And wow, I didn’t know bunnies are popular pet in Germany.