Cough. Burp. Who is that?

Do you think you can tell who a person is by the sound of his/her cough or burp?

For example, if you're sitting on the john at work and someone walks in, and without seeing the person or hearing him/her speak, can you tell who it is if s/he cough, burps, or sneezes?

Dodge This!

Been off blogging lately because I've been too busy. Well, my readers have been too busy too, giving birth to babies and what not. But in the meantime, I've still been coming up with blog topics.

This past Wednesday, we had a company dodgeball tournament.

In Taiwan, dodgeball is a common game on schoolgrounds much like it was for me in Canada, but with a different set of rules.

The rules I knew as a kid were something like this:
- The game started with either a number of balls laying along a center line which both teams race to gather after a 1-2-3 Go! or with each team starting with the same number of balls
- If you get hit, you go into a zone behind your enemy's territory and can throw the ball from there
- If you catch a ball before it hits the ground, then one of your "dead" can come back in to play

The common rules in Taiwan are more like this:
- Each team starts with members in the "in play" area, and is surrounded on 3 sides by members of the opposite team
- There is only one ball in play
- If someone in the surrounding area knocks out a player, s/he can go into the "in play" area for his/her team
- Catching a ball doesn't result in your team member coming back from the dead

So, in the small area of a basketball half-court, we squeezed in two teams of 20, and whipped around a yoga exercise ball.

Made from thick rubber, a yoga ball is pretty heavy - and guarantees injury. I threw out a few people, but on one throw (which managed to kill an opponent) my arm came at a strange angle and resulted in a minor dislocation of my shoulder. Well, it was more of a subluxation - a partial dislocation. So now I have two bad shoulders, and I'm getting treatment from my physiotherapist now. Sigh.

But that injury was far from being the worst of the night. One coworker took the ball in the face, shattering his glasses. I wasn't playing in that game, so I didn't see the hit; but I saw that there was blood running down his face, with glass shards caught in and around his eye. So, he was taken to the hospital. Over the next couple of days, I heard he had surgery on his eye. Apparently the pressure from the hit might have busted up his eye a little, and now he can't work for a month, as they pay attention to the recovery to see if everything went smoothly.

Done in Japan

[Wrote this on Sunday]

This morning, I spent about 1 hour walking around Akihabara (30 mins of which the stores weren't open yet). Akihabara appears to be a mix between two industries: computers/electronics and comics/Manga/anime/and associated porn/etc. The fact that the latter is such a big market here is kind of scary. Apparently there are places that people (men.) can go to "rent" and have sex with life-sized dolls dressed in nurse or schoolgirl uniforms. I found a few blogs/websites describing that.

I like that a lot of hotels and airports have switched to providing free Internet service instead of requiring you to purchase credit or pay for a 24 hours. Unfortunately, Japan's Narita airport still charges, and it's rather annoying. So I'm doing without Internet while I write this.

In terms of Japanese Yen spent, I just did the calculations, and they're beautiful. I exchanged 35,000 yen, and AC gave me another 2,000 yen that she had left over. When I arrived at the airport, I went to a duty free shop to get rid of my leftover change (228 yen). After not seeing anything on the shelves, I finally found something sitting on at the register; a 228 yen cake thingy. Perfect.

Adding up all the cash expenses I incurred on this trip, the total comes to a gorgeous 30,000 yen. On top of that, I split up my expenses and the company's expenses. I spent exactly 23,000 yen. Nice numbers.

I only took about 47 pictures, and 11 were in the Taiwan airport. So, I didn't spend much time seeing anything new. Hmmm... Tokyo gets old pretty quick. Hehe...

Ok, survey for anyone who read this far. On the plane, your meal consists of cold noodles, seafood curry on rice, apple slices, and cake. You are given chopsticks, a small spoon, a small fork, a knife, and a toothpick. What do you use to eat what? Just curious.

Boring.

Wrap of up Day 3. Overall a pretty boring day. I overslept in the morning, but still managed to get ready in about 10 mins to get a taxi from Shin Yokohoma to Shinigawa Tokyo. The conference I was attending, which was all in Japanese, was rather uneventful. A very small conference in which I took pretty much no part. But I brought the hardware we were demoing, and that was my job.

Throughout the day, I did a bit of work, watched some shows on my computer, MSNed, and made use of the free drinks. We packed up and left before 6pm. Dropped my stuff off at my hotel in Akihabara, went to an English pub for Steak Pie, and came back.

This is probably the smallest room I've stayed at -- although a Hong Kong hotel (Imperial Hotel, I think it was called) might contend for that title. But it's surprising how efficiently they use this tiny space. I have a single bed, a small flat-screen TV, a hot plate built into the desk, internet, a radio, a phone, a few lamps, hair-dryer, little flashlight, little closet, little washroom, enough outlets to charge my few electronics, and that's pretty much all I need. $7,900 yen the first night, and $8,600 the second.

Though one interesting thing is that this is the first time I've been required to do a virus check before using the hotel internet.

Gotta sleep earlier tonight -- long day ahead of me. Of fun.

Uneventful

So far, a rather uneventful business trip. The hotel's right across from the office, which is nice. But the breakfast can definitely be much better... in fact, I missed breakfast this morning because I headed out too late (around 9:20am).

My CEO and I went out for lunch today: some sushi near the office. As we chatted, he said that it's safer to eat food in Japan than Taiwan or China (the 3 places he travels to most). This afternoon, he said he ate something bad - and his stomach was in terrible shape. So he went back to the hotel. Fortunately, while we had the same lunch, I didn't feel that. Although now I feel kind of hungry. So I'm going for dinner.

Buddha Air

Arrived in Japan yesterday, got soaked in Tokyo, had dinner with SFU Engineer and friend BC, and settled in at my hotel at Shin Yokohama. A few observations and stories from the day's travel:

- Why is it that whenever I go to the airport in Taiwan, I see Buddhist monks? You don't see that many monks around Taiwan, but yet they convene in airports.

- I took the Hello Kitty flight. It was SERIOUSLY Hello Kitty. The waiting room was completely decked out in HK (Hello Kitty) - not just a few items, but completely renovated. I'll post a picture on this posting shortly. When we boarded the plane, all the personalized LCDs were showing HK with accompanying song over the loadspeaker. Our meals had Hello Kitty decorations and ice cream.

- Tokyo is the New York of Asia. Everyone dresses sharp and walks fast.

- My hotel room is small. Only a little larger than the double-sized bed. But it comes with a pants press - a large flat electric device that opens like a laptop and you put your pants in. Neato... but really rather useless. I'd rather they gave me an iron and ironing board so I could do my shirts too.

- Travel is almost always a sweaty affair for me. Just lugging around luggage. If it's hot out, I'm bound to sweat. If it's cold out, I'm probably wearing more layers and then I get hot, so I'm bound to sweat.

Anyway, the worst of the travel is over. The hardware I brought to Japan works, and now I can spend time doing the same stuff I would have if I were in Taiwan.

Bring it, Bin Laden...

This day marks the 6th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on the US.

It's also the day I fly out to Japan for a business trip to Shin Yokohama and Tokyo.

After spending 6 days in Tokyo earlier this year, I'm not sure what else to visit on the 1.5 days personal days. Last time I went, I had 2 friends there to see and hang out with. This time, I'm going solo.

What to do, what to do.

yawn.

Last night, a rerun of MythBusters tested whether or not yawning is contagious. Without watching the show, my gut feeling is that it is. But I think it's even more than just yawning because you see someone else yawn. From my experience, yawning can be caused simply by thinking about yawning.

For example, maybe while reading this blog, you yawned. Maybe if someone talks about yawning, you yawn. Maybe if, you thought about a yawn in the back of your mind, and... you yawned! This is just my observation.

What do you think?

Were You? iWoz.

Last Tuesday, Steve Wozniak was in town. As part of his iWoz book tour, "Woz" made two stops in Taiwan - one in Taipei on Monday, and one in Hsinchu on Tuesday.

In case you've never heard of Steve Wozniak, perhaps you're more acquainted with his partner in crime and co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs. In all honesty, I hadn't heard of Woz until recently when I read the Jobs autobiography called "iCon: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business". But fair enough, I decided to go have a listen to his book promotion since I got my hands on a free ticket through a coworker. In some circles, he's an engineering legend, having almost single-handedly inventing the personal computer.

Woz was one of two guest speakers - the other being Taiwanese Mr. Chang, founder of Trend Micro, best know for its popular anti-virus software PC-Cillan. For the Taiwanese, Mr. Chang is probably a better known name than Woz.

A third character that evening was a Taiwanese female moderator who in my opinion had no reason being there.


The 2 hour event roughly went like so:

• Woz spoke at a podium about his life experience, his childhood, his love for building computers, etc. Probably very close to what he recalls in his book.
  
• Then they switched gears, and had all 3 people (Woz, Chang, and the moderator) on stage, with Woz and Chang answering questions thrown out by the moderator.
  
• The moderator was awful. Trying to segway between answers and her next question, she would constantly throw in irrelevant comments, make terrible jokes (or at least I think they were attempts at humour), and she had a hard time
  controlling an overly-verbose Wozniak.
  
• Woz is a well-spoken man, but as I mentioned above, he sometimes has a hard time keeping it shut. He just wants to tell story after story.
  
• At some points, it felt like Woz and Chang were telling stories to show what they'd accomplished in the past to one-up the other.
  
• Finally, they took some questions from the audience - including one from me asking what Woz's current role at Apple is. Well, this is before I realized he wasn't at Apple anyway. Ok, officially he is. He has a very low salary, and basically just chats with Steve Jobs and acts as a consultant. The salary is just to make him an official employee - as the longest-standing member at Apple.
  
• Overall, I didn't take much out of the event. I didn't learn much, and none of what was said was very enlightening. But I guess sometimes you just go to these things just because it's cool to meet someone famous and have your picture taken with them.
  

After the event ended, a table was set-up on stage where Woz would sign books.

With a copy of iWoz I bought the day before, I stood in line to get my book signed. Some guy brought his iBook to have it signed on the cover. I had brought my digital camera, but without a battery. So, after I got my book signed and shook Woz's hand, I stood in line with my ex-coworker CY, who had brought his camera. As I got to the front of the line for the second time, I told CY to get behind the table to pose with Woz. I took his picture, and then we traded places and had my picture taken. Then CY and I went to McDonald's and to chat a little. About 10 minutes after sitting down, CY says "Eh? Where's my book?" Turns out, with all the photo-taking, we/he completely forgot to take his book. By the time we got back to the scene of the crime, everyone was gone. Fortunately, CY had already read the book - and he wasn't too devastated about losing the signed copy.

But that's how the evening went. I met him, shook his hand, and got his picture.


* While keeping with the Apple them, both books, iCon and iWoz, start with the 'i' prefix. But in my opinion, both titles are horrible. "iCon", which talks about Jobs being an icon, can also be read as "I con", describing how he's screwed over a lot of people in his career. "iWoz" on the other hand seems to indicate Steve Wozniak as a thing of the past, "I was". I feel like both books could have been better named.

$500K

I'm listening to Team 1040 right now, and they're talking about how once-BC Lion quarterback Casey Printers signed with the Ti-Cats.

"Printers signed with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on September 6, 2007 for a reported $500,000 a season, making him the highest paid player in the CFL."

$500K per season is the highest pay in the CFL? Seems rather low, or does it? I guess in the CFL, they only play 9 games each season over 3 months or so. Just ramble.

EarthShake

We just had an earthquake. Not yet updated on the Taiwan Central Weather Bureau.

Around 1:53am, Taiwan time, Sept 7th.

2:05am Updated: Now it's up.

2007-09-07 01:51:00 6.6 058 24.20N 122.43E, i.e. 87.3 km ENE of Hualien City

Click here to see a map of where it hit. The epicenter is the red star. I live in the 3rd county from the top along the West coast - so I felt a 3.

Da Vinci Strokes

Here's a neat news story...
Researchers uncover Leonardo da Vinci's method stroke for stroke