mahalo.

and… on a lighter note, went to kelly’s birthday dinner yesterday. man… the food was great. cajun food i think… again, lots of meat. i had the skirt steak and fried chicken. oh soo good. and watched kelly down four drinks in the period of about an hour and a half… interesting.

Just got back from a game. Turned out the other team didn’t have enough players show up so they had to forfeit and we donated a couple of our guys over to them. We ended up playing a 44 min scrimmage which ended up in a 2-2 tie.

Before I went to the game, I stayed around at work to watch the live webcast of John Kerry’s acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. The first thing I noticed, is what a good speaker he is. You don’t hear him and watch him and think he’s slow like our current president. He just has the aura of a strong and forceful leader, even different from Bill Clinton, whose demeanor was something more neighborly. Regardless, both of these former lawyers gave what I thought were pretty good speeches. The transcript of Clinton’s speech is here:
Clinton’s Speech. Excerpts from Kerry’s speech are here: John Kerry’s Speech.

Actually, I just found the links to the videos. This is Kerry’s Speech and this is Clinton’s Speech

In general, Kerry seems to want to make himself out to be a champion for the middle class. He focuses in on the segment of American society that are working regular 40-60 hour weeks, and also on the segment that is struggling to get by, promising that the decisions of the Republican administration only benefiting the richest portion of American society, will be rectified.

There are a couple of things that I’m worried about. For one thing, John Kerry is clearly against out-sourcing. Even though it may be my job that is someday given to some Indian programmer making a quarter of what I do, I for one support outsourcing. In theory, outsourcing allows for corporations to improve their bottom line. This in turn means more money available for investment. Which part of, goes into R&D. Which creates new technology. Which creates new fields. Which creates a need for new types of skills… new workers… the advancement of American technology… with which the original laid off workers can be retrained. Either that or existing workers are re-trained and everyone just moves one step up the ladder. Which is exactly what IBM just announced they would be doing.

Let’s say we didn’t outsource jobs. These overseas positions would still be filled somehow. The programmers won’t just sit around and do nothing. Eventually, they will catch up and be competitors - it is inevitable. But at least by outsourcing, we will have built relationships with them, in a way, have some control over them since usually they are doing contractual work for a larger corporation. Hopefully by the time they get to the point where they can compete, the cost of living will have naturally inflated to a point where their salaries won’t be so cheap anymore, at which point the outsourcing issue just may go away.

It’s hard to accept that we have to trim fat to move forward when you’re the fat, but it’s just the way things are. The thing that has been missing so far, however, is an effective program for retraining these workers. I think Kerry makes some allusions that that’s what he intends to do, especially for manufacturing - that seems to be the outsourced segment that he really focuses on. But I am still a little worried that his stance against outsourcing is so strong. Hopefully it’s just to get the fiscally liberal vote.

I do have to admit I was wrong about one thing. I was originally thinking that the tax break to the rich was a good idea, because it is true that this will allow the rich to invest more… which in turn should help the innovation because supposedly these rich people are the ones that are entrepeneurs. But that’s just not really true. What Kerry intends to do, give tax breaks to small businesses, that makes a lot more sense… targeting much more directly the entrepeneurs and innovators.

Kerry didn’t touch on religion too much, but I thought his statement, “I don’t want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God’s side,” is a much more accurate portrayal of how the relationship should be, compared to the Bush administration, whose actions are just so unbelievably self-righteous that it hurts even the socially conservative like myself (although I think I’m probably more of a moderate).

In the end, I just think Bush needs to go. After 9/11, we had the goodwill of the entire world (save those that attacked us) and he wasted it and just created more division. Not only are we even more hated by the Islamic extremists, we have created enemies and damaged relationships within the U.N. Our allies are slowly deserting us. And that isn’t even considering the state that the nation was after that attack… and how we lost that unity and patriotism that I think pretty much everyone felt… I just remember that those days were amazing… the reaction of the nation after we were attacked. All but squandered at this point unfortunately. Clinton said it in his speech, “After 9/11, we all wanted to be one nation, strong in the fight against terror. The president had a great opportunity to bring us together under his slogan of compassionate conservatism and to unite the world in common cause against terror. Instead, he and his congressional allies made a very different choice: to use the moment of unity to push America too far to the right and to walk away from our allies, not only in attacking Iraq before the weapons inspectors finished their jobs, but in withdrawing American support for the Climate Change Treaty, the International Court for war criminals, the ABM treaty, and even the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.”

I just don’t trust Bush anymore. His ability to lead, to make good decisions, to be the figurehead of this nation. It’s not that he isn’t passionate about his decisions, but I just think he makes poor ones. I haven’t watched Farenheit 9/11 and probably won’t, but really. Haven’t we all seen enough?

i finished a whole bag of reese’s white chocolate mini peanut butter cups over the last three days. i can’t imagine that being anything less than 3000 calories (which translates to almost the amount of energy it will take to burn a pound of fat). whooo… pants getting a little tight… chin creating a little cushion.

Won again tonight, 3-0. scored 2 goals. unfortunately, during the course of the game, i managed to get nailed and land on my knee again. AGAIN. it’s so sad… bruised up and all with the little red dots on it from the ventilation in my shin pads. augh.

friday, i actually got off work later than usual… headed over to cpk for dinner to meet up with allen, mimi, and sri. originally mimi had wanted sushi, but that usually isn’t an option because sri can’t do sushi. but while waiting at cpk, sri called and said he was going to eat at home, so we took the rare opportunity to go over to sushi boat. i had the deluxe sashimi combo for $16.95 which was pretty good for the amount of stuff i got. after dinner, we scrapped a movie because sri is “voting with his dollars” against the movie theaters “artificially raising ticket prices”… which i thought was also known as the principle of supply and demand. allen was also out for a movie because he had to go back to work. so… we decided to help the two worlds meet by going to allen’s office and playing foosball and hold’em. we dragged in andrew along the way, who insisted that we play for some sort of stakes, so we settled on push-ups. to make that LONG story short, i ended up going in all in first with a Q, 6 2 pair but andrew had freaking pocket somethings to hit the set. ever since i started playing with my own chips i’ve lost every single game i’ve been in. anyways, this translated into 50 push-ups for me. the final order of the finishers were 1. andrew 2. sri 3. mimi 4. allen 5. me. after that, got home around 1:30 and went to bed at around 2:30 in order to wake up at 7 the next day to go help a friend move.

moving day. moving out of my friend’s apartment wasn’t so bad. before the u-haul came around we were able to finish loading up my van (another parking ticket…) and had the bigger stuff lined up ready to go out the door. so when the u-haul came out, it was pretty quick and easy to get out of there. next stop was to move out her roomie’s apartment. i learned an important lesson in that until i’m rich enough to feel that i’m justified in spending money on movers, i’m living somewhere with an elevator dammit. because moving some of the heavier stuff out of there just sucked. but not as much as what was to come…

so next was moving into the new apartment. they basically live on the third floor of a complex… that also has no elevator! after that experience… i know i definitely got to check out the knee, because basically, i can’t lift with my legs… i have to do the lifting with my back, which is no good.

the moving finished around 3:30 and they started unpacking and stuff while i passed out. at around 6ish, i went to get dinner at a chinese place in solano. you know those glazed shrimp with walnuts dish? i had the same thing with chicken. i thought it might be better, but i think the shrimp is still the way to go. after dinner, we went back to the apartment and to ikea to pick up some more stuff. i bought an arm chair. it’s really comfy, i had one at the old hillegass apartment. after assembling that, i took a shower and conked out.

sunday, had dinner at a korean bbq place, hahn’s hibachi. love korean food. meat and rice and pickled vegetables. it was good stuff. after dinner, i went home and watched american wedding, which i bought at target for ten bucks. got t2 for the same price. and also a standing dvd rack. target is just too useful. target, ikea and costco… places not to go if you don’t want to walk around and find something you want to buy.

i think one of my knees is messed up. if i stand on it and try to lower myself, i can’t get to a 90 degree bend before it gives out. i feel like something isn’t right right above the kneecap, but i’m not sure what it is. i have landed pretty hard on that area about three times now though.

“This Land” parody with Kerry and Bush

birthdays this weekend. sri’s was thursday and amy’s was friday.

saturday, had dinner with sri. we went to macaroni grill for dinner… which was unbelievably speedy in terms of how quickly we got our food. i was super hungry too, so i actually finished my entire meal this time (save some tomatos i donated to others). after that steph met up with us and we went to the milpitas ranch market for what else but sweetheart boba. loitered for a while… watched the security guard drive by a dozen times or so, and went home at i guess 11:30ish. the thing i did miss out on on saturday, was amy’s potluck/bbq thing at golden gate park, which is too bad… it would have been nice to see some berkeley people, but there just wasn’t time to get across the bay bridge, hang out and get back to san jose in time. today i woke up fully intending to be really productive, fold my laundry, do more laundry, go to the gym, fix my dresser… but i ended up just folding my laundry and playing a lot of yahoo! hold ‘em. i just really like it… hopefully just a phase.

i also spent some times looking at cars. the news on the company sale is fairly positive at this point, so i’m pretty hopeful… i saw an article in the mercury on the scion tC, which unlike the other scions, actually looks pretty cool. a lot of standard features, a good amount of power, hatchback capable, and a nice look for about 16K. i think it looks like a pretty good deal. only downside is that i’d prefer a 4-door sedan over a coupe, but oh well. other possibilites are the mazda 6, nissan altima (wimpy trim), and honda accord. the a4 would be nice, but it’s so pricey. other secondary possibilites would include srt-4, the saturn ion, and maybe the s40 if i can get a good deal. i think my dad would prefer if i didn’t get a japanese car, but they’re just too good of a value. probably some economies of scale helping out there. but yeah, the scion tC looks pretty promising. maybe in december you’ll see me lurching around in one while i figure out how to drive stick…

went to cheesecake factory for dessert because today’s sri’s birthday. i had myself a nice vanilla bean cheesecake. a lot of other people got cheesecake as well, but sri had this monster brownie ice cream thing. it was quite impressive. you know what i realized from all this? I don’t crave cheesecake like i used to. it was almost painful to down that last bite. maybe it’s just because that cheesecake factory cheesecake is so darn rich.

i had to jet out of there right after i finished my cheesecake to make my 11:15 game. i was sort of worried that i would just throw it all up. but i ended up feeling pretty good and scoring two goals. although i wouldn’t go as far as to suggest that i should eat cheesecake right before every game. c’mon now, that would just be silly.

Three W’s in a row. Who would have thought?