2008 End of the Year Letter ... not quite ready

Sorry everyone - I'm only about a third of the way through my 2008 End of the Year Letter - and since my mom is visiting me for the next week and I'll be playing tour guide as a good son, I'll have to postpone the Letter for a couple of weeks.  Thanks for reading - until then, Happy New Year!

It's my birthday today

And it's business as usual for me - I'm working during the daytime, and then going to an OCA-Orange County board meeting tonight.  I thought about taking the day off today (and if I lived in Canada, I would have my birthday off EVERY year :)), but then I realized, what's the point?  I would just sleep in late, watch a matinee movie by myself, and putter around the house since everyone else was working :P.

That said, I'm sleep deprived today because I didn't sleep well last night. Mihály Csíkszentmihály, the researcher who coined the idea of "flow" in psychology, argued that the most productive/stimulated people changed their career approximately every ten years to stay sharp and avoid plateauing on their learning curve or getting stuck in a rut. Me, I've always known that since high school, I've moved approximately every 4 years (college in Boston, then medical school in Baltimore, then residency in Chicago, then a 1 year fellowship in Boston, then for work in Los Angeles) and essentially restarted my life each time, and that that sort of thing kept things fresh for me - new city, all new cast of characters, and a chance to be...different? better?

So...at the 4-5 year mark in Los Angeles, I was kind of surprised that I didn't really feel a need to move.  I chalked it up to the size and diversity of the city, that even after five years (and now, after nine) that there's still plenty of nooks and crannies that I still haven't explored of this metropolitan area.  But in retrospect,  my life did change at that time.  In 2004, I bought a house, rebooted OCA-Orange County from scratch, and most significantly I started taking improv and acting classes at that point.  So while my "world" hadn't changed geographically, it changed significantly in terms of what I was doing.  Work was the same, but I stopped going to most of the mixers and functions that I used to go to (as an indication of this, I was at someone else's birthday party a couple of weekends ago, and someone asked me if I was still single.  "Yes, why do you ask?" "Because we haven't seen you in a long time!"), because I was now spending much more time studying the arts and performing, and unlocking another side of myself that had only existed before in a rudimentary fashion. 

Well, now it's 2008, and I'm hitting the four year mark again.  As you know, I'm co-chairing the NAAAP National Convention in Los Angeles (www.naaapconvention.org) - and internally, I know that this is my "swan song" when it comes to Asian American organizations - kind of a last, parting gift to the organizations that have nurtured me and that I nurtured in return.  I'll still be involved, but certainly not to the same degree. I feel the gears of my life grinding, getting ready to shift again.  I don't know the full details...but somehow, I know that same time next year, my life is going to be very different.  If life is a series of books, then...I don't actually know the ending, but I can see from the page count that the end of this particular book is coming up, before the next book in the series begins.

"Things are going to change, I can feel it."

Jhemon's Secret Birthday Party

This past Saturday I had my birthday at my house.  For the past few years, I've been hosting my own birthday party because 1) I'm the only one that knows all of my friends and 2) if I don't, there's no guarantee someone will do it for me :P.

For the past couple of years, the idea of having a "James Bond" themed party had been percolating in the back of my head.  I loved the Bond series when I was growing up (my favorite was "Moonraker" - it was over-the-top hokey, but had the kind of action that kids love :)), and when I'd heard of this idea, I wanted to do it myself.  About a year ago I started collecting the things needed for one - an e-book entitled "James Bond Theme Party Secrets," knick knacks like authentic poker table cloth, etc. The hardest thing to get was a decent stone-grey Nehru jacket - the kind of jacket that Dr. No and Ernst Stavro Blofeld wore in the 60's Bond movies, and which was famously worn by Dr. Evil in the "Austin Powers" series. You'd think that given the popularity of Austin Powers that it'd be easy to find a "Dr. Evil" jacket...but surprisingly, the only ones out there were the cheap ones found in Halloween costume supply stores.  I spent a couple of months searching, and eventually found an eBay storefront for a clothing shop in England that actually still made "real" Nehru jackets - and I picked one up last October.

Now then, the only thing left was having a proper excuse to throw the party. And as my birthday was coming up this year, I figured, why not?

In the past, I conceptually had a hard time with the idea of spending a lot of money on my own birthday party.  After all, isn't the idea that you should be coming out ahead (with presents) rather than behind on your birthday :)?  And in the past, I've also had birthday parties where I didn't know half of the people there (it's one thing when a friend brings one of his/her friends, but when they start inviting entire tables of people you don't know :(?) and the party ends up becoming a random mixer, and you feel badly asking people to pay up their fair share of the restaurant bill.

This year, I figured, what the heck, I'll go all out and splurge - I went out and bought a bunch of appetizers (like shrimp and scallop brioches, yakitori, and mochi :)) and the alcohol to make martinis, including the ingredients for a Vesper martini as seen in "Casino Royale" - interestingly, the actual ingredients no longer exist, but the closest analogy involves Tanqueray gin, 100 proof Stolichnaya vodka, Lillet Blanc and a little bit of quinine to restore some bitterness to the drink.  Admittedly, buying booze at Costco and BevMo was a new experience for me :).  The quinine I ordered online from an herbs store - I figured that I could use the leftover quinine in the future to experiment with making "real" tonic water :); either that, or as a treatment for malaria and leg cramps :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonic_water
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinine

Part of the fun of a "James Bond" party is that people dress up - not as rare an event on the East Coast, but quite rare (unless it's a formal banquet) on the West Coast.  But to reinforce the "spy" theme, I wanted people to try their hand at "spy" type things - which gave me an excuse to make puzzles for people to solve.  There's a part of me that delights in games and puzzles - not just playing them, but making them as well off the top of my head.  You can see the puzzles I made and picked in a separate Xanga entry.  Did I make them too hard?

Some classic Bond activities (e.g. car chase scenes) couldn't be replicated, but thanks to the great Nyko Perfect Shot attachment for the Wii (and "Ghost Squad" loaded up), we could do a reasonable facsimile of shooting :).

http://www.nyko.com/Nyko/Products/?i=124

And I felt that we needed door prizes for the winners, so I got a bunch of nifty gifts (including edible notepaper, rear-view sunglasses, invisible ink pens, and a bug detector) from the International Spy Museum store and ThinkGeek:

http://www.spymuseumstore.org/
http://www.thinkgeek.com

Admittedly, I have a tendency to over-produce my own parties - i.e., I tend to set up too many things, which end up not getting used.  No thanks to procrastination on my part, I was still setting up the party during the first 90 minutes of the party itself, and the following items I set up got left out:

• Several selections of cheese. I was planning on setting out a wide array of cheeses and crackers for appetizers, but didn't get around to it.  I'll likely serve the cheeses at the next NAAAP volunteer function.
• 4 CD's worth of spy music (basically: all of the James Bond movie theme songs in order, and a series of 60's spy TV show theme songs) and jazz that I burned the night before - I played the first CD, but forgot to queue up the rest :(.
• A playing card version of the "Assassin" game - I figured that people were busy enough with the puzzles and just eating/drinking that I didn't bother trotting this out.
• Unused puzzle ideas - some of the more technically elaborate ideas I had (including an underwater puzzle, a puzzle involving a searchlight, a puzzle involving a remote camera, and asking people to lockpick a simple lock) I ended up discarding - but they would've been cool :).

Since I was splurging (alcohol and decent party gifts don't come cheap), it was a reason for me to limit the party guest list this year.  That way, I could think of the birthday party as a "thank you" of sorts - to my better friends and acting classmates from this past year, to people that needed to be thanked for their help this year or in past years, etc.

Even though the party was hectic at the beginning (since I wasn't really ready on time :() and quite a number of people no showed (some things about Los Angeles never change :(), it was fun for me to host.  I believe people had a good time, which is what makes me happiest as the party host. Thank you especially to Rob Lee and Billy Wing for bartending throughout the night, and sticking around to help clean up.  Rob was right in guessing that people would be much more interested in apple martinis than the more classic martinis. Since it was a dress up party, I let everyone wear their shoes inside the house, which meant I spent hours the next day mopping, Swiffering and vacuuming to clean up the footprints :(.

I've uploaded the pictures onto Facebook already; when I get a chance, I'll upload it onto a photo-sharing site for those of you who aren't college aged (or pretending to be college aged :)).

Tomorrow never dies,

Jhemon

The Puzzles from Jhemon's Secret Birthday Party

So...I had several puzzles to occupy my guests at my "Secret" (Agent) Birthday Party.  Since 50 people were coming (and likely working with each other), I worried that they might be too easy.  As the Second City Manual of Improvisation tells me, play up to the full intelligence of your character.  And since many smart people were coming, I purposely set them at a level that would be challenging for myself.  Everyone says that the puzzles were too hard (the winner got 3 out of 9 right).  Were they?  Just for yourself...

Question 001 (source: "Mensa Presents: The Covert Challenge")

Question 002 (source: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/adam.bozon/ChessPuzzles.htm)

White to play and win in 2 moves

White’s first move?

Question 003: (I made this puzzle up myself the night before).

It was a digital picture frame cycling the following pictures:

So...what's the answer?

Question 004: "Petals of the Rose"

This was Question 12 from this website:
http://www.folj.com/puzzles/

Note that despite this puzzles being labeled "Very Easy"...no one got it at the party :(.

("A claim that often accompanies these instructions is that the smarter an individual, the greater amount of difficulty the individual will have in solving it. If such a statement is true, it may be attributed to the fact that "smarter" people tend to be more knowledgeable in a wide range of information which they may unnecessarily attempt to draw upon to solve the puzzle" - yes, THAT's why no one got it :))

Question 005 (source, with some modifications: http://www.websudoku.com/)

Question 006 (source: I made this up the hour before the party)

What card should be the one that is face down ?

(guests noted that the question wasn't clear - I'm actually asking: "What card is face down?"  Not that it mattered, I was surprised that no one came close to solving it :()

In case you can't read the cards, clockwise from the top:

Three of Cups (III)
Temperance (XIV)
The Devil (XV)
Nine of Wands (IX)
Two of Cups (II)
Six of Pentacles (VI)
Five of Swords (V)
Three of Wands (III)
Five of Cups (V)
Eight of Pentacles (VIII)
Nine of Swords (IX)
?????

Question 007 (source: I made this up the night before)

JAMES BOND TRIVIA

The answer is a string of ten characters.

001) What was the name of Maximilian Largo’s boat in Never Say Never Again?  Hint: It’s the English translation of the name of Emilio Largo’s boat in Thunderball.  First letter, first word (“The” doesn’t count in this case).

002) What hit 80’s band did the theme song for The Living Daylights?  First letter, first word.

003) The original Bond actor, Sean Connery, was replaced by whom in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service?  First letter, last name.

004) That replacement only lasted for the one film.  Who played Bond in the next film? First letter, last name.

005) Austin Powers’  Dr. Evil is mostly based on which character?  Last letter, middle name.

006) Daniel Craig played Bond in Casino Royale in 2006.  Who played James Bond in the non-EON 1967 version?  Last letter, last name.

007) In Goldeneye, 007’s antagonist is a former 00 agent - what number?  (Last digit)

008) In Die Another Day, what Asian American actor stars as the main henchman, Zao?  First letter, last name.

009) Name the CIA agent that’s been played by 7 different actors over the years. Fifth letter, first name.

010) Major Boothroyd is better known as?  First letter, first word.

___	___	___	___	___	___	___	___	___	___
001	002	003	004	005	006	007	008	009	010

Question 008 (source: I made this one up two nights before)

There's actually no way that you can solve this online.  You actually have to be physically present to solve it.  Next time you're at my house, I'll show you - you'll be surprised :).

Question 009 (source: I made this one up myself that morning)

Ankara

Ashgabat

Athens

Beijing

Dushanbe

Kabul

Lisbon

Madrid

Pyongyang

Rome

Seoul

Tashkent

Tehran

Tokyo

________?

(Hint: it REALLY helps to have a globe or map handy for this one)

BONUS QUESTION (source: I made this up an hour before, with help from Wikipedia :))

If your complaint is that there are too many puzzles that are “guy”-centric – you’re right.  I’m a guy :P – so to make up for it, here’s some questions re: Sex in the City.  Not to stereotype, but I think the women in the audience will be at an advantage on this one.  Successfully answering this will make up for any one incorrect answer on your sheet.

1) What is “Big”’s actual name (revealed in the movie)? (First letter, first name; first letter, last name)

2) What newspaper did Carrie’s column “Sex in the City” appear in? (first two letters, last word)

3) Samantha is how old at the end of the Sex in the City movie? (both numbers)

4) What is the name of Miranda’s husband? (First letter, first name; first letter, last name)

5) Charlotte went to Smith College – majored in what (first letter, first word) and minored in what (first letter, first word)?

___	___	___	___	___	___	___	___	___	___
1		2		3		4		5

SO...how did you do?

Ivanov, Ivanov

Wow, I haven't updated my blog in a while, since I've been busy, and I spend more of my time on Facebook instead of other sites like this or Myspace and Friendster.

My East West Players' acting class is performing "Ivanov" by Anton Chekhov this Saturday (May 3) - please come, it's free :)!

That's the #1 reason I've been busy - rehearsals this past month have been every other evening, and that increased to nearly every evening the past two weeks.  I'm just happy I remember my lines :).

#2 reason is that I'm co-chair of the NAAAP National Convention (www.naaapconvention.org) which is going to be in Los Angeles, August 21-24, at the Hyatt Century City.  I remember several years ago when I was NAAAP National President that I dreaded the notion of being a convention co-chair since it was so much work...and here I am :( :).

This past weekend was extra zany - a filmmaker/writer/actress colleague used my house as the set for a short film - she and her set designer redecorated my master bedroom (as a wedding suite), my office (as a funeral director's office) and my living room (as a seance) on Friday, and did all of the principal shooting while I was at work on Monday.  Kind of disorienting having things like wedding dresses (as props) hanging in your doorway.  The first couple of scenes called for nudity - but I was at work during those scenes, so I didn't see anything; I quipped to my improv group (which I've been on a year long hiatus from (!)) that this is the first time there has been female nudity in my house for a long time :( :).

BTW, I haven't been diligent about uploading photos from my house finch nest here.  I've been very good about uploading them onto Facebook (again, I "hang out" there a lot more than here) - they've gone from eggs to baby birds to fledglings leaving the nest already.  I had some good photos last year, but I got some really good photos this year, including some of the last baby bird about perched on the edge of its nest about to fly! The nest is empty, but on Monday the mother bird came back to start re-thatching the nest with twigs and down, so I sense that she'll be laying a second clutch of eggs really soon this season in the exact same nest :).  I have videos from the nest this past month that I'll need to edit and upload onto my Youtube account :).

So...rehearsals every night until my performance on Saturday, May 3.  Then a ton of conference calls for NAAAP on Sunday, May 4 (and a haircut - we're growing our hair long for this play, so all of the male cast members are getting haircuts ASAP after the play).  On Monday, May 5, a new radiologist joins my group, so we need to get him oriented to the hospital.  And Tuesday, May 6, I fly to DC.  Wednesday, May 7, I drive my parents from DC to Boston for my sister's wedding on Saturday, May 10.  Drive back on Sunday, May 11 after tea with the in-laws, spend one quality day with Mom and Dad on Monday, May 12, and then I fly back to LA on Tuesday, May 13.  Then I can breathe.  Busy times :).