Phil’s blog

Tonight I went to wushu practice for the third time since moving out here. I started learning a spear form, and one of the moves is a left-handed cartwheel while the right hand is holding the butt of the spear with the tip dragging on the ground. I had a lot of trouble with this move at first. The second time I tried it, I accidentally lost my grip on the weapon and kicked it high into the air, and it landed about 2 feet away from a little kid practicing his form. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at me. I quickly fetched my spear and said I was sorry, and the kid continued with his form like it wasn’t a big deal or the most hilarious thing ever. I stood on the side, still in shock, but also trying not to laugh. I am laughing right now as I write this. Seriously, is it possible to do something less coordinated than kicking your weapon into the air? It’s hard to imagine. On a related note, I was in my car and dropped my bluetooth headset into the space between the driver’s seat and the center console after practice, spent about 5 minutes trying to find it, and in the process accidentally sounded the horn with my shoulder. I hope nobody was around.

Anyway, embarrassment aside, it was a great practice. My spear technique has improved by leaps and bounds, which isn’t saying much because it was pretty lousy to begin with. It’s great to learn tons of stuff every practice. For my 4 years with UVA wushu, as enjoyable as they were, I did not learn as much as I could have considering the time spent. I think it’s amazing that we’ve been able to compete so well despite not having a coach. It’s unfortunate that now that I finally have access to great coaching, I have little time to train. Back at UVA, time was so plentiful. I miss those days. Perhaps that’ll be the subject of another post.

I’ve been intrigued by qigong for a long time, but until a couple of months ago, had serious doubts about whether it was really possible to manipulate one’s energy.

In late August, Justine and I went to visit some friends at East-West Wing Chun in Oakland. Their eskrima master, Sultan Uddin, was visiting from L.A. and giving some demos and guidance at the school that evening. At one point he mentioned that controlling energy could make techniques more effective. I asked him if he was talking about something similar to tai chi or qigong, and he offered to demonstrate. He did three demonstrations.

In the first demo, he had me stand with my arms straight out in front of me, hand over hand, at shoulder height. He pushed down on my hands while I resisted. The first time, I was able to resist slightly but he’s way bigger than I am, and was able to push my arms down. The second time, he pushed them down immediately, claiming that he disrupted my energy. Surely he could have simply pushed harder and more suddenly, but I didn’t say anything. The third time, he first told me to relax as he slowly ran his palm up my spine, about an inch away. I didn’t feel anything. When we did the exercise again however, I was able to resist easily. I could tell he was pushing harder than before, leaning on my hands with his body weight. It was unreal. After a few seconds, something popped in my shoulder and my arms finally fell. He said that he had given me energy with which I was able to resist. I was shocked by what I had just experienced.

For the second demo, my memory is hazy but I think he first did something similar to the first demo to fortify me with energy. He then had two people stand behind me, feet planted and arms propping me forward to keep me from being pushed back. With two fingers, he pushed just to the side of the gap below the sternum. Seemingly without much effort, he pushed me and the two people behind me back a few feet despite that they were pushing as hard as they could in the opposite direction. I suppose the key point is that I was completely unhurt by a fairly large force concentrated into a single point on my chest.

For the third demo, he had Justine stand facing me with her left arm outstretched, palm a few inches away from my chest. He stood behind her with his palms a couple of inches away from her back. I just stood there not knowing what was happening. After a little while he finished and I asked what was supposed to have happened. He told me to ask the people watching. I did, and they said that I was swaying back and forth. I guess he was supposedly controlling me by sending his energy through Justine.

The second and third demos were questionable; I can see how they could easily be faked. But the first one blew my mind. Resisting with my arms that last time definitely felt different. He had definitely done something to me. I asked him if this was part of eskrima and he said not really; it’s something you can develop by practicing anything for a really long time. He joked that you could even gain such power through gardening. He added that he had only shown me the kind of energy manipulation used for fighting, and that healing was much different. During the drive home, Justine and I were both wired. It was amazing to see that this was real, and of course I had many questions. Unfortunately, Master Uddin only visits every couple of months, so it would be impossible to train with him regularly.

A couple of weeks later, I searched for qigong teachers near Mountain View and found Unison Health Connection, an accupuncture and qigong healing practice owned by Master Philip Yang. He was offering a class that started in a few weeks, so I stopped by after work one evening to talk to him. He seemed very genuine and gave satisfactory answers to my questions, so I decided to go for it despite the high price.

The bulk of each class covers principles of qi, with a bit of technique at the end of each session. The techniques form a 16-part sequence of movements and meditation which we’re supposed to practice each day if possible. It’s only 30-45 minutes to go through the whole thing, but it’s hard to keep this up during the work week. I’m averaging about 4 sessions a week, and the only way I’ll realistically do this every day is if I wake up earlier and make time for it in the morning (which is when it’s optimal anyway).

I think I’ve made decent progress. For the first couple of weeks I couldn’t feel anything, but during the third class he had us emit qi from the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other. I could definitely feel it. I’ve since tried sending qi into Justine’s palm a few times and she can also feel it almost every time. At this point I can usually send qi into my hands at will. It feels like a very subtle internal pressure, like my hand is being inflated slightly. If I send a lot of qi, my hands will start to tingle. I think I can also draw qi out of other things through my hands and into my body, but this would be harder to confirm.

We’ve covered a lot in the class, some of which is difficult for me to believe, such as contacting ancient masters or gathering qi from things that are thousands of miles away. Each class seems to cover more fantastic things, but I’m trying to keep an open mind. For the moment I’ll keep practicing and will post again if there are breakthroughs :]

It’s amazing to see the club members and demos get better every year. It’s sad that for the first time since we started performing at Culturefest in 2002, I wasn’t around to see it. Hats off to Preston for taking the footage. Enjoy!

I know I’m embarrassingly out of the loop on popular culture, but I recently learned about ghost riding. From Wikipedia:

To ghost ride, frequently used in the context of “ghost riding the whip” (a “whip” being a vehicle) or simply ghostin’ is one of the latest trends to be popularized by Hyphy culture, which originated in the Bay Area of California. This act involves the driver and/or passengers of any given vehicle accelerating while in gear, shifting to neutral, exiting while it is still rolling and dancing beside it or on the hood or roof. It is one of the highest forms of “going dumb” and a representation of the style of hyphy.

It’s both hilarious and disquieting that this has become so popular. But mostly hilarious. If you’re curious, check out one of the better ghostin’ videos put together by some highschool kids, but definitely watch this clip of a guy ghost-wrecking his truck (he bails out just in time).

I’ve had a recent mini-obsession with a dessert called uji kintoki. As Vickie has informed me, this is actually one of several variations on a popular asian shaved ice dessert. This version consists of shaved ice topped with green tea syrup, condensed milk, red bean paste, green tea ice cream, and mochi balls (sticky blobs made from rice flour and water). Justine and I first encountered this during our trip to Japan last summer at a place in downtown Kyoto. It was amazing.

The first attempt was made on a whim while Justine was visiting. We got a cheap ice shaver from Target and ingredients from a nearby Japanese supermarket. As pictured below, these included sugar, condensed milk, macha (green tea powder), red bean paste, and rice flour. The first time I was a bit impatient and didn’t take much care with the presentation, and it ended up looking like green soup with crap floating in it as you can see from the photo. I’ve made it twice since with better results each time.

Here’s my current recipe:

1. Make the mochi balls by first putting about 1oz rice flour per serving into a small bowl. Add water slowly while squishing it around with your fingers until you have dough that will maintain its shape. Break off little pieces, roll them into balls, and put them in a pot of boiling water. Once they’re all floating, transfer them to a bowl of cold water.
2. Make the green tea syrup (about 2-4T per serving) by slowly dissolving sugar into boiling or near boiling water until it’s about a 1:1 ratio. Slowly add a tiny bit of macha, about .5g per serving, until it’s combined. Put it in the freezer to chill.
3. Optionally form the red bean paste into whichever form you like. An easy option is to roll them into little balls like the mochi.
4. Shave some ice and pack in densely into a bowl.
5. Top with the green tea syrup and drizzle condensed milk. This step will likely destroy your perfect little ice mound. I’m still trying to figure out how to mitigate this, and I’m thinking next time I’ll put the syrup in the freezer for longer until it’s near freezing before I pour it on. Packing the ice differently may also be an option.
6. Add little scoops of ice cream, then the mochi and red bean paste. Enjoy!

Am finally getting around to writing about this, but the details are getting hazy : / Must stop procrastinating. Anyway, two weeks ago Justine and I went out to look for a cache called Swimming Hole. There was a ton of brush and we didn’t end up finding it, but it was nice to get outside and we passed a giant spider walking down the trail in the opposite direction. Actually we stopped to stare at it for a bit and made it climb onto a stick. The thing was completely unphased. We must have spent at least 30 minutes walking around the supposed location of the cache. It didn’t help that my GPS never seems to get a good fix. At one point we got excited after seeing what looked like a plastic container. Upon closer inspection it definitely wasn’t a cache of any sort. We’re still not sure what it was, perhaps a bong? More photos here.

It occurred to me that I’m losing my ability to write sentences because my first instinct is always to make lists. I’d say about 50% of my emails contain bulleted lists. It seems more efficient to not have transitions and sentence boundaries, leading to higher information density. On the other hand, maybe people are used to the flow of sentences and the abrupt transition from one point to the next actually slows down the reader.

Anyway, the point of this post is to summarize roughly the last two weeks. Unlike the last massive update (after Justine’s previous visit), this time I’ll follow up with a couple of additional posts with a bit more detail on certain things.

Justine and her family came out here on the 9/27 for her cousin’s wedding. The ceremony was on 9/30 at Villa Montalvo. I’m not a huge fan of weddings (I don’t dislike them but don’t get excited about them either), but it was nice hanging out with Justine and her family. Dinner was great and I was even convinced to dance a bit during the after party (an extremely rare sight). Her parents and younger sister Syl left the next day, but she and her twin sister Constance stuck around and stayed at my place. I’m glad Cons stayed a few days because last time Justine visited, she got really bored while I was at work. Cons stayed 4 extra days and did stuff with Justine during the day, then we’d all have dinner and see a movie or something after I got back. Justine had planned to stay until 10/9, but within a couple of hours of her flight, changed her mind and rescheduled for 10/13 Here’s a brief list of what we did (including when Cons was here):

• Movies
  • Dumbo - Their idea, but was actually decent for an old children’s movie (1941!). I liked the crows.
  • Akira - My idea. They didn’t like it much but I guess you have to be more of an anime fan to appreciate it, especially because it was made in 1988.
  • The Science of Sleep - Charming, hilarious, awesome.
• Restaurants
  • Jatbar.com is a great resource for restaurant reviews in the Bay Area. We used it to find a few of the places below.
  • Maruichi - Multiple times for udon and ramen. Can’t be beat.
  • Totoro - Kalbi and chap chae, nice but less pickled veggies than we got last time
  • Pasta Pomodoro - Perhaps the most reasonably priced restaurant in Santana Row. We got prosciutto/mozzarella/asparagus bruschetta, some kind of meat/pasta soup, and linguini with clams and white wine sauce. They were gross, pretty good, and pretty good, respectively. There was also garlic bread which was served cold, intentionally apparently, which was also gross.
  • Pho Hoa - Justine is getting tired of this place but it’s fast, cheap, satisfying, and reasonably healthy, and I still love it
  • Sushi Coast - Random little japanese restaurant in the middle of nowhere. Read that their rolls are a great bargain on Jatbar, but we weren’t blown away. On the way back we saw an interesting sight on the 101: a police car with lights flashing was swerving back and forth across the width of the highway, making a sine wave as it progressed, and causing all cars behind it to slow down. We thought there might be an accident or hazard ahead but there was nothing, and the cop just exited after a minute or so. Strange.
  • Back A Yard - Tiny carribean place in Menlo Park. We got jerk chicken and ox tail, both of which were incredibly delicious, but the ox tail was like 1/2 fat.
  • Taqueria la Bamba - Massive burritos for cheap - we got carnitas and pollo asado. What makes this place stand out is that they brown the meat so it’s slightly crispy - delicious!
  • Momoya - They disappointed me this time. We got the sashimi dinner for two as we did the last time Justine visited, but this time the selection was much smaller, including only tuna, salmon, yellow tail, and scallops (which I’m not a fan of by the way). Definitely not worth $40. I’ll probably give them another chance but I’ll definitely ask about selection before ordering another variety meal.
• Cooking
  • Couscous with golden raisins, pine nuts, and green onions - Quick, easy, delcious, plentiful, reheats well. We made this a lot last year at UVA.
  • Thai shrimp curry - We also made this a lot at UVA. Our version is based on the linked recipe, but minus the spinach and plus chopped onion, bamboo, and snow peas. Rivals any restaurant’s curry in my opinion, but isn’t so good reheated.
  • Uji kintoki - A japanese dessert consisting of shaved ice topped with green tea, red bean paste, and optionally condensed milk, mochi, and ice cream. I’ll write more about this in a later post.
• Other stuff
  • Shopping/dining at Santana Row, including trips to the Diesel store ;]
  • Mountain View Public Library - Justine loves books
  • Geocaching - Will write more about this later.
  • Shopping at Ikea - Got a sweet bookcase.
  • Toys R Us - Thought it would be cool to go back to this place that was so awesome during childhood, but now all the toys seem lame :[
  • I’m sure there’s more but my memory is hazy.
  • EDIT: forgot to mention taking Justine to the emergency room at 4am for an itchy rash that would appear in seemingly random place on her body and was driving her crazy.  Turns out it was an alergic reaction to amoxicillin prescribed for a tooth infection.  The doctor gave her a steroid and Claratin and there was no trouble after that.  We were pretty hungry so we went cruising for burgers afterwards.  Luckily I didn’t have to work the next day :]