Thoughts of -e^πi man - Tien Nguyen

I’m trying something new here with making lists of some the top things in the world, as I see them–so perhaps the title of the post would be more accurate if it were, “Top 5 Beaches in the World, that I’ve been to.”

I also was going to post pictures of each location, but laziness plays a factor here.

5. Lagos, Portugal - The water is so blue here you’d think someone had dropped 100 billion gallons of ink in there, but it’s not quite the case. It’s also warm relative to the water you’d find in the California beaches, so you can jump in right away without instantaneously shriveling up your balls.
4. San Diego, CA - SD would rank higher if the ban on drinking didn’t get passed out here, but as it stands the beaches here are accessible 12 months out of the year, and you have terrific options too. You can become anonymous and find places that are crowded so you don’t stand out with your pale skin and beer gut, or if you simply want a calm, relaxing environment where the water is pool-like and the people are scarc, which is good if you don’t want to expose your pale skin and beer gut to a lot of people.

3. Los Angeles, CA - As amazing as the La Jolla cove and some of the other locations along the San Diego shores are, it’s simply second fiddle to some of the views you get driving up the Pacific Coast highway as you pass up Santa Monica, Malibu, and others. And since Orange County is basically LA anyway, you have a show that’s named after one of the beaches out there. If Laguna Beach was called Pacific Beach it probably would’ve sucked moreso that it already does.

2. San Sebastian, Spain - Very spacious, very picturesque, the water isn’t ice cold, and the girls are topless–it’s what every beach (should) aspire to be.

1. Mallorca, Spain - You’re basically swimming in warm bath water here, partying with tourists from everywhere (okay mostly German), and escaping it all on this remote European island. Beach it around in the morning, then pay $25 to get into all the “hot” local clubs where you get a trendy bag, all you can drink, and watch a session of female AND male go-go dancers. It’s the place to be if you ever consider retiring young.

Didn’t make the list - Anywhere in the Bay

Google finally implemented a feature that’s been available elsewhere where it autocompletes phrases based on what others have searched for in the past.  Here’s some of what they’ve searched for:

Obviously there was a setback last night in the move toward ensuring equality for all, but there should be no reason to take it as a sign that we should give up on humanity or the fight itself–instead it should be viewed as a way to keep fighting stronger than ever.

If the civil rights movements over the years have taught us anything, it’s that time is the only barrier to change, and that the walls toward justice come down with each new generation.

Looking at last night’s results, 53% of voters in CA voted for the ban, an improvement of 8% over the last time the initiative was brought up when 61% of Californians were for the ban. Looking back further in history it wasn’t long ago when over 90% of Americans were against the idea of interracial marriage, and today the idea that two people of different races would be unable to marry is unfathomable.

They say old habits die hard, but so do old ways of thinking–(as well as old people themselves). The new generation is making their voices heard louder than ever, and there should be no doubt in any of our minds that we will all be ready for true equality one day.

I will take the bet that new ideas and change will always eventually take over old habits and stagnation anyday. Ideas that are the norm for the young will replace what is perceived as radical for the old.

It may be in 5 years, it may be in 15 years, it may even be longer…

Just not now.

And quitting now when we’ve been closer than we’ve ever been would be wrong, so wrong. The war has only begun.

Oh, but at least our children are protected.

So for the last couple days I diagnosed myself with an ear infection–symptoms included an awful fever, fatigue, sore throat, and major pains in my ear that made me suicidal.

I ended up just resting a lot, taking a Vitamin C pill everyday, and took aspirin which was supposed to reduce the fever. After 3 days or so it was a little bit improved but still really annoying, and I really hoped to get better for the Halloween weekend.

I ask a med school friend then who recommended to go to the doctor and get some anti-biotics–which was probably going to be a last resort effort..since I hate to get anti-biotics unless I’m in a life threatening situation.

I google around then and find this article.

Which recommended garlic oil, which I didn’t have..but said that cooking oil may work as well.

I decide I have nothing to lose then, so I grab some corn oil from our cabinet, pour a few drops into a shot class, go in front of the mirror, tilt my head to the side, and ever so slowly pour it in my left ear.

For a few seconds I go completely deaf in my ear, thinking wtf did I just do why do I believe everything I read on the internet–but within minutes, I find myself COMPLETELY CURED.

Maybe it’s just because I lost an ear drum on my left side so now I can’t feel any pain over there anymore, or cooking oil was really the magic cure all I should’ve tried days ago–but whatever it is, I’m a new person again.

w00t

Cliff’s:

Had awful pain in ear
Tried normal remedies, which didn’t work
Poured corn oil in ear, voila!

This is Dr. Nguyen, signing off.

Over the past year or so I’ve been battling with the other Tien Nguyens of the world to get this very blog to be the #1 search result when my name has been inputted–I’ve gotten as high as #4, but generally range around #8-10..Here’s a peak into some of the imposters in the top 10..

1) http://home.eng.iastate.edu/~tien/

The first Google result is a guy who’s an assistant professor at Iowa State in the Electrical/Computer Engineering department. His hair is parted neatly to the side, he’s got a small body, big head, and wears glasses:

Way to break all the stereotypes buddy.

2) http://www.tiennguyen.com/about/

Next guy is “the Chief Technology Officer at Galaxy Group, a media company in Vietnam. In the past, I worked at Microsoft, where I was involved with MSN Entertainment, Zune, and XBox Live.”

Also has a masters in computer science, and also looks like a total douchebag who’s probably still a virgin–but can probably kick my ass in ping pong…j/k no one beats me in ping pong.

3) http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=309540457

Good news is this guy isn’t a computer nerd, but he’s a total emo guy who probably cuts himself every night. He describes himself as someone who “seals feelings with silence,tastes paint with passions,touches poems with carelessness”. His Myspace is filled with art created while he was on heroin.

What da fuck?

my mood: annoyed

4) http://www.linkedin.com/in/tienn

#4 is a linkedin profile of the same guy in the #2 spot, way to monopolize the name ass.

5) http://www.nguyentientam.com/homepage.html

I have respect for #5–he has some nice images of Vietnam up, so that’s some positive points.

However his site was designed back in 1973, and he’s not even really a Tien Nguyen–he’s a Tam Tien Nguyen.

I’d hate on his look but this’ll probably be me in 25 years so…

6) http://www.pages.drexel.edu/~tnn27/

Good news: this guy is not a tech nerd, instead he’s a biz major and actually has marketing experience.

Bad news: he looks like this:

7 ) http://pikindaguy.com/

This dude is pretty f’in awesome if I must say so myself.

http://www.thenextorg.com/

’nuff said.

9) http://www.modelmayhem.com/219080

From the site:

Greetings and welcome. Thank you for checking out my portfolio and taking an interest in my work. I have been modeling now for the past three years and I really enjoy it. I would like to eventually pursue it at a more active level. I would like to be able to explore every angle of what makes up photography.

Um…does not compute, but shoot I’d say I’m pretty f’in hot if I say so myself.

I’d been pretty excited to see this for a while now, and finally got a chance to get into the mindset to do so today–and in the end I was left somewhat satisfied but mostly disappointed.

I’ll start with the obvious good points…the characters were all interesting in their own ways, the dialogue was pretty unique, and overall the film was done very very well from a production and director’s stand point.

The rest of it though definitely left a sour taste in my mouth..

Maybe it was my fault for going into it with the expectation that this movie was supposed to be “deep” and not just your typical mindless action flick, but ultimately I found that it tried too hard to be the former, and ended up being just the latter.

To me it was basically two movies, the prototypical cat/mouse action flick between Brolin and Bardem, and what amounts to be soliloquies by Tommy Lee Jones’ character. Jones’ character was entirely worthless in the plot as he was basically a lazy cop that had no influence between Brolin/Bardem.

The Brolin/Bardem part of the story then, if it were separated as its own movie would at best be a “quality” B-level action flick. I feel like I’ve watched that same plot 2 million times before: dude finds money, bad guy wants money back, bad guy chases guy down Tom and Jerry style for a few hours and kills some random Mexicans along the way just because he can, bad guy fails for a while so he threatens to hunt down the helpless wife, etc.

Even then, Brolin’s character was just so boring that I really didn’t care or rooted for him in anyway. So he’s an “all-american” rugged guy who’s a Vietnam vet (as they had to mention twice in the movie) who doesn’t care for his wife and somehow we’re supposed to care if he lives or not? I suppose we don’t, since he dies anyway..

The wife then that maybe we’re supposed to care for was your typical passive, submissive woman who obeyed her husband’s every word, and isn’t the last bit curious as to what he does–yeah I didn’t care for her either.

Bardem’s character was probably the one redeemable point in the movie as the indestructible badass, but he was too fictitious in a Terminiator/Freddy Kreuger/Jason kind of way for me to take him, or this movie seriously.

That brings me back to TLJ’s character again then, it feels like all his scenes were forced into there to make the movie’s point that “violence/morals are bad in today’s” world through his elongated, drawn-out dialogues which had no bearing on the plot whatsoever. He was an awful, lazy cop who seemed like he’d rather talk to the younger cop about life than to actually take action himself–and again I ask, we’re supposed to feel something for his retirement, which happened in the midst of a cold blooded killer loose out there?

Without him we’d have a mindless action flick, but with him in there the story just dragged while we waited for the mindless action.

Woody Harrelson’s character = even more worthless, lazy, and stupid

The action scenes then were just as cartoonish as any Friday the 13th movie I’d ever seen–Brolin actually out ran a pickup truck after being shot, jumped into a river with a dog chasing him and outswims him until he finally shoots it?

Plus the “coin flip” scenes at the gas station and with Brolin’s wife at the end, more attempts at symbolic crap that actually don’t mean anything.

Not that I expect action scenes in any movie to be realistic in any sense, but please..

Finally, I won’t say too much about the ending, but I feel like your average movie goer will “accept” it just because it was different and since the rest of the movie was put together so well that the ending became acceptable.

I don’t care what the intent to it was, it’s a movie, give me an ending–don’t Sopranos me at the end.

Michael Clayton was quite disappointing as well.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the comical performance of what was allegedly an NFL team donning some silver and black uniforms out there tonight; in part because it was just so silly to watch a bunch of grown men acting like clowns out there, but mostly the laughter was there in order to subside the harsh reality that my team was, for tonight at least, a horrible failure.

It got me to thinking of the ridiculous notion of how emotionally vested one can become in a team of 53-men boys in tights who’ll never acknowledge your existence, to the point where their weekly performance can dictate one’s self-esteem and self-worth; Witness a win and you’ll be on top of the world for a week–suffer through a loss that you had zero part in, and suddenly the days and hours go by ever so slowly.

It’s stupid, but it’s simply a part of human nature.

It applies beyond just the “sport” part of sports then, and is analogous to other parts of our lives too, namely “love”.

Harsh reality: Our lives are to some extent failures and full of shortcomings–full of dreams that never amounted to anything.

Think about it, as a 5-year-old we had the world ahead of us–our dreams were bigger than ever and went beyond reality. But these dreams, whether it be to play in the NFL, be a big time singer/actor, or even something more reasonable, e.g. become a doctor, all either failed, or in the rare cases that they were accomplished, the actual realities of the situation are nothing compared to the dreams we had.

Sure as a kid you can dream of being a doctor in order to help people, but no one kid ever “dreams” of having to deal with the drama of being a doctor–like the stuff you see on E.R. or Grey’s Anatomy, which as I understand it is 100% non-fiction.

As a result of living life as a plain, miserable failure then (which you clearly are if you’ve made it this far), we require external sources in our lives in order to define our self-worth. For some, it’s sports teams, for others, it’s the seeking of a “great love” or a “soul mate” or whatever you want to call it…not that the concept is mutually exclusive of course.

In the case of love then, all too often you see a person get out of a long-term, say 5/6-year relationship, and end up marrying the next person they meet within a short time frame.

Why is this? It’s because that feeling of having that “extension” in their lives, that is to say, their “lover”, was such that it was taken so much for granted, and once it was gone created a tremendously huge void (i just re-read this and it makes no sense and i have no intention to fix it, my apologies)

Rather than take a chance at going through that cycle then, with say a 2, 5, 10 or even 20-year long relationship that will eventually expire, they feel their solution is to get married–which in theory is a life long commitment or security blanket in which they will co-exist with the “better half” of their lives, forever.

The reason

Which brings me back to sports teams then…

The reason that it is so easy and convenient to define ourselves, and as a result our self worth upon a team, is that we know that they’ll (almost) always be there for us. While friends/family/great loves all come and go at some point, your favorite baseball/football/basketball team has (probably) been around for decades, or in some cases centuries, and will be there for many more.  We feel secure knowing that this is a long, long term investment that at some point will pay off greatly, in the form of a championship.

With no threat of being abandoned then, it’s no wonder we continue to ride out the lows and enjoy the highs of random men that we somehow consciously or subconsciously at some point decided would become an extension of us.

Pathetic it is..

It’s natural and easy to react with shock and appallment when hearing stories of these Chinese womens children’s gymnasts being taken from their families by the nat’l government at the age of 3, and from there beginning a strict, strict regiment of training for the Olympics.

One girl specifically (the captain) was only allowed to contact her family just once every year, and when she’d request to go home, she was denied by her own family as a matter of “honor”

Initially I felt quite torn when I think of how these girls have been basically conditioned to be robots and programmed to do just one thing in life just barely out of the womb, making it impossible to compete with them. As a result I found it extremely difficult to have any respect for a country (namely it’s government) that apparently has such an inferiority complex that they’ll take ownership rights of a zygote and force them into modern day, athletic, slavery, just so that they can have a citizen of theirs stand at the top of a podium for a few minutes during a once in four year event.

However I got to thinking, what’s the alternative?

Having seen what life in the rural is, which makes a life of poverty here in the US seem like an episode of Cribs, I can only imagine that being an Olympic gymnast and honoring your country, the largest country with the richest history of any in the world–regardless of what sort of torture you have to go through as a youth–is infinitely better than a life you’d achieve living on a farm picking rice for 16 hours a day, not having any sort of escape route and perpetually “continuing the tradition” for generations throughout.

And in a country where essentially 700 million people or so live in the Dark Ages, you can bet that a high, high majority of them would send their kids off to do the same.

This is not even billions upon billions of others around the world that would sign up in a heartbeat as well.

There is certainly an honor in what they do that I can respect. It’s a cultural difference that may be hard is impossible to grasp as we sit away in comfy chairs behind our computers reading this while looking up the latest relationship statuses of our friends on Facebook–but until we’ve actually witnessed, or better yet lived in true poverty, that is poverty on an international standard, I don’t think we have any right to judge what actions the Chinese government and their families do in the way they nurture their citizens in an attempt to best in the world at what they do.

And while their intentions are far far from genuine and can easily be described as a humane crisis in any civilized part of the world, it’s hard to argue with the results, and who am I to deny a 12-year-old accomplishing more in her life than I ever will.

That said, I’m rooting for the U.S. all the way…

We’re a simple people, and while the 60s are long gone, we’ll always have a burning internal desire to create meaning and worth in our lives by fighting against “the man”.

We take bold stances by joining others fighting the same cause by placing the blame squarely on certain things for everything that’s wrong in the world–and generally there’s one specific scapegoat where all the anger is pointed at–even though there exists any number of clones that go completely ignored and often accepted by society.

Usually this target is the best or biggest, since it’s so much more fun to take them down, and so much easier too!

After all who actually likes to do critical thinking?

Examples:

Hummer H2 - Yeah it’s big, brash, and gets horrible mileage–but it’s no bigger or worse for the environment than any other full sized SUV. The Hummer is the face of the whole anti-SUV movement, and people point at them for the fuel crisis, global warming, Mid-East conflicts, and killing of baby seals.

However you never hear these people give off the same criticisms when the see the other tanks of the world, like the Toyota Sequoias, Lexus LX470s or Mercedes Benz GLs out there, which are often bigger and at best get marginally better fuel mileage than the Hummers/Escalades of the world (if they even do).. the same goes for performance sports cars that get mileage in the low-mid teen range that have zero utility and for most owners, are 100% status symbols (at least you can stuff a Hummer with lots of people/cargo).

Sure there’s the whole image the Hummer H2 gives off that’s part of the blame, but just from the standpoint of what’s killing the baby seals out there, it’s no worse than any number of popular vehicles out there that emit just as much emissions, or causing such a spike in our demand for fuel/oil.

Wal-Mart - There’s a million and one reasons to hate them, particularly if you or your family have never been in a situation where you actually had to shop here–as paying more than $5 for jeans or $2 for a bath towel isn’t an option for a good portion of the population.

But while shopping or supporting Wal-Mart is akin to worshipping the devil himself (or in this case the little Waltons), there apparently exists no problems with the Targets out there even though they both represent everything that’s wrong with globalization, destruction of local businesses (or mom/pop shops), and welfare in America.

Making a purchase at one is equivalent to the other, in the sense that both pay their employees about the same along with similar benefits, both import their products from 3rd world countries, and if you shop at either you’re most definitely not helping out the mom & pop/local businesses out there which apparently only Walmart is capable of driving out..

The differences between the two are a) Target charges more for their products and convey a greater image of “class” compared to the white trash image that Wal-Mart has b) Walmart 6x as large, and c) Target has a much better PR department.

At least with Walmart there’s the passing on of the slave labor wages from whatever 3rd world worker that’s making their products onto the lower class of America (e.g. my parents when they first immigrated over here)–at Target you just ending up paying more for the same crappy products and providing them with higher profit margins.

Wal-Mart may be pushing further onto the extreme level with it comes to its practices, but if they’re a 10 on the “evil” scale, Target is its mini-me and is at least a 9.

Barry Bonds - Yup he cheated at the sport, but so did all his peers, and he did it better than all the other cheaters. Maybe he shouldn’t have lied about it, but the blame is laid on him because a) he was so good at cheating, and b) because he’s a class A jackass, making it easier to point the finger to him.

Don Imus - Touchy subject but I’ll give it a go here–the black community can be seen in the news at any given time dealing gangs to drugs to dropping out of school to living in horrible communities to homelessness to shooting each other up for no reason to AIDs to teenage pregnancy to robbing liquor stores to stealing cars (no wait that’s us Vietnamese folk)–Don Imus making a comment about “nappy headed hos” shouldn’t even just be on the absolute bottom of all those worries–it needs to…well I’m not sure what it needs to do, but it should be the last thing that should be rallied around and made into big news.

McDonald’s - They’re unhealthy and will kill you young if you’re eating all their popular items everyday–but uh the exact thing is true about every other restaurant out there.

And not just all the fast food places joints pretty much any popular item at any “trendy” restaurant, from Chili’s to Cheesecake Factory out there is going to be loaded with fat, calories, and will leave you dying young. Restaurants rarely become popular because they’re healthy–they become popular (and hence profitable) because of taste, and in order for things to taste good for Americans you need to add lots of butter and fat and cheese (lots and lots of cheese) to their foods.

But McDonald’s is seen as the reason why all our kids are fat and our adults are dying from heart attacks, when basically the joke of a documentary Supersize Me could’ve featured any restaurant out there and come to the same conclusion–eating lots of fatty foods makes you fat, OMG.

At least w/ McDonald’s you’ll save up enough money to pay for your angioplasty.

Mmm $1 double cheeseburgers.

Yeah eating a Big Mac everyday is probably not recommended, but neither is sharing one of these…

Aaron Rodgers - Poor guy, he’s had nothing to do with Brett Favre flip flopping all over the place and going to a new team, Packers fans need to LEAVE AARON ALONE.

George W. Bush - Yeah he’s the leader of the gang, but if you’re the type of person who thinks the world is in chaos at the moment, and believe it’s because of our current administration, there is a laundry list of others who can be shared on here too. Impeaching Dub would have ultimately made little difference–other than holding up Congress for a months.

Oil companies - Exxon, Shell, etc., did not make your gas prices shoot up to a gajillion dollars overnight, don’t hate.

Enron/Tyco/Worldcom/Countrywide and subprime mortgage lenders - These guys…no wait scratch that, they are scum and deserve every bit of criticism them received and then some.

I logged into Yelp today and noticed an interesting new feature–they have a distribution chart on the left side that measures how many times you’ve given a place a certain star rating.

Not surprisingly mine looks like this:

Essentially, 92/118 of the places I’ve chosen to review I’ve left extremely satisfied (or higher)–and most of my really negative reviews (the 1/2 star ones) are for ghetto-ass rotting clubs or places I reviewed/went to when I was PMSing.

I’ve been asked before and have thought about what makes me so easy to please, particularly in the areas of food, and it easily goes back to my upbringing. My parents essentially came from nothing and came into nothing when they immigrated over here, and have always acted, and raised me as if we had nothing.

I’d had very few toys, no video game systems, eating out was very rare, and when we did there was almost never a time when a meal would amount to more than $8 > person; and come to think of it I don’t recall an occasion where I’ve ever shared a meal with my parents where a plate was > $15.

Food was eaten 99.9% of the time at home at the dinner table, and while it was always very basic, there are few things I’ve ever had at any price range that’s been more satisfying.

And beyond that whenever I’d complain the slightest about this half green/half brown thing with bumps on it that I was ever so slightly hesitant in eating, it’d always be “you know…when I was your age we were lucky to have rats at the dinner table, and the adults would always eat first and save the least appetizing parts to the kids”.

With my vivid imagination then that I had as a kid, every bite of food I’d ever had from then on was like a steak and lobster meal to me.

So yeah, I’ll never be able to distinguish between a bottle of 3 buck chuck and a $200 bottle of wine; I’ll never understand how a $200 Kobe beef burger is any more special than a double-double from in-n-out, and I’ll forever find a meal where I boil up my own noodles and pour pasta sauce over it more satisfying than a $50 dish found at an Italian restaurant with a valet out front and man in a tux handing me towels in the bathroom.

And I’m sure those Yelp business owners appreciate as much too..