mong the Christmas party invitations stacked dozens deep in my inbox for the month of December, a few stand out: the annual bash at Pixar Animation affords those of us who do not work at the world's coolest corporate office a chance to enjoy the amenities of Pixar's amazing campus in Emeryville, CA.

Took Cath to Pixar's soirée (her first time, my third) and a great deal of fun was had by all.

Now, enough of horking my gym's wireless and off for my morning run to burn off the calories I consumed last night. Hah.




( Pixar Holiday Party - 2007 )

unday - Chocolate Kitchen Redux.

Thanks to the overwhelming response of the previous Chocolate Sunday, we revisited Anthony Ferguson's Cacao Anasa for a second act of touring his kitchen, making a series of ganaches, bars and potent chocolate liqueurs with a few familiar faces, and a some new ones.

Photos to follow.

	Heidi, amused at something.
	Etak, trying to temper the choc again
	This is your ganache. This is your ganache with nuts.
	chocolate-dipped cookies
	spice chocolate
	Dhwani, looking on
	Down the kitchen with the bar team
	Rebecca, stirring the choc.
	Dhwani, I will buy a vowel.
	Putting on the aprons
	With Etak and the Pixar crew

lickr's photo-uploading feature is still a bit counter-intuitive, but I uploaded shots from this weekend's trip to Monterey, CA where I shot the graduation ceremony of the newest 'class' of new search dogs and their firefighter handlers.

Photo set is posted online; after a three hour gathering celebrating the newest graduates, I made a quick dash to the Monterey Bay Aquarium where I took the above shot.

And now, back to work ...

rom a Red Egg Party hosted by Eddie down in Santa Clara.

Just testing Flickr's posting features. As you were.



Also: The sheer awesomeness of Stacy's Mom has made me a fan of Fountains of Wayne.

After watching that, I ROR'ed at Stacy's Dad.

That is all.

fter 9/11, I became intensely curious about the origin of the search-and-rescue dogs that scoured the site for survivors, and the breadcrumb trail of different search-engine queries led me to the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation based in Ojai, CA - and I have been a big fan and supporter since.

NDSDF takes in dogs otherwise slated for euthanization at pounds - screens them for personality/motivation and trains them to become FEMA-certified search-and-rescue dogs (they are then donated to fire departments around the country). Interestingly, the qualities that make a superb search dog often makes them terrible pets for most families - they are high-energy, restless creatures that have the canine equivalent of ADHD; if they are shut home every day without an outlet to run and play, their relentless energy and boredom makes them difficult housepets for sedate households. And so every day, families send these dogs to pounds, where most of them are unfortunately euthanized for lack of a place where their boundless energy are appreciated or put to good use.

The training event in Gilroy was a way for NDSDF to thank its supporters and donors and showcasing the animals that are brought in and trained by their staff. This was the first time I got a chance to meet with the founder, Wilma Melville, and the chief trainer Pluis Davern who described the intense nine-month gauntlet the dogs are put through before they are ready to be considered a fully-trained search dog.

During the presentation, Pluis related a story about 9/11; the day after the attack she got a phone call from a distraught firefighter "Oh my God, I think I broke my dog!"

After calming him down, she got the story.

Awake for 24 hours and under the kind of unbelievable stress that we can only imagine an FDNY fireman was working under on 9/12/01, he took his search dog to the perimeter of a debris mound at the site. When he ordered her to continue walking past the rubble pile beyond his line of sight, she sat on her haunches and refused the command. Now this is highly erratic behavior for a fully-trained dog, and in exasperation, he screamed "GO! GO NOW!"

To which his dog turned around and obediently walked ... into a puddle of burning oil.

As it turned out - the animal was burned but not permanently injured and was back at work after a few weeks of recovery, but it was a stark reminder of the level of bonding that the training can instill in the animals ... and the responsibility that human handlers have in directing them. A trained dog does not refuse commands on a whim.

We wrapped up the event with an announcement of a new $10,000 sponsor of Ellie, a golden retriever who was assigned to a firefighter in Carmel, CA. All in all, a great day spent to witness people working at an amazing cause.

A very happy birthday indeed.

Dog-lovers interested in supporting the Search Dog Foundation are welcome to read more about the organization or ask me anything about them. :)

Photos:



Special thanks to badwolf for loan of a Rebel XT. :)

rrington's Techcrunch parties are legendary in the valley, bringing together a potent melange of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, high-powered engineers and other Silicon Valley power-brokers ... and the Techcrunch 7 event last Friday in Menlo Park proved to be no exception.

We witnessed demos from fascinating new startups, sampled wine from Stormhoek, and mingled with a cast of over 500 attendees at the headquarters of August Capital.

Alas, as is the case with such events, a few riff-raff managed to crash the party - and made off with a odd souveneir - a stolen 'G' from the metallic sign at the entrance of the August Capital office.

Sadly, nobody managed to collect on the $200 bounty to be photographed streaking next to Michael Arrington, as offered by Valleywag magazine.

Better luck next time, eh?


"Who stole my G?"

P.S.: Correction. David Hornik, at August Capital pointed that the 'G' was, in fact, not stolen - simply knocked off during the party's festivities. A dab of superglue later, the sign was promptly fixed. Thanks David.

P.P.S. Correction 2. An anonymous commentor indicated that there was, in fact, a streaker who managed to make his way through the party, though he was in a bathing suit so I don't know if that still qualifies. Ha.

or years, the U.S. Navy trains its officer corps in the medical service at Officer Indoctrination School in Newport, Rhode Island - taking in raw recruits and turning out medical professionals to serve aboard carriers and naval bases around the world.

After five weeks of marching, training and being yelled at by drill instructors, my brother completed the grueling course along with fellow OIS classmates in a ceremony steeped in over two centuries of Navy history and tradition on a bright Saturday morning to an audience of family and friends.

But there is work to do, calls to make, people to contact - so I leave you, as always, with photos.

More soon.



 

hursday evening, I was invited for a private tour of Chuck Siegel's fantastic Chocolate Factory in Emeryville.

As Chuck handed out various confections, he described the iterative process in which he distilled each chocolate's recipe through a process of trial-and-error; as befitting a man with an obsessive love of fine food, he also shared the history of high-end confections and some of the common misconceptions the general public has about the manufacture of chocolate to an audience of about 20 press/reporters.

And, of course - candy ... the entire store smelled of the cocoa powder and freshly-milled chocolate from the day's batches, fruits of Chuck's lifelong dedication to his delicious craft. Unlike conventional 'premium' chocolatiers like Godiva (which salts its products with preservatives to enhance shelf life), Charles Chocolates' 100% organic creations have a shelf life measured in weeks, not months and when asked by a reporter "so how should chocolate be stored?" Chuck offered a flip but frank response: "Don't!"

So now that I've polished off about 1000 calories of doublessly high-fat food, I must hit the treadmill before going to the office.

This evening, I'll be taking a business partner to watch Daniel Puder beat the holy hell out of some dude at the HP Pavilion.

Never a dull moment, heh.

Charlie	Molds & Chocolate
$150 for a tub of high-end salt	That's about ... 4 heart-attacks right there on the tray
New Policy	Reporters and Bay Area press
Chocolate-covered almond to die for.	More press
Caramel chocolates ... Mmmmm	Pots and pans
Transfer sheets	Whisk of the Gods
"And now, I shall show you the oompa-loompas!"	Mojito-chocolates. Yes.

hough events conspired to complicate Thursday night's Stormhoek Wine Dinner, we had an absolute blast.

Kicking off the evening, the Stanford Harmonics offered rousing acapella renditions of Melissa Etheridge's 'Breathe,' Seal's 'Waiting for You' and other pop-music favorites to an enthusiastic audience. Once appetizers were cleared off the tables, I introduced Eric Cheng who began his presentation of underwater photography from on his recent dives in the Bahamas, French Polynesia and Indonesia. The audience cooed over the irresistably cute photos Eric took of clownfish (made famous by 'Finding Nemo'), whereupon he shared the interesting fact that clownfish genders are fungible - if a female partner of a male clownfish dies, the male will actually transform to become a 'mom' to their hatchlings. "I hope this isn't a spoiler for anyone here since the movie's been out for a few years, but at the beginning of 'Finding Nemo,' Nemo's mother dies, and I was wondering if Nemo's father would slowly become a girl-clownfish over the course of the film." Alas, a story about transgendered fish probably is a bit much for a G-rated movie, so Nemo's father remained a guy for the course of the Finding Nemo.

As the presentation continued on Eric's other dives, he pointed out the difference between old-school underwater photographers (who shot film) and modern-age digital counterparts, who now gather around laptops on the boat as soon as they surface. "People ask me why I'm single, but if you look at this photo, I think you can see the reason," Eric remarked, showing a photo of himself with a dozen other divers, all of them men.

flashfire raised his hand and quipped "Well, maybe female divers become male in contact with the open ocean?"

*Ponder*

Dessert hour, Chuck Siegel from Charles Chocolates did a brief presentation on his chocolate company and how different grades of confections are created, as waitstaff passed his sinfully delicious creations to guests. Immediately after Chuck's talk, I announced the first of our raffle prizes: gift certificates to Charles Chocolates, a box of his finest dark candies which were won by very appreciative guests. After the first drawing, I shared a bit about Keith Ferrazzi and his NYT bestselling book, Never Eat Alone (Keith has generously donated four signed copies for this event) and invited the guests to stand up and switch seats to a different location and introduce themselves to someone they didn't already know - and discuss the Essential People of your life with a stranger and hear their thoughts.

(Special thanks to Takeover Lounge for burning the midnight oil in getting the printouts ready at the last minute)

The final raffle prize of three $100 gift certs to Tarboosh came courtesey of Carlsen Audi, who parked the stunning new Audi Q7 in front of the restaurant for guests to poke and prod. All in all, a great evening of fine dining, great wines and awesome company. I'm absolutely thrilled and exhausted so I leave you with photos. If you wish to come to the next event, do drop a comment here and I'll make sure to add you to the next guestlist.

Cheers!

- pjammer

Girl Friday (Thursday, actually) Our gracious hostess Jenn, at the door.	About to open a wine with Pat
Tammy Chen & Your Host	Pazornik & Co.
Herro!	Sunyata & Friends
Conversations & Wine	Stanford Harmonics
flashfire & brad	Eric Cheng, presenting
The new Audi Q7	"So if your mate dies, you become female..."
Food & good wine	Everybody! Everybody!
Scrill from an evening's take.	Never Eat Alone, won by Sunyata

riday evening, Daniel Puder called me to go over a few business projects we are working on jointly, and invited me to join him as some of his 'Puder Knockout Girls' at Club NV, where they were showcasing a bikini fashion show at midnight.

Those of you who know me can guess how long I took to consider my response to such an offer. Ha.

Had an absolute blast in the company of Daniel and his friends ... a peculiar mix of MMA fighters, bikini models and gay fashion designers. After an evening of dancing, sleight-of-hand magic, and four cans of redbulls, I left the club to witness a confrontation between four SFPD cops and a few thuggish looking guys in the parking lot around 2:30 am. Grabbed a quiet shot with the telephoto lens, and promptly headed south.

As I write this, it is breakfast hour ... I am at the restaurant of a fancy hotel in Silicon Valley, finshing off a fourth veggie egg-white omlette while updating the journal through their free wireless.

Life doesn't get much better than this.

	Robyn It's amazing how I can look drunk off my ass without a drop of drinking. "Honest, officer! I only had redbulls and tonic water all night!"
	Theresa ikilled007, you are right. Latinas = teh hotness.
	Stacey ... though Stacey gives 'em a run for the money.
	Robyn, Act Deux Soda & Lime, that's all I had last evening, I swear ...
	Amy & Robyn Great seeing the two of you up here ... here's to a safe trip home!
	Her name escapes me ... ... not that you care.
	Kittens, prepare to die.
	"What is the sound of one hand fapping?"
	Theresa, vamping with her rockin' bikini. Backoff. This is Puder's girl.
	Awwwww!
	Five-Oh SFPD cops draw guns outside the club and arrest some dude for god-knows what. But checkit, they ran past some black guys and cuffed the Asian person. Affirmative-action in the criminal-justice system? *Ponder*

ixty, in Chinese culture, is a big deal as far as birthdays are concerned, a significant milestone that calls for significant celebration.

Until this weekend, my mom (who turns sixty this week), was under the assumtion that my brother and I were being the stereotypical Bad Immigrant Kids who forgot their heritage as well as their mother's birthday. This suited us just fine, as we were busy scrambling around preparing for a surprise dinner party in her honor. My brother had to juggle a few things to take a break from medical school in New York to fly to CA for 30 hours while I approached family members for digital photos and combed through our own photo archives to create a collage I would present to mom at the dinner table.

Thanks to my good friends Jane C and bride I got the letter scripting for the 60 大寿 characters properly drawn up, I got to work three weeks prior printing it out on red paper and carving the characters with an X-Acto knife to attach to the photo collage. Should also mention here my gratitude to badwolf for the use of his G5 Mac computer in creating the collage, I doubt my poor PowerBook could handle a 445MB PhotoShop file with as much aplomb!

Printing and matting/framing were the easy things - all they required was for me to slap down plastic. The letter-carving was the most difficult part of the present - cutting with precision the Chinese characters that would be glued to the matting. One and a half hours with an Xacto knife and countless screwups I had to throw away finally yielded the results I was aiming for. Done.

Moment of truth: I pick up my brother at SJC and show up at my parents' doorstep, much to mom's surprise and delight; we all dress up and head to Ruth's Chris for a birthday dinner. I excuse myself to the restroom to recover the collage and hand it to our waiter, asking him to bring it to our table at the end of our meal.

"Mom, turn around. The waiter wants to show you something."

The expression on her face was priceless.

Happy birthday, Mom.

Though we don't say it enough times during the year, we love you.

-pjammer


( +8 Photos ... click here )

PS: I know, I know. I'll finish the 16 Essential People piece as soon as I can. Would love to open up the topic to discussion as well, but for the time being, please stop emailing me. :)

riday evening found me in line at the HP Pavillion to see Daniel Puder as well as a few others in the first sanctioned mixed-martial arts fight in CA. owyn introduced me to the world of then-called "Ultimate Fighting" back in college in 1993. At the time in the sport's infancy, there were still pure practioners of various fighting styles (sumo, karate, ninjitsu, etc.) as contenders. As the dominance of grappling-style fighting (exemplified by Gracie-style Jiu-Jitsu) reigned in the intervening years, even 'pure' school fighters had to incorporate grappling/wrestling into their techniques, if only to know ways to resist being taken to the ground from an experienced grappler.

The title fight of Shamrock vs. Gracie was, in retrospect, rather anticlimactic - after 23 seconds of feints and parries, Shamrock took down Caesar Gracie with a hard punch and prepared to rain down a barrage of fists on Gracie's head until the Gracie corner threw in the towel conceding the match. Meh.

Upon announcing Cung Le's entrance to the cage, an ocean of Vietnamese flags rose from the audience as locals cheered for their champion. His fight (against another kickboxer Brian Ebersole) was impressive, exchanging countless telling blows before he triumphed in a decision after five rounds.

Daniel Puder, who I've been working with on some business matters, extended his 1-0 Win/Loss record by crushing his opponent in the first round and now has an MMA record of 2-0. Fair warning - don't let that man put you in a headlock. HA!

After the fight, we headed to the Afterparty at Studio 8 in San Jose for celebratory drinks and other mischief.


Photos:



Ring babe.

( +11 photos ... click here )

isited Noah Kagan today, who is now hard at work making the guts and bones of Facebook in Palo Alto.

On the topic, my facebook profile is here for those of you who can't get enough of online networking. Hah.

Not much to report, so I leave you with a photo from my drive through NV.


Genoa, NV

Will be back in LA from the end of January to early February. More updates to follow.

ttended the wedding of Monica Barnhart and Erich Nachbar past Saturday, and met up with some familiar faces (including Christine "Quattrogirl" Scholl) and some great new people.

First met Monica three years ago at a party thrown by Jacques Teisen. In was in an offline conversation with the Best Man that I discovered an amusing story I had a part of, but no recollection.

So it turns out Erich met Monica at that same party, and was interested in talking with her alone, but at the time she and I were already engaged in animated chatter over the fact that we both attended UCSD ... so Erich sent his brother to pry me off Monica so he would be free to bring his mack on the girl. Having no romantic designs on her, I was utterly oblivious to all the machinations behind that exchange.

"Hey, I remember you!" Erich's brother exclaimed when I walked outside the reception hall to "nicotine alley" where all the smokers congregated in exile. I replied that I didn't recognize him, so he explained the entire back story to how he distracted me from Monica on his brother's request. Heh.

Am travelling right now, so email updates will be sporadic - will be having dinner with Ian Ybarra in 30 minutes.

In the meantime ... pictures from the wedding!

Photos:


I usually don't like 'em this young

( +9 photos ... click here )

unday morning, July 31 - my alarm rings at 5am.

Beeep beeep beeep beeep.

At the moment I'm in the middle of another vivid dream, and I first 'hear' the alarm inside my dream. Everybody else in the dream pauses what they are doing and looks up the same direction ... as though we are cast members of a movie shoot, reacting to our director's shout of 'CUT!"

I am lucid enough to know that in about 10 seconds, I will be fully awake and the story-arc of the dream will be cut abruptly short. The twenty-odd individuals on the 'set' react unhappily to this interruption ... shoulders slump and they trudge single-file to an unseen exit, muttering about the great scenes there were about participate in.

And then I awoke.

Any other Sunday, I would be fast asleep at that hour, but yesterday, I invited jhogan to join me on a day-long Middle Fork American River whitewater rafting run. With a meet time of 8:00am three hours away, we were rolling north on the 680 in pre-dawn darkness, chatting about recent events, relationships and other ramblings.

After a briefing where we signed a long liability release form detailing all the horrible ways we could be paralyzed or killed on the river, I had to stow my camera away and gear up for the day's adventure.

Since I did not have a waterproof rig for my camera, the most visually stunning moments yesterday remain only in my memory ... dragonflies the size of your hand skimming smooth expanses of water in between Class III/IV rapids, 'Tunnel Chute' where our raft hurtled through a tunnel bouncing like a cork in a tempest ... ancient ruins of mining operations dating back to California's gold rush.

Must return to work, so I leave you with a few photos including Forest Hill Bridge, one of the world's highest bridges ... (yes, jhogan, I still need to get you photos of 'Toad' from Patri's wedding. :P)



( +6 photos ... click here )

PS: Having lost about a half-day's work on the amazingly well-written Waiter Rant, now I will inflict his time-wastingly brilliant prose on the rest of you. You're welcome.

I would suggest starting with Baby Bucks, Because I'm Pretty, Sieg Heil! and Waiter Axioms.

Booya.

razy weekend - highlight of which was the wedding of patrissimo and choiceful in Saratoga. Congrats to you both! :) Met and reconnected with a lot of familiar faces ... and yes, photos will be posted soon.

In the meantime ... some of you may remember that I was hired to model for a Microsoft commercial about three months ago; the advertisement is online at the 'China' section of the Microsoft website (click on the top box of the 'map' and then scroll to the right).

Screencap for the lazy or Chinese-illiterate:



Whoo, the camera adds ten pounds, don't it? HA!

Back to work.

Edit: Caption contest. Create thought-bubbles/word balloons for the people in the advert!

unday, met up with some familiar faces at Amabelle, Felicia & Walter's 'annual' summer Beach BBQ [photos from three years ago here] and said hi to a few people I haven't talked with in ages.

With 20+MPH winds on the beach kicking up a fine mist of sand, Amabelle & company relocated the BBQ a few blocks inland to Golden Gate Park.

In internerd news, my AutoBlogger entry in the Contagious Media Showdown yielded a 9th Place showing behind some fine entries. Most amusingly, El Mundo, Spain's primary news channel, fell for my AutoBlogger 'ad' and reported it as real, forcing them to post a retraction on May 27th.

Now I am off to a meeting, then catching the midnight showing of Batman Begins. Whoo.

Photos:

.

( +7 photos ... click here )