Thanks to a nap I recently took, approximately from 5 pm to 7 pm, I couldn’t sleep despite the fact I finished reading a new book I started two days ago, Freakonomics, which is a fascinating book btw, that is supposed to make me sleepy but didn’t. Thanks to my little friend in my head, I thought about a few things and thought I’d write a few words about what it’s like to be a Deaf person.

A good start to this would be to ask, “how did I become deaf?” Well, scientificially, the cause is unknown but it is probably heredietary since I was born deaf, and so was my older sister but we’re the only ones who are deaf in our family. So, I’ve been deaf since I was born. Ironically enough, it’s my deafness that has brought me here in America. Otherwise, I’d be still in Korea with my family and probably would be working on some rice farms or studying to become a priest. My sister’s husband is a priest, so to speak. I don’t know which is more blessing: being deaf and here in America or being hearing and stay with the family in Korea. Either way, I’m happy with who I am and what I end up living with.

Now, onto being a Deaf person, it annoys the hell out of me when a hearing person says “Oh, I wish I could be deaf like you, so I don’t have to be bothered by all those noises or having to hear those awful things.” Bull$hit. That is like telling a blind person that you wish you’re blind so you don’t see awful things (would you say porn is an awful thing to see?) on the tv. I’m not gonna pretend/lie here and say that I embrace every moment of being Deaf or that it’s the best thing ever happened to me. I’m telling you right now, being deaf is HARD and if I were to be hearing, I have no doubts I’d be a lot different person than I am now. But again, I do not know if I’m actually better off being Deaf or hearing. I might end up being a drug lord, being homeless on the street or getting killed in Iraq. I could be anything else in such a way that I won’t find myself writing this entry.

Since Deaf people only account less than 1% of the entire U.S. population, Deaf world is a lot like a high school except it’s a lot smaller. We keep bumping each other and everyone knows who f*cked who. It sucks when you’re trying to date someone; that someone is also your ex-girlfriend’s best friend or roommate. And when you do that, everyone back-stab you and call you a player. Much unlike Hearing World where you could meet a person at a bar, get some alcohol going, having a good time and you both decide to have a little extra fun and spend a night together. The next morning, you might realize it wasn’t what you thought it’d be, you simply walk out and never expect to see her/him again. Case closed. Unfortunately, that isn’t so with the Deaf world.

I take the metro to work everyday so it’s not uncommon when tourists come up at me and ask where the f*ck are they or where they’re supposed to go. Depends on my mood, I may act nice and try to lip-read, which I guess more than I actually lip-read, their mouths. It looks like they want to go to the Washington monument or Union Station, whatever. But admittedly, most of the time, I simply point to my ear and shake my head as to say “sorry, I’m deaf and can’t understand what you say.” Nothing harm, right? Except when tourists happen to be a hot-looking lady in a short shorts with long legs. I’d be more than obliged to be her tour guide and if she’s visiting just for the weekend, perfect. I can show her around the city and she’d be out of my sight by Sunday. (Think of Adam Sandler in “The first 50 dates” with Drew Barrymore).

Food. I can’t really customize my meal as much as a hearing person can. “Hey waiter, this isn’t what I want. I said no condiments on my burger but I want a Swiss cheese and onions. And this is overcooked; I want mine medium-well. Oh, these buns are overburned too.” Or whatever the hell like that. I suppose I could write on some napkin to tell him what I want but he’d still f*ck it up and got my order wrong. So I just mouth, “everything” and when I get the burger, I have to customize it with my fingers or spitting it out of my mouth barbarically. If I’m allergic to something, God bless me.

So, that’s what I have to deal by being Deaf. First of all, you may notice why I keep using capital D, instead of just deaf. Well, you know, being Deaf doesn’t simply mean you cannot hear and still be able to function within the hearing world as if there’s a perfect harmony between us. When you cannot hear a f*cking word since you were born, you perceive the world differently. You learn the language differently. You can only imagine the sounds but never actually hear it. You end up interacting with similar people, not those who could hear. When you have more than one generation who’s also Deaf, the pattern continues and gradually becomes into this world we all have come to know—the Deaf world. We’re not just deaf; we’re Deaf. When we say that, we don’t mean we’re perfect; we all have shortcomings like everyone else and we dream what it’d be like to be a hearing one day, as much as you’d dream abt being a Spider-man, the next U.S. President, or even geekier the Bill Gates. But don’t ever tell us you wish you’re deaf.

In about thirty minutes, it’ll become Friday! Whoo-hoo. Time for the weekend! You probably already know I’m lying here or just trying to pretend I’m in a good mood. Seeing the San Antonio Spurs losing to Detriot has really pissed me off, so I’m trying to enlighten myself somehow. Thinking about Friday… Well, that won’t work. What’s wrong with the Spurs!!! Why can’t they just grab one win at Detriot!!? I’m starting to believe that there is actually a conspiracy going on. The refs calling the game in a certain way so that Detriot Pistons would win and extend the series, this time, to even up. Shit. 2 – 2 in the NBA Finals. This is exactly what Commissoner David Stern wanted to see. Boost up interests, attendence, media, or in all, more $$$. Nearly made me throw up. Ok ok, Nathan, calm down. Perhaps the Spurs will bounce and win the next game. They better be! God, shut those little stupid Pistons down! I better see the Manu Ginobili in the next game!

It’s soon to be Friday…. Ok ok, Friday…ah, I’m going to see the Batman Begins movie! That ought help to cheer my mood up. Been reading excellent reviews abt the movie; sure looking forward to it.

Let the wee-keend begins!

http://joi.ito.com/archives/2005/06/02/korean_bloggers.html

What�s with us, the koreans, that are drawn to blogging? The article says there�s over 5 million korean blogs and one of the commenters think Xanga blog is at least 40% asians. Dammit, I am not fluent enough to be able to read korean blogs. Wonder what do they usually rave/rant on about? Also, this article said Korea has the highest penetration to the high-speed internet with more than 12 million subscribers out of 16 million population or 24.9 people out of every 100 have a broadband connection. That is a LOT.

I remember watching a korean movie about the teacher/student rival (the title name is �Lonely Rivals�). In that movie, one 5th grader brought her cellphone which has a camera inside and her teacher got into a bad mood and hand-slapped one classmate (common sight if you watch a lot of korean movies/dramas). You guess it, ofc, the teacher got videotaped by the cameraphone and that 5th grader went home and released it over the internet. Then, the movie got really interesting. So, that part showed me how tech-saavy their culture is and how young they are doing it. When I was in 5th grade, the only thing I carried was my batman lunch box and internet connection didn�t even exist. Boy, am I sounding like my dad, his I-didn�t-have-what-you-have-now lectures.

I don’t recall Korea being a tech powerhouse a while ago so it’s amazing to me to see how fast Korea is gaining in this trend and is starting to become more competitive with other nations like Japan. I wonder how long before people will stop associating Korea with cheap products like Kia or Hyundai and become into a brand quality like Sony or Honda.

Square A and B are the same shade of gray.

And now, stare at the black cross below and purple dots will disappear. I swear!

It seems as if my mind has gotten out of hibernation and is itching to do something. A couple of days ago, I found myself joining the gym membership and worked out on two days. My body is sore especially my triceps but my stomach needs a lot of work, so I’m aiming to pull some good hard cardio workouts this week and try to lose a pound (from 166 lbs) and stay away from rice or carb foods. Now, I look at my own site and well, it’s getting a bit boring and stale, design-wise, so I find myself itching to redesign my website. I look at professional web designers’ sites and their designs are definitely kicking ass in quality. So that got my creativity juices going and I’ve got an idea of what I want my redesign to be. I remember the first goal I have before was just to get this website up and running because it was simply taking forever to be up cuz of my damn obsession with perfectionism. Now, I’ve taken myself well into the blog world and get an idea of how “information” is distributed, and how to make it more useful and presentable. So that’s where the focus will be on the next redesign—with the information more concise, purposeful and yet pleasing.

I tried something new today—I went to a Deaf Korean church in Wheaton, MD—-and I think that’s my first time attending church in 2005. I didn’t even know they have one around here till one girl told me about it. It was interesting to see some “FOBs” who knows only KSL, not ASL. I think there were about twenty people who were in attendance and the best part was the korean dinner that followed. Pork Gulogi, rice, curry vegetables, and no korean dishes can be completed without kimchi. Also, what’s impressive was that they had a full outdoor court basketball with two backboards that are made of fiberglass, not some cheap-ass plastic you would see on driveways. I didn’t even know Koreans are into basketball. We had a little pick-up game and one girl named Min-Hye definitely can play some basketball and she’s only 15 years old, never played on a school team. I told her she should. I had fun today and that’s what happens when you do something new. :-)

Oh yeah, my new sk2 has been finally shipped and I should get it soon this week. Can’t wait! (another reason for redesigning my website)

Sherry and I at the Todai in Fairfax!

Inside the Todai

Food time!

Here we goo!

Sherry showing how to eat seaweed soup!

We had a good time at the Todai, obviously. My belly just expanded one inch bigger after that, not exactly a good start to my workout program!

Browsing thru websites as usual, I found this cool search engine site that combines both Yahoo and Google search engines. You can see two columns on one page and see the search results. Pretty neat. Here’s the link.

Now, try to type “failure” into the search box and see what or who comes first at the top. :-)

Here’s my rough summer workout plan on a five days basis.

Monday – chest and back/shoulders

Tuesday – cardio workout – running or do supersets on weights

Wednesday – arms workout – biceps, triceps, abs

Thursday – cardio workout – running or do supersets on weights

Friday – a follow-up workout – whatever muscles areas that need more work or stretching ( use lighter weights), also, on this day, you can measure your bench press max.

Weekend – do a leisure workout, be it golf, disc golf, a run in the park, play football or basketball, etc.

And watch your diet!
And don’t forget to eat a lot of fiber and almonds too.

Today, I decided to do something on the second day of summer. For some reason, somehow, I lost motivation to go to the gym to work out and gradually became a couch potato (*gasps* even you, Nathan?) right before my eyes, and keeping myself warm from the winter, for almost three months. My best excuse is that I think it’s related to work—too tired to work out when I get home from work and that it was already dark by the time I step out of the cubicle. But, um, that was, like, two months ago and it’s summer now! Get off the couch, Nathan!

So, today, I joined the gym membership here at USDA. They have a fitness center called ECG. Although their equipment sucks, must be from the prison, it only costs me $24 dollars a month, can’t complain abt that price and I can work out during my work hours. After all, can get one of those best home rowing machine if feeling gym is not enough. So, first, I weighed myself and I believe that’s the heaviest I’ve ever been, 4 pounds below 170 lbs. I don’t think I’ve ever been more than 170 lbs, staying steady at 160 lbs but today, the scale said 166 lbs. *ahem* It was like setting off the fire alarm in my brain. “Must work out and lose weight.”. I’m aware that once you reach 30, your metabolism rate goes down and it’ll be harder to lose weight and you may be stuck with beer belly for the rest of your life. I want to get rid of the flab on my belly and stay that way till I meet my own death.

My goal isn’t to buff like Arnold Schwargennzer (sorry, I know that cliche is getting old and boring) but be more toned and leaner. The biggest challenge is and always will be my food cravings and try not to eat more than one serving, meaning not two, three cups of rice, having two whoppers from Burger King, or eating 10 foot-long worth of sushi rolls. Get some great coffee cups at https://ember.com/, they have great style and design. You can see where I get the flab from. :-( Next challenge isn’t about how many reps or miles I should do/run today but simply getting my ass over to the weightlifting room or onto a treadmill. And to do it everyday except for Sundays.

That’s it. That’s the two things I have to do—watch my diet and exercise regularly at this new gym in my area called Sweat Equity Fitness. As easy as it looks, it’s tough and no wonders we have such a word called discipline.

That is, and I suspect will forever prove to be, the most profound true statement there is.” –Bill Bryson

I’m sure most of you have heard of that a couple of times from your biology teacher, that we’re all related one way or another. You may be rolling your eyes and be like “Yea yea, what’s your f**king point?” Well, my point is that we tend to think in current time frame or at least since we were born, meaning we don’t bother to think what has happened in the last century or longer than that. You say that’s for history majors. You know, if you could go back in time and change one TINY thing and everything after that point will be drastically different than they would be now and it would directly affect us and our existence. How’s that for history?

Obviously we can’t be here without our parents procreating first. And that goes the same thing for our grandparents, then our great-grandfathers. Start to see the pattern yet? Just keep going on and if you go eight generations back, that’s when Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin lived and that took 250 people in order to make your existence possible. Go even further to the time of Shakespeare, you have no fewer than 16,384 couples who f**ked each other. Let’s skip some generations here and go to the time of the Romans, the number of people on whose cooperative efforts your existence depends on has increased to approx. 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. So, basically, we’re not just the product of our parents but the product of gazillion numbers that led to our existence. And what’s the most remarkable of them all? We’re still 99.9 percent the same.

Now comes the scary part is this paragraph in “A Short History of Nearly Everything.”

“In late 2000 Nature and other publications reported on a Swedish study of the mitochondrial DNA of fifty-three people, which suggested that all modern humans emerged from Africa within the past 100,000 years and came from a breeding stock of no more than 10,000 individuals. Soon afterward, Eric Lander, director of the Whitehead Institute/Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Genome Research, announced that modern Europeans, and perhaps people farther afield, are descended from “no more than a few hundred Africans who left their homeland as recently as 25,000 years ago.”

That’s right, with the DNA’s help, science has found enough evidence to suggest that we descended from no more than 10,000 people in Africa.

So that made me thinking. With the numbers I mentioned above, wouldn’t it be safe and logical to assume that at the pattern it keeps going at, that it traces all the way back to a single couple—perhaps Adam and Eve?

What we know for sure is that we’re all related to each other, no matter how different we may appear to each other yet we have all kinds of problems in this world and cannot be perfectly at peace. I suppose that’s what makes it interesting—our problems—despite the 99.9% similarity between us.

I’m not exactly sure why I’m even writing this post but that’s kind of things my thoughts tend to wander, reflecting on the bits of information I read in books or hear about what people say. One thing about this book that struck me is we didn’t even account for 1% of the entire Earth’s history and that dinosaurs dominated the world much longer than we ever did. The author also said that the extinction for human race is pretty much inevitable; it’s just a matter of when. So I suppose what I’m trying to say is that we all should make the best/most out of our life and don’t worry too much on small stuffs because we are pretty much insignificant to the universe. But remember, we ARE significant to one another. And that’s my point. :-)

I usually find good stuffs via del.icio.us and saw this page. Thought I’d share with you guy, that is if you’ve been meaning to save money, pay off your credit card debt, start some investments and most of all, you don’t want to be still working into your sixties or seventies.

This guy said he’s read over a dozen books on financial independence and he’s found a recurring theme almost in each of them. He summarized them up and include a guide or rules in a bullet-style list. That way, you don’t have to spend $20 on each book (I’ve read three) and you can remember the points better and use the page as a quick reminder or reference.

http://www.foldedspace.org/archives/004245.html

Learned something from that article. He said financial independence is achieved when your monthly investment income equals or exceeds your monthly needs such as car payments, house payments, etc, which will take a long time to acheive. How nice would that feel when that happens. No more getting up early in the morning and dragging my ass to work. Play golf all I want.

Mantra #2: “Is this a need or a want?” Ugh, I hate this question but it’s vital to your financial independence. Dang, I want more golf balls, new suspension (sway bars, shocks, short-throw shifter) for my car, new G5 powerbook, and the list goes on endlessly, sigh.

This sentence got my attention.
Mantra #4: “Cash is better than credit.” There is almost no reason to carry a credit card.
True, ‘cuz it would incur debt (doh). I carry my debit card instead and some cash when they don’t accept debit cards like Vietnamese Pho cafe.

So, if you read the article, followed the steps, and for the rest, you have to be committed and disciplined. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

I just stumbled across someone’s blog, confessing that she has a secret “crush” on someone’s blog, so that got me thinking. I wonder if it’s possible to have a crush on someone’s blog without even knowing that person or never met the person before, like a complete stranger.

I have this scene in my mind that during your boring times or being sleepless at 3 am in the morning, you decided to check out your friends’ blog, despite the fact that you already checked a few hours ago. Ah, nothing new except for one new comment in ur friend’s blog, you followed the link and read the comment. Something about the comment got your attention and you’re curious who wrote that comment, so you clicked down the author and it turned out s/he has a blog too.

You’re reading her/his entries and the more you read, the more you become fascinated. You click on “previous posts” for more reading, then clicked again for more posts. Without knowing, you’re hooked to the blog and you decided to click on the << to go all the way back to the first ever entry (which is like a few hundred entries back), so you could imagine her/his life better in a chronological order. However, the first entry said something like "Well, this is my first entry and I'm just going to babble about my thoughts, life, love, experience, etc and I know no one probably will read my blog anyway." You found yourself thinking "Hey! I love your blog! I'm reading all of your entries! There IS someone who does read your blog." Now you're thinking, "I wonder if this person post some pics?" and off you went looking for pics. "Ooo! I see pics! hmm, that person is good looking." So within a few half-hours later, you're still up and you have read each entry, you know what s/he likes, her/his favorite foods are, movies, etc. You know what their friends look like and what an asshole her/his ex-spouses were. You bookmarked her/his blog and check their blog right after you check ur daily email box. Once in a while, you'll try to drop off a comment and wait to see if s/he will respond to your comment. You may have found out where s/he lives and how far they live from you. You spend ur day daydreaming about meeting that person and what would you say when you do. Wait a minute, maybe this doesn't sound like a crush.

Hungry for some pizza? To help spread word about Pizza Hut’s new online order service, they’re giving out a free coupon, so I thought I’d post in here.

Instructions:
1. Go to pizzahut.com
2. Register
3. Add either a large or extra large pizza
3. Apply the code: HL
4. Enjoy your FREE pizza!

*Not sure when it will expire; today could be the last day.
**it seems that the coupon no longers works, so if it continues to be that way, guess we missed the boat, :-(

I have been meaning to order the new T-Mobile Sidekick, not because it has a built-in camera or that it’s a bit smaller and lighter than its predecessor but a better vibration. With my current sidekick, I often would have to check my pager to make sure I didn’t miss any alerts. Ah, one of the many pitfalls of being a Deaf person.

So, I scorched the Net for the absolutely best deal on the sidekick 2. For the reference of price comparison, I used the T-Mobile’s upgrade offer, which is outrageous at $370 dollars or $300 dollars with the purchase of voice/data plan, $39.99 or higher, for 12 months contract. Of course, I don’t use the voice plan at all. Then, I saw this page that you could get it for free but only to add an additional line to your current account, phffth. So, the best deal comes to deafpager.com and fusewireless.com. They offer similar pricing, with one $50 dollars rebate from T-Mobile. You may be inclined to ask how come their deals are lower than most online retailers. The secret is that they have an agreement with Sprint and MCI relay. They pay them to install Sprint or MCI relay programs onto sidekicks. (I believe deafpager.com works with MCI IP-Relay while Fuse Wireless uses Sprint relay). Sprint and MCI are fierce competitors, vying for more customers to use their relay so that they could garner more minutes, which will be reimbursed by the FCC. Somehow, fusewireless.com adds $20 dollars fee to the initial price of $149, bumping the price to $169 while deafpager.com doesn’t. Moreover, deafpager does offer a free color bumper to customize your sidekick plus a free car charger. I entrusted my order to deafpager.

Deafpager.com said it’ll be within 48 hours that the order will be processed. If they don’t, I’m gonna report to the Better Business Bureau!