Haven’t blogged since Monday. I have been struggling to recover from the dreaded spring allergies, and catching up on the newest version of the Condor Heros (神雕侠侣). As some of you may know, I should be on my way to Yellowstone. But I’m still in Pittsburgh. The plans kinda fell through, but I’m glad I stayed back here. To finish up my project, tide my baobei through the last stressful finale of her Statistics Masters exams, to clear up all those crap in my room…

In a span of one and a half weeks, both baobei and I finished up two boxes of (300 pieces each) box-tissue. Sneezing and coughing. It sucked! Baobei commented, “All those poor trees died for us to make those tissue.” But those trees are the ones to give us those pollen allergies - they deserve it! Hah- an instance of karma I would say.
1 week more, my dad will arrive here in Pittsburgh. 2 weeks more, we’ll be back home!

I’m glad it’s raining now. Down with those pollens! Darn those pollens!

I’m quite a big fan of soy milk and soy products like beancurd. Recently, I have also included the Silk Chocolate Soy Milk into my regular shopping list.

Then Cocoa alerted me to this surprising report on soy, saying soy may not be beneficial to human health after all, when all along I thought soy is such a great health food. In a nutshell, the report says that soy contains a number of substances which resemble the female hormones. Eating more soy may lead to “half helping of men”, “little girls starting to masturbate at an age as early as 18 months” and “men getting older faster with each serving of tofu”.

It feels like one of those many food products where you have reports saying they are both good and bad, and you don’t know which side to believe. I guess anything in excess is just harmful.

Read the whole report here.

All of a sudden, being a vegetarian becomes not the least bit appealing any more. Good for baobei since she always hated soy stuff!

I recalled seeing such an automatic mahjong table on sale four years ago at Bukit Timah, but didn’t have the chance to catch it in action. Now this video is a dream come true!

First I wonder how much this cost. Next I wonder how the table knows which is the right side up for the tiles. Nevertheless, amazing!

(Thanks IZ Reloaded)

Just checked the pollen count today at weather.com. There was a high pollen count alert for Pittsburgh. No wonder I’ve been sneezing the whole friggin’ day, and my eyes could barely open wide. Ugh I hate spring allergies. It’s funny I only developed this after my second year here in US. I thought Singapore has tree pollens too - all year round, but I didn’t get these allergy symptoms at all.

Took two pills of Benedryl allergy medicine on an empty stomach this afternoon. The effect of the medicine was amazing. I actually felt very light-headed.

Now I know this is a real cheap way to get high!

The Montreal and CHI2006 conference pictures are finally sorted and up! This time, I succumbed to peer pressure and published the pictures to a Flickr account too. Enjoy!

View the photos on my album page here.

View the photos on my Flickr page here.

CHI conference was fun. Meeting new people, reminiscing with old friends, attending all those cool paper sessions and talks… Now I’ll finally back in Pittsburgh with that whole pile of work waiting for me to finish. Some of the memorable parts of the trip:

Hookah Bar
Went to a hookah bar for the first time on the last night at Montreal. Our casino plans fell through that night, but the night still worked out pretty well. This was cheaper than alcohol. A few puffs made me light-headed for a while. I don’t like it too much.

Thousand Islands
This is indeed the place where the first Thousand Islands salad dressing was made. We passed by the Thousand Islands skydeck on our way back home. The view was awesome at the top of the deck. Two things I had learnt here. One, there are in fact only 997 islands here. Two, a island is a piece of land which has at least two trees on it.

Original Buffalo Wings
These wings were amazing. We dropped by the Anchor Bar in Buffalo. This was where buffalo wings originated from. We got adventurous and decided to try their Suicidal Wings, the spiciest ones they had there. I almost died. This is definitely a close contender to the Atomic Wings in Quaker Steak and Lube. We bought some for Jason and as usual, it was no sweat for him! Ugh.

• With Spring comes spring allergies… Why in the world do I have to develop allergies for tree pollen when my first two years over here are allergy-free?
• There we have Spring Carnival this year again. The rides, the booth, the parties and the events at the tent. Just another Carnival again.
• Missing my car again…
• Why must creating comments for javadoc require periods ‘.’ at the end of all the first sentences?
• I’m going to drive to Montreal early tomorrow morning. A whooping 11-hour drive (without any break at all)! It didn’t feel that long when I decided to drive one month ago. I wish I had chosen to fly instead. I guess the trip there will be worthwhile. A chance for me to redeem my bad impression of this island known for its European beauty.

[Apr 19, 3:46pm] It’s official! We sold our dear red car!

The whole car negotiation process was tiring and messy. All the price haggling and all. I want deposit… No I can’t give you deposit…. No no then there’s no guarantee… Ok lets settle this before I leave for the conference on Friday. And with one phone call, suddenly we had to settle the car title deed that afternoon itself!

There was a massive mad rush then. We had to grab all our groceries from Giant Eagle and Strip District before we lose the car. We had to eat our lunch. It was weird just because we didn’t have the mental preparation that we would be selling the car today. Suddenly we realized there is so much we haven’t done that can only be accessible with a car. Oh well…

I guess we really don’t have much time left here. So in a way I was glad we sold it now. It’s finally back to the good ol’ days of the ‘11′ - our legs!

Walking is afterall good exercise!!

There was so much buzz in the Singaporean blogosphere talking about the one-hour dialogue MM Lee Kuan Yew had with this group of under-30s. I was so glad someone recorded it and put it online.

With the content of the forum aside, maybe I’m just sensitive, the attitudes of some of those youths were really less than respectful. There they were thinking, ah, now’s the chance to unleash all these burning questions we have! Lets break him down! At some point, it really felt like a mass attack. After all, here’s a man who built up Singapore dirt up from scratch, with his guts, brains and the love for the country. Even to a 80-something elderly, you don’t speak with such aggression. Now show this man some due respect would ya?

And then there were all these awkward interruptions when some of them tried to fit in questions even before he was done speaking. Call that the by-product of the spontaneity of a good discussion. But by my standards, I’ll call that rude.

Anyway, my take on the elections - why break something when it ain’t broken.

How many balls and serves do you need to hit to start getting a sense of a tennis serve? 200!

I was early for my tennis class today. There was no one at the courts, but one huge basket of tennis balls lying on the court. I’ve always wanted to be able to practise my serves all alone with no one to judge or waiting for you to serve the balls to him. Of course the whole inviting basket of balls was great, like a dream come true!! And there I went throwing the balls and hitting them. Hah- it was disastrous with 1 in 15 balls ending up as a decent valid serve! 5 minutes were all it took to settle all 50 balls. Then I picked up all the balls again and served from the other side of the court. 2 more rounds of this! Sweet! I must have looked like a fool to those kids playing at the playground (there is a childcare center next to the courts). Yeah- but what the heck…

I’m finally getting it I must say. 4 consecutive valid serves! Yay!

A few things I realized from today’s practice:

• Hit the ball with arm almost fully extended.
• Where the ball contacts the racquet face is darn important. At least for my Wilson Hyper Hammer, it’s about 3 inches  from the top.
• There is kinda a rhythm to the whole prepare/toss-ball/raise-arm/hit sequence.
• Bend the knees a little before tossing the ball and straighten them after tossing for that ’sweet spring’ upwards.
• Where you toss the ball is critical. With your left foot pointing towards the right net pole, the ball should go straight up in line with an imaginary line between your left foot tip and the right net pole. At least this is what I’m comfortable with.
• Consciously aim.

More tennis and more practice! I’m loving this game.