50 things about myself
1.0 I am relatively static.
1.1 my life has little that is interesting on a day to day basis.
1.2 I have extremely consistent approaches to life.
1.3 despite saying that, I realize now I don’t update this enough.
1.4 the best thing about this style of blog is that emotional bursts are well filtered. in a blog, something startling could happen that could put you through many emotions, and you would blog about it, and trouble everyone with your issue. with this style, I always take the time to settle emotionally.
1.5 I wrote the first rendition of the 50 things almost 3 years ago.
2.0 Instead, I will create a list of fifty things about myself
2.1 to establish what I am like,
2.2 to minimize apologies later on.
3.0 I have lots of ideas, plans, goals, and hopes. 3.1 As I update, I’m in Guatemala, finally carrying some of these out.
4.0 I used to more philosophical then I am. 4.1 I miss having all-night conversations. I’m quite willing to drop anything else I’m doing to meet someone new or relive a life with someone from the past.
5.0 My mother and father are government employees and reside in Brentwood, CA
5.1 We recently moved from my childhood home (age 4 until 17) in Victorville, CA.
5.2 One could call me a “desert person”, and get away with the stereotype.
5.3 Victorville makes me so bitter sometimes, and other times I like it alot. I can’t forget it.
5.4 The current plans are to return to southern california after my doctorate is complete. plans are just plans however, so we’ll see what happens
5.5 Home is those people that you care about and…
5.6 The sneaking suspicion is that there’s very few people you care about.
6.0 I am a musician.
6.1 I used to play in a band in Riverside, “Cuddlefish”. We were really talented.
6.3 I was a church piano player for many years.
6.4 I was part of a band in Davis called “Porpoise Christi”. We were really talented as well.
6.5 Porpoise Christi kind of splintered off for personal reasons and lost it’s very eclectic sound. When I played with the singer and the cellist we were very hauntingly folky, and with the drummer, demonic dance electronica. I loved both sounds and would refuse to choose sides.
6.6 I want to start a new band in Davis, playing more pop, rock, piano, and other sounds I haven’t focused on in a while.
6.7 Occasionally, people will have large parties and I become a jukebox. I hate doing this. I hate playing other people’s music, it’s like stealing and cheating rolled into one act.
7. I am truly capable of being an excellent friend.
7.1 This line is very sarcastic in some instances and very true in others. It’s been a long standing criticism against a few women in my life, but I’ve come to realize how capable of the same I am.
8.0 I, up until recently, would apologize for being extremely liberal.
8.1 I am registered Green Party and I vote for whatever democrat I hope won’t lose.
8.2 I believe, and operate in life on a socialist system (loose, american socialism)
8.3 I behaved consistently to this for a long time, but since this has happened, I’ve become very materialistic, at least with a hippy flavor.
8.4 I was involved in the ASUCR senate. Before this line used to say something optimistic. Now I realize politics is a much more complicated game. But I did a decent job.
9.0 I have emphatically shook off a mild depression from my middle years in college.
9.1 I changed my look, got healthier, starting making new friends, standard stuff.
9.2 Things I adopted during this time has stuck, like the beard and the beads, and I’m generally happy.
9.3 Playing music, and playing it live had so much to do this with this change. Thanks Sam/Eamon.
10.0 I try my best not to be an armchair thinker.
10.1 It’s a difficult life to want to lead, especially when you are worried about your salaries and homeownership and all the “issues” of the first world.
10.2 I’m still invariably focused on how little it can accomplish at times.
10.3 I’m really starting to think I could spend the rest of my life being an active environmentalist. wish me luck.
10.5 I’m currently in Guatemala working on supported business and renewable energy! Yay!
11. I hold degrees in Environmental & Biological Engineering.
11.1 I love these disciplines. I’m going to keep changing my major, but my goal will always be to teach students to think with the intention of making the world a better place.
11.2 It wasn’t always my major. I started out school as a biology major, with the intent to be a medical doctor. I wanted to help more people. I also learned that I am not a science learner.
11.3 Knowledge is tied down by disciplinary thinking. when it’s all said and done, I think I’ll have three degrees all in different subjects, and still feel like each discipline didn’t give me enough to solve the problems I want to solve.
11.4 More importantly, I’ve found time to work for a non-profit, and pursue more helpful tasks than degrees.
12.0 I am 5’9” and interracial. Ask me and I’ll tell you what races.
12.1 I was born in the Kuala Lumpur General Hospital in 1986.
12.2 Malaysia is a well conquered place. My family roots are quite a bit more british then people expect. However, my mom has a portuguese last name. shrugs
12.3 We are all naturalized now, and thus have lost most aspects of culture, unless of course, you are me if something is spicy or not. I promise you, unless, it’s habenero, it won’t be spicy to me.
12.4 Vacations are awesome, and above all, I like to visit my home country of Malaysia. I’ve recently traveled to a country without family, and that’s very cool as well.
13.0 Project Ideas:
13.1 Building power (hydro-electric) plants on the banks of the world’s most volumous rivers, specifically the Congo and the Amazon. If you’ve read “King Leopold’s Ghost”, you know that 1/6 of the world’s Hydroelectric Potential resides in the Congo. That being said, the Amazon’s mouth discharge is 180,000 m^3/s, easily 4.5 the congo’s value. Both these rivers could single handedly turn Zaire and Brazil into firstworld nations, or if nothing else, contintental energy ambassadors.
13.2 Continuing the work of Norman Borlaug, i.e. genetically altering and breeding plants to increase efficiency, and also to engineer characteristics to help certain populations. The big example allready out there is Golden Rice, rice containing carrots genes to produce Vitamin A, to help africa’s deficient population restore their eyesight. The biggest obstacle involves politics (as they always do) Norman’s work with wheat and rice in Mexico, India, Pakistan, and throughout Asia is single-handedly responsible for their population boom and beginnings to enter the technological era. (quotable on Norman Borlaug: “He’s fed a million people, and you don’t know his name”) His funding, which is derived from the Ford Center, and the Rockfeller foundation, discontinued his funding once they saw what happened to India, and when he revealed his intentions for Africa. Could you imagine? What if all of Africa started being as prosporous as India? There’s no way Rockfeller would allow that… (this is the how of solving world hunger… why can’t africa have it’s own Green Revolution?)
13.3 Working on projects such as the Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability, i.e. problems like Bandledesh’s arsenic situation.
13.4 Pushing for fully recycled water, and educating people who think it’s gross. (or just whacking them on the head with sticks). People like the City of San Diego.
13.51 I think having grand dreams is really important. Too many people I know just want to have children and be a good family, and those goals are difficult and admirable, and I can’t present a logic reason to approach life as more, but I will.
13.6 Solar Panels and Wind Mills should cover the sahara desert. or at least the mohave desert. Tell me what else we are doing with that land? Tell what else can you do with that land? Have any of you guys ever read the book Dune? We should set up windtraps and harvest for spice melange… lol…
13.8 Cars should be running on vegetable oil and batteries by now. I’m pissed.
13.9 What a powerful post. I think at this point in time, I’m comfortable with starting a higher degree, and keeping this ideas inside. It’s hard to do everything. That’s why I’m getting a doctorate. I want the authority to fix my portion of the world at least.
13.99 I still love this post. This will always be the longest post in this blog and I love how I’m starting to work towards some of these goals.
14.0 I usually own more than 15 bicycles. 14.1 I have always loved transportation and I am a closet-business minded person.
14.2 I have sold bikes in Davis, and some of your friends probably are riding on some of them.
14.3 I take pride in the personal impact I’ve had in taking junk and making it work for other people.
14.4 I have sold over 70 bikes since I started, and I generally have 5 or so out on loan.
14.5 There’s nothing cooler than riding a bicycle 50 miles. Tour, seriously.
14.6 So the ones I can’t/won’t sell eventually get named after exgirlfriends. I have a few I’ll never want to part with.
15.0 I own a bus.
15.1 I have always loved transportation and I love facilitating moving others around.
15.2 I use this bus for parties, for Domes retreats, and it’s available for hire.
15.3 This pile of junk costs me lots of money. It’s a really impractical possession.
15.4 This bus has hosted some of the craziest dance parties ever.
15.5 This bus is awesome. It’s done things and it’s allowed me to do things that have made it all worth it.
15.6 It’s currently stored away in Green Valley, but usually parks near the Bike Forth in Davis. Help me keep it from being dismantled at the hands of hobos and davis high schoolers…
16.0 At UCR, I was a coach of intramural soccer.
16.1 I played when we were winning bad, like 6-0 or something
16.2 Many of my closest friends came from this team.
16.3 I’m not sure if I’m going to join a team at Davis, but I did find my cleats while moving.
16.4 I need to play soccer again. Make sure I do it.
17.0 I like working in the lab late at night when no one is around so I can sing outloud.
18.0 Relationships are not something I’m good at.
19.0 I enjoy piano techno ballads and folky acoustic guitar picking. 19.1 This was the 3 year precursor to the band’s split. I finally was able to play these very different sounds. But I feel that way again. Piano Techno, and Piano Ballads are very different things.
20.0 I am a vegetarian.
21.0 I’m not interested in connecting too closely right away. It takes years.
22.0 I really hate superficiality - mostly my own.
23.0 I live a social existence, defined by a balance of work, and lots of friends/social circles.
24.0 I’m still deciding how I feel about you. Trust me, that’s a good thing.
25.0 I have good friends. I’ve lost good friends along the way. Life is like this.
26.0 Provincial thinking is not always a bad thing.
26.1 Provincial thinking is key to making the world a better place. Provincial thinking is key to changing something. Thinking about what affects you and making a positive change is all that’s important. Anything else is a distraction. Love is a distraction, even.
27.0 During the summer I sweat alot.
27.1 Blame the genes. While we are at it:
27.2 blame the mom genes for making me so short.
27.3 blame the dad genes for the uneven facial hair.
28.0 I have a large extended family, and I travel home to visit them approximately every 2-4 years.
28.1 There are about 20 aunts/uncles, 30-40 cousins, and two grandmothers. I am the american son, so I’m allowed to say anything I want, and am generally treated as a king. Occasionally we have visitors stateside.
28.2 I’m more comfortable with people that have large extended families and labor to keep those relationships together.
29.0 Deep dark secret #1: I had a Bush/Cheney Sticker in 2000.
29.1 I was a moron.
30.1 My dad chided me in 2000 when I had the Bush Cheney sticker. He didn’t quite use the word “oppressor” but he might as well have. He really impressed me because obviously he’s better served voting for the conservatives then not, but he’s thinking about other people.
30.2 My mom is a fairly reasonable cat, except when it comes to religion. Even then, she’s wise enough to realize I’ll make the right decisions. Both of them never require me to do anything that I don’t want.
31.0 I believe highly in self-love.
32.0 Sustainability is one of my favorite words.
33.0 American people just go through the emotions of relationships much too young.
33.1 Chong’s got a point with american culture, and I hate to validate him: The culture pervades all of this, from the required valentines day celebrations, through proms and what not.
33.2 I ‘ve spent two years in a long relationship. It’s really humbling, the afterwards of it. I don’t want to make the same mistakes.
34.0 I detest Objectivism. 34.1 My friend who used to believe in this is no longer. I was so happy when I found out.
35.0 I will spend the rest of my life doing things that are helpful.
35.1 This used to say I will spend the rest of my life in the Ivory Tower.
36.0 I hate very few things.
37.0 My idea of a dream woman is a blank canvas.
37.1 The more I think about it, there’s no such thing. Lately, I’ve been more comfortable with finding all I require regardless of how many people it takes.
38.0 I despise disney, walmart, and most corporations that are nearing the ability to achieve monopoly.
39.0 We used to film movies in our backyard.
40.0 I’m the kind of person that wants to keep people together.
41.0 I love this list of 50 things. I sometimes suspend and review it and I can’t change anything.
42.0 I wish the world wasn’t held in a vice by plastic and its products.
43.0 I like hair.
44. I think i’ve developed enough maturity to move on from a bad situation. 44.1 This was referring to a very specific incident, but no, no I haven’t.
45.0 I’m afraid of caring deeply about someone that aren’t my family
46.0 I love the sport of basketball.
47.0 I hate and love reading books that resemble my life.
47.1 “Native Speaker”
47.2 “The Namesake”
48.0 I’ve long been accused of being a mother’s boy. I love my mother. They say you can tell alot about how a person treats a woman from how he treats his mother. I wonder why it’s not though of this way: you can tell alot about a person’s mother from how he treats other women. my mother and sister will always be there for me. especially with how I treat women, they won’t always be there for me.
49.0 I say “no” alot. 49.1 No… not really.
50.0 I would never claim to be someone’s soul mate.
50.1 I never was happy with how bitter this last one was. It’s true, but I don’t have that same anger attached to it that I did when I first wrote this.
