Drove around the city in the heavy rain and ended up at Wonjo restaurant for some Korean BBQ. Not too bad for a Friday evening. Drove three hours the next day to Turning Stone Resort & Casino to get some gambling fix. Didn’t get any luck with Pai Gow this time while a Caucasian guy, who played the game for the first time, sat next to me made a couple hundreds with just fifteen bucks to begin with. I helped him win while I lost my own hand. Beginner’s luck, I guess. Also met another Vietnamese guy who started out lecturing me how not to press my luck, yet he’s the one that ended up losing much more than I did. Had a lot of fun though.

Simon Aughton’s “Chinese Couple Name Child ‘@’:”

While the “@” simple is familiar to Chinese email users, they often use the English word “at” to sound it out – which with a drawn out “T” sounds something like “ai ta”, or “love him”, to Mandarin speakers.

I still like “Cu” (Vietnamese’s common nickname) better than “@.” Imagine trying to find out where he’s at. “Hey @, where are you at?”

Ben Ratliff on Max Roach:

Mr. Roach, who died yesterday at 83, was in on the ground floor of aesthetic change for much of his working life. He just kept on being involved in whatever mattered most, zeroing in on particular regions of his drum kit and reshuffling rhythms, inventing percussive patterns that helped move jazz away from typical swing.

Nicole Scherzinger’s “Whatever U Like” is horrendous even with the help of T.I., but she’s, indeed, hot as a stove.

“…the non-verbal information that triggers [the] content in the viewer’s mind.” –Zeldman

Visualgui.com is running two graphical spots. The one you see on the left displays various facial expressions of Eric to add some visual elements to the simple homepage. The one on the graphic page showcases the banners I have done for the Infosite.

Minh Tuyet’s Yeu Mot Nguoi, Song Ben Mot Nguoi released in the States while Thanh Thao’s Bup Be Con Trai relased in Viet Nam, yet what do they have in common? They are both mediocre and about six degrees from artless, yet why do they still make them? If there are still demand for them, why not? Don’t hate the players; hate the game.

Thich Nhat Hanh has a new book. Let’s take a wild guess: The Art of Power is about appreciating the present and being mindfulness. Despite how many times he writes in his books about living a happy life now, not in the future, I tend to forget after I close his books. Every time I see mindfulness, however, I think of him. The word is like his brand.

Pretty nice design for a motherfucker.

Forget Chinese and Korean series. R. Kelly has released 10 more chapters of his infamous “Trapped in the Closet,” a crossover between “brilliance and insanity” according to Evan Shapiro, the general manager of IFC. From the New York Times:

The story began simply enough: the love triangle of Sylvester, Kathy and Rufus. But after 12 chapters the triangle was more like a lopsided octagon, with a dozen characters and as many cliffhangers. The dramas hinged on unlikely plot devices: leg cramps, pie allergies, the surprising things one finds hiding in cupboards.