Travel Blog

I have been deeply encapsulated as of late by the TV series Heroes, to which my sister and brother-in-law, Eileen and Bob, first introduced and then sourced at infinitum through an online streaming site called Peekvid.com, an ingenious website made for those incapable of using Torrent.  This show is highly recommended.  A battle cry of "Save the cheerleader, save the world!" deserves accolade in urban history.  Have we come to an era of human evolution when some people will really mutate and develop powers beyond the norm?  I certainly hope so and I certainly hope I’m one of them.

More in past decade than ever before, Hollywood has amassed a tidy fortune on comic book heroes and fantasia.  From Jedi Knights and X-Men to Harry Potter, these characters we watch with a tickle of jealousy and whose powers we use vicariously in our imaginations.  What would your superpower be?  Pyro has always topped my list.  The belligerent teen with a Zippo, blowing shit up.  On Heroes, there is a Japanese salaryman named Hiro that can bend time and space.  Brilliant.  And he has a samurai sword.

Human beings are built on DNA.  The diversity of our DNA stems fom generations of blendng, some more careful than others, of our ancestors.  Half of your DNA comes form your maternal side and the other half from your paternal side.  So to foster an increased chance of mutation, theoretically, we have to widen the DNA canvas.  The most natural way, save finding a radioactive spider to bite you, is cultural diversity.  Here I present a new battlecry: Widen the canvas and gain a superpower!  Be warned.  Not all mutations are good.  Now also be reminded that "widening" the canvas does not mean you have an excuse to sleep with everyone in sight.  Remember that said canvas can only be widened when you procreate, and the possibility of superpowers to be your offsprings’.  This will certainly redefine "talking back."  I will suck to be a parent of the future.

Go ahead.  Imagine your baby with telekinesis.  Evil. 

Speaking of evil…..

I’m getting married. 

Counterpart:

Big words from a guy racking up big numbers in the age category.  How do you know she’s the one? one might ask.  That’s the million dollar question… or in California… the [your assets divide by 2] question.  Well, life is full of risks and your ability to analyze risk, coupled with the quality of your guardian angel registered to your soul, should help you weather the toughest of life’s challenges.  But really.  Analyze risk?  I spent 10 years of my life in the insurance industry analyzing risk from all angles.  No analysis can be applied to this. 

So here I present a new theory: if you are able to quantify love in dollar (or yuan or euro) terms, then it is not true love.  When this woman walks into the room, Justin Timberlake starts singing Sexyback in stereo in my head.  So how do I identify this as true love as compared to lust?  I am still able to think logically, work, made decisions in everyday life without fault. 

Back in November of 2006, I took Mandy (the counterpart) to Shanghai for a weekend, where I took the GMAT.  The evening before my exam, we dined at the Ruijin Guest House, a beautifully remodelled restaurant and lounge in the former French Concession at the heart of Shanghai.  It was a clear evening, we sat outside at a candlelit table, sipping champagne.  I got on one knee and asked for the honor of spending the rest of my life with her.  She said yes. 

The next day, I successfully took the GMAT, and subsequently was enrolled at China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) Executive MBA program.  Beginning March 2007, I will fly to Shanghai on a monthly basis to attend classes for 2 years. 

Suffice to say, this coming year will be a bit compressed.  But as we all know, we can’t choose when good things come.  But when they do, make certain to grab as many of these good things as you possibly can as if Trump had thrown a million dollars in C-notes out his office window above Columbus Circle.   If I had a million dollars to throw out a window, this has to be the only moment in my life so far that I would actually do it.  Risk?  What risk?

Variety is what people crave.  Boredom is what people seek to avoid.  Yet familiarity is what lights the warmth in our hearts.  Like all things of this world, this emotional paradox of a triangle is actually circular in nature.  To avoid boredom, we find variety.  To find variety, we must first escape familiarity.  Once gone too far, we regress to familiarity, which in another context, may translate to boredom.  We are taught to think in a linear fashion, which I believe creates an unsettling state of heart.  I propose a circular philosophy.  It is natural to go through these points of boredom, variety, and familiarity.  Do not think that you are getting away from each point after you’ve reached them.  Think of it as if you were going through it.  When bored, look forward to variety, when extended in variety, look forward to familiarity; and when boredom sets in, you start all over.  Embrace the circle and it shall disrupt your soul no longer. 

I recently fell madly in love with a girl named Mandy.  In the haze of the honeymoon period, we often question just how real this feeling is, and how it will actually feel a year from now, or 3 years from now.  The Discovery Channel claims that this feeling is purely biochemical and that it will not last beyond an average of 18 months.  Though factual, I refuse to let go of my biochemical high.  This begs the question: How does one physically prolong the release of the biochemical cocktail that produces this euphoria?  That is my quest.

Let’s assume this fall into a bell curve.  Taken the Discovery Channel’s average 18 months as a fact, of the 6 billion persons on earth, 80% or 4.8 billion persons will on average fall out of love somewhere between 3.6 months to 32.4 months.  Rough calculated, this is equivalent to 600 million persons who fall in and out of love under 3.6 months, and 600 million persons who stay in love up to and beyond 3 years. 

Please note that this doesn’t mean that people just break up after the love is gone.  We all know that it transforms to another level of love, comfort and familiarity, which ultimately works for approximately 50% of our marriages. 

The holy grail is to find out how to be one of the 600 million persons that make the euphoria ever lasting.  Given this, I am now attempting my own theory.  Keep it mysterious.  Never completely understand the other person.  Continuously learn, be creative and bring surprise to the relationship.  Really, the only way to do this is to regress to middle school crush mentality.  Back in the day, pulling a girl’s hair was a subconscious level of foreplay.  Imagine that.  The simplicity of it all. 

I received terrible grades in Chemistry in high school.  I think I may do better this time around.  And if that doesn’t work for you, email me, I know a cool website that sells nurse uniforms.

Just yesterday, I read an article in the Economist about an experiment where by a silicon chip with 100 gold electrodes was connected to the nerves of the primary motor cortex of a paraplegic.  Through this chip connect to a computer, the person is able to open email, play Pong, and change the channel of his TV set just by thought. 

WOW. We are really moving that fast into the future.  I just want to be the first to say that I want for Christmas (1) memory stick slot installed in the back of my head for memory expansion and multi-language capabilities and (2) Gills installed in the back of my ears like Waterworld. 

Back to reality.  I have been on hiatus.  I have been living.  I recently went back to California to attend two amazing weddings back to back.  I saw old friends, babies, children, and met new friends.  Seeing two people come together and commit to building a life for eternity is a beautiful thing.  It’s inspiring, thought provoking, and pushes the procreative urge.

My friends Welly and Dina were married in Dana Point.  Being show persons, the after reception party at the lobby bar of the Monarch Resort Hotel consisted of In n’ out burgers and extremely talented performers playing the piano and singing show tunes.  Welly topped it off by sneaking in our rooms and singing a capella, which woke us up in mid sleep like a dream.  This I will never forget.

My friends Marvin and Margaret were marred in Pleasanton.  The ceremony was beautiful and filled with friends from a long time past.  There was also In n’ Out burgers and my brother Tony drunk and physically incapacitated, yet still mentally able to talk shit and have full conversations with you (you had to get in line and lay next to him on the floor).

I’ve returned to my life in Taiwan refreshed and with a new perspective.  Often I discount my life here in Taiwan because it is less exciting or fulfilling than a life otherwise imagined in a foreign land.  Seeing these couples have inspired a new perspective: focus.  When there is focus on a goal, all other things seem to fade into a low priority blur.  Take my friend Raul and Smitha for example: they have a wonderfully beautiful baby boy.  In the presence of this baby, nothing else mattered.  If this is the feeling I can achieve through just a short visit with a baby, I can’t imagine the intensity of focus with Raul and Smitha as the parents.  My conclusion is that this is definitely a part of the human experience no one should miss.  What a rush. 

I’m not naive to think that we are all made for this focus.  But for me, this has become a priority as of late.  Adrenaline Junkies beware of the new sport: having babies.  Probably more likely to kill you than skydiving. 

Hey everyone.  I just wanted to show you my friend Dusty’s bike.  It’s called "The Shizzle Deluxe".  His fiancee, Blicious, has the same bike in pink.  Awwwwww!

My friend Chad Norwood is going to visit me in Taiwan.  So he promises.  This to me is as if I’ve been given a piece of insider information, to which I will eventually profit on.  Chad Norwood.  Present at the happiest moment in my life, drinking pink things concocted by Fri Bri on the Playa along with my best pal, Dusty Swartz, dancing to breaks thrown on by none other than Master of the Universe, Greg Tung.  Seeing Chad here in Taiwan is as alien to me as seeing him in a mid-drift nurse uniform at a How Weird Street Fair in San Francisco.  That’s Rick Reiker to the left and Chad to the right.  The plot thickens.  Fri is in Ko Tao Thailand teaching as a dive instructor.  The world thus shrinks.  Globalization in evidence.

In fact, this is how I feel:

The only probable down side is that he will get trapped in Thailand, which so oft happens amongst the backpacking crew.

So I welcome my friend Chad Norwood to be here with me and experience what it’s like live like Yuta in Taiwan.  He will then be knighted as an official promoter of the bureau of "Visit Yuta in Taiwan".  Because as with Vegas, what happens here, stays in Asia.  Chad is number 2 from SF to visit.  YOU… can be No. 3. 

A recently renewed acquaintance, Lishan in SF, made use to the phrase "drinking career".  Here I would like to openly draw a correlation to our working careers. 

As much as we don’t want to admit it, we all have drinking careers that parallel our working careers.  Working career by day, drinking career by night.  Our drinking careers and our working careers are typically linked by negative correlation.  For instance, achieving infamy in our drinking careers typically hinders our working careers.  Focusing too much on our working careers leaves little time for our drinking careers. 

There are exceptional one-way rules to this relationship.  When you excessively focus on a working career not of your liking, it may drive you to infamy with a drinking career to match, which will also likely ruin the undesired working career.  An effect perhaps subconsciencely desired.  However, your excessive focus on your drinking career will ALWAYS negatively affect your working career.

Mental ability and Physical ability.  In both your working career and drinking career, your mental and physical abilities are important factors.  The primary mental factors I mention are maturity and experience.  The primary physical factor is aging.  Maturity and experience will significantly improve your working career but slow your drinking career.  Aging will both negatively affect your working career and drinking career. 

There is no moral to this topic, but only to provide useless mental tickling.  But anyone who is interested in discussing this further, meet me at happy hour for martinis.  I’m buying.  My parallel career has fallen to neglect as of late.

We oft sit in deep contemplation of our past relationships, particularly in solitude.  Last night, I sat in my iron claw bath tub surrounded by candlelights, smoking fragrant tobacco from a pipe, which I recently purchased in Brussels with the help of my Santa Barbara friends Dan and Gretchen. 

Why is it that we do not take the time for introspection to identify the repeating faults of our previous relationships?  Past relationships are by default failures.  For those of us not yet married or engaged to be married, we continue traverse through this world, meeting attractive persons of the opposite sex, and fail time and again to establish a deeper and more spiritual connection leading to an undeniable urge to get married. 

In contrast, when we play video games, we learn quickly upon the death of a player to avoid the same mistake that caused the previous death.  Mario runs up the ramp dodging wine barrels tossed down by Mr. Kong, in order to save a fair maiden.  We can make the same correlation to this analogy.  The barrels are the attractive, but not meant to be, persons of the the opposite sex that comes along.  We must learn to quickly identify them as barrels and jump over them in continuous succession in order to reach the fair maiden.  When we get hit by one, we quickly learn to not make the same mistake at the next turn.  Jump sooner perhaps or jump higher. 

Yet in real life, it is not as simple.  The next time that you go out with an attractive person, remember Donkey Kong and save yourself some time up the ramp to the fair maiden.  If by chance you begin to see all attractive persons as barrels, it is then a misfortune that I have put this imagery into your head.  And if by chance you are the type of person that does not want to find the fair maiden, then run forthwith straight into each barrel, each, hopefully, filled with delicious wine. 

The 18 of us left Amsterdam 2 days ago and arrived in Brussels.  This country is known for (1) Chocolate, (2) Waffles, (3) Beer, (4) Capital of the EU, and (5) Jean Claude van Damm aka Muscles from Brussels.  Since arriving, I’ve eaten chocolate non-stop, waffles twice a day, drank 8 different types of beer, enjoyed an amazingly informative tour at the Chantillon Brewery, saw same EU federal buildings, but alas, no Jean Claude, most likely womanizing in Los Angeles. 

My friend Dan accompanied me to a tobacco shop yesterday and assisted in picking out a briar wood pipe, made by Brebbia.  I am now a pipe smoker.  The aromatic mango tobacco was an absolute pleasure to smoke, particularly paired with a Chimay sitting at a corner tavern surrounded by Wallonians.  When I get to London, I will find myself a red velvet smoking jacket and my alter ego will be complete. 

Speaking of alter egos, I want to pay tribute to an alter ego of a dear friend of mine in Kaohsiung, Zoey Kennedy.  Everyone should take on an alter ego to do evil. 

Any clever suggestions for my alter ego name, please chime in.

Tomorrow, I leave for Amsterdam. 

A sentence like that deserves its own space.  Like staring at a blank canvas moments before inspiration, this sentence is brimming with so much anticipation it is almost overwhelming.  It has been almost a year since I was last back in California.  Eric Allday, turning 40 next week, and Cat had gathered a crew of Santa Barbara Burners to celebrate said birthday with a beer tour through Belgium and a long weekend in Amsterdam.  No was not an option.  Here is a picture of the beautiful man.

The amortization of Amsterdam comes after the trip.  As with all things natural, you gain some, you will pay some.  I speak only of non-monetary payments.  Terms of payment to be determined.  Equilibrium.  But the lissajous ups and downs of life is what defines the interesting times that we live in. 

Starting tomorrow, I am going to be irresponsible and rack up a huge debt of emotional hedonism.  Scheduled payment begins 1 week + 1 day.  It’s going be worth every neuron I destroy.

Here’s to you, Eric!  Happy Birthday.  And a gargantuan thanks to Cat for organizing the week.  See you in two days.