Chan's Personal Blog

So down here in Silicon Valley, it's rather hip to be green and trying to save the environment. At work, we have these "green" coffee paper cups called Ecotainers which are supposed to be good for the environment because they're made of 100% recycled products, and they're biodegradable. From my current experience, I think they probably cause more waste.

So, the day before at work, I filled up my Ecotainer with some warm water and left it on my desk. The following morning, I noticed that a bunch of my papers surrounding my Ecotainer were all wet because the water had soaked through the dang thing. I thought to myself... okay, maybe it's just a flaw in one of these Ecotainers.

I get another Ecotainer and fill it with water. About an hour later, I notice that the desk was getting wet yet again. I don't understand why a cup, designed to hold water was letting water soak through and leak already! I'm all for biodegradable cups, but it shouldn't biodegrade in an hour!

Now I'm experimenting on a double hull design, ie use two Ecotainers. The theory is, once the water soaks through the first Ecotainer, the second one will catch the water. We'll see if my desk is soaking wet when I get into the office tomorrow.

My theory is that they may cause more waste because I can't reuse the green paper cup more than once (since they seem to be a one-shot use), and I end up having to use two cups instead of traditionally one cup.

As I've been exploring Flickr (an excellent photo management service from Yahoo!), I've come across a strange innovation that they've come up with. I am of course speaking of Faceball. Here's a video that explains the game:


To learn more about this game, visit Faceball.org. They have some really awesome photos there. Unfortunately, this cube game hasn't made its way to my office area yet. Perhaps it's time to drop the gauntlet and challenge some Yahoo on my floor to Faceball.

So it looks like Fortune Magazine has come out with 2008's list of the 100 Best Companies To Work For. Here's a list of the top 10:


Not surprised that Google took the top spot again this year.

I just saw this headline from Yahoo News entitled, "Mexico City Starts Grope-Free Buses For Women."


This news is pretty timely as my friend Venu is currently in Japan, and he says that a lot of groping occurs in the Japanese subway system. I wonder if this would catch on in Japan. Women-only bullet trains.

Today concluded Adam & Sarah's trip to Northern California, so your regularly scheduled blog postings will resume. They visited for 10 days, and it feels like we did a lot. Here's the trip itinerary:

Wednesday, January 9th

Arrive in San Jose
Check-in At Chateau Le Chan

Thursday, January 10th

Visit Westfield Valley Fair Mall
NHL Hockey Game @ HP Pavilion - Sharks VS Canucks

Friday, January 11th

Visit Winchester Mystery House
Dinner at the California Pizza Kitchen

Saturday, January 12th

Visit San Francisco
AT&T Park Baseball Field Tour
Chinatown
Lunch at random Chinese Restaurant
Little Italy
Colt Tower
Pier 39 - Fisherman's Wharf
San Francisco Aquarium
Ride Cable Cars
Union Square
Dinner at Ryowa Ramen Noodle House in Mountain View

Today's mission involved picking up Sarah & Adam from the airport. They landed safely at 7:54pm tonight, and no flight delays at all, so all is well. They'll be here in California for a week and a half, so blog postings are going to be inconsistent for this next little while.

I'll be sure to put up some photos though.

In either case, Sarah's already been busy unpacking my house stuff and decorating. Hello home makeover police.

I just came across this really funny instructional video entitled, "How To Enjoy Sushi." It's quite amusing.


Asking the chef about "special" items is really funny. The panda looked really tasty.

Note: This is an over-the-top parody howto manual. Although, the intended audience is Japanese people, instead of foreigners which I initially thought.