these last few weeks have felt like christmas. part of that is because it WAS christmas. the other part of it is because i've just been purging out my life of the old and filling up with the new. there's a whole bunch of changes that are just crazy.
it started with my new sonicare, giving me the cleanest teeth EVER. i had already gotten my new laptop a few months earlier as well as a new surfboard. then i got a new cell phone. then the free tv came. then the tivo. in a few days, i'll be getting some new RAM for the laptop. and tomorrow, mark is moving here. things are wild and crazy and i don't know what's gonna happen next.
make sure you stay tuned for more changes. i'm sure a new something or two (or three) will pop up. get excited. i already am.
merry christmas, everybody.
and yes, you heard right. i DID get the free tv. here's the pics:
freeflatscreens.com experience, from approval to new tv in my place.
yay.
so we all know about the freeflatscreens.com scam that i was foolish enough to get involved in. and i've posted and posted and posted about it. but it finally came! it's sitting at my place now, though i'm stuck here at work without a new tv to play with.
so big big BIG thankyous go out to julie, wendy, bones, prid, lianne, matt, phil, and paz. you guys suffered so i could have a bigger tv. simply put: you guys rock. the first thing i'm gonna watch on the tv is hero. you guys can come veg out on the tv anytime. an after-the-holidays-look-at-the-free-and-pretty-tv party is in the works.
pics of the beautiful tv will be posted soon.
i spent last night cleaning my place: vacuuming, laundry, sorting through old clothes to donate to goodwill, washing dishes, etc. i also had the tv going. it was either on monday night football or the final pageant of season 2 of the swan.
now, i'm a fan of the swan. i think it's a good show. trashy, maybe. but good for the women on it, yeah. they do good things. but on the other hand, it's a big waste of time. not the swan program, just the fact that i was watching. i was doing all this good, productive stuff (cleaning, etc) while also wasting my life away (watching the swan).
i also watched vh1's flab to fab: madonna style. these three fat gay guys go through a month or so of madonna's workout and diet and yoga and fencing. it's a big waste of time. it made it fun because they were the flamingest fat gay guys ever. and they had to work out with boxing and fencing and pushups and situps. it was funny. on the whole, though, a big waste of time.
sometimes i enjoy wasting my life with vh1 and mtv and the biggest loser. other times, the existence of those shows makes me want to cry.
and oh! i saw how fox is reaching new highs. or lows. or whatever. with who's my daddy. a girl who never met her father gets to meet and greet a bunch of guys, one of whom is her biological dad. brilliant. more wasting of my time.
with all that eddie aikau stuff going on, here's the website for the polynesian voyaging society. they're the ones that were all involved with the hokule'a. it's the canoe voyage that eddie aikau died on. i especially like the narratives compiled from nainoa thompson's talks, interviews, and notes. he went to my highschool and was/is the navigator on those voyages. cool stuff.
they held the eddie yesterday. i dug out of the first half of the workday to go watch. i left the house at 6am, but wasn't sitting on the sands of the bay until about 7:30am. there was ridiculous traffic and parking craziness. they closed some of the roads because the high surf was washing over the highway.
when i got to the top of the cliff on the haleiwa-side of the bay, i was just in time to see THE BIGGEST wave i've ever seen. the wave was this mammoth closeout that seemed to be closing out across the entire bay, the winds feathering its pitching lip. it was so large that, even from the cliff, we couldn't see the only-slightly-smaller wave behind it. i'm sure that wave will come back to me in my sleep.
the contest itself was ok. waimea is a wave that is awesome only when you realize how dangerous and heavy and huge the waves are. but it's the kind of scene that you can get from a video clip. being on shore doesn't really do anything extra for you. and the rides are typically very short and simple: frighteningly steep drop, a quick shoot-out to the shoulder, and maybe a turn to keep going straight. it lacks showiness of a haleiwa pro, or a pipe masters.
with that said, it was still fun and exciting to be there. the contest announcer mentioned that dennis hopper was there watching. i was more impressed with all the top surfers just sitting around talking story with their friends and watching the surf. i took pics. check them here. i even got a pic of the winner, bruce irons, and some girl he was cuddly with. check it.
i somehow made the jump from memorable north shore surf contest to hour-and-a-half talking meetings at work. it was not an easy transition.
i fixed the marathon photos. i think my computer shut itself down while uploading the pics. whatever the reason, they're up. fun fun.
i also added some more ringtones to the wap-enabled part of the site. (http:wap.chairmanlau.com/). there's now some xmas ringtones (as requested by my mother) and some newer non-xmas types.
go do it up and annoy some neighbors with obnoxious ringtones!
*i know it works with sprint phones. i could work with yours, too. try it!
i put some commentary up here with the pics. i'll write more about it later. this is all i could get posted before i got really, really tired.
this is the first in a series of post-marathon posts. to update you, i ran the honolulu marathon yesterday. it was fun. kind of. pics and commentary to follow.
---------------------------------------------------
Eric M. Lau #4989 of Honolulu HI USA
10K: 01:02:58
Half Marathon: 02:11:19
30K: 03:13:03
Gun Time: 04:45:58
Finish Time: 04:44:15
Place Overall: 6052
by Gender: 4223 Men
by Division: 435 (age 26)
* i was also 3rd out of 14 laus.
so i'm still sick. marathon running is still in doubt. but i started carbo loading. that might be the best part. you get to eat all this spaghetti and then sleep. well, i'm sure i'm supposed to be running or stretching or something, but all i did was eat and sleep. it was brilliant.
here's the fun for the day: dyson's telescope game it's brilliant. i've been playing a ton and bones said he lost sleep because of it. it's on the website of that boring guy with the commercials with the vacuum with the 100,000 times the force of gravity to have a vacuum that never loses suction. or whatever. whether you buy into his idea about the vacuum or not, the game is kickass.
ok. scary story for the day: Laptops may be fertility risk to men. frightening stuff.
"The increase in scrotal temperature is significant enough to cause changes in sperm parameters," said Dr Yefim Sheynkin"
eesh.
ever wake up with that "wow, it hurts when i swallow, and my sinuses are about to blow up" kind of feeling? i did. yay. so i'm home today. lots of sleep. but, sadly, i can't sleep all day. so i spent part of the day watching mtv's "date my mom". or whatever they call it.
basically, they it's a dating show where the guy chooses which of three girls he wants to date based on his dates with the three girls' mothers. eventually, we're presented with the very awkward scene where the boy stands in front of the three mothers and a limo containing the three daughters. the boy then goes down the line, mother by mother, saying, "hi mother number 1, i think you daughter is not _blank_ enough. so i do not want to date your daughter." the mother replies with a token, "you suck anyway." and the daughter steps out of the limo.
he announces the winning daughter, who comes hopping out of the limo into his arms. [cut to the one-on-one interview with the boy, where he describes his first impression of the girl: "baby's got back?...check! baby's got rack?...check!]
[cut to the reactions from the losing mother-daughter teams]:
mother one: "he sucks. and he's ugly."
daughter two: "i think he wrongly thought i was too innocent. 'cause i like to take risks and have fun."
mother two: "next time i will lie to boys."
i desperately need to get healthy and back to work. the horrible things on tv might be an even bigger reason than me having to be healthy for the marathon, which is less than a week away. yikes.
i sat down here with my lunch break ready to write a logn post about my weekend and whatever else popped into my head. but instead, i spent all that writing energy returning emails to people. but they were really good, really descriptive and informative emails. you would be proud. but it means a lame post. sorry.
but i'll give you this! http://spaces.msn.com/. it's free blog hosting. it's much like http://www.blogger.com/ and others. but it's new. so you might be able to get that blog URL that you want. like http://spaces.msn.com/members/ericlau/. not that i'm gonna use it that much. it's just that in this battle of ericlaus, i just scored a mild victory.
i got my teeth cleaned today. i even had the beautiful dental hygienist. she didn't look so beautiful. maybe it's because i know that she has a husband and kids. maybe because of the way she made very well-polished but very obviously rehearsed small talk. it was awkward, and it made me smile.
anyway, she said that my teeth were clean, my gums looked healthy, and i was taking good care of my teeth. then she proceeded to scrape the hell out of my gums. i don't remember teeth cleanings to be that painful, and i don't think i'm becoming more of a wuss. maybe it's true that you forget how painful things are and only remember the good in things. or maybe i'm just an idiot.
i spent most of the half-hour of scraping wondering how my teeth would be if i used the sonicare deal everyday instead of once a week or so. maybe i should buy that new one from costco. would that prevent the pain? see how i'm more motivated to clean my teeth by the pain of getting my teeth cleaned than the idea of having a "healthy smile". i guess it works either way.
anyway, i now have the cleanest teeth EVER. and i got a free toothbrush and dental floss. yay.