http://kolinateng.com

Wow, it’s already Day 32! When I first had the Kims, the breaking-in process crawled by ever so slowly. Too optimistic about my own size, I bought a pair too small and endured bruises on my hips and uncomfortable sitting positions. I was  much more realistic this time, and the Slings are stretching out comfortably to a customized fit and look!

The whiskers and honeycombs definitely aren’t coming along as fast as Reid’s Samurais are, mainly because the 5% polyurethane makes the S&S denim more elastic (versus Samurai 100% cotton denim) and thus does not create the sharp creases needed for very distinct atari (”wear”) in the denim. Sadness. However, you can see the slight hue difference where the creases have formed. Exciting!

You can also see where I sat in someone’s food at the UC Davis Picnic Day. Raw jeans are hard to spot-clean without removing indigo in the process. :(

 

These raw denim jeans should be like a blank canvas on which to paint your lifestyle, whether it be biking, skateboarding, painting, etc. Well, my lifestyle involves a lot of sitting in a cubicle. Exhibit A:

Yeah, not much wear there. Draw your own conclusions… haha :)

When I first discovered Vienna Teng in 2004, I knew she had to be awesome. After all, we share the same family name. (Yesterday I found out “Vienna Teng” is her chosen stage name, thus confirming the awesomeness of “Teng”.) Upon listening to her music and being blown away by her beautiful narrative lyrics, clear and smooth vocals, and emotional piano music,  I tried to figure out if we were long-lost relativies (I had also done the same for the great late singer Teresa Teng). Alas, we are not.

Nevertheless, I jumped on the opportunity to see her perform at Yoshi’s Jazz Club at Jack London Square, Oakland yesterday night. The venue is pretty intimate, and even in the farthest table possible, our group still had a good view of Vienna. She performed with the Vienna Teng trio, which consisted of herself on piano and keyboards, and two very versatile accompanying artists on everything from cello to drums to electric guitars, and many other odd instruments in between. 

While I thought Vienna was amazing on her recorded tracks, her music live is better than I could have ever imagined. Better yet, she was able to connect with her listeners through her witty anecdotes interwoven between songs in the set. And what makes her particularly special to me and others in this area, is that her roots are in the Bay Area; she grew up in Saratoga, studied CS at Stanford, and worked at Cisco before she quit to pursue music professionally. And she’s Taiwanese! +1 point from me.

For her very last song in the encore, she sang the Mandarin Chinese song made famous by Teresa Teng, Green Island Serenade, a capella and in Mandarin. I wonder if Vienna chose her stage name based on Teresa Teng? +10 points. I’m naming my future kid Vienna Teresa Teng. Even if it’s a boy.

My dad found my blog. What a stalker! I learn from only the best, I guess :) Hey Dad, if you’re going to follow my blog, you should at least leave comments!

 

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dad: there is a machete under my bed.
dad: You can have it near your bed while mom is out
me: you forget i have 3 swords and a spear already =P
dad: your Chinese weapon is not going to work. try handle mine.
dad: you need to spread out the weapn in different room in the house, so you can grap the one close to you.

WHY does my dad have a machete???

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dad: Everyone on the earth should have know that there is only one Kolina on this earth, at least in California.
me: haha unfortunately, there were 2 in my class at davis
dad: We should go and kill those two tonight!!!

I appreciate the enthusiasm..

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me: i have a lot of nerdy engineer wushu friends
me: you are nerdy too
me: you should do kungfu
dad: I was nerdy befoe they are even born.

 

HAHA WHAT. Totally 1up’d.

I drove up to Davis this past Saturday to revisit my old haunts in conjunction with the 95th Annual UCD Picnic Day. I don’t remember quite so many people participating in the festivities on Picnic Day, but then I realized it is UCD’s 100th year anniversary. Woo, go Aggies!

While I normally don’t have too much school spirit, I did want to return as a UCD KungFu Club alumna and perform with some of my other KFC alumni brethren. It was then that I realized I hadn’t done a whole half-form with any sort of intensity since the last Picnic Day; as a result, Wushu felt incredibly awkward, as my body has acclimated to a soft easy lifestyle, yet kind of familiar and exhilarating. I’m still feeling the sore hamstrings 4 days later, so I don’t think I’m in any sort of rush to return to old training days. In any case, it’s good to see that the club is still alive and kicking (pun intended! haha!) with new members–those cats were fast as lightning!–it makes me feel a bit less guilty that the club has diminished a bit since our good friend and founding member Alan left a 50-member roster in our hands when he left Davis.

Unfortunately, we missed the annual Doxie Derby, where tons of little dachshund hounds race against each other. How is it that I’ve seen the races only ONCE since I started attending UCD? Ri-diculous. We actually missed a lot of events that we had hoped to see, but I was content just to do the things we used to do–sit at the lounge, eat subpar-yet-expensive baked goods from the MU Bakery, eat bagels, drink Arizona Sweet Tea at the MU in between classes while working on crossword puzzl homework.

We also visited the MUGA (Memorial Union Games Area), where Eric and Linda used to play SUPER. SEGA. GT. everyday while waiting (and thus, missing) the bus. I used to work as a student manager there, and the bowling customers would say things like, “I think your lanes are tilted; my ball keeps rolling to the right.” WELL! MAYBE, you suck at bowling! (I’m terrible in bowling too, but you don’t see me blaming it on the lanes!) Ah, good times.

I finally picked up the “UCD Cow Tipping Team” shirt I had been wanting for a year. Since there’s never much to do in Davis, people tend to ask if I used to tip over unsuspecting bovines in the middle of the night. I might as well advertise that I’m part of a very elite, competitive team.

The one thing I discovered this year is the Battle of the Bands, where different university bands come together and play in rotation starting at 8am. Each band drops out of the rotation when they run out of new songs to play. They do this until there’s a winner or 10pm, whichever comes first.  Stanford played a 30-minute piece and all the university bands joined in; the percussionists took turns with solos while running across the lake, lying on the ground, and pulling a bunch of other stunts. There were an insane number of people at Spafford Lake watching on the lawn, and the atmosphere was really fun and crazy. I’ve been totally missing out!

Anyway, it was good to be back for just the day, from the all-familiar KFC demo to the post-Picnic-Day red-cup parties. I do miss having so many friends and peers close by everyday, since I took it for granted when I was still in school, but if given the choice, I don’t think I’d go back to that life; I’m definitely enjoying work and the “real world” more and always excited to see what’s coming up next.

…Speaking of which, I came down with a fever yesterday while flying to Albuquerque, New Mexico for a 4-day business trip. THIS part of the “real” world, I’m not enjoying much. :(

The last snowboarding trip on April 4th marked the end of winter for me. I couldn’t have asked for more at Northstar: there were literally no lines for the ski lifts, we virtually had the black-diamond slopes to ourselves at Lookout Mountain, the weather was gorgeous, and the snow was pretty decent for the time of year. It was all kinds of awesome!

The season had started off shaky for me, as I had only gone on two snowboarding trips from 2004 through 2008. This is how the first one ended up:

 

The second trip last in January’08 yielded a similar experience. But last October’08, I VOWED TO SNOWBOARD. I splurged on pre-season deals (I’m frugal so I need good foresight for these things) and bought all my discounted gear, snow apparel, and the Double Whammy season pass to Northstar and Sierra. Thanks to the encouragement and tips from Arden and Justin, I was carving by my second trip in December!

 

 

 

 

Yes, there were 26 candles, and we very well could have set off the fire alarm and sent the whole restaurant in a frenzy. Now THAT would have made a good blog post.

(No such luck.)

We celebrated Jean’s 21st (+5) birthday yesterday at Amarin Thai, with some very nice waiters that catered to our group of 13 on a busy Tuesday night. Gifting a pyromaniac a large box of matches and a new Zippo and then telling her light her own candles is probably a bad idea…

Started off the weekend very nicely with an amazing Moroccan-Mediterranean Californian fusion dinner at Aziza in SF! The piquillo-almond spread on flatbread was especially delicious, and I can see why the lamb shank comes so highly recommended.

Headed to Local Kitchen & Wine Merchant shortly after dinner to meet Kim and company, and then to Kate O’Brien’s, where the entire bar busted out singing along with Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” - all kinds of awesome!

On Saturday, I attended (for FOURTEEN HOURS) the 17th Annual Chinese Martial Arts Tournament. As always, I regret not participating in the competition. But I wouldn’t have been able to compete anyway, since I haven’t trained since the the 16th CMAT last year and have virtually quit since then, due to changes in priorities and the frustration associated with the lack of drive and thus, the lack of improvement. Perhaps if I can pick up Wushu recreationally and just constantly remind myself that I can train without the competitive edge and simply for appreciation of the art.

In any case, Linda performed really well. I am amazed that she was able to recover from a torn ACL two years ago and train to compete again! Eric did very well, too; solid performances all around, and especially impressive in the advanced division of staff and broadsword - respectively, 2nd and 3rd place winner! WINNARRR!

Friends have really improved in the past year, and I was especially impressed with Evelyn, gold medal winner in Intermediate Female Changquan, and Ashley, who medaled in the Intermediate Female jianshu (straightsword) event!

In any case, tournament and afterparty were fun for the most part, nice to be reunited and it feeeeeels so gooood with lots of old faces! (Cookie for the person that can identify title and artist of that song!)

Trying to hack (emphasis on the “trying”, less on the hack) Wordpress source code so, uh, bear with me :) BUT, if you’re reading this in Google Reader, it shouldn’t matter anyway! SUBSCRIBE NOW! :D

If you’ve known me for at least a year, you’ll probably remember I wore the same pair of jeans (my “kims”) everyday for 100+ consecutive days last year. Gross, right? Well, I thought I kicked that obsession but alas, I have relapsed! I am now wearing a pair of raw Japanese Sling&Stones denim in the Mary cut - a pair that I had been eying for about a year. I will be breaking them in alongside Jean, who also purchased a pair of raw S&S in the Naomi cut at Self Edge, and Reid, who recently purchased a pair of raw, selvage 19 oz. Samurai 710XX from Blue in Green. Nelson, you are next!

Reid has some amazing whiskers on his Samurais already. I can’t wait to see what Jean’s and mine will look like in a few weeks! It’s gonna be hawt. :P

I’m not sure what I was waiting for, but I finally bit the bullet and bought the domain and web host account in order to start this site. Hurray!

Its existence is long overdue. In a 6th-grade elective course called “Internet”, I created my first ever webpage detailing the intricate steps required to make a tuna sandwich. I know—not terribly exciting, but I did get an A in the class! Perhaps it was an early indicator of my future-now-present internet addiction, partially fueled by the dot-com era in the Silicon Valley where my circle of friends at MSJHS was far more interested in web development than, say, sports. I remember joking that we represented neither the “East side” nor “West side” but “Web site!” Man, I was lame even back then!

My first recreational page was on one of those free Geocities-hosted sites and was completely decked out with animated gifs and pastel text in Comic Sans font (Sorry Jen—don’t judge me). I redesigned that site about 4 times between junior high and college, “coding” in Notebook with basic HTML and CSS skills I picked up from interweb forums. I didn’t get very far.

In addition to early interest in web develepment, I’ve also kept a journal since the 4th grade. I blogged journaled almost everyday up through junior high, until I discovered LiveJournal. There, I blogged minute details of my life almost daily for nearly four years before the switch to Xanga. I’ve largely stopped journaling since then, ironically when the blogosphere started booming, and sadly, when my life started really picking up (but that’s not saying much). 

Anyway, here’s to hoping that I’ll keep up with this site and cultivate the few web development skills I’ve acquired, as well as blog about the rest of my 20’s. These should be the best years of my life, right? :)