just to recap a few points, thursday, i had lunch with W and O at choi’s. i missed choi’s.

that night, i ate dinner at the company at 7pm, but right after, jay called me. he was in palo alto for some craniosacral therapy, and he wanted to grab dinner. so i was like, “ok, i’ll just eat a little bit.” he came over just before 9pm.

jay loves dance, too, and i told him earlier to watch LXD. he watched the first episode, and as i expected, he thought it was lame. i thought so too. but then, i showed him LXD episode 3, and he was really impressed. i’m telling you, watch episode 3 (“robot lovestory”). you will NOT be disappointed.

then, we went to fu lam mum for their 9pm+ $8 chinese dinner specials. last time, we got the salt and pepper fish, cantonese chicken in clay pot, and sizzling hunan spicy bean cure. jay loved it. this time, we tried the braised fish in clay pot and eggplant with garlic sauce. jay also loved it. i’m telling you, fu lam mum rocks. $8 for a set of certain dishes after 9pm.

for whatever reason, i was up until 4am thursday night, and when i realized i had an 8:30am morning the next day, i skipped my PT exercises and decided to hit the sack pronto.

getting 4 hours of sleep really hurts. since i sleep so little every day now, the first thing i do when i sit up in bed is yell “FUCK” because it hurts so much.

anyways, i had an 8:30am conference call with our paris division, and i think things are coming into focus for the next chip. i still don’t know if i want to fly to china, which is what the project manager wants me to do.

i spent the rest of the day developing a real, rigorous and functional test for one of the IP’s that i integrated in to my block. i wrote a bunch of C programs and sed scripts to convert ascii data to binary files, etc. i forgot how much i love writing software. but the gist is, that after a few kinks and a lot of intense and focused work, i got the entire test to work. I AM THE FUCKING MAN. my company has no idea how good i am.

anyways, alan called me, and i met up with him and ting at the redwood city chevy’s. it was good seeing them again. ting is weeks away from delivering their baby girl.

why do women opt for natural birth? why would they go through all that ridiculous pain? anyways, ting wants to try it, and i’m like, “why?” yes, i’ve heard from bradley method people that the epidural can harm the baby, but i dunno. i can’t deal with severe pain, so if i were a woman, i’d definitely get the epidural.

we were at chevy’s for 2 hours. i was good to relax and chat with good friends.

after i got home, i got on my computer for the next several hours. honestly, i think i am getting addicted to the internet. there is just too much good content. i watched some louiekc comedy clips, and i explored some music from the seattle/northwest hip-hop scene. (who knows about this?). i listened to some hip-hop from two groups: blue scholars and common market. apparently, the seattle hip-hop scene is very underground, and their hip-hop is very different from the mainstream. instead of mass market rappers talking about how much money they have and how they want to have sex with a girl, a lot of seattle hip-hop outfits rap about social consciousness and stuff. it’s pretty interesting.

anyways, i finally dragged myself off the computer around 3:30am. and since i hadn’t done my physical therapy exercises for two nights straight, i forced myself to do all of my exercises despite the fact that i was so tired. so after that and my shower, i went to bed at 4:30am.

i got up at 11:30am. so that sounds late, but i only got 7 hours of sleep. still, though, 7 hours is a lot relatively speaking. remember that i used to be a guy who would get 10-11 hours of sleep a night. now, i’m getting around 5-7. it’s a really big change.

ok, i’m off to find some lunch.

friday night, i left work at 9pm. of course, there was nobody around for dinner, so i got another six dollar burger. the night before, i ordered a guac/bacon one, but they gave me a jalepeno one. this time, i ordered the guac/bacon again, and i told them very sternly not to mess up my order. they didn’t. damn, that is one awesome burger. but of course, at 2,000+mg of sodium per pop, it’s gotta taste great, right?

i didn’t do much that night. the entire workweek had been exhausting.

saturday morning, i woke up around 10am. i did my morning routine (check my e-mail, read my twitter feed, etc.), and then i went into work for about 30-40 minutes. yes, i am working too much.

but then the rest of the day was awesome fun.

first was chloe’s (paul and leeya’s adorable daughter) 1st birthday. the event was held at a park near the rivermark. i got there, parked in a residential area, started walking, and then i spied a blue handicapped spot across the field. so i got back in my car and parked in that spot. yes, i am ALL about exploiting my handicapped placard.

slowly, people started coming, and i had a great time. i was especially excited about telling people about my _inception_ theory knowledge. some people who had seen it didn’t think that there were any other possibilities other than the face value they saw. a lot of people asked me about my ACL injury, as my leg brace was very obvious. paul cooked up a ton of food.

i stayed at the party from 11:30am to 4pm. i didn’t notice it until i saw myself naked in the mirror before my shower that night, but the back of my neck, my forearms, and my lower legs were *really* sunburnt. i mean, the back of my neck was bright red, and it really burned when i touched it. ouch. i have never used sunblock in my life, not once. i should start doing it.

there was a basketball court next at the park. when i saw it, i felt really sad and frustrated. i really wanted to just grab my basketball from my car’s trunk, but i wouldn’t have been able to shoot without being able to jump. so i was a little sad about that. i really miss playing basketball, and it kills me to know that i won’t be able to step back on the court until at least next year.

then, from that party, a lot of us went straight to the next party. this one was for geoff, who was in the states for 2 weeks in the middle of his stint with US army in iraq. it was good seeing geoff. i was really worried for him when he left, but he’s almost always indoors, so i feel better about it. i asked him a lot about his thoughts about the war in iraq and afghanistan, and what life out there was like. i mean, geoff is the only person i know who is in the armed forces.

i brought two bottles of whiskey to the party: jameson 12 year and black bush. geoff is a whiskey disciple of mine, so i made him drink quite a bit of it. he liked the jameson 12 year better than black bush, the latter which he said was sort of “peppery.” i also drank my fair share of the stuff.

i had a really good time hanging out with bowling gang that whole day. i don’t see them much that often anymore, so it was really refreshing and nostalgic. funny thing, the first party’s address’s street number was 4321, and the second party’s number was 1234. crazy, huh?

i got home before midnight, and when i sat in front of my iMac, the alcohol really hit me. i tweeted a few times, and typing (correctly) took a shitload of concentration. and then, i had to go upstairs and do my PT and take a shower. during my PT exercises, when i closed my eyes, i nearly passed out a few times. and then, when i was in the shower, i also almost passed out a few times. closing your eyes is *really* bad when you’re buzzed/drunk.

the next morning, i woke up around 10am. my dad had arrived from taiwan/narita to SFO by then, and an hour later, he rang my doorbell. i was really happy to see him. he bought me a bottle of patron silver at duty-free, and i i showed him my bottle of patron anejo. and then, i proceeded to give him a lecture about the different classes of tequila (silver/plata, reposado, anejo). then, i made him do a smell and taste test with my anejo and the silver.

for lunch, i took him to su’s mongolian bbq, but it was closed on sundays. (drat) then, i took los padres, the scenic route, to santana row. man, HANDICAPPED PARKING RULES! i introduced him to pasta pomodoro. he liked it. then, i introduced him to pinkberry. yes, his first pinkberry experience. he got a mini mango with three toppings (blueberry, blackberry, kiwi), and i got a small watermelon (their summer flavor) with mochi. i was excited about the watermelon, but honestly, it tasted nothing like the fruit. it was sort of berry-like. i was disappointed.

then, i drove us home, and my dad took a long nap due to jet lag. i spent the next 6 hours or so watching 3 hours of SYTYCD (2 hours performance, 1 hour results). yeah my TV OCD was pretty bad. also, i found out about the “surprise” decision during the results show from twitter days before. but damn, lauren gottlieb made me drool once again. i would SO do her.

for dinner, i waited until past 9pm so i could take my dad to fu lam mum and get their $8 dinner specials. and before i left, i took off my leg brace. yup, it’s been 2.5 weeks. i no longer need the leg brace anymore.

after i parked behind fu lam mum, i got out of my car and started walking. it felt WEIRD. i mean, ever since i injured my knee, i’ve been in a knee sleeve or knee brace 100% of the time while i’m outside my house. so i felt naked, unsupported. i tweeted, “is this how women feel when they don’t wear a bra?” i’d really like to know.

my dad and i totally pigged out on three dishes: salt and pepper fish (with their hot sauce), sauteed greens with garlic, and sizzling spicy hunan bean curd. it was DAMN GOOD. i fucking love fu lam mum after 9pm.

then, after i got home, i showed my dad two SYTYCD routines. then, i showed him LXD episode 3. he was amused. i wonder if he thinks i’m weird because i’m into dance. this is a new fact to him, despite the fact that i’ve been watching SYTYCD since episode 1.

he went upstairs to go to bed, but i heard him talking on the phone until at least past 1am. (it was sunday, but a monday in taiwan, so he was doing work.) i stayed at my computer and read more _inception_ theories until like 1:30am.

anyways, it was an awesome weekend.

i don’t quite get it. am i busy because my mind is freed from the haldol, and i choose to be busy? or am i busy because i’m just involved in so many projects at once (up to 4 different chips), and this is only temporary? i don’t know.

i am starting to dream about work again. and that is NOT GOOD. it took me a long time to be able to separate work from my life. when i first started working in 1997, i would take my work with me everywhere: in showers, during drives, in my dreams. i was too involved. i worked at T for like 2 years straight without a vacation, and one november, my mind just snapped. i had a nervous breakdown. and unfortunately, my parents were visiting right at that time, and they saw how fucked up i was. i will never forget my mom seeing me and crying in my company’s parking lot.

ever since then, i’ve been able to compartmentalize my work, to sweep it under the carpet the moment i walk out of the office. however, these past few months, i’ve been losing my ability to do that. my life is entirely consumed by my job. i mean, part of it is because the current project required me to become the resident expert in a huge part of the chip, and now i have so much more knowledge. that’s why i want to ask for a promotion and a raise. i swear, my division would choke if it weren’t for me doing my thing. i am the only one who truly understands the display processor (from the high-level architecture down to the detailed code), and i can debug a hardware simulation failure or a c-model bug faster than anyone else. i have become what i was at my first company: a super-star engineer.

anyways, today, justin, an ex-coworker was in town. he left a few years ago to join a startup in vancouver, and now he’s getting his MBA in hong kong. so we organized a pho nam outing with him, me, ian, david and william. it was good hanging out. i noticed that all four of them had iPhones. it’s amazing how ubiquitous iPhones are these days. props to apple, even though they are far from perfect.

these past two nights, i’ve gotten out of work so late that i just got lazy and had a six dollar burger each night. last night, i ordered a guac/bacon one, but they gave me a jalepeno one instead. so today, i ordered the gauc/bacon again, and i told them to get the order right (which they did). damn, these burgers are good. but i know i can’t have them that often.

tonight, i had my burger, tried to watch SYTYCD on my DVR, but i was getting sleepy, so i turned the tv off. then, i fell asleep on the couch while my leg was still in an active CPM machine. yeah, i’m getting worn out. i woke up, wanted to get ready for bed, but then, A called, and wound up talking for 80 minutes. (and before you jump to any conclusions, let me just tell you that i just started talking to a girl who i’m interested in.)

i need to wear my straight leg brace for like two more days. then, it’ll be 2.5 weeks, and i won’t need it anymore. already, when i get home, i take it off, and i walk around the house without the brace.

i do find it interesting how much attention i get because of the leg brace. everybody’s always asking me what the hell happened to me, and i have to explain to them what an ACL is, where i got it from, how i hurt myself, etc. i mean, the attention is nice sometimes, but it gets a little tiring.

twitter ruins my tv watching experience, hehe. i already know what happens in SYTYCD’s results show. damn that lauren gottlieb! (no, i can’t say that… i love her too much.)

ok, that’s it for me today. i have two parties tomorrow to look forward to. i’m pretty excited.

like, i can feel it when i drive my car. the past week or so, i’ve noticed how i am driving faster, braking harder, wanting to get to point A to point B as fast as possible.

i can feel it about my job. i have been spending a lot of time at the office this week, even though i am technically supposed to be working from home as i recover from my ACL surgery. last night, i spent about 2 hours thinking about a new chip architecture and another 2 hours writing an e-mail explaining to some coworkers how to implement it. i was up until 3am. this morning, my old boss at the company called me to ask me if i was ok. he saw my 3am e-mail, and he told me to take it easy, to not burn out, and to chill out. then, my current boss e-mailed me, saying “don’t come to work until you’ve gotten some sleep.”

but the thing is, i really *want* to work. i have become this super-guru of a major part of the chip, and i like that. i like the fact that when the architecture team proposes something, they have to run it by me first to see if it’s feasible or not. i want to be an important member of our team.

and then, there’s my ACL recovery/rehab. i wasn’t quite sure what would happen once i got my ACL surgery. i mean, i am very paranoid and neurotic, and i am a big worrier. so up to the actual surgery, i was fretting about this and that.

however, after i got my new ACL, i was just so motivated to get better. luckily, for me, 1) the anesthesia didn’t give me any nausea (i have a friend who also got ACL surgery two weeks ago, and she puked FOUR times after she woke up), and 2) the vicodin didn’t affect my mental state. so those two things, especially the immunity to vicodin (well, except for my massive constipation) made me recover extremely quickly. i was alert, active, social, functional.

and now comes physical therapy. you all know that i have OCD elements in my personality, so god damnit, i am going to stick to the PT routine like a motherfucker.

anyways, i just think my attitude towards life has improved a lot.

ok, let’s see… i didn’t blog yesterday. what did i do? i do know that wednesday night, i got champagne at safeway for diana’s birthday. that’s what i didn’t want to disclose, as it was a surprise party. it was a $60 bottle of bubbly, but the safeway club card got me $20 off. veuve something.

anyways, thursday morning, i had this really long 2-hour meeting at work from 10am to noon. basically, like i said before, the architecture team had come up the specs for the next generation chip, and they wanted to run it by me to see what i thought. i looked at the block diagram of my area of expertise (display processing), and i immediately noted some issues.

for lunch, adam came over to my company. he had coupons for carl’s jr. (buy one six dollar burger, get another one for $1), so we got in my car and drove about 1/4 mile to the one down the street from my office building. we got two six dollar burgers (jalepeno for him, guaco/bacon for me) and an order of crisscut fries, all for under $9. it was adam’s first six dollar burger. i think he liked it. but, we also got the full nutrition guide, and holy shit, the gauco/bacon six dollar burger is the WORST one of the six. it has over 1,000 calories, the most fat, the most carbs, and over 2,000mg of sodium. holy shit. but damn, is it tasty.

after lunch, i brought adam into my office, and i showed him around. i showed him my cube, the PQ lab, all the modified HDTV’s lying in the aisles, etc. after adam left, i started testing out this new feature in my block, and i realized that i needed to add something in the hardware to make it work. so i fixed it, and now we can do some really cool stuff with that feature.

i had physical therapy at 5:30pm. my original therapist was unavailable for the next few sessions, so i got a new one. she was a nice woman too. she massaged my leg to get the swelling down, and i was taught 5 new exercises. her assistant helped out near the end. she tore her MCL playing softball; usually the MCL heals itself on its own, but hers didn’t, so she had to get it replaced.

after PT, i went back to the office, and i helped out the contractor a bit. then, i got the champagne from the office fridge and drove to diana’a house. basically, diana thought that a few of us were going to meet up at shimbala for stinky tofu at 8pm after she and her fiance worked out, but what really happened was that her fiance drove her back to her house, where 5 of us were waiting to surprise her.

we heard the garage door open, so we just sat by her staircase and waited for her to enter. she came up the stairs into the living room, saw us, and then we yelled, “SURPRISE!” diana had a weird delayed reaction, and then, she screamed. it was funny because she saw us before we surprised her, but she didn’t really react at all, and there was a long moment from the time we yelled “SURPRISE!” to the time she screamed.

anyways, then we had dinner. jen got fried rice, jason made mojitos for everyone (except me, because i don’t like them), and caroline cooked up a shitload of jerked caribean pork and chicken. we ate and talked for a long time. topics included jen’s horrible BMW buying experience, real estate, and google’s “mail goggles.”

i think we all eventually left around 10 or so. then, that’s when i got home, saw that work e-mail, and spent the next 4-5 hours thinking about work and composing a huge e-mail about how to do the job right in the next chip.

i think i fell asleep around 4am.

i got up at 10am today. i didn’t feel tired or anything. i checked my work e-mail, responded to a few of them, got that phone call from my old boss, and then went into the office. the first thing i did was to go straight to the cube of the architect to sent out the previous night’s e-mail, and work with her on clarifying the architecture. she eventually got a bit confused, so she asked me to leave her alone while she tried to understand what i told her.

today was the free lunch day at my company. around 12:20pm, i was like, “where is everyone?” some straggler in the hallways told me it was company lunch, so i went down and got some food. i had some saffron rice, vegetarian jambalaya, steamed vegetables, lemon chicken and some fish thing. it was ok. the best thing about my company’s free lunch day is that there’s free dr pepper. i had one can.

i spent the rest of the afternoon working leisurely. my stuff is pretty much done, so i have been helping out others. at one point, i took off my leg brace, sat on the ground, and did my PT exercises.

in the middle of one of them, two of the architects came to talk to me about what i was telling them earlier, so the three of us went into a room, and we just hashed it out. eventually, my new boss came in, and he was pretty upset, because he’s being protective of me, saying that i just had surgery, went to bed at 3am last night, and that i shouldn’t be bothered and stressed. i reassured him that i actually wanted to be in the discussion, so we just kept on hashing it out until the lead architect for the next chip was satisfied.

i spent the rest of the afternoon helping the contractor with the C-model. i swear, if i didn’t help him, he’d be fucked, and he wouldn’t be here anymore.

i helped him to a point where i thought he could be self-sufficient, so i left and went home. it was like 6:50pm. shit. i had told david to get home at 6:30 so we could drive up to aziza. traffic on 101 was a bit spotty, so i took 92 west over to 280, and then it was a breezed until we got into the sunset district. i called aziza around 7:40pm (our reservation was at 7:45) just as we were passing stonestown galleria to tell them that we were running late. we got there just before 8pm.

three different employees at aziza recognized me from last saturday. i thought that was pretty cool. do i have a memorable face or something? they gave us a side table and an extra chair so i could elevate my leg. i noticed that until late in our stay there, we were the only guy-guy table. all of the other 2-person tables were clearly dates between a guy and a girl.

anyways, i got us both the tasting menu again. (let me remind you that i was taking david out to thank him for living with me and helping me during my surgery recovery. he moves back up to SF tomorrow.) i made david order a cocktail, and he got this tequila-based drink that was described the words “plum” and “jasmine.” it was pretty heavy on the tequila.

the food was pretty much the same as last week, except that we got soup (creamy horseradish) this time, but less variety of main courses since it was just the two of us instead of nine last week. david got the lamb shank, and i got the chicken. (i originally wanted the wagyu (kobe), but “sweetbreads” was listed as a companion ingredient. fuck that.) but yeah, it was really good. the final tab (2*$62 + $10 cocktail + tax + tip) was around $167. it was my fourth $100+ 2-person meal that i paid for, and it was the second more expensive one. however, it isn’t even *half* of the most expensive 2-person meal that i’ve paid for. crazy, huh? yeah, that k4.

david is a good friend. i treat him like a little brother. after all, he is like 10 years younger than me. i’ve introduced him to whiskey, semi-fancy restaurants (le charm, house of prime rib, alexander’s, and now aziza), and i just like the fact that he is a good guy. and i’m really grateful for him that he agreed to live with me while i was recovering from my ACL reconstruction. he filled up my kodiak ice machine, got me water, got me food, etc. it’s been great having him here.

anyways, the drive back was uneventful. after we got home, i showed david some youtube videos: the daft punk of the two women, and the hitler meme about the iphone 4 antenna.

ok, it’s getting late. 1:35am. earlier, we were watching _manswers_ on spike. that show is ridiculous. i mean, it’s such trash, but a lot of the questions they answer are really interesting.

stuff like:
1) how do you increase your peeing aim by 80%? – putting a visual target in the urinal
2) what one other animal practices prostitution? – chimps, i.e. female chimps will agree to have sex in exchange for food
3) how long can you keep a severed limb before it goes bad? – 4 days, if you wrap it in a towel and keep in ice at 40 degrees
4) what animal has been employed by the US armed forces to fight terrorism? – sea lions, which can sniff out enemies in the water
5) how much has the average US boob size grown since 1993? – B-cup to C-cup, due to addition of hormones in beef, lotion, toothpaste

yeah, it’s damn fascinating.

ok, i gotta go to bed.

i went to bed around 2am last night, and i just couldn’t sleep anymore by 10am. so i just got up. i did, however, have this amazing dream where i was hanging out with a bunch of guy friends, and we were wearing all these swanky suits. and we were watching porn on a big-screen TV. and the house we were in had this wall facing the street that was entirely made of glass, so anybody outside could look into our room. then, all these hot girls came in. some of them were the wives of some of my guy friends.

then, these mobster-types come bursting in, and they take one of my friends and drag him to a corner of the room and start harassing him. my friend kevin steps in to intervenee, but the mobsters throw him aside. basically, the mobsters are actually legal people, and they are charging us with allegedly running a prostitution ring. upset, i run to a room where some of the wives are hanging out, and i explain to them that we’re NOT dealing in prostitution in any way. the wives all understand, because, i mean, they’re MARRIED to my friends, not just having sex with them for money.

anyways, it was a really intense dream.

after getting up, i did my physical therapy exercises. then, i worked from home a bit. i started first on my iMac, since i MUCH prefer a desktop over a laptop. so i read some work e-mails and responded to them. eventually, though, i had to log in, so i got on the couch, strapped my right leg to the CPM machine (85 degrees, which is my maximum amount of flexion), and got on the laptop and VPN’ed into our servers. i analyzed a lot of failing chip-level testcases, and i wrote this long e-mail explaining why each of them failed.

eventually, i went into the office. i first got a jack’s spicy chicken and three mozzarella sticks. then, i worked until around 8pm. i got some cool stuff done today.

A called me around 6. she was pretty upset, so i talked to her for a while. then, my friend david (not the one who’s staying with me) from high school called me up. he tore his ACL playing basketball over the weekend. he had just gotten an MRI done, and he said the technician told him that his ACL was definitely torn. so i talked to him for quite a long time, telling him about my entire experience, and giving him all the information that i possibly could. i told david his choices for grafts (he’s picking an allograft, i.e. cadaver), what to expect during surgery, what to expect from recovery, etc. i hope talking to him made him better informed and more at ease.

after work, i went to subway to get a 6″ spicy italian sandwich. then, before i went home to eat it, i drove to safeway to buy some stuff. so my toasted sub was cold by the time i got home. whoops. i should have thought about safeway before subway. (hm, similar words.)

then, i wrote this long e-mail to my boss about how the 120Hz TV mode will work our chip. i had to do some real math and stuff. 148.5MHz, anyone?

then, david came home, so we watched SYTYCD. it was a pretty good show. i just tweeted that SYTYCD is, in my opinion, the best source of publicly accessible art on television today. i truly believe that. i mean, american idol might be more popular, but there’s not that much you can do with a song that’s already been written. (unless you’re adam lambert or david cook) but on SYTYCD, they take an existing song, pair it with two talented artists/dancers, and marry it with the vision and art of the choreographer. not all the dances are that great, but when it’s done right, what you witness on SYTYCD can be fucking amazing. (and no, i am not really talking about travis’s dance about his mom. it was good, but i wasn’t blown away.)

after the show, i showed david some of the dance routines from SYTYCD season 5′s finale.

and that’s it.

i have a “secret” meeting tomorrow at 10am.

ok, good night.

saturday morning, david and i got up and watched the world cup 3rd place game between germany and uruguay. germany won 3-2, so i was happy that at least some goals were scored.

afterward, we went to lunch. we got to gombei bento (this newish gombei) right before it closed at 2pm. i really like gombei bento: the food is good, and it’s cheap. i talked to the owner about how my japanese-american neighbor knows the owner of gombei (kubota) and the main dude at the menlo park gombei (i forget his name).

then, david and i went to bevmo to buy whiskey. david is a whiskey disciple of mine, as i got him to start drinking the stuff. we bought a bottle of black bush since i’m running out of it at home. david is going to try black bush vs. jameson 12-year and figure out which one he likes better.

i also bought a wine bottle vacuum thing. i almost got breathalyzer ($70), but i decided to wait, as i wasn’t driving yet.

then, we went home, and i got on my CPM machine. then, jay called me, and told me that we were going to aziza in SF for dinner. (i knew this beforehand and texted him earlier in the day that i was up for going.)

so i put on my leg brace and went upstairs to change into a nice navy blue striped club monaco shirt. i mean, i had to wear shorts because of my leg brace, but i wasn’t going to look like a slob from waist-up.

jay and margaret came by to pick me up around 5:15. 19th avenue was a mess as usual near ocean/sloat, but like i told jay, i got better when we got into the reverse alphabetical streets (wawona to irving). but we were like half an hour late to our 6:00 reservation for 9.

i had been to aziza 5 years ago. it’s moroccan food. at the time, i didn’t think much of it, except that it was the first and only time i’ve eaten cous cous and not been disgusted.

this year, aziza was awarded one michelin star. so a bunch of us (teddy and carol were in town, which was the impetus) went up to try their tasting menu. it consisted of a few appetizers (flat bread with dip, meatball skewers, carrot salad, a filo chicken thing), a few main courses (beef cheeks, which were my favorite, chicken, some weird grain thing, and something else i don’t remember), and two desserts (chocolate ice cream sandwich and chocolate sorbet, and a strawberry pastry thing with pistachio and some honey ice cream).

all in all, the food was pretty good. i didn’t drink any alcohol, so just the tasting menu plus tax and tip for me was $83. i WANTED a whiskey, but because i was on vicodin, all of my doctor friends banned me from drinking.

on the drive back, there was a sobriety checkpoint near 19th ave and ocean. they were stopping random cars. jay was driving, and he had a glass of wine, so we got sort of nervous. i mean, do you tell the cop you drank and risk a breathalyzer, or do you lie about it and risk purjuring yourself?

in the end, we weren’t stopped, so i was like *phew*.

i went home and chilled out with david.

sunday, we were all supposed to have dim sum at dynasty (cupertino) at 10:30. however, david and i BOTH overslept. i kept on snoozing until it was 10:40, and i was like, SHIT, so i got ready as soon as i could, and david and i rushed to dynasty.

by the time we got there, everyone else had pretty much already eaten, so david and i just ordered food for ourselves, and then all of us got dessert.

when we got home, we watched my DVR’ed world cup final, spain vs. netherlands. it was SO FUCKING BORING. it was 0-0 until overtime, in the 116th or so minute. ugh. like the commentators said, the game was so ugly it was like “lipstick on a pig.”

then, i decided to try walking. i stood up with my straight leg brace, and let go of my crutches. and i could WALK! i was so excited.

for dinner, david and i (crutchless) went to castro and had thai food at king of krung. we got green chicken curry, pork pad kee mao, and rice. then, we walked to tea era and both got roasted barley milk tea. before us, though, was these two japanese men who could NOT communicate their order. they wanted tea, green tea, japanese green tea, but no milk, no sugar, hot, etc. i was rolling my eyes the entire time.

then, we went home, and being inspired by soccer, i showed david _bend it like beckham_. my DVD player’s remote control batteries frosted over, so i think the remote is dead. fortunately, my blu-ray player can play DVD’s, and actually, the picture looks better from the blu-ray player. i guess the blu-ray player’s upscaler is better than my tv’s.

while david watched the movie, A called, and i was also IM’ing J at the same time. i was SO distracted. clearly, i cannot talk and IM at the same time.

then, we finished the movie, and david went to sleep. i didn’t need him to help me because i could walk.

so finally, i took a shower for the first time. this is because i needed to wait until i could stand up and stabilize myself before taking a shower. i could have gotten a chair, but i didn’t have one that i wanted to put in david’s bathroom’s bathtub.

so for the first time, i unwrapped all my dressings, took off my ice pad, and unwrapped the inner dressings. i saw my knee for the first time. it was swollen. there were 4 band-aids where the incisions/holes were made. and i was bruising all the way down my leg from my knee to the bottom of my foot. (apparently, the internal blood just flows down your leg due to gravity.)

i took a three pictures of my knee/leg with my phone camera to document it. and then i took a shower. it felt SO GOOD to be clean again.

anyways, that’s it. i went to bed around 3am. i need to go to sleep earlier today.

but yeah, i’m healing FAST. i feel like i’m blessed or something.

well, after i went to bed last night, some time during the night, i regained sensation in my knee. and IT HURT. like a MOTHERFUCKER. i mean, i didnt’ have to wear the brace in bed anymore, so i just went back to my normal posture: sleeping on my right side.

when i moved my right leg just a little bit, pain just started shooting up and down my leg. it was so bad that i grunted.

i was still on vicodin, by the way.

anyways, the pain kept me up until 3am. at that point, i just got fed up, so i took an extra vicodin and then some xanax to knock myself out. within a few minutes, i was finally able to fall asleep.

this morning, barden arrived to spend the day with me, and david left for work soon after i got up and settled down on my couch. i talked to barden about random stuff for a while. then, i got a call from a contractor at work, so i had to do some work. basically, i helped the contractor compile a testbench that had some problems. it turned out that i declared some “wire”‘s as “reg”s and then used them in “assign” statements. that was clearly wrong, but i was baffled as to why my own testbench compile worked. maybe the contractor was using a stricter version of VCS?

anyways, we went to lunch at hobee’s. i was surprised that i could fit in barden’s car, i.e. i could sit in the front seat with my legs straight. barden, like alan yesterday, has a 2-door car, so my guess is that 2-doors have front seats that go further back, but the downside is that the back seats are really cramped.

at hobee’s, i didn’t get my “usual”: the stanford cardinal omelette with pork sausage instead of chicken. i looked at the specials on the cover, and i decided to get my first hollandaise-style eggs. it some kind of “bennie,” i.e. eggs benedict. i think eggs benedict (louis, and florentine) all are variations of two poached eggs on english muffins with hollandaise sauce, but mine today also had spinach and mushrooms. pretty decadent, but i think i’ll stick to my usual. i just don’t like runny eggs.

after lunch, barden drove us to safeway, where he bought another bag of ice. i think i’ll be done with the icing after tomorrow.

the rest of the afternoon, i caught up on 4 hours of SYTYCD while barden read some science articles and played on his iPod touch at my dining table. i knew that melinda was gone in week 3, and then, for last week’s episode, i knew beforehand that alex got hurt, so i was really bummed out about that. i thought ashley’s hip hop was pretty good, but aside from that, it wasn’t a spectacular show. oh, and i thought kent and lauren froderman’s high school prom dance was touching. i find it funny that all the guys who dance with lauren gottlieb are like in love with her, just like me. it sort of validates my obsession with her. but is her booty really that big? two guys on the show have mentioned her ass, i.e. adechike nicknaming her “cushion” because of her soft butt.

it was good seeing katee dance again when allison got hurt. katee’s awesome.

but DAMN, having alex bow out of the show (torn achilles tendon, surgery on tuesday) just deflated this season. alex was SO good, so good that it hurt. i considered him the front-runner of the show. man, how sad. i mean, alex was crying, and you could tell that cat and the judges were pretty devastated.

(was kent alex’s best friiend on the show? i could have sworn that i heard alex say kent’s name at the end when he addressed his love for his fellow competitors.)

anyways, after i finished SYTYCD, i turned on espn. i watched some of the press conference with lebron james, dwyane wade and chris bosh. that’s going to be nuts. however, miami is not done yet; they need to surround this trio with a good set of role players, i..e a good center who can deal with dwight howard, a good point guard, etc.

then, barden and i went to fu lam mum for dinner at 8:30 or so. parking was not that easy to find (friday night on castro), so it took a while for me to get to fu lam mum from his car while on crutches. early next week, i’m going to try to make an appointment at the DMV to get a handicapped placard. that’ll make it easier for me and anyone who drives me.

at fu lam mum, i ordered the salt and pepper fish. barden picked mongolian beef. then, i introduced barden to putting hot sauce (you have to ask for it) on the fish. i LOVE that, but i dont think barden liked it at all. he said it ruined the delicate flavor of the fish. i guess it does, but i just love the hot sauce so much.

during dinner, barden and i talked a lot about taiko. both of us expressed interest in playing with jun daiko, this taiko group based in the mountain view buddhist temple that some of our ex-stanford taiko members started. but both of us wondered how much dedication and commitment jun daiko required. when i saw susan over the weekend, she asked me why i wasn’t playing with her and the rest of jun daiko. i brought up the practice schedule, but susan said that they were pretty lax about it. so i think that after my ACL heals, i’ll seriously consider playing with them.

dinnner was tasty. however, cafe yulong’s mongolian beef is better than fu lam mum’s.

after barden dropped me off, i went back to my couch and my CPM machine. i’m at 50 degrees today. and i’ve been on my laptop ever since, with espn on in the bakckground.

ok, i’m really sleepy now. i haven’t slept much this past week. time to hit the sack.

however, at 7:30, my anesthesia must have worn off. my heel and achilles HURT LIKE MAD. i couldn’t deal with the pain, so i had to get up since i ran out of water. i forced myself to get up, grab the crutches, and hobble over to the bathroom to gulp down my vicodin.

after about 5 minutes, i was ok. but i couldn’t sleep anymore.

i got up around 8:30-9, and i saw david off after alan came over. alan brought his dog, rylie; she went NUTS when she came in.

for the rest of the morning, alan did some work while i propped my leg up and ran the ice machine. however, the ice pad didn’t feel cold on my knee.

i had a post-surgery followup appointment at 1pm. originally, it was going to be around 11:15am, but nobody was available to take me. (i asked barden, but he wasn’t available until 3, and even alan, who came over, had to do some conference calls.) so i called PAMF early this morning just before 8am and requested my visit be rescheduled.

anyways, alan and i wanted to have lunch before my 1pm appointment, but by the time we left my house, we didn’t have time for food. so we just went straight to PAMF, and i went up and checked in while alan walked rylie around the area outside.

when i walked into the clark building, i bumped into my dermatologist. i have only seen her three times or so, and it had been years since i had seen her last, so she totally did not recognize me. i called out her name, and she just gave me a blank stare. i told her about my scaly spot and psoriasis and her giving me clobetasol, but she didn’t really seem interested. oh well.

anyways, the sports medicine department was completely deserted, as everyone was on a lunch break. i was the only patient. then, this woman melissa called me in to check my knee out. she was very nice.

as i walked into the examination area, my crutches slipped, and i had to land on my right (injured) leg. damn, i hate crutches. melissa told me that i should actually start trying to put some weight on my right leg.

when we got into the examination room, she took off my leg brace, ice pad attachment, and what i realized was a HUGE amount of gauze/wrapping. and then, right there, i saw what my knee looked like. there were four little square band-aids around my knee. three of them were holes for the arthroscopic surgery, and there was one tiny hole where they threaded the new ACL tissue up to my bone. they attached the new ACL (which i found out was a cadaver’s achilles tendon) to my bones with these biodegradable screws made of carbon and something else. from what i understand, the screws will be incorporated into my bones. cool.

then, melissa proceeded give me a ton of instructions. ice for 2-3 days. no more left TED stocking. keep on right TED stocking for a few more days. 81mg aspirin to thin the blood for a few more days. leg brace for 2-2.5 weeks, and it must be worn at all times when i am walking or standing. CPM machine for at least 6 hours a day. and if i decide to shower, i should put a chair in the shower and sit down. i could only allow water to run down my right injured leg, and i couldn’t submerge it, like in a bathtub.

then, i got some physical therapy location suggestions, a doctor’s note so i can apply for medical leave at work instead of taking paid time off, and a form for the DMV so i can get a handicapped placard for my car.

melissa said that my next appointment would be in 3 weeks, and by that time, i should be able to walk without a brace. i really hope so.

then, alan and i grabbed lunch at the nearby creamery at the stanford shopping center. (the creamery has outside seating, and we needed that because of the dog.) oh, how i love the creamery. their chicken salad melt sandwich is a MUST to try. it’s the only thing i order there. it was SO good.

then, we got home at 3pm, and i had alan set up the CPM machine on my couch. CPM stands for “continuous passive motion.” it’s basically a contraption that you strap your leg into, and then it bends and straightens your leg over and over again. you can set the speed at which it does it (mine was 3 out of 5), the extension angle (0 degrees for me, totally straight) and the flexion angle (40 degrees, as directed by my doctor).

the CPM machine has multiple purposes. first, moving your knee constantly helps prevent the formation of scar tissue. also, it keeps blood circulating in your leg, so it cuts down on the chances of a blood clot. and then, finally, it is used to regain flexibility. like i said, i started today at 40 degrees, and my goal is to increase by 5-10 degrees each subsequent day until i reach 110 degrees of flexion.

i could not fully extend my leg before the surgery (0 degrees). i was told that i needed to achieve it, because otherwise i wouldn’t be able to get it back after surgery. so when the CPM machine went to 0 degrees, my knee really hurt. when it went to 40 degrees, i could feel some pressure in my knee.

i basically stayed there for about 6 hours straight. i had to unstrap myself once and rush down the hallway in crutches because alan went outside and got locked out. i think i went to the bathroom once or twice. but other than that, i pretty much stayed on my couch in the CPM machine from 3pm to 9pm.

alan left around 5 or so. i was on my laptop the entire afternoon. i responded to some work e-mails, and i even talked to one of our contractors to help him out with a testbench compile.

then, at 6pm, i watched the lebron special. the HEAT. holy shit. wade, lebron and bosh will be amazing to watch. i’ll be curious to see how those three will play together, because both wade and lebron demand the ball a lot right now. that has to change.

i IM’ed J for a while. eventually, david came home and brought me the dinner that i requested: a jalepeno six dollar burger from carl’s jr.

finally, i got out of my CPM machine at 9pm. i have been watching espn on tv, and of course, the only story that they talk about (aside from some golfer shooting the 4th 59 in PGA history) is lebron’s decision.

anyways, i am very surprised that i am so functional. i have some friends who got ACL surgery in the past, and they were completely incapacitated for the first two days. however, after “sobering up” from the anesthesia last night, i have been totally lucid and alert and physically able. i wonder how much of that has to do with me, and how much of it has to do with my surgeon and anesthesiologist.

ok, that’s about it. i’m going to bed soon. oh, and to get up and down stairs, i have to scoot on my ass. ugh.

yesterday was the only workday this week. i finished up some stuff, and i basically left my part of the project in good shape. then, i went home. david was standing outside my door by the time i got home. i asked him to live with me so he can help me out while i recover from surgery.

once i got back, i took david to target to buy some 150-watt 3-way bulbs. my living lamp goes through those like crazy. then, we went to safeway and bought two big bags of ice (for my ice machine thing) and two boxes of soda.

then, after dropping off the ice at home, we went to AMC vallco to watch _the last airbender_ in 3D at 10:05pm. it was my last hurrah before surgery.

yeah, i know the movie was supposed to suck. it got only 8% on rottentomatoes.com. i APOLOGIZED to david before the movie started for what we were about to experience.

but you know what? i actually liked it! i mean, the dialogue was HORRENDOUS, but i was able to overlook it and enjoy the visuals and stuff. it’s pretty much like _star wars_, especially episodes I, II and III: terrible dialogue, bad acting, but what you get out of it is the images and the mythology. so yeah, i enjoyed _the last airbender_. i’m probably one of the few. it’s amazing what can happen when you have ZERO expectations; you can’t be disappointed!

after we got home, we set up the air mattress that i borrowed from alan in my empty bedroom. david soon went to bed, but i stayed up until 3am on the internet again. *sigh* i need to stop myself and separate myself from my computer.

and now i’ll talk about today. i woke up around 11am. i had a dream about two female high school classmates (AS and JL) naked and having sex with each other. random.

my surgery was scheduled for 4:30pm. i was told that i could only eat toast and/or bacon until 8am, and i couldn’t drink any liquids or chew gum after 10am. well, i woke up at 11, so all of that was moot. (by the way, the reason why gum is bad is because it stimulates the stomach to secrete “food” stuff, even though you don’t swallow the gum.)

i IM’ed several people, checked my e-mail and twitter feed, and then i watched the spain/germany world cup match. i was getting pretty nervous and ancy and worried. i kept on wondering, “what if i don’t wake up from anesthesia?” part of me wanted to say goodbye to people.

then, at 2:30 or so, jack arrived to take me to the hospital. he had to get some gas before we got there, as his tank was almost empty. we arrived at fremont surgery center around 3:10pm, 10 minutes late.

i signed a ton of paperwork about my ethnicity, patient privacy, anesthesiology consent, etc. then, i waited for a brief while until i was called into the prep area. jack left to run errands.

i had to make a urine sample (to check for UTI before surgery) and change out of everything but my boxers into two gowns, a TED hose on my left leg (compression stockings to prevent blood clots), hospital socks, and a hair cap. then, i got on a hospital bed, and i was asked all these questions by one of the nurses. they weighed me, took my blood pressure, and took my temperature.

this medical equipment guy came over to talk to me. he explained how to use the CPM machine; this thing will mechanically move my leg back and forth, and i need to use it at least 6 hours a day for around a week. then, he showed me the leg brace that i would have to wear.

i was then given an IV in my left hand. it was saline solution for hydration. i also got some zofran (anti-nausea), some anti-bacterial that made my hand sting, and zantac (simply because i told them i had heartburn once a year) in my IV. a nurse shaved my right leg, and then rubbed it in this cold yellow liquid to clean it. my surgeon visited me, and we talked about the raiders, as he was on their sidelines last week during minicamp as their chief orthopedic surgeon. then, i talked to the anesthesiologist, and she went over my medications and stuff and asked if i had any concerns.

finally, they were ready for me. two nurses wheeled me along these winding hallways for a long time. at that moment, i sort of started panicking. i mean, the seriousness of this was becoming very REAL. it was like i was in a medical tv show, and it hit me that i was going to get SURGERY. REAL SURGERY.

when we arrived, i got out of the bed and walked into the operating room. it was full of equipment, this big operating table, nurses, etc. they put me on the operating table, strapped my right leg down, strapped my arms down, and covered my arms and upper body with this hot air balloon thing. then, they started another IV, and the anesthesiologist put this mask over my mouth and nose.

and that’s the last thing i remember.

i woke up feeling drunk and dizzy. jack was there. my mouth was completely dry. i kept on repeating myself. i drank three cups of water. they also gave me some saltines, but my mouth was so dry at first that the crackers stuck to the top of my mouth. then, as i slowly came about, i started asking questions about what happened. i called my surgeon, and he told me that everything went well. he did have to smooth out some meniscus damage.

they gave me some percocet (50% stronger than vicodin), and i was off. i was shipped out of the building on a wheelchair, and i got into jack’s back seat. then, we went to the drug store to pick up my vicodin. it was a drive-thru pharmacy, and i had no idea those things existed.

then, we went to jack’s house to eat dinner. his kids were excited to see me, and i wore my paul frank monkey shirt on purpose because i knew they liked that shirt. i was starving since i had had no food the entire day, so i ate three bowls of amy’s ground pork rice.

then, jack drove me home. he and david helped me around. i must say, crutches SUCK. i have never used them before, so i almost fell down several times. going up 14 steps to my bedroom tonight is gonna be hell.

anyways, that’s about it. i’m still alive. i’m very thankful. but now begins the painful and difficult rehab process.

my leg is completely numb. however, i can tell that once the anesthesia wears off, it’s gonna hurt like a MOFO. i better take a vicodin right now.

ok, off to bed!

friday night, i had dinner with nelson at dusita. dusita’s sort of been a controversial place ever since we found that cockroach on our table. but i still go there; i just make sure that we don’t sit against the wall.

nelson and i ordered the spicy crispy catfish and the red duck curry. it was good catching up with him.

after i went home, i would be at my computer until 3am. basically, i saw a tweet by eric about this dude named leyan lo, and it was a video of him setting world record in 2006 for the fastest BLINDFOLDED rubik’s cube solve. it was fucking ridiculous. he analyzed the cube, put a blindfold on, and solved it in a minute and 22 seconds.

so from there, i went to leyan’s twitter feed, and i read about tau, which is being pushed by this website to be the “better” constant than pi. basically, tau is 2*pi, and it is used in more mathematical situations than pi itself.

from there, i read the wikipedia entry on pi. there are all sorts of fascinating things about pi. like, near the 170th decimal digit, there is a string of six 9′s. it’s called “the feynman point,” for the famous physicist richard feyman. and there are all sorts of weird places in pi where there are repeating digits, since they’ve calculated it out to like a trillion decimal places.

then, i read about the number e. that is also a fascinating number. there are all these crazy infinite expansions that produce e.

and finally, i read about rubik’s cubes. i won’t even go into detail what i went through there.

so basically, wikipedia is EVIL. i couldn’t stop reading until 3am.

then, saturday morning, i got up, and i invited adam to come over to watch the paraguay/spain world cup match. i showed adam domino’s pizza’s cool online ordering system. we split a large pizza, but we both could have eaten more.

i was a boring match in the first half, but then the penalty kicks and stuff made it interesting.

after adam left, i chilled out at home for a bit. for dinner, i called ray, and i joined him and some of the taiko crew at maruichi for ramen.

then, after i came home, i started watching last wednesday’s SYTYCD top 9 performance show. the first dance featured lauren gottlieb, who i am obsessed about. you know my TV OCD, right? so it took me AN HOUR AND A HALF to watch the first TEN minutes of the show, which was only the intro and lauren/adechike’s dance. i kept on freeze-framing it to see lauren, watching the dance over and over again, etc. it was really insane. i mean, i watched it so carefully that i noticed that adechike made this one small mistake with his feet. ugh.

then, that night, stayed up until 4am on the internet again. aside from going through lauren’s website, i can’t remember what i else i did.

sunday morning, i woke up and finished watching SYTYCD. i really dread watching tv by myself. luckily, i only spent an extra 50 minutes or so than i would have if i just watched it straight. ALEX WONG. holy shit, he was amazing.

then, i went over to jay’s place for a 4th of july BBQ. he cooked these awesome spicy burgers. alan, ting and gina came over. we hung out and chatted until about 7pm. it was really nice just chilling out with friends.

when i got home, i IM’ed J for 2 hours. then, i went on the internet again, and i stayed up until like 3am again. i remember one of the things i did was purchase two songs featured on SYTYCD: “jar of hearts” (amazing song) and the “candlelight remix” of jay sean’s “down.”

i didn’t have dinner.

monday, i got up and had a 1pm lunch with mikeC at red robin. i got their guacamole bacon burger ($12 after tax and tip), but i swear, carl’s jr.’s guacamole bacon six dollar burger is better, and it’s less than $6.

then, i went home, and i called up ray. his wife susan recently broke her fibula, so she had this ice machine/cold water recirculator that they said i could borrow after my ACL surgery. so i went over to their place.

they lent me the kodiak ice machine, some pads for crutches, and a bed-top food tray that they said would come in handy. i wanted to see _the last airbender_ with ray, but then, some other taiko folks came over, so we dropped the movie.

A called me while i was there, and i talked to her for an hour sitting on the toilet in the bathroom.

then, i came out, and susan and i had a very serious and sobering discussion about this incident that has been weighing on my mind ever since it happened. i won’t get into it, but basically, it involves a lot of people feeling a lot of guilt. and it will haunt me forever.

ray heated up some of his famous chili, and we ate that for dinner. they’re from hawaii, so of course it had spam in it.

then, i went over to jimmy and sabrina’s for _the bachelorette_. it wasn’t very interesting. what *was*, though, was the interview with jake and vienna, the couple from the last season. they broke up, and it’s all scandalous and stuff, and man, they were totally dysfunctional. it’s sad to see two people from being in love to totally hating each other.

then, i went home, and i kept thinking about that thing that susan and i discussed. i wrote some e-mails to susan and emi to clear my head. and the next thing i knew, it was like 2:30am. so i went to bed.

so yeah, i went to bed REALLY late every night this weekend. and fittingly so, i was so tired by the time i went to bed that i fell asleep within minutes.

but yeah, despite revisiting “the incident,” it was a good weekend. it’s my last mobile weekend before my ACL surgery.