Daylight Saving Time

We move our clocks back one hour today at 2:00am as Daylight Saving Time ends. That may be why today feel so long. I'm not sure, I woke up around 11:00am today, which is actually 10:00am. By the time I finished dinner tonight, it was only 7:00pm. I'm not sure what happened, and what is this Daylight Saving Time (DST) anyways? I did some researching on the web and this site that provided some interesting facts:

• The main purpose of DST is to take advantage of the extended sunlight during Summer and save energy (we move 1 hour of daylight from the morning to the evening hour during the Summer)
• Spring forward First Sunday of April, Fall back Last Sunday of October (both dates at 2:00am)
• George W Bush recently expanded the period of DST to save energy and fuel. Starting 2007, DST begins earlier on the 2nd Sunday of March and ends 1st Sunday of November.
• DST is not observed in Hawaii, Arizona, and the most Eastern Time Zone of Indiana.
• World Wide, Japan is the only industrized country that have not introduced DST
• U.S. Legislators had always wanted to move the end of DST to after Halloween so it's safer for children to go trick-or-treating (it will happen in 2007!)
• Bar-goers lose 1 hour of drinking time when DST begins -- they need to stop at 1:00am! In Athens, Ohio, this actually caused riots!

Interesting...hope you enjoyed those little tibits of DST!

For those partying tomorrow for Halloween, HAPPY HALLOWEEN !

Okinawa

Gorgeous weather today and I took the day off from work. Wasn't planning on going anywhere or doing anything special but just wanted to be out of the office for once. I'm physically tired from the 1-1/2 week long trip. I was working 12-hour days throughout if not more. I guess I already had the better end of the deal since some of my co-workers ended up working more than 18 hours per day. That's why I don't like to travel for business. People see it as a perk, but I knew it was never that glamorous.

I visited Okinawa (in Japan) for 2 days. Getting there was cruel. I had to take 3 flights: from SFO to Nagoya, Nagoya to Fukuoka, and then Fukuoka to Okinawa. Total time: 18 hours. It almost felt like I was flown to Siberia and back. It was tough but I made it through. By the time I got to Okinawa, it was 10:00pm so just in time for a good night's sleep! I have to admit that I didn't really "visit" Okinawa, because I didn't go anywhere other than our company's office, the store, and a local restaurant. I didn't visit anywhere else. We were shuttled to and from, so I wouldn't be able to tell you anything about this place. I heard that Okinawa has some nice beaches, oldest people, and beautiful temples. Nope, I didn't see any of that. The highlight was the local restaurant we went to where we did eat some very local Okinawan food, such as rare horse meat! Ok, no, I didn't any.... people who ate it said it tasted like chicken. Then again, everything exotic tastes like chicken.

I didn't take any of these pictures, but here are some pictures of Okinawa.

Beach on Sesoko Island (below)

Memorial to Akainko (below)

Business Class

Now I understand why flying on business class is so darn expensive. It's because you really get the bang for your buck. I've flown on these 13-hour international flights from SFO to HKG for more than 6 or 7 times in my lifetime already. Everytime, I dread the experience. I never can sleep, seats are cramped, food is nasty. Overall, I hate it. But this time for my meeting in Hong Kong, my company flew me on business class. I was, for the first time, able to fall asleep, and I ended up sleeping for 6-7 hours straight, uninterrupted. The seats move flat like beds. What a great feeling! It was by far the most pleasant flight. I woke up just in time for a quick meal, and before I knew it, the plane already started its decent. It felt like only 3-4 hours but in reality, I was on the plane for more than 12.

Besides the comfortable seats, business class service is impeccable because we had 4 flight attendants servicing the 20 of us. The 1:5 ratio allows the attendants to tend to minute details. Food is not only better where you had a menu choice, but it is actually served on China, drinks on glass stemware and usable silverware. The attendants offer a good selection of newspapers and magazines, good wine, and a goody bag filled with useful toilettries. I love those socks that look and feel like shoes, the blindfolds, the warm towels, the choice of OJ or champagne. I enjoy the On-demand movie channels. I love priority baggage claim, shorter check-in lines, airline lounges filled with snacks and drinks and comfortable, sleepable sofas. I like the ample overhead storage bins and the ability to embark and disembark the plane first. I like long flights that feel short.

AND! On my flight from Okinawa to Hong Kong, I even had a famous Hong Kong singer-celebrity sitting a few seats away from me.

I love flying business class.

Highway Robbery

My co-worker and I went to try out this new restaurant called Medicine Eat Station for lunch today. It's a new, posh/hip restaurant, located inside the Crocker Galleria in Downtown San Francisco. Their "niche" is to offer a healthy, vegetarian menu, inspired by the cooking of Zen Buddhist monks in Japan, dating back 500 years. Their motto: Food so healthy that it has historically been called by a Japanese word meaning 'medicine.' Today in Japan, this cuisine is called shojin, a word that means "working to better oneself." Bottom Line: BULLSHIT. The food is so bland and tasteless that I wonder if they even cooked or seasoned it.

I ordered one of the 5 "Foundation sets," which is their healthy, ultra-simple foundation for a meal. Again, BULLSHIT. They offered an "artisan tofu" which is nothing more than a square of uncooked tofu off a box (aka Vitasoy Tofu). Not even a peck of salt on it. Tasteless. Then I got 4 pieces of extremely small pickled turnip. Hurray. My main course was a bowl of Soba (buckwheat noodles) in a Shojin broth. Okay, instant noodle is a lot 100x better than this. The broth tasted more like hot water, and the noodles, well, very buckwheat. I feel like barfing when I ate it. I hate to diss food like this, because I was taught never to complain about food. But believe me, this is perhaps one of the worst meal I've ever had! Charge for this bland, favorless and unsavory meal: $8.95

But this is not the end of it... on the bottom of the menu itself, these words, "For convenience, a service charge of 17% is automatically added to your bill. No tipping is accepted. " BULLSHIT! Convenient for them! No, don't get me wrong, this is not your typical, add 18% for party more than 6, etc. This is 17% no matter what. It is sooo ridiculous!! The service is by no means impeccable, but we (a party of 2) were forced to pay this 17% to a waiter who didn't even fill up our glass of water or drop by to ask how we're doing. Now, this is highway robbery.

Needless to say, I will never go back there again... plus, I need to spread the word and let everyone I know how ridiculous this restaurant is. Food is horrible and overpriced. Service is poor to warrant the mandatory 17% charge. I would never recommend this restaurant to anyone, even to my worst enemy. Yes, it is THAT bad.

Worked out!

Work has been crazy for me lately, actually for everyone in my office. Today when I left the office at 7pm today, everyone in my near vacinity was still there. I really mean, everyone. I thought to myself, how pathetic was that?! The company is beginning to tick some nerves with the employees. Everyone is forced to take on more work, yet of course, not truly getting compensated for it. We lost 1 headcount in our department. The workload of this one individual who left got re-distributed among those remaining. That is just so typical. And then they ask us why we can't be on top of things?! How could we? I'll be leaving for a 1-1/2 week long trip next Wednesday. I'll be traveling to Hong Kong for a team meeting. Up until today, I was thinking that maybe this trip would be cancelled. Who knows? Maybe that's just me dreaming. I have so much to do to prepare for this trip, but I haven't done anything yet. Needless to say, I'm freaked out!

New Weblog

I've decided to create a separate weblog to share my current experience with braces and eventually jaw surgery. It is going to be a long process so I don't want to bore you with the details on this stie. I'm going to keep this site to rant and share my thoughts on day-to-day things. If you're interested, the link to new website is on the side column.