Random Brain Dump

So I’m putting together a list of top 10 movies with the characters who hate their crummy jobs. I am only up to 5. Any suggestions?

1. Adventureland
2. Clerks
3. 500 days of Summer
4. Being John Malkovich
5. Office Space
6. ?
7. ?
8. ?
9. ?
10. ?

One night many months ago, I was re-telling the story of the Tri-county pie-eating contest to Katelyn & Allison. Most people probably remember it from Stephen Kings’s Stand By Me– the barforama scene was both funny and gross to me when I watched it 20+ years ago. I had to rename the character from “Lard Ass” to “Fat Art” to do away with a “bad” word. Anyway, I grossed out the girls but they enjoyed how Fat Art got his revenge and got back at the people who were cruel to him. I told them that the story was from a movie.

So earlier this week, I caught Stand By Me on cable at the train scene which is just right before the barforama scene. So I called the girls from their room to watch the scene with me. I figured it’d be cool to make good on my promise of letting them see that part of the movie. When it was done, they thought it was pretty gross with all the barfing but they also thought it was funny too. As I turned off the TV and asked Allison:

Rex: “Did you like it?”

Allison: “It’s funny Daddy!”

Allison was impressed: “But how do you know these things?”

Rex: “You mean the story? Daddy watched the movie a long time ago. But I remember the story because it’s one of Daddy’s favorite movies!”

Allison: “Oh… I like it too Daddy!”

I think she was impressed that the story was “real” and that her old dad didn’t make up it all up… 🙂

After all these years, I’m finally realizing it… Oscar Night is the female version of Superbowl Sunday.

And it’s the whole gambit. There’s the week’s anticipation and the build up, leading to the big Sunday. The afternoon starts off with the red-carpet rituals (pre-game shows) with all the interviews and the analysis of all sorts of what-ifs and scenarios. Like Superbowl, there’s all sort of speculation of what that key “players” will put on in the show. Of course, then there was the show and its opening fanfare.

This year, Hugh Jackman was the master of ceremonies, pulling out the stops and conducting the show like a head coach running a football game. We each have favorite movies and actors we pulling for for. We get elated or disappointed whenever a favorite movie or actor didn’t come through, just as one would react to a broken play in Superbowl.

The show ends with celebrations and parties, with all the usual after-math happenings. There’s even talk of what to expect next year.

The mirroring between Oscar night and Superbowl is a bit scary if you think about it. I even saw loads of “Oscar Specials” advertising for big screen TVs on Best Buy and Newegg, just like Superbowl. The one difference is quality of the commercials, Superbowl commercials are far more entertaining…

The tube was on from 3PM to 10PM, my wife even planned dinner around the broadcast. 🙂

Anyhow, I’m glad Slumdog wins, as I usually root for the underdog– be it Superbowl or Oscars.

I can’t help but notice the steady stream of high level exodus @ Yahoo! It’s not surprising with a change of command, but the flight seems extra-ordinary to me and I find it disturbing for Yahoo! Below are some of news stream I’ve encountered:

• ChoiceStream scores
• AOL scores
• PR head resigns
• Sales chief is dugged
• Zimbra founder leaves
• Decker leaves

Nortel was among the many companies recently announcing dire economic news. In fact, it filed for chapter 11 earlier this month. Well, there goes my tiny pension… 🙂

It’s sad for me as I started my career at Nortel when I moved to the Bay Area in ’92. Fresh out of college, I joined the company to build software for the company’s Meridian line of PBX‘s. Nortel’s Meridian phones seemed ubiquitous at the time but they were getting replaced by IP-based systems during the late 90’s.

There were a batch of new grads coming in to the Mountain View campus that summer. The place had a lot more older folks, very different from the companies I’ve been a part of since (web companies tend to attract young folks). The newly relocated “rookies” began to hang out together– many remained my good friends to this day. The companies may not have been one of the cooler companies, but I sure have the fondest memories of the folks there.

Good luck to the company.

While watching Wall-E with the girls this weekend, I finally catch on to one of the inside jokes from the movie Wall-E now that I started to use a Mac.

Toward the end, after The Axiom lands on Earth, Eve takes Wall-E back to his hut and feverishly puts him back together. She then shot a hole in the ceiling to let in the sun light to recharge Wall-E. After a few seconds, Wall-E boots up with an audio chime. Turns out that chime is the same sound my Macbook Pro makes when it boots up!

The joke is that Wall-E is a Mac, I get it now… 🙂

Some years ago, I read Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel. Diamond took a whirlwind look at the human societies trying to answer the question posed to him by a politician from New Guinea:

“Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”

Diamond took a broader approach: why European societies managed to dominate the world in wealth and power?

He rejected the notion of racial or intellectual superiority as answers and argued that successful societies are not created out by sheer intelligence, but by a chain events. His investigation focuses on environmental issues and formed a theory that whites dominate the natives because of environmental influences.

He argued that development of farming in specific regions and favorable climates in certain areas that give rise to the growth of important crops. Some regions were less prime for farming like New Guinea. The farming advantage gave way to a larger population which in turn gave way to trade & economic growth in a society. Two critical advantages come with larger more efficient societies: strong immunity and faster technology progress.

In short, Diamond basically argued that the dominance of Europeans is attributed to happenstance (luck of climate and location) rather than actual differences (intelligence, strength, etc) between the people. His theory gained both acceptance (the book won 1998 Pulitzer prize) and criticism.

It was an interesting read; while I accept a lot of his arguments but I do think he sidestepped some of the more controversial issues.

Anyhow I was browsing TED the other night and came across an interesting presentation called “Why Societies Collapse” by Diamond in 2003. In it, he argued for 5 factors that lead to a collapse of a society:

1. Human impact on environment
2. Climate change
3. Relation with neighbor societies
4. Relation with hostile society
5. Political, economic and cultural factors that lead a society to perceive & solve environmental problems.

As an example, he explained how all these 5 things that can lead to the collapse of Montana (who knew Montana is in danger? :).

1. toxic from mines, weed control, salination, forest fires etc…
2. warmer & drier weather
3. half of Montana income derived from out of state
4. economic hostile from over seas and terrorism
5. long-standing traditional values getting the way

He argued that two things that blind a society from seeing the coming collapse:

• The conflict of short term of decision maker elite and long term of society as whole. He argued that this conflict is particular acute in US in 2003 as the elite insulate themselves from society; he used ENRON as an example.
• It is hard to make good decision when conflict involving long-standing values. He used Australia as an example, but he can simple look at the religious conservative in the American heart-land.

Diamond argued that these ticking time-bombs have short fuses, most of them a few decades-long. We are on a non-sustainable course and we will face outcomes in the coming decades. Ever the optimist, Diamond claimed that that we have choices and we can choose to do things to avoid a collapse of our society.

The take away lesson?

We have to look at what we can do and do more!

This incredible piano performance is from a 14 year old Jennifer Lin who demonstrated her composition talents by improvising a song on the spot after asking a guest to randomly chose 5 notes for her. Wow…

Ran across some funny campaign posters inspired by the original posters by Shepard Fairey…

I didn’t exactly grew up with what you call “outdoorsy” upbringing, didn’t take my first camping trip until the year I graduated from high school. But I’ve always associated the outdoor with a sense of romanticism. The source of this feeling was probably developed through the books I was reading as a young boy.

Growing up, I dreamed of being a fisherman, ala Hemingway’s The Old Man & the Sea. There’s something undeniably adventurous (at least through the colorful description in the books) about battling the elements of the sea and the simplicity of living off nature. The 3 days I spent in the south China sea escaping Vietnam as a kid probably further enforced the idea. It’s funny because of course, had I followed that dream, I’d be starving everyday since I get sea sick & puke every time I step on a boat. 🙂

I admired folks with deep passion for the outdoors like John Muir, Edward Weston & Ansel Adams. I often imagine the thoughts that were running through John Muir’s head when seeing the pristine western wilderness for the first time.

Then there are extreme folks like Chris McCandless who desperately seek solitude and pit themselves against mother nature, without an ounce of fear. I started to look into McCandless’ life after watching movie Into The Wild. I got curious after I realized when I was watching the credits that the movie was based on real life. (Spoiler-alert: rest of this post discusses the endings at lengths).

McCandless was from a middle class family in suburban Washington DC. It was clear even at an early age that Chris marched to a different drummer. He was compassionate, intelligent, independent & adventurous. He also had an unusual strong will. To escape a troubled family life, Chris turned to writings of Thoreau, Tolstoy and the likes. He quickly subscribed to the doctrine of asceticism: extreme self-denial as a means to salvation. These writings turned Chris from an innocent young man into an extremely idealistic skeptic. He began to “feel extremely uncomfortable with society.”

After college, rather than attending law school per his parents’ wishes, Chris rebelled. He donated all the money in his estate and was determined to invent a new life for himself. He permanently severed all family ties and created for himself a new identity: “Alexander Supertramp.” He burned all his cash, left behind identification documents and drove off in an old Datsun, embarking on a spiritual pilgrimage to seek solitude and to “kill the false being within.”

He wandered the west for almost 2 years before beginning the audacious trek into the frontiers of Alaska in spring of ’92. Determined to live off the land, Chris brought minimal rations. Frankly, he was ill-prepared. He proved very resourceful at first, able to supplement his 10 lbs of rice with hunting and gathering. He sleeps in an old abandoned bus and keeps a journal for 189 days.

By summer however, food was getting low and Chris resorted to eating roots and seeds. Chris eventually succumbed to starvation one August summer day; he was 24 years old and weighed all of 67 lbs. Both the movie and the book suggest toxins did Chris in but that theory had been debunked. Chris left the world with a self portrait snapshot (2nd picture below) the following last message:

“I have had a happy life and thank the lord. Good bye and may god bless all!”.

It’s ludicrous to suggest Chris was suicidal. Some dismissed Chris as a foolhardy misfit, a nature greenhorn who is no match for the Alaskan wilderness. And some even questioned his mental stability. On the other hand, some people made him out to be a hero; in fact his story is quickly reaching a level of folklore.

I’d argue that “Supertramp” was a lost soul. Every answer he thought he had spawns even more questions. The existential struggles within him lead the young man in search of the pure meaning of his own life and his relationship to the world. His last message and picture seemed to suggest that he was at peace or at least content. There was no indication that he regretted any of his actions.

In the end, that’s what made his journey admirable and worthy of our attention. It is one thing to subscribe to a set of ideals, it’s another to gather the courage to practice them in real life, especially ideas most consider extreme. Chris lived his life by his ideals and died clinging onto them. The wilderness may have defeated him, but there’s no denying that his journey self-discovery was extremely courageous– the type of courage is all but rare this day and age. We can only speculate and theorize if Chris really managed to kill his “false self” within and found what he was looking for.

As for his family, they have my sympathy. His father said that it’s ironic how a compassionate person can create so much pain for close ones. Perhaps they found comfort in one of last Chris’s entries in his journal:

“Happiness is only real when it is shared.”