Monday, August 31, 2009

Hello, Fiance...

I feel happy every time I see this picture. I placed the original color print on my cubicle right by the laptop. It feels as if Bibi greets me every time I return to the cube and I find my self saying hi to him.



It was taken by a film SLR of Bibi's colleague, a certain Dr. K. He and his wife were one of the first ones who witness our early going out back in December 2007. We were attending some kind of St. Mary's pipe organ Christmas recital.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Utterly Happy

Remember Pollo Desperado?

I made Bibi that for dinner just after he landed. Bibi carved the chicken fresh out of the oven. He had salad for a side dish while I had soup. I also made some baked potato with rosemary from my pot garden. We opened a bottle of wine I had handy for a sitdown dinner like this.



We had elaborate plan for Saturday to visit the Santa Cruz mountain, drive the 17-Mile Drive at Monterey, and then hike somewhere in Point Lobos. As for me, I had always wanted to cross two things of my Bibi list: taking a long walk at the beach and watching sunset, and it was not just any beach, it has to be at Carmel by the Beach.

Due to some mismanagement of time and also on getting a bit lost, it was already 5 PM when we drove the 17-Mile Drive. The cloudy sky put a stop on our hiking plan as we cruised thru the next 12 points of interests and off to Carmel.

That long walk on the beach was a God sent. I pointed to an older couple who were walking a few feet in front and to the side of us who were pausing for a kiss. "It's like one of those De Beers diamond commercial," I told Bibi. And then he dragged me to the very spot and did the same to me.

I took out the beach towel when we decided to take a rest. We had a mini health-conscious picnic with some baked multigrain chips, trailmix bars and plain water. Bibi regretted the lack of wine. I should've picked up clues by this time, but I didn't. I asked him for his camera and started taking pictures of us.



Before long when I was still playing with the camera, he took out a dark blue paper box out of his backpack without me knowing and proceeded to say, "you have crossed things off your list today, now you will be able to cross one more thing." He put the box on his lap.

I still didn't catch that it was a proposal. "Opened it, " he said. I opened the paper box and inside there was an oval box to what looks like something that houses a ring. Inside was the most beautiful diamond ring a girl like me has ever seen.

Bibi made a speech of proposal, which honestly I forgot the details of except for few bits about how I made him feel special and then..."H****** N*********, will you marry me?" I shouted a big yes and planted him a big kiss. I put the ring on my left ring finger. Maybe in that order.

I still can't believe that I am engaged to a beautiful, caring, intelligent person!


We stayed at the beach for another hour or two just talking and talking. I totally forgot all about the sunset. We then had a celebration dinner at maybe the best gourmet type of restaurant I've ever been in. It serves Asian-European fused food, properly symbolizing our future venture together. We were hesitant at first to dine at such place donning only our very casual beach get ups. But, ah, what the heck.





It was a really nice ring. I know what I felt about diamond before. But it does make a girl feel a tad more special.


Thank you God. Thank you, Baby. I love you and I can't wait to start a life with you.

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Seriously

In light of the so-called drama, I couldn't resist to post the following excellent eye-opening piece up here. It is applicable to the situation, as we, in a sense, are geeks, religious geeks. LoL. Come to think of it, it could be applied on any social groups, circles, etc. As for me, I am a GSF1 &GSF5 carrier, so people beware.

Taken from here via Facebook. © 2003 Michael Suileabhain-Wilson.

Five Geek Social Fallacies

Within the constellation of allied hobbies and subcultures collectively known as geekdom, one finds many social groups bent under a crushing burden of dysfunction, social drama, and general interpersonal wack-ness. It is my opinion that many of these never-ending crises are sparked off by an assortment of pernicious social fallacies -- ideas about human interaction which spur their holders to do terrible and stupid things to themselves and to each other.

Social fallacies are particularly insidious because they tend to be exaggerated versions of notions that are themselves entirely reasonable and unobjectionable. It's difficult to debunk the pathological fallacy without seeming to argue against its reasonable form; therefore, once it establishes itself, a social fallacy is extremely difficult to dislodge. It's my hope that drawing attention to some of them may be a step in the right direction.

I want to note that I'm not trying to say that every geek subscribes to every one of the fallacies I outline here; every individual subscribes to a different set of ideas, and adheres to any given idea with a different amount of zeal.

In any event, here are five geek social fallacies I've identified. There are likely more.

Geek Social Fallacy #1: Ostracizers Are Evil

GSF1 is one of the most common fallacies, and one of the most deeply held. Many geeks have had horrible, humiliating, and formative experiences with ostracism, and the notion of being on the other side of the transaction is repugnant to them.

In its non-pathological form, GSF1 is benign, and even commendable: it is long past time we all grew up and stopped with the junior high popularity games. However, in its pathological form, GSF1 prevents its carrier from participating in -- or tolerating -- the exclusion of anyone from anything, be it a party, a comic book store, or a web forum, and no matter how obnoxious, offensive, or aromatic the prospective excludee may be.

As a result, nearly every geek social group of significant size has at least one member that 80% of the members hate, and the remaining 20% merely tolerate. If GSF1 exists in sufficient concentration -- and it usually does -- it is impossible to expel a person who actively detracts from every social event. GSF1 protocol permits you not to invite someone you don't like to a given event, but if someone spills the beans and our hypothetical Cat Piss Man invites himself, there is no recourse. You must put up with him, or you will be an Evil Ostracizer and might as well go out for the football team.

This phenomenon has a number of unpleasant consequences. For one thing, it actively hinders the wider acceptance of geek-related activities: I don't know that RPGs and comics would be more popular if there were fewer trolls who smell of cheese hassling the new blood, but I'm sure it couldn't hurt. For another, when nothing smacking of social selectiveness can be discussed in public, people inevitably begin to organize activities in secret. These conspiracies often lead to more problems down the line, and the end result is as juvenile as anything a seventh-grader ever dreamed of.

Geek Social Fallacy #2: Friends Accept Me As I Am

The origins of GSF2 are closely allied to the origins of GSF1. After being victimized by social exclusion, many geeks experience their "tribe" as a non-judgmental haven where they can take refuge from the cruel world outside.

This seems straightforward and reasonable. It's important for people to have a space where they feel safe and accepted. Ideally, everyone's social group would be a safe haven. When people who rely too heavily upon that refuge feel insecure in that haven, however, a commendable ideal mutates into its pathological form, GSF2.

Carriers of GSF2 believe that since a friend accepts them as they are, anyone who criticizes them is not their friend. Thus, they can't take criticism from friends -- criticism is experienced as a treacherous betrayal of the friendship, no matter how inappropriate the criticized behavior may be.

Conversely, most carriers will never criticize a friend under any circumstances; the duty to be supportive trumps any impulse to point out unacceptable behavior.

GSF2 has extensive consequences within a group. Its presence in substantial quantity within a social group vastly increases the group's conflict-averseness. People spend hours debating how to deal with conflicts, because they know (or sometimes merely fear) that the other person involved is a GSF2 carrier, and any attempt to confront them directly will only make things worse. As a result, people let grudges brew much longer than is healthy, and they spend absurd amounts of time deconstructing their interpersonal dramas in search of a back way out of a dilemma.

Ironically, GSF2 carriers often take criticism from coworkers, supervisors, and mentors quite well; those individuals aren't friends, and aren't expected to accept the carrier unconditionally.

Geek Social Fallacy #3: Friendship Before All

Valuing friendships is a fine and worthy thing. When taken to an unhealthy extreme, however, GSF3 can manifest itself.

Like GSF2, GSF3 is a "friendship test" fallacy: in this case, the carrier believes that any failure by a friend to put the interests of the friendship above all else means that they aren't really a friend at all. It should be obvious that there are a million ways that this can be a problem for the carrier's friends, but the most common one is a situation where friends' interests conflict -- if, for example, one friend asks you to keep a secret from another friend. If both friends are GSF3 carriers, you're screwed -- the first one will feel betrayed if you reveal the secret, and the other will feel betrayed if you don't. Your only hope is to keep the second friend from finding out, which is difficult if the secret in question was a party that a lot of people went to.

GSF3 can be costly for the carrier as well. They often sacrifice work, family, and romantic obligations at the altar of friendship. In the end, the carrier has a great circle of friends, but not a lot else to show for their life. This is one reason why so many geek circles include people whose sole redeeming quality is loyalty: it's hard not to honor someone who goes to such lengths to be there for a friend, however destructive they may be in other respects.

Individual carriers sometimes have exceptions to GSF3, which allow friends to place a certain protected class of people or things above friendship in a pinch: "significant others" is a common protected class, as is "work".

Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive

Every carrier of GSF4 has, at some point, said:

"Wouldn't it be great to get all my groups of friends into one place for one big happy party?!"

If you groaned at that last paragraph, you may be a recovering GSF4 carrier.

GSF4 is the belief that any two of your friends ought to be friends with each other, and if they're not, something is Very Wrong.

The milder form of GSF4 merely prevents the carrier from perceiving evidence to contradict it; a carrier will refuse to comprehend that two of their friends (or two groups of friends) don't much care for each other, and will continue to try to bring them together at social events. They may even maintain that a full-scale vendetta is just a misunderstanding between friends that could easily be resolved if the principals would just sit down to talk it out.

A more serious form of GSF4 becomes another "friendship test" fallacy: if you have a friend A, and a friend B, but A & B are not friends, then one of them must not really be your friend at all. It is surprisingly common for a carrier, when faced with two friends who don't get along, to simply drop one of them.

On the other side of the equation, a carrier who doesn't like a friend of a friend will often get very passive-aggressive and covertly hostile to the friend of a friend, while vigorously maintaining that we're one big happy family and everyone is friends.

GSF4 can also lead carriers to make inappropriate requests of people they barely know -- asking a friend's roommate's ex if they can crash on their couch, asking a college acquaintance from eight years ago for a letter of recommendation at their workplace, and so on. If something is appropriate to ask of a friend, it's appropriate to ask of a friend of a friend.

Arguably, Friendster was designed by a GSF4 carrier.

Geek Social Fallacy #5: Friends Do Everything Together

GSF5, put simply, maintains that every friend in a circle should be included in every activity to the full extent possible. This is subtly different from GSF1; GSF1 requires that no one, friend or not, be excluded, while GSF5 requires that every friend be invited. This means that to a GSF5 carrier, not being invited to something is intrinsically a snub, and will be responded to as such.

This is perhaps the least destructive of the five, being at worst inconvenient. In a small circle, this is incestuous but basically harmless. In larger groups, it can make certain social events very difficult: parties which are way too large for their spaces and restaurant expeditions that include twenty people and no reservation are far from unusual.

When everyone in a group is a GSF5 carrier, this isn't really a problem. If, however, there are members who aren't carriers, they may want occasionally to have smaller outings, and these can be hard to arrange without causing hurt feelings and social drama. It's hard to explain to a GSF5 carrier that just because you only wanted to have dinner with five other people tonight, it doesn't mean that your friendship is in terrible danger.

For some reason, many GSF5 carriers are willing to make an exception for gender-segregated events. I don't know why.

Interactions

Each fallacy has its own set of unfortunate consequences, but frequently they become worse in interaction. GSF4 often develops into its more extreme form when paired with GSF5; if everyone does everything together, it's much harder to maintain two friends who don't get along. One will usually fall by the wayside.

Similarly, GSF1 and GSF5 can combine regrettably: when a failure to invite someone is equivalent to excluding them, you can't even get away with not inviting Captain Halitosis along on the road trip. GSF3 can combine disastrously with the other "friendship test" fallacies; carriers may insist that their friends join them in snubbing someone who fails the test, which occasionally leads to a chain reaction which causes the carrier to eventually reject all of their friends. This is not healthy; fortunately, severe versions of GSF3 are rare.

Consequences

Dealing with the effects of social fallacies is an essential part of managing one's social life among geeks, and this is much easier when one is aware of them and can identify which of your friends carry which fallacies. In the absence of this kind of awareness, three situations tend to arise when people come into contact with fallacies they don't hold themselves.

Most common is simple conflict and hurt feelings. It's hard for people to talk through these conflicts because they usually stem from fairly primal value clashes; a GSF3 carrier may not even be able to articulate why it was such a big deal that their non-carrier friend blew off their movie night.

Alternately, people often take on fallacies that are dominant in their social circle. If you join a group of GSF5 carriers, doing everything together is going to become a habit; if you spend enough time around GSF1 carriers, putting up with trolls is going to seem normal.

Less commonly, people form a sort of counter-fallacy which I call "Your Feelings, Your Problem". YFYP carriers deal with other people's fallacies by ignoring them entirely, in the process acquiring a reputation for being charmingly tactless. Carriers tend to receive a sort of exemption from the usual standards: "that's just Dana", and so on. YFYP has its own problems, but if you would rather be an asshole than angstful, it may be the way to go. It's also remarkably easy to pull off in a GSF1-rich environment.

What Can I Do?

As I've said, I think that the best way to deal with social fallacies is to be aware of them, in yourself and in others. In yourself, you can try to deal with them; in others, understanding their behavior usually makes it less aggravating.

Social fallacies don't make someone a bad person; on the contrary, they usually spring from the purest motives. But I believe they are worth deconstructing; in the long run, social fallacies cost a lot of stress and drama, to no real benefit. You can be tolerant without being indiscriminate, and you can be loyal to friends without being compulsive about it.

Hey, Are You Talking About Me?
If I know you, yeah, probably I am. It doesn't mean I don't love you; most of us carry a few fallacies. Myself, I struggle with GSF 1 and 2, and I used to have a bad case of 4 until a series of disastrous parties dispelled it.

I haven't used any examples that refer to specific situations, if it has you worried. Any resemblances to geeks living or dead are coincidental.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Pollo Desperado

I had heard about a recipe that somehow results in many boyfriends' proposals to their respective girlfriends. So after taking the idea into the pensive, I decided to give it a try, just to see how it tastes like.

The recipe calls for a 3-lb chicken, two lemons, salt and pepper. I, of course, modified it with more seasonings for the outside part of the chicken and some onion. I added significant baking time as the bird was a almost a 5-lb one. It tasted so good, I probably will marry myself, I told Bibi on the phone.

One day, he asked if I am ever going to make him the Engagement Chicken. "Are we going to be part of statistic?" I texted him back. "It could be fun," he replied. So yeah, I decided to cook him that--with some other side dishes yet to be determined--for his upcoming visit.

I made another tryout two days ago. This time with a smaller bird since I found a mere 3-lb stew hen on a local Asian grocery store. It tasted even better this second time around. Although, I regretted my foolish decision to cook a stew hen for baking. The meat is rubber-like. Also the feathers weren't plucked properly. Ah, well, you couldn't expect much from an Asian grocery store. You do get what you paid for.

So will this result in a proposal? We will see. Bibi did ask for my ring size last week.

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Much Ado About Nothing

One day on a meeting with the many groups and commissions at church back in CS, a favorite priest commented on my name, "it's Latin for the one who is nominated," he said. I smiled, mildly disagree. I have nothing in me that spells out L-E-A-D-E-R-S-H-I-P. I am good working with myself and from time to time can bring into reality some degree of successful fashion things that interest me. Working with others while assuming a leadership role need a whole other level of vigority, spontaneity, planning, and genuine believe in human beings, all that are incompatible with the silent side, anti-social me.

Despite the self assurance that I posses no leadership skills whatsoever, the namesake might, once again, be put in line what with the current politics at a certain non-profit, non-political, religious organization I am involved with. In an abridge version, a simple power overthrowing is on its way towards producing tragic consequence to the state of the organization. I am thinking in term of the ridiculousness of the situation, it is similar to the statue of Saddam Husein fatally befallen the masses around it.

In order to avoid the kind of doomsday everyone afraid of, some of the officers voicing their support for yours truly to man one of the key positions, that is as an interim President or a Vice President. I want to add a sexist point of view here, since none of the men is man enough to assume such positions (they are the ones that created the drama in the first place), why not make it an all women roles (although this can be dangerous also, we do not want to foster "feline belligerence" down the line). Anyway, back to being nominated, my take on the matter is that in addition to the lack of leadership ability, I simply don't have the virtue for such a heavy responsibility, not to mention this anxiety --that is well on its way to become a disorder-- I am suffering over the comeuppance of a certain proposal (BF, beware! Although, I doubt you read far down to this line. LoL!).

Let me work with myself to support the group. Let the drama dry out and all will be well again.

Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Monday, August 03, 2009

Back Log: July 18

Another volunteering chance served us on the 18th of July at MedShare, a fine institution formed in 1998 delivering surplus medical supplies from the US of A to all over the world.



The many types of medical supplies handled at this Northern California location.




The ready-to-be-shipped supplies in the background. Terry Monday is the Medshare person in charge on managing all volunteers.


We diligently sorted needles into pools of gauge size, type, and expiration dates.




The whole group posed customarily at the end of the event.


It was a lovely experience. We hope to come back.