Filed under: Random
I found the following in the facebook group “How a Nerd Picks Up a Girl”. Here are their pickup lines:
Let’s convert our potential energy to kinetic energy.
I wish you were my problem set so I could be hard and you could do me on your desk. (our personal favorite)
I wish I was sin squared x and you were cos squared x so together we would be one.
You can put a trojan on my hard drive any time.
You had me at “Hello World”
You’re so hot you made my LCD melt.
I wish I was your derivative so I could lie tangent to your curves.
I don’t know if I’m in your range, but I’d sure like to take you home to my domain.
I’ll take you to your limit if you show me your end behavior.
Your body has the nicest arc length I’ve ever seen.
My love for you is like a concave up function because it’s always increasing.
Euclid said that 2 parallel planes don’t touch. let’s go back to my room and study some Non-Euclidean geometry.
Baby, I am a north pole on a magnet, and you must be a south pole.
Thermal Conductivity: Let my warm love flow through your copper body.
Baby, you’re so hot you’d make water boil instantly.
If I am an electron in the ground state, then you ionize me every time you touch me!
Want to come see my hard drive? I promise it isn’t 3.5 inches, and it ain’t floppy.
How about you and I go back to my place and form a covalent bond?
Why don’t we measure the coefficient of kinetic friction between you and me?
You’re hotter than a Bunsen burner set to full power.
How about I take off your cover and insert a bigger CPU?
Nice set of floppies!
The volume of a generalized cylinder has been known for thousands of years, but you won’t know the volume of mine until tonight.
Filed under: Musings
Is it a sign of serious psychological imbalance that I felt a little stab in my heart when I read that the new American Idol David Cook is dating someone (Kimberly Caldwell)?
(Not to mention the constant googling of “David Cook” since he won)
Yes!
Filed under: Personal
Coming back from NYC to Chicago, I was greeted in front of my apartment building by the vision of a bright orange ticket happily sun-tanning on my car’s windshield’s wiper. And up the building, on my desk, a pile of work laughs at my face.
Still, home is actually Chicago, and coming back to my own home is strangely comforting, despite all the dreaded work and expected work.
The first night staying on the couch in my brother’s tiny new york apartment, as my brother (and then another brother) slept on the floor, a mosquito massacued us. Specifically, for me it was my toe. The next morning, Mom woke up, and naturally, came to the tiny living room where we slept and just sat there trying not to make any noise (but she couldn’t help but keep bustling around the kitchen doing this and that), we told her of the mosquito. She said (in funny Cantonese of course),
“Let this old mama dai dai dai (meaning, beat the heck out of the mosquito)!”
That was quite funny actually, the way she said it.
But basically, the 4 days in New York was an intense family reunion. As I watched Phantom of the Opera for the 4th time, my Dad, who had never watched a Broadway show and insisted to watch this, kept raising his thumb excitedly, especially in response to “Think of Me”, and to my horror — even hummed during “That’s All I Ask of You”. (This is because I constantly played the Phantom score on piano in high school…they are familiar with the songs even though they have seen the show). Two little girls sat in front of me. They hugged each other and cried their heart out (I mean, REALLY SOBBING) when Phantom gave up Christine and told her to go.
My brothers and I fight all the time. For example, the night before I left, my little brother and I fought over a straightening hair iron which I thought I lost and which he found in our pile of possessions in the storage room in LA. So the sister discovered her long lost hair straightening iron in little brother’s bag, and told little Brother that she would take it back with her to Chicago. Brother refused. Sister refused to let go also. Dad became the judge. Little brother claimed that without the hair straightening iron his front hair looks like pubic hair. Sister claimed that without the hair straightening iron she wouldn’t be able to get a boyfriend. Old brother sat at the sideline and watched with amusement. Dad sided with little brother. Mother sided with sister. Sister won the argument after delivering a forceful analogy with regard to Dad’s boat. Brother’s ego was injured and decided to hide his head under a blanket cover for the rest of the night. Sister went out with Older brother to take a breather, later came back and decided to secretly placed the hair straightening iron back in little brother’s bag. The morning after, everybody pretended nothing had happened.
Filed under: Personal
I’ve just made a decision. I am trying to convince myself that I am not running away. I truly believe that. When I first asked, I had a small feeling that that’s a wrong decision. In life there is always a first time. Before things came so easily for me, and I was spoiled. From now on I can only believe in myself, and be true to myself.
Cross my fingers.
Filed under: Personal
My family is finally having a reunion. It has been amost three years since all of its 5 members come together, and this time, come together in the meager 300ish sqr ft apartment of my brother in NYC. It is his graduation.
Today as I was sitting in the bus, a chinese word came up in my mind. I just have to type it here:
超能力
It meant magic power. When we were young, we used to pretend we have 超能力. When asked: if we could be granted one wish, what would we want? 超能力, we both said. Too many cartoons for us then. My brother had a big influence on my likings. He pretended he has 超能力, so I pretended I have 超能力 as well. I was like a duck swaddling behind the mother duck, learning the latest trends –be it cartoons, toys, or human concepts–from him.
By human concepts, let me give a specific example. I remember one day back from school, he asked me, “Wong Wing Yee, so do you know what does “make love” mean?” (in Cantonese of course)
I said, “Cut hearts from paper.”
My brother has taught me a lot of things since we were young. He always deconstructed walls in my contented little world.
On the bus today, I realized I’ve forgotten a lot about our converations since young.
But anyways, congratulations Brother!
Filed under: Musings
There are some simple modern conveniences that I really appreciate. For example, with just one click of my mouse, my printer, which is situated less than 1 foot away, would immediately react to me. I really appreciate this quick reaction.
If only everything in life react so instantaneously, especially in the customer departments of companies that provide home facilities.
Filed under: Personal
How I love creative work! Making your own kite is a form of creative work. But if your kite can fly, that’s even better. Although it was drizzly and cold today, the drive to make the kite fly insulated me from the bitter external environment and supplied me with continuous energy to modify my kite.
And the result?
The kite still doesn’t fly!
But at least it’s better that L’s kite. Ha.
But failure is the mother of success.
I’ll continue to modify this kite, and then one day, I’ll fly it at the Quadrangle to the jealousy of passerbys.
P.S. My dad as well as another passerby at the lawn said what I need is to add a tail to the kite.
The following is a picture of a flying shark.
Filed under: Music
There is a Chinese saying that basically says, “Walk a thousand miles to seek a maestro/good teacher.” That is what I did yesterday, finally taking a first step to resolve my long-standing helplessness and wonderment at playing jazz piano.
And I took it from a maestro. I first saw my current teacher perform at Greenmills. A couple months later, I saw an Ad in the classified section of a local newspaper. I emailed. And there was I was yesterday, at her house, at her grand piano (which has a microphone standing by its side), playing “Stormy Weather.”
Some moments during the session was actually embarrassing because I am such a basic player. I mean, I have absolutely no imagination when it comes to make up a melody. I played “Stormy Weather” as it was written on my chart. Then I was asked to play it differently. While murmuring some incomprensible excuses about how bad I am, I played a chromatic scale at the first bar and was promptly stopped. The teacher took over and played it as she thought appropriate.
At that moment I discovered that I did not know what jazz is afterall! She said that Jazz is about coming up with a different melody. No, it’s not harmony. (I thought it is about coming up with harmony!) You got to think up a different melody.
A second surprise then ensued quickly. I was asked to play a scale! The last time I played any scales was 8 years ago! And then I thought I would be done with scales forever after the certificate of merit advanced examination. Then she asked if I can play Hanon, which is supposed to be a popular fingering excercise book. I said no. And I mentioned the most dreaded name in my piano repertoire ever since I started playing piano — Czerny. I can’t even believe I remember this abominable name. Yes, in my many years of taking classical piano lesson, I always had only given a half-assed effort to the Czerny excercise.
But to become a jazz pianist, you got to have strong finger.
I am to play the fingering excercise in Hanon for 20 to 40 minutes per day. To build up the strength in my fingers. Wow.
“It’s like meditation, ” she said, on practicising the fingering excercise. Play Bach too. ( I can tell she likes Bach and Chopin because they are sitting on her piano)
The third thrill-causing question followed. She asked, “Can you play with your ear?”
No I said. I can only read. Then she played some quick jazzy notes on the piano, and asked that I hum as I play it.
Well, at least I can do that. Whew, so this is what she meant by play with your ear. (in my mind, this means, to sing while you play) You can’t play jazz if you can’t do this, she said.
The rest of the sesson I was taught to play some basic 12-bar blues in the F key. (at least I learned this on a DVD last year! So I have some clue). While my teacher played some amazing stuff on the right hand, I was as boring as ever. But my heart was aching to play like her. She asked me to try to make up a melody on the right hand. I couldn’t!
My homework is to: do fingering every night, play the 12-bar blues, write down a melody (this in my mind corresponds to COMPOSING).
This is way beyond my comfort zone.
No, my teacher has never taught anybody as basic as I am.
By the way, she told me that I should attend some “Jam Sessions” in my school, which is when random jazz musicians come together and play whatever that come to their mind.
I am seeing things I never saw before.
