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.

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.

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.