Digital Lifesavers

Wow, has it been that long?  Well, I’m in a rush, so maybe I can appease you with the formal announcement of my upgraded photo website, which, apart from the beginnings of a humble home theatre setup in my new master bedroom, has been taking up most of my time lately:

http://niftyken.stanford.edu/gallery/

Enjoy!  Let me know if something breaks!

Went to an “O” Party at the Stanford Blood Center today.  Basically, they invited all of their O-type donors to come on the same day.  This seemed both festive and amazingly inefficient.  When they called me yesterday, I was kind of skeptical of the fun-factor, but they promised me a “full course meal.”  I asked them how they were going to pull that off for an event that lasts from 7:30 AM to 7:30 PM, and the lady just gave me some hand-wavey (a new favorite word) description of how they would “probably” have rounds of breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Really now.

Well, that sounded pretty fun to me, so I went around lunch time to 780 Welch Road.  First thing that happened: “Hey, have an O Party t-shirt!”  Sweet, another t-shirt-I-will-probably-never-wear.  Of course, they didn’t have medium anymore because everyone likes Medium and it wouldn’t be a party if they didn’t run out of Mediums, but they did have a couple crates of Large and Xtra Large (or as one of the other donors muttered, “Xtra Fat”).  I had to turn up the suave factor before I could convince one of them to hunt for at least a Small for me.  I got it.  The place was indeed festive, with paper streamers and balloons and an Elvis cardboard cutout that said, “Thank you, thank you very much.”  

The place was just bustling with way too many O donors and it was clear they could’ve used a few more staff.  At one point they had me in the armchair with the blood pressure-measuring arm band wrapped around me, awaiting the syringe to be inserted.  And I waited.  And waited.  Uh…. Eventually they remembered that I was still sitting there with a pressurized arm and they started the bloodletting (a probable misuse of the word).  The process went without a hitch otherwise, except that they ran out of the red gauze bandages, which have a special place in my heart.  So I got the blue instead.

Out in the waiting room (where they make you sit and wait for 15 minutes after donating to make sure you don’t pass out and fail to demonstrate that giving blood is “fun”), I started counting up the times I have donated in the past year, and realized that I was now eligible for the Six Pack Club, which unfortunately only meant that I get a long-sleeve t-shirt, and not a six pack of any sort, for my contributions.  At least by now they figured out I wanted a Medium, dang it. 

With two t-shirts-I-will-probably-never-wear in hand, my thoughts now turned to more important things.  I had seen no evidence of a full-course meal anywhere, but had been content to just play it cool until now.  Dude… where’s the food… I started asking one nurse, who ask another nurse, and nobody really knew what I was talking about.  They kept mumbling about the cookies and Kudos bars that were at the waiting area table.  No.  This was definitely NOT a full course meal.  Surely, someone knew what I was talking about.  I have never had delusions of people promising me full course meals over the telephone, and I wasn’t going to start now. 

A gust of wind blew the Elvis cardboard cutout over, his face crumpling lifelessly against the back of a chair, just like the fate of one who has just given blood and is now famished for want of a long-awaited full course meal as promised by a mysterious stranger over the phone the day before (yet remains undelusional about such seemingly ridiculous promises).  Alas, nobody had a clue what I was talking about.  Dejected and famished, I walked out the door (after my 15 minutes of waiting was up), trying to hold on to what little dignity I had left.

Outside, radio station KFRC was apparently sponsoring some more “fun”, as demonstrated by the presence of their fun van and a fun wheel-of-fortune that donors get to spin for additional prizes, like new cars, trips to Hawaii, and, you know, keychains and stuff.  I tried my hand at the wheel, but *just* missed the slot for the new 2005 Toyota Prius and the trip to Hawaii, or whatever was there.  But I got a Stanford Blood Center seat cushion.  (Hey, that’s… um… cool…)  And another O Party t-shirt (apparently last years much-coveted design).  It came in a Medium.

You’d think that 3 t-shirts-I-will-probably-never-wear and a foamy seat cushion would get me off their backs.  No.  I was going to find some food or die trying.  Here we go.  I waved at one of the staff people who was walking past me outside, minding her own business, wearing her O Party t-shirt.  I pressed the issue slowly, unwaveringly.  “I heard there was food…”  She paused in her tracks and blinked a few times, perhaps debating how to best let me down gently.  “Uh… well, if you walk beyond those trees and walk down the stairs in the other building, there’s some food that’s really for the staff but I guess you can have some…”  I was beyond those trees and down the stairs in a jiffy.  And there they were, a bunch of staff in their O Party t-shirts, and me.  “What can I get you?”  The pizza lady had waited, just for me!  Two slices of vegetarian pizza and a scoop with lettuce salad with zesty Italian dressing later, I walked away beaming.  Mission accomplished!

Um…anyone short of t-shirts?  I think I carry the full line of Stanford Blood Center t-shirts now, including the Crimson Donor, the Four-Seasons Club, the Six Pack Club, and of course the O Par-tay series.  Collect them all!

Back to work.  I got dismissed again from jury duty without ever stepping into the courthouse.  This is probably about the fourth time this has happened.  You just call the number the night before and listen to the recorded message.  It makes me wonder what happened.  Did they have a settlement or just throw out the case?  Do they just not have any other cases requiring jury members to be selected today?  Do they just randomly call you to duty even if they knew they wouldn’t really need you, just to see if you’re paying attention?

I decided to finally reformat and rebuild my Toshiba Satellite 5005-S507’s hard drive from scratch.  Yikes.  I have such paranoia about leaving important files behind.  *Click*  Oh well, no point in thinking about that anymore.  Goodbye, cruel world!  “Formatting 38,15.34 M.  3 percent completed.”  It disturbs me that the comma is in the wrong place.  Not exactly reassuring…

——Update——-

Wow, I’ve had my “new” computer on the network for all of 10 minutes, just enough to get the updated virus definitions for Symantec Anti-virus and start downloading Service Pack 1 for Windows, and already a virus has been intercepted!  10 minutes with a new system!  I haven’t done ANYTHING with the machine yet!  Wow, it’s crazy.  It sucks that some packages take just 1 minute to download but over 30 minutes to install (i.e. Service Pack).  They really should have a reminder: “Download complete.  Disconnect your Internet connection in the meantime, before you catch another 3 viruses!”

Well, it’s been a tidy two weeks since I’ve been back from vacation, so I suppose it’s time to remove the shroud of mystery surrounding my trip to Singapore and try to recall some of the sights and sounds for the delight of my three readers.  Some of you may try to argue with me that I have more than three readers, but I don’t have time to go into that right now, so you can just chime in during the Comments section.

Seiwei and Steph picked me up from the airport.  I was pretty embarrassed over how late my flight arrived.  After an hour of mechanical problems in Hong Kong, I arrived in Changi International Airport after midnight on a Thursday night.  Changi International is an *amazing* airport, a true paragon of excellence when it comes to entertaining the weary traveler.  But I did not know this at the time, since my main thought at 12:30 in the morning was, “Let’s get out of here.  Let’s get out of here.”  More details about the fabulous airport later.

I had a great time staying with Seiwei’s family in Ang Mo Kio.  When he initially told me he lived in a “flat” I had an image of something considerably smaller, so I was pleasantly surprised by the accommodations.  Probably the most interesting item of interest was the toilet that did not have a toilet seat.  This apparently is not so much the way of the Western toilet nor the way of the squat toilet nor the Singaporean way nor anything categorizable like that, but merely the Way of Seiwei’s mom, who found cleaning the toilet seat to be a hassle, and so merely did away with the whole thing.  I should have taken a picture, but really, you can just imagine a Western toilet with the toilet seat permanently removed.  (C’mon, everybody try this at home.)  What took more imagination was what I was supposed to do that first morning to, uh, interact with said toilet of seatlessness.  I’m happy to report that I did not fall in, as much as that may have enriched my Singaporean experience.

I found my way to Singapore’s “island resort”, Sentosa, on Friday and walked around by myself, while Seiwei worked in his Opulent Office and Steph recovered from her untimely illness by sleeping for 20 hours.  It was somewhat uncharacteristic of me to bumble around the island with no particular goal or destination in mind, and I spent most of the time in silence amidst the scattered groups of rowdy fob-like high schoolers.  (They  were only “fob-like” and not actual fobs for obvious reasons.)  A bunch of attractions were closed for renovations, including the one thing I really really wanted to see, the “Images of Singapore” exhibit.  However, I was still entertained by the dragon fountains, the monorail ride, the “other” Merlion, and the “Southernmost Point of Continental Asia.”  Sure, it was gimmicky and purposely excluded all these little micro islands out there by use of clever wording, but that is to be expected from an island resort that I only paid S$3 to enter.

There was a lot of good eatin’ while I was in the company of Seiwei and Steph.  (July was the “Food Festival” month, though somehow I’m skeptical that every month isn’t a Food Festival month.)  We made sure to visit a number of the hawker centers and while a couple of places could probably stand to appear less grimy, my digestive system remained agreeable with our plans for my entire stay.  We never managed to dine on “Glutton Street”, which was just as well, as the mere name of it made me a tad queasy.  It was fun to try to get our friend Jarrett to try some of the more adventurous dishes.  Some of my favorite new dishes included popiah spring rolls, fried stingray, roti prata with mutton, laksa, char kway teow (is that what that greasy dish was?  ack, I forgot), and the barley drink.  It was sad that I missed out on one hawker stall’s “wanton noodles”, and I even missed out on my free Chili Crab compliments of Singapore’s tourism board.

At just about every hawker center, it was rather disconcerting at first to be addressed by the person in front of each food stall we walked by as if it was assumed that we were going to eat there, a not-so-subtle application of the power of suggestion.  Probably the most aggressive encounter was the one in front of the Chocolate Bar where the girls standing outside followed us a couple of steps and insisted that Seiwei and I really wanted to buy them drinks inside.  “Oh yeah… so that’s why I was walking down the street… AHH!  Warning!  Jedi mind tricks in progress!!”

I had to feed my inner nerd too, so I went with Jarrett, Gwenda, and Hi-C to the Asian Civilizations Museum and the Chinatown Heritage Center.  Hi-C impressed me with his encyclopedic knowledge of Southeast Asian history, being able to rattle off curator-quality descriptions of many of the exhibits faster than I could even read the content off the signboards.  Sigh, history was never my forte.  Some people just have the gift.  I went with just Gwenda to the Chinatown Heritage Center, which oddly enough none of my Singaporean friends had ever been to.  I had fun taking photos there of life-size replicas of scenes and items from the 1950s, so that I could come back and show my friends “Seiwei’s outhouse”, “Seiwei’s sweatshop”, and “Seiwei’s ghetto kitchen” (which is in fact right next to the outhouse).

Anyway, this is near the end of this entry, but I did want to make a plug for the incredibly cool Changi International Airport.  They really do everything to encourage travelers to pass through its lush gates: 200+ free Internet stations, free wireless access, free Xbox gaming on 42″ plasma screens, free “movie room” for those long waits, prayer room, sleeping room, gym, showers, massage clinics… (hmm… these laters ones aren’t free…)  Wow, all they need now is a waterslide.

Of course, no trip would be complete without its share of bloopers, such as taking Seiwei’s house keys back to California with me, as well as his mass rapid transit card.  Well, hopefully they are back in his possession now, courtesy of Waiyan and Larissa, who are working hard to get me an excuse to revisit Singapore next August…  =]

More photos at http://niftyken.stanford.edu/gallery/Singapore2004

By the way, does any fellow Xangan have a clever way to make the images clickable (i.e. with a link to a larger image)?  I’ve been adding that by hand, and this madness must come to an end.  In fact, it’s so crazy, I had to remove them.