I love naps. A nap is a time when you go to sleep when you're not supposed to be sleeping, mostly in the daytime. It's the one rare time when you listen to your fatigued body and let yourself fall asleep, no matter what time it is in the day.

I used to take a lot of naps in grad school. Even ten minutes of napping before I had to TA or go to a class made a huge difference in the day. When I started work, I thought my napping days were over. That was true for a while, but then things changed when I moved my ass out to the boonies.

Having to get up extra early to get to work means I'm pretty tired by the end of the day. Now, when I get on that 160 bus along Burrard in the evening, I'm usually exhausted. The bus is warm and it's dark. There's nothing for me to do but sit there. It's a perfect recipe for falling asleep.

I usually doze after we leave the dowtown eastside. Somewhere along Hastings, Mr. Sandman visits me. I sometimes briefly awake, seeing other people get on the bus. I imagine I must look like an idiot, being half-awake. I've never missed my stop. Somehow, I always wake around the time the bus turns onto St. John's from the Barnet Highway.

Since the bus ride takes about 35 minutes in total, I'm asleep for less than that. When I get off the bus, I feel much better and the cold contrast of the outdoors ensures I'm fully awake for the short walk to the front door. Napping the bus is good.

Ok, your reward for reading about how I like to sleep on the bus is this ridiculously non-user friendly web page that shows you how to make paper airplanes. Good luck trying to fold the paper while watching the animations.

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Barely two months ago, I was able to divulge I was working on Shadow-Born, a game for the Nokia N-Gage system. Well, hot on the heels of that news is an admission from Nokia itself. In an interview with a news outlet, a senior VP at Nokia has admitted the N-Gage platform is not a success and that they would be stopping game development on the platform. They call it a pause in the grand scheme of things but I'm not so sure.

Internally, we've known about this for weeks but you can imagine how we felt when we found out. After busting our asses for months on the game, we discovered we were doing so on a failed platform.

We're continuing to work on the game and we will finish it. Why? There's a very good reason for it which might seem strange since the whole world now knows the N-Gage isn't viable anymore in the eyes of Nokia. I can't say more than that.

Read more here.

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"Grandmaster Tu Jin-Sheng, best known for his Iron Crotch, attached himself not once, but twice, to a rental moving truck and pulled it several yards across a parking lot in Fremont. In lace-up leather boots and a black tank top, the 50-year-old tied a strip of blue fabric around the base of his penis and testicles and tugged to make sure it was on tight. An assistant kicked him hard between the legs before he lashed himself to the vehicle."

"Jin-Sheng hopes to strap a dozen of his top students to a 747 for the biggest penis pull of all time."

And here I thought I held the record for the biggest penis pull of all time... or was that something else? Read the whole article here.

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On Saturday, November 26, 2005 at approximately 3:40pm I saw Greg Chan and his lovely wife walking east along W. Broadway between Maple and Cypress. They had their dog with them.

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I will admit this might not be the most politically correct post I've ever written. The topic is interesting, however, so I feel in the end this is worth posting, even if it makes a feel people uncomfortable in the end.

So last week, I'm sitting in my cubicle with my cubicle-mate "Greg". We are happily coding away, putting in place what must have been the millionth re-design in our game. "Ron" walks into our cubicle. I am not sure what we talk about first but the conversation turns to "Dave", another co-worker. Ron says something about Dave "taking away our women". Alright, so let's stop here for some backstory. Dave, who is an awesome guy by the way, is dating "Joyce". Dave is what some people commonly refer to as a "white guy". Joyce is what some people call "Chinese". Ron is Chinese as well. Greg is also known as a white guy, Caucasian if you will. Just for completeness, I will also identify myself as Chinese at this point. Hey, just out of curiosity, was that last statement a surprise to anyone?

Anyways, Ron was half-joking when he made his comment but Greg calmly looked up from his work and said, "Well, why don't you just go even it up and go out with a white girl?" Ron took this suggestion and had an unconvinced look on his face. What he said next was one of the most significant things I've ever heard him say:

"Date a white girl? Dude, that's impossible! There's been only one Chinese guy in the history of the world that's ever successfully dated a white woman... and that was Bruce Lee. And to even make that happen, he had to be fucking Bruce Lee! It's a fact of life that white women don't date Chinese guys, it's just the way it is..."

When the laughter about the Bruce Lee comment died down, Ron asked Greg how many times he's seen a Chinese guy out with a white woman. Ron answered his own question with... "never".

It was at this point, I put down my fried chicken and said that while there many, many truths to what Ron had just mentioned, I have seen some rare exceptions. I noted that once in 1989, I'm pretty sure I saw a Chinese guy out on a date with a white woman. Then again in 1997, I saw a Chinese guy with a white woman at Safeway shopping for taco fixings. They even had a kid with them, which I assumed was theirs. Most recently, I also told Ron my friend's sister had even married a Chinese guy. "Sarah's" sister is Caucasian. I even showed Ron the wedding photos online. Ron was still very unbelieving:

"Dude, those photos are on the Internet... have you heard of Photoshop before? There was a probably a white guy in those pictures originally..."

Despite Ron's extreme claims, I believe he's wrong but only by the slightest of margins. Yes, there are Chinese guys out there with white girlfriends but these are extremely rare instances. If these types of relationships were animals they'd be on the endangered species list. Not so rare are the white dude and Chinese woman couples. These relationships are plentiful in North America, some of which are comprised by guys with the "fever".

So why is that white guys find Chinese women attractive but not that other way around? I'm not a social scientist so I have no definite answer. I do have some theories though. Unfornately, some men and women take their cue from pop culture and the media as to what is "attractive". For the most part, Asian women on TV and movies have always been portrayed as a combination of submissive and exotic. I've seen some cases where they are clearly presented as sexual objects. So how are Asian men portrayed in media? Ok, so let's see... there was Bruce Lee, who was a martial arts expert... then there's Jackie Chan... who was a martial arts expert. Then there was the character of Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles whose most famous quote was, "No more yankie my wankie. The Donger need food."

In general, what few appearances Asian males have made in the media, they never get the girl in the end, instead, usually ending the movie in the friend zone with a handshake. Often, Asian males are seen as sexless martial arts experts or geeky guys who are good at math. Good or bad, women of all ethnicities do become influenced by this.

Then there's the popular myth that Asian men have small penises. Man, of all the things that have hurt my Asian brothers out there in the dating world, I think this has been the worst. Can you imagine how hard it is to ask a woman out when she's already thinking you've got a small penis? Tiny wang disease is an affliction that knows no boundaries of race. It can happen to any guy.

As you can see, it's an uphill battle for Chinese guys when it comes to dating women of other races. It's not impossible but I would say it's extremely difficult and the odds are not good. I told Ron this but he disagrees. He thinks it is indeed impossible, he believes white women do not find Asian males attractive enough to be boyfriend material.

In fact, he is so sure of this that offered me a little wager. If I could find a Caucasian girlfriend the next *ten* years, he'll give me $100. He also set out some details for the bet:

- no age restriction other than being older than 18; I am free to date senior citizens if I wish

- she has to be of European descent; New Zealand and Australia is ok

- I must go on a minimum of four dates

- she must admit to Ron that I am her boyfriend

- I cannot tell the woman about the bet or coerce a woman into this with the promise of money

- I cannot use dating sites for this bet (I argued vehemently against this but Ron would not relent)

I accepted the bet. Now before all of you get your panties in a bunch about me messing around with some girl's feelings over a $100 bet, please hear me out. I find that there's beauty in all races. Ok, that sounds like a cliche or possibly a pickup line, but it's true. Physical beauty can be found in all ethnicities and a great personality isn't limited to certain race. I'm colour blind when it comes to dating.

So, I'm taking the bet in the sense that yes, if I happen to date a white woman in the next *ten* years, I'll win the bet, but it doesn't mean I'll be trolling the bars on the weekend from now on, searching exclusively for white women. That's just a bit too creepy, even for me.

Most of you know me well enough that I wouldn't date a woman just to win a bet, so I don't want a stack of angry e-mails out of this.

Alright, now I gotta get back to practicing my kung-fu, solving integrals, and washing my tiny cock.

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