I don't really believe in anything beyond what's explainable by science. But there have been lots of amazing bizarre coincidences and synchronicities in life which defy explanation. I wish I'd started keeping a list earlier, because I'm sure I'd be pretty impressed by now. Unfortunately, now I've forgotten many of them. I'll try to recall as many as possible from the past, and then start entering them in here as they happen.

It takes discipline to write these down, and I often seem to forget good coincidences before I get a chance to write them down- so I guess this is just a sampling of the real thing.

Summer 1976

In general, my memory of my early youth is pretty cloudy, but I distinctly remember one bizarre experience from 1976 when I was six years old. I clearly remember standing on a warm summer day in the kitchen of the house where I grew up, and asking my mom "What year is this?". She replied "What do you think it is?". I said "I don't know. Ummm, one nine seven six?". And my mom replied "Of course", as if it was obvious. I remember being amazed that I had guessed this number, off the top of my head! Of course, in retrospect, I assume I must have heard my parents or school teacher mention the date many times, and I was just mimicking them - but if that were the case, why didn't I say "nineteen seventy-six" - no one says "one nine seven six". I could also assume that I was a smart enough kid to say "Well, I was born in 1970, and I'm six now, so counting on my fingers, now it must be 1976" - but I remember that I didn't do that - I just guessed a number. So whether or not this was some remarkable coincidence, I do remember it as being one, and I've never forgotten it.

Aug 1997

I was writing and recording a song, a somewhat spacey drawn-out hypnagogic-inspired adventure. The opening is a very sparse and simple guitar part, and I was seeking some kind of recording which I could play in the distant background - the feeling of a radio being on in the distance while you're falling asleep.

So, I spent some time going through old vinyl records, and recording pieces onto tape. I found an old 1958 record, The Melachrino Strings' Music For Dining, one of those RCA Victor "Moods in Music" records with the goofy color covers, and I arbitrarily chose the first song from side 2 and put it on a a tape (Gross/Lawrence's Tenderly- a jazz standard). I took this song, and recorded it onto a spare track next to my previously recorded guitar work. I didn't spend any time whatsoever trying to line up the beginning of Tenderly with the beginning of my guitar stuff, I just dropped it onto tape in a random spot, and recorded the whole thing.

It was phenomenal - it was the first thing I tried, and it worked beautifully. The harmonic changes and melody in Tenderly complemented my guitar parts so well, synchronizing almost perfectly with my guitar - I faded out Tenderly through a couple of sections where it didn't quite fit, but I didn't make any cuts, just fades. I just absolutely couldn't believe it - the result was an entirely different, haunting sound. It was an almost religious experience, and I became obsessed with continuing this piece of music - at one point the recording was over 9 minutes long, but I finally finished it up at about 6 minutes.

In a fit of whimsy, I named the song Music for Dining. Please listen to it, and let me know what you think...

Mid-Aug, 1997

In early Aug 1996, I wrote a song one day about a dreamy girl. I had no girlfriend nor any love interest at the time, so this was pure fantasy. It was the kind of spontaneous creative songwriting burst which is very exciting and satisfying - suddenly some strummed chords on the guitar sound good, then suddenly some words come together as lyrics, and suddenly I have a song! It was a nice song and I was pretty happy with it, but for some reason over the next few months I forgot about it.

Almost precisely a year later, my relationship with Chunling was blossoming. One day, I sat down to play guitar, and suddenly found myself playing a distant, familiar song. After a minute, I realized it was that old song, which I had forgotten. I tried to remember the lyrics, but had to go look for the piece of paper on which I'd written them. When I found it, I was stunned, both by the fact that the date written on the page was almost precisely one year earlier, and that the first verse seemed to be written about Chunling!

oh dreamy baby i know you are
a year of spring mornings i've known, risen in an hour
i've seen you before me, moonlit dreamy baby

The "Chun" in Chunling means "spring" (the season). It had been almost exactly a year since I wrote the song. And we frequently talked about how fast time goes by when we're together ("seems like just an hour since we met!"). Also, a few weeks after meeting Chunling, I had a very intense dream (or hypnagogic hallucination?) in which I opened my eyes while laying in the dark, and Chunling's face was above me, illuminated by the moonlight.

The 2nd verse of the song was more abstract and poetic, and didn't really relate to Chunling and I. So, I know I was being sentimental and romantic, and reading too much into this, but it was indeed an interesting coincidence.

Aug 30, 1997

I was the best man at my friend Chuck's wedding. My parents also came to the wedding. During the reception, I went over to say hello to my parents before I had to give my speech (I was supposed to do the best-man speech at a particular time, say 8:30 - I can't remember now exactly). My dad chose this moment to tell me that a good friend of the family, Larry Brown, was dying of cancer in the hospital, and that he probably wouldn't last much longer. Now, Larry was one of my dad's best friends, so I'm sure he was thinking of him, but this was certainly a strange time to tell me, as I'm sure my parents knew I was pretty nervous about having to give the speech in a few minutes. The next day, my dad called me to tell me that Larry had died the previous evening, at almost precisely 8:30, the time when my dad had told me...

Incidentally, Princess Diana was killed in a car crash that same night...

Mid 1998 sometime

My good friend Rob and I have similar tastes in life, so maybe this one isn't so cosmically inexplicable. Rob lives in Seattle now, and we only talk every month or so. But each time we talk, we tend to marvel how our lives follow a similar path. Often it's just a matter of us sudddenly choosing to read a book at the same time.

Well once, I was lying in bed, thinking I'd like to start reading a new book. I looked over at my bookshelf and scanned across some book titles - Don DeLillo's White Noise jumped out at me. That's a great book, I've read it before, but I'd like to read it again. The first time I read it, a year or so before, I had recommended it to Rob, who had started reading it, but lost interest and put it down after a few days. So a few days later, after thinking I'd like to read it again, I called Rob and I told him that I wanted to re-read White Noise, and he told me that he had just that week picked it up again and tried to get into it, but again didn't like it very much, and gave up.

June 18, 1998

Chunling and I were getting ready to go on roadtrip. As I was falling asleep I was trying to think of some good tapes to take in the car. Roadtrips demand good music. Suddenly I remembered an old tape I hadn't listened to for years and years: the Good Morning Vietnam soundtrack. Perfect roadtrip music. So, the next morning, I remembered to find the tape, and we listened to it in the car. That night, in the hotel room, some TV channel was playing Good Morning Vietnam, the movie. We just happened to turn on the TV before going to sleep, at like 1:30am, and Good Morning Vietnam, which I hadn't thought about in years, happened to be on at that time. Bizarre.

Sometime in July, 1998

I had a really disturbing dream that I was sitting at a family dinner, and my mom suddenly announced that my grandma had died. In the morning, I called my mom to ask if everything was ok - she said that grandma was fine. A couple days later, I was talking to my friend Charlie, and he told me he had to cancel our regular Wednesday meeting - he had to go out of town for a few days because his grandma had just died...

Sept 3, 1998

I tried to call Chunling at the lab in the afternoon to say hello - the first time I had used the phone all day. Her line was busy. A few minutes later I tried again and reached her: she said she had just tried to call me to say hello - but my line was busy. So, we had both suddenly had the urge to call each other to say hello, and had picked up the phone at precicely the same moment.

Oct 2, 1998

This is ridiculous, but true: I was sitting in a waiting room this morning, waiting for my appointment. I was passing the time by reading an article on the Iridium global satellite telephone system, in the Oct issue of Wired magazine. My back was suddenly unbearably itchy, and I had to put my hand under my shirt to really give it a good scratch. In the next paragraph of the article was the following sentence: "You scratch my back. I'll scratch yours". Hehehe.

Oct 7, 1998

Recently I started reading Frank Drake's Is Anyone Out There? the Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Today while eating lunch, I read the chapter titled "Building a better mouse trap" which describes the awesome Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico. This telescope is actually a giant bowl 1000 feet across sitting in a natural depression in the mountains of the island, with an enormous receiving structure suspended above it. It was an interesting and entertaining chapter, and I was thinking about it quite a bit during the day. That night, after Wushu practice, I was exhausted sitting on the couch, about 11:30, and Chunling turned on the TV to PBS. It was a science program on the Caribbean islands, narrated by Alan Alda. We learned about the volcano in Montserrat, and then how steel drums are made and played. And then suddenly Alan Alda was in Puerto Rico, walking up to the edge of the great Arecibo dish. I couldn't believe my eyes - I had never heard of this thing until today, and then I both read all about it, and see a documentary about it on the same day! The Arecibo Observatory is often used in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence - is someone out there trying to tell me something? At the end of the documentary I found that it was called Scientific American Frontiers, and the episode was called "Science in Paradise". I will definitely watch again next week...

Oct 12, 1998

Last night Chunling wanted to start reading a new book. I recommended a book from my shelf that I haven't looked at in a long time: Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses. Today while eating lunch, I finished reading the last chapter of Frank Drake's Is Anyone Out There? the Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. At the beginning of each chapter, Frank Drake chooses a quote or poem to set the tone for the chapter. He begins the last chapter "No Greater Discovery" with a poem by, guess who, Diane Ackerman. The poem is "As our metal eyes wake" from Jaguar of Sweet Laughter.

Nov 4, 1998

Chunling and I had our friend Debbie over for dinner. We were serving dinner and I offered drinks: "We have sparkling water, juice, beer and hooch. What would you like Deb?" She said "Hooch? What the heck is hooch?" Chunling and I explained that it's a lemonade flavored beer that's really delicious. Deb said "Isn't hooch the name of an animal or something?!" I said "Naw - it's more like the slang name of alcohol back in moonshine days". (Here's the Webster's definition). Deb said "Wasn't that the name of a dog in a movie or something?" "Oh yeah," I said. "That was a silly Tom Hanks movie called Turner and Hooch - I completely forgot about that movie!!" So Deb passed on the hooch, and that was pretty much the end of the conversation about hooch.

The next night, Chunling and I turned on the TV to relax a bit. We were flipping through channels, and guess what we came across?! You guessed it: Turner and Hooch. I hadn't seen or heard of that movie in almost 10 years, then here it is twice in two days. Like Deb's choice on the drink, we passed on the movie and watched something else...

Nov 8, 1998

I was driving over to Plearn Thai restaurant in Berkeley to eat lunch. I was reflecting that I hadn't been as productive the previous night as I had hoped, working on some new music. I was listening in the car to a cd by Node, and I mentally reaffirmed that I'd like to write some big ambient electronic piece of music. I thought, maybe I'll make it 15 minutes long and call it Opus Number 5 or something. I was reflecting how that might sound pompous, but maybe it would also be amusing, and then I arrived at the parking lot, and walked over to Plearn to eat.

Over a plate of yellow chicken curry, I picked up my book - Isaac Asimov's The Left Hand of the Electron, a collection of essays on science. I started reading a new essay, on the evolution of the platypus (more interesting than it sounds, really!) In Asimov's opening paragraphs, he talks about how he's written so many books, that he can no longer keep count. He then says how he wrote a book, titled Opus 100, which listed his first 100 books chronologically.

I practically dropped the book into the chicken at that point, musing that just moments before the word "Opus" had popped into my head, and now here it was on the page of this book. Coincidence, or some kind of prescient daydream?!

Nov 9, 1998

Chunling and I were both looking over some books, trying to decide what books to take with us on our upcoming vacation. I looked over my shelf, and picked up a couple things.The first was Douglas Adams' Last Chance To See. I read the first page to see if it grabbed me - Adams' first sentences are: "This isn't at all what I expected. In 1985, by some sort of journalistic accident, I was sent to Madagascar with Mark Carwardine to look for an almost extinct form of lemur called the aye-aye." I thought "Aye-Ayes and lemurs?! Never heard of em". Adams is always a good read, but I decided to pick up the next book, Oliver Sacks' The Island of the Colorblind.

I sat down to read the first few pages of Sacks' book. Meanwhile Chunling was looking through a stack of books. She looked over 3 or 4 books, then settled on Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park. I told her "Yeah - that's a fun book, you'll like it", and went back to reading my book. Not more than a few seconds later, on the first page of Sacks' book, I read "I adored The Lost World, Conan Doyle's splendid yarn about an isolated South American plateau full of dinosaurs and Jurassic life-forms..." I yelped with surprise and told Chunling "Wow! There's one for the cosmic coincidences page!!"

Then, two paragraphs later, I read the following: "For islands were, so to speak, experiments of nature, places blessed or cursed by geographic singularity to harbor unique forms of life - the aye-ayes and pottos, the lorises and lemurs of Madagascar..." This time I had to laugh - that's just too bizarre that on the same page, within just a few minutes, I'd read again about aye-ayes in Madagascar (which I'd never heard of before!), and just after the Jurassic Park coincidence.

As it seemed that the planets were aligned (or something!) for me to read The Island of the Colorblind, I put the other books back on the shelf, and settled in to read the first chapter. (Interesting book so far!)

Nov 14, 1998

Chunling and I were driving up the coast of Oregon on highway 1. We had enjoyed really nice weather (uncommon for Nov in Oregon!), and had visited the sea lion caves in Florence, and some tide pools at Cape Perpetua. Our next stop was a stunning view along the coast from the amusingly titled Cape Foulweather. As we parked the car, I yelled out jokingly "What foul weather!", and almost immediately the wind picked up, and it started sprinkling rain. After a couple minutes we got back in the car as the rain really picked up. We had really foul weather for the rest of the day!!

Nov 19, 1998

A followup to the Nov 9 Jurassic Park coincidence, as well as another entry in the pop-culture related coincidences. Very similar to the Good Morning Vietnam coincidence.

Chunling and I were well into our big roadtrip, driving from Port Angeles, Washington to Portland, Oregon. Chunling was reading some of Jurassic Park to me in the car, since it was raining so hard outside and there was no nice scenery to look out. We started talking about the sequel to Jurassic Park, The Lost World. Chunling had seen the movie called The Lost World back in China, which I assured her was not the Jurassic Park sequel, but the campy dinosaur movie from 1960 (based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic).

Anyway, that night, in our hotel room in Portland, we switched on the TV, exhausted from our long drive. Almost immediately, we saw an advertisement for "Jurassic Park: the Lost World", which would be showing on wednesday or something. We had to laugh, as I said "well, that's a coincidence", and Chunling said, "naw, that doesn't count!"

I have to wonder about these pop-culture coincidences... Am I subconsciously driven by media events?! Unpleasant thought.

Nov 27, 1998

Chunling and I were putting our pictures from our trip in a photo album, and reminiscing about some of our experiences. We were writing little labels for some of the pictures, and couldn't quite remember the dates on which we took some of them, so Chunling pulled a 1998 picture calendar off the wall to used as a reference.

I was looking at the pictures we took at Cannon Beach, Oregon. This beach is famous for several huge rocks which rest like alien kings in the water. Chunling and I were discussing how they might have gotten there - she is convinced that aliens put them there! At the same time, Chunling was looking through the picture calendar to find the exact date that we were at Cannon Beach. The calendar contains pictures of many beautiful nature scenes, and guess what the second pictured in the calendar is? The rocks at Cannon Beach during sunset!

Nov 27, 1998

After having read that Michael J. Fox has Parkinson's disease, Chunling and I were recalling how much we enjoyed the Back to the Future movies, and thought we should watch some of his other movies. We borrowed a tape from my parents house that had some movies that we had recorded in the mid-'80s, including The Secret of My Success, one of Michael J. Fox's real winners - a real, super-dated time capsule of the '80s.

So, after finishing putting the pictures in the photo album (see previous coincidence!), we decided to watch The Secret of My Success. Chunling turned on the TV, and change channels a bit, stopping at a familiar face. "Isn't that Tom Hanks?" she asked. I recognized the movie as the lousy mid-'80s comedy, The Money Pit.

So, I went to find the videotape we had borrowed from my parents house, and as I was putting the tape into the VCR, I noticed on the label that the first movie on the tape was The Secret of My Success, and the second was The Money Pit!!

Late Nov, 1998

Chunling and I were cooking dinner when the phone rang. It was my friend Chris Muir, and we chatted for about 10 minutes. When I hung up, Chunling asked, "Was that Chris?" I said it was. She asked, "Oh, how's Thora?" I said, "No no no, wrong Chris! That was Chris Muir on the phone." I hadn't talked to Chris Knight or his girlfriend Thora in awhile.

A few seconds later, the phone rang again. This time, guess who it was - Chris Knight! Bizarre!

Dec 3,4,7, 1998

On the night of Dec 3rd, I woke up at about 4 a.m., and couldn't get back to sleep for two hours. That's very strange because usually I have no trouble sleeping. This time, however, I just couldn't sleep.

The next night, at 4:16 a.m., there was a powerful shaking earthquake, which woke me up in a panic. I was so full of sour adrenaline, that I couldn't get back to sleep for a few hours.

Two nights later, I was dreaming that I was caught in a rain storm, and my shirt and back were wet and cold. I woke up, and realized that the blanket wasn't covering my back and shoulders, and I was cold. No big deal really, but, when I glanced over at the clock before trying to go back to sleep, the time was 4:16 a.m. exactly.

Dec 4, 6, 1998

On Dec 4, Chunling and I went to my parents house to celebrate my sister's birthday party. My cousin Roger and his girlfriend Kathy were visiting from Australia. In a few days, Roger and Kathy would be continuing their holiday in Las Vegas. We were talking a bit about Las Vegas, and I was saying how Las Vegas had been started in the desert by gangsters. Someone else chimed in, saying, "Yeah, that guy, what was his name...?" I said, "There was a movie with Warren Beatty, and Annette Bening - Bugsy - which was about the founding of Las Vegas." "That's right - Bugsy Mallone!"

The next night, Chunling and I turned on the TV, and almost immediately, what did we see?

I'm beginning to think that Chunling and I have the power to control the media!

Dec 9, 10 1998

As we were leaving the house, I pulled on my big heavy boots but didn't tie the laces. As we walked down the driveway, me sort of dragging my feet, Chunling teased me saying "you're walking like a crab!" She explained to me that this is a kind of insult in Chinese, because crabs don't walk like other animals, but walk sort of sideways.

The next night, at wushu practice, Mark was teaching because our teacher Patti had injured her back. Mark was having us do all these different kinds of exercises which we had never done before. One exercise was called "around the world", in which the person in the front of the line would do something and everyone else would have to do the same thing. Mark first did a duck walk, and we all struggled around the room walking like ducks (this is much harder than it sounds!) Next, Mark yelled out "crab walk" and proceeded to walk around the room like a crab (on hands and feet with his back facing the floor). We had never done any exercise called the "crab walk" before, and I had to laugh out loud hearing Mark say "crab walk" just after Chunling was teasing me the night before.

Dec 19, 22, 1998

Chunling and I visited my parents house on Saturday to decorate the Christmas tree. We had put on a CD of old swing and jazz. As we were decorating the tree, I was only half listening to the music. I remember hearing a woman's voice, and thinking that I recognized her and used to listen to her a lot but couldn't remember her name right now. Since I was only half paying attention, I just forgot about it.

Last night, Chunling and I watched Deep Impact on our new DVD player. During the movie, Tea Leoni's character is trying to figure out what E.L.E. (extinction level event) means, and she searches on her computer. One of the first few results that popped up in her search for "E.L.E." was "Ella Fitzgerald". This triggered the memory of the music on Saturday, and reminded me that that was of course who the singer was!

Dec 31, 1998

I was finally finishing filling out my photo album from my trip to Beijing and Tokyo from Oct 1997 (Ok, I'm a procrastinator sometimes!) It was New Years Eve, and Chunling and I were taking it easy after a big XinJiang style feast. I finished up the Beijing pictures, and was looking at the Tokyo pictures. I was referring back to the guide book I had used while travelling, trying to remember everything. As I was labelling the photo from the Meiji Jinju shrine, I read in the guide book that millions of people converge at Meiji Jinju on New Years Eve to celebrate. Wow, that's a coincidence!

So then Chunling turned on the TV, and tried to find some New Years Eve stuff to watch. I guess it was still early, as nothing was on, but she came across the movie Red Corner on HBO. This movie is set in the heart of Beijing with scenes in Tiananmen square, which I of course had just been looking at in my photo album!

Jan 2, 1999

I watched an interesting documentary on PBS called "The Battle Over Citizen Kane", which detailed Orson Welles' career, peaking with his production of Citizen Kane, followed by his gradual decline into anonymity. The movie was a direct attack on the rich and powerful William Randolf Hearst. They described how Hearst essentially pulled America into a war with Spain in Cuba, using his newspaper to fan the flames. Before this documentary, I had no idea that Hearst had done any of this.

The next night, Chunling and I watched Wag The Dog, in which the government's spin doctors create a war to attract the public's attention away from the President's affair. In the interview with the director (a bonus on the DVD), Barry Levnison mentions a parallel with Hearst's involvement in the Spanish-American War in Cuba.

Until today, I knew nothing about this, and then I hear about twice in a row!

Jan 9-10, 1999

Similar to the last entry, a TV and movie interchange. Last night I watched Godzilla on DVD, which opens with grainy old-newscast-style scenes of American nuclear testing over South Pacific islands (which obviously result in giant city-destroying mutated lizards). The next night, I came across a PBS documentary called The Atomic Movie or something, about the American nuclear testing program. They showed the same (or very similar) footage of the nuclear testing on the South Pacific islands...

Jan 20, 1999

Chunling was having problems with her PC monitor. All the stuff on the screen had strange shadows (a ghost image just next to the original image). I found an old magnetic-shielding thing which clamps onto the monitor cable to reduce magnetic interference, and the problem was solved!

I went back to my PC where I was working on my Pulsar web page. Specifically, I was writing about the Pulsar's modular synthesizer. I remembered that someone had posted a message to Analogue Heaven saying that John Bowen, who apparently used to work for Sequential Circuits, helped design the Pulsar modular system. So I searched around on the Internet for anything about this John Bowen of SCI. After a few minutes, I came across a message posted somewhere by a John Bowen, asking about magnetic shielding of audio cables! I don't know if that was the John Bowen I was looking for, but it was an outrageously bizarre coincidence!

Jan 26, 1999

I was walking out of the Andronico's grocery store in a contemplative mood. I recalled that on my way into the store, I had been hit right on the head by a single falling drop of water, so this time, on my way out, I wondered what the chances were of being hit again. For some reason, in the 30 seconds or so walking to the car, I considered how one could determine such a likelihood, which got me thinking about the mathematics of describing natural phenomenon, chaos theory, (none of which I undestand mind you).

When I got in the car, the CD player picked up where it had left off, the very beginning of the second track on the Pi soundtrack, which I had just purchased and was listening to for the first time. A voice from the car speakers said "Mathematics is the language of nature", and then the song started. That is certainly bizarre!

On top of that, the next day I noticed that a few tracks later on the CD is Banco de Gaia's Drippy, which features the sound of water dripping as a percussive element of the song.

Feb 24, 1999

I received the new AAA magazine "Via" in the mail, and the cover announced "Belize: It's a Jungle Out There". I thought, I've heard of Belize, but don't even know where it is. I picked up the magazine and read a bit of the article - turns out it's in the Caribbean.

That night, feeling lazy, I turned on the TV and a movie Hard Rain was just starting. I got sucked in to it, even though it was a pretty lousy movie. At one point, Christian Slater's character mentions that he had thought about moving to Belize. Synchronicity!

Feb 25, 1999

Getting HBO on cable is dangerous, as I often turn on the TV for a minute, and then find myself sucked into mediocre movies (and with no commercial breaks, it's sometimes difficult to break free). So, having been accidentally sucked into the Peacemaker, I was surprised at the end to notice that the musical score had been done by Hans Zimmer - a composer whose name I've been hearing a lot lately, but didn't know much about.

The next morning, I picked up the new issue of Keyboard magazine over breakfast, and there was a big article on, guess who, Hans Zimmer, and his movie production studio Media Ventures. Of particular note was the picture of his giant Moog Modular synthesizer, as I've been very interested in modular synthesis lately.

Feb 25, 1999

Visiting my parents for dinner, my mom was showing me a bunch of photographs of relatives, etc. In one picture, she showed me a picture of my uncle at his new house in "Cape Shank" - a very comical sounding place name, which I laughed at.

Later that night, I was doing some work while Chunling was watching the news on TV in the background. I overheard a headline reporting that Glenn Seaborg (Nobel prize winner for his discovery of plutonium and research into other superheavy elements) had just died. Read his obituary. I turned from my computer to watch the rest of the news report, and at the end, the reporter said "I'm Chuck Shank, reporting live from..." SHANK! Hahaha.

Mar 7, 1999

While sitting at Plearn Thai restaurant, eating lunch and reading Gleick's Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman, I read this passage:

" The ability to reason, to compute, to manipulate the symbols and rules of logic - this unnatural talent, too must lie at the very margin, where small differences in raw talent have enormous consequences, where a merely good physicist must stand in awe of Dyson, and where Dyson, in turn, stands in awe of Feynman. Merely to divide 158 by 192 presses most human minds to the limit of exertion. To master - as modern particle physicists must - the machinery of group theory and current algebra, of perturbative expansions and non-Abelian gauge theories, of spin statistics and Yang-Mills, is to sustain in one's mind a fantstic house of cards at once steely and delicate. To manipulate that framework and to innovate within it, requires a mental power that nature did not demand of scientists in past centuries."

Literally at the moment I was reading this passage, I became aware of a converstation between a young woman and an older man at the next table. She was saying, with much exasperation, "I just have problems solving equations! I can do algebra, but I just can't apply the equations!!"

Mar 18, 1999

Last night, I was looking for pictures of Venus (I can't remember why exactly), and came across an excellent website on the solar system: The Nine Planets, a Multimedia Tour of the Solar System. There are some fantastic pictures of the planets there, including one of the surface of Venus, which I marvelled at for some time.

Then today, I was chatting with a friend over ICQ, giving some advice about publishing audio on the internet using MP3, etc. But, In the midst of the conversation, completely out of the blue, he said "Have you seen the Nine Planets website? Cool!" My answer was something like "WHOOOAAA!!"

Apr 4, 1999

pending...

Apr 26, 1999

I'm helping Chunling set up her investments online at Fidelity. We realize we need to set up a PIN code for her to access her account information. We spend some time scanning the Fidelity pages for info on how to do this.

Phone rings.

It's my Dad, and without barely even a hello, asks "Do you know how to set up a PIN code to access a Fidelity account on-line?"

May 11, 1999

Waiting for a conference call meeting to begin, I realized it's getting late. I tried to call one of the other folks but their line was busy, so assuming they started without me, I sent an email to them, with the subject "Still waiting", saying I was waiting by the phone...

Just after sending it, I received some new mail. I switched to my Pulsar mailing-list folder, and there were seven new unread messages, all with the subject "still waiting"!! (Something about the new version of the pulsar software being delayed again...)

May 13, 1999

Today, my friend Mark asked me some questions over ICQ about buying a DVD player. He was interested in a particular JVC model, which I didn't know much about...

Minutes later, I received an email, sent to the wrong address at planetz.com (I get lots of accidental mail, any mail to the planetz.com domain ends up in my mailbox). This email contained a sales promotion about the exact same JVC DVD player model which Mark had been asking about.

May 16, 1999

Today we looked at some Teak furniture at Smith & Hawkens, impressed by its beauty and its pricetag. This evening, we flipped through channels on the TV, and came across a silly movie with Tom Hanks and John Candy - Volunteers. We watched for a few minutes, because we both like Tom Hanks, and we reached an amusing scene where Tom Hanks and John Candy are pointing at the trees on the island saying how valuable they are, yelling "Those trees are all teak wood!"

Having had enough of that, we flipped across the Coneheads movie. Ugh - riduculous. Then to MadTV which was featuring a sketch about a Prince-like singer singing sex anthems to benefit "Cranial deformities". Coneheads, cranial deformities?!

Then we came across a documentary promoting the new Star Wars movie. In an interview with the refreshingly crass Ewan McGregor, commenting how absurd American media is, how OJ Simpson's trial lawyer ended up having his own TV show. Enough of that, flipped a few more channels, and came across, guess who, Mr. Cochran and his show.

Enough absurd American media for one night!

May 20, 1999

Driving home from Tilden park in Berkeley, we smelled a skunk. Chunling was commenting how skunk smells seem so powerful they can pass right the metal car doors, and then stay in the car for hours! We commented that it's interesting we don't ever smell skunks around our house in Berkeley. We thought maybe the racoons keep the skunks away.

Of course, as we approached our home tonight, we smelled skunk all along our street. At home, I picked up "Bay Area Naturally" magazine which I had received free in the mail. I opened it up, and right under my finger was an advertisement of "Pure Ayre Odor Eliminator" with big picture of a skunk.

Skunks skunks skunks!

Jun 14, 1999

I had been listening to some music by my coworker David Billen's techno band "Ton of Whores" (now renamed to RedRexx). One song was particularly amusing, as it featured an audio clip from the Planet of the Apes, in which the main character comes across the Statue of Liberty, awash in the ocean surf, and realizes that this planet is really Earth, and cries out in despair. I haven't seen this movie since I was really really young, but David's deadpan humor made me laugh anyway.

Anyway, I was later talking to my friend Rob (who lives in Seattle) on the phone, and he was saying how he had visited Alki Beach Park. Apparently, he told me, when the ocean tide is low enough, you can see the former remnants of an amusement park named "Luna Park" which had burned down into the water earlier this century. Thinking I was clever and funny, with a Planet of the Apes reference, I said "Did you see the statue of liberty in the surf?" Totally straight, he answered something like "Yeah! I was wandering up and down the beach looking for it..." At this point I interrupted him "What?!!"

He told me that there is indeed a 10 foot tall Statue of Liberty near the beach, and that he looked around for it in vain for awhile. Finally, deciding to give up and go home, he paused to tie his shoe before leaving, and realized he was right next to it.

Jul 12, 1999

We moved into our new house at the end of June, so we've been getting lots of mail for the former residents. Today, however, I received a mail to a "Michael Cooper" at our address, which is strange, as there was never a Michael Cooper living in this house, and it's the same last name as me. Strange, but who cares?

Also in the mail was a new issue of Keyboard magazine. Over lunch, I flipped through the magazine, and found an interesting article about acoustically optimizing a home studio, which is exactly what I'm hoping to do in my new studio. So, I read the whole article, and below the final paragraph was the author's name. Guess who? Michael Cooper.

Jul 16, 1999

Finally sat down to write some thank you notes to the friends who helped us move to our new house. I was just setting pen to paper, to write a letter to our friends Chuck and Melissa, when the phone rang.

Guess who? It was Chuck, who I hadn't spoken to since the day of our move a few weeks before, asking if we could help them move into their new house!

Aug 17, 1999

Driving to work this morning, listening to KQED 88.5FM, the San Francisco public broadcast station. I found myself listening to a rather long interview with a couple Vietnam prisoners of war, who were describing the living conditions during their internment in the prisons. They described at length how they felt betrayed by Jane Fonda, who had spent some time in Vietnam during the war, contributing to the enemy's propaganda machine. Interesting interview. My main memory of Jane Fonda is the videoqueen of my mom's aerobics workout group in the 80's.

Anyway, when I arrived at work, my boss Chris Muir was just receiving a new order of DVD's (he's a DVD-aholic). Today's order was Barbarella, starring, of course, Jane Fonda, and with a hilarious campy picture of Jane Fonda on the cover.

Aug 25, 1999

A bunch of extended family are visiting for our wedding, including my grandma and grandpa and aunt Jill from Australia, and my aunt Carol and uncle Jock from Japan. Today they all came over for dinner, along with my mom and dad, and my sister Gillian.

We were all relaxing outside on the deck, enjoying the view of the valley. My mom was telling everyone how last time they had had dinner at our house, we were fortunate to see the full moon rising over the hills, through the dining room window while we ate dinner. I turned around to point from the deck towards the northeast hills, and said "it rose right over there", and, well, there it was. Just beginning to rise over the hills, the full moon, and everyone oooh'd and aaah'd, and "wow, what a great coincidence!"

Aug 27, 1999

Today, Chunling and I were driving home in my Dad's BMW. My dad is thinking about selling it, and We had been considering buying it from him. But, as I was telling Chunling in the car today, I realized I didn't really enjoy driving it as much I enjoyed my Acura Integra. Sure, it's a Beemer and all, but maybe it's not so practical. Plus, Chunling would prefer an automatic instead of a manual transmission.

At that point in the conversation, a nice shiny black Acura drove past, and when I saw its license place, I had to laugh. It said "4MR BMER".

Aug 28, 1999

At our ltitle wedding rehearsal on August 26, we were excited to see a small family of deer trot past the wedding site (the Tao house in the hills of danville is surrounded by hills and trees). Chunling was very excited, sying that the deer bring good luck -"I hope they visit on our wedding day!"

My mom asked if we ever saw deer behind our new house (a big open field stretching down into the valley, and up into the hills of Wildcat Canyon Park). We said we hadn't (but we see some horses sometimes). That evening, as the sun was setting behind our house, we were surprised to see a small group of deer up on the hillside!

On our wedding day, after the ceremony and reception at the Tao House, Chunling and I were getting ready to get in the car to leave. Across the way, we could see several deer, who had obviously stopped by to wish us good luck, and good fortune!

Oct 21, 1999

Today, experimenting with the active desktop features of Windows 2000, I encountered the active CD Jukebox from Broadcast.com. I listened to part of eat static's science of the gods while continuing to work. I called my coworker Doug Wyatt with some programming questions, while listening to a bit of autechre's Tri Repetae Plus Plus (an appropriately geeky title for a programming discussion).

I told Doug how I was listening to these entire cd's from broadcast to come, and he said "Oh, I think my cd is on there!". I jumped over to the jukebox, and clicked on "format search", and selected "ambient", and bingo, there, first on the list of many many selections was "Doug Wyatt Accidental Beauties". He said "No way!!! First on the list?!" Cosmic.

Nov 2, 1999

I've been doing a lot of work with my hands this week, including building a work bench - which involved screwing in dozens of wood screws. My hands have been burning and hurting, bruised and red. Yesterday, I was looking at my hands thinking, hm, I wonder if this is the source of people's stigmata - hard workers, start bleeding from the hands, and call it a miracle! Saints are often hard workers, right?! haha. Then, I found my thoughts turning to more unexplainable events, like one I remember about a large group of people simultaneously seeing an apparition of the Virgin Mary over a church. I couldn't remember when or where that had occured.

Today, over lunch, I was reading an article in the November issue of Wired magazine, titled This is Your Brain on God, by Jack Hitt. This article describes experiments by Dr. Michael Persinger in which the feeling of "seeing God" (or your local equivalent) is induced by blasting the brain with a carefully planned sequence of electromagnetic fields.

It is proposed that environmental disturbances (e.g. solar flares, earthquakes) could generate similar magnetic fields causing mass hallucinations! Dr. Persinger says "One classic example was the apparition of Mary over the Coptic Church in Zeitoun, Egypt, int he 1960's. This phenomenon lasted off and on for several years. It was seen by thousands of people". Yep, that's the one I had been wondering about.

Nov 8, 1999

Chunling was telling me some of the new words she had learned today (life for a Chinese person in America is a constant vocabulary lesson!) One of the words was "claustraphobia". I explained to her the phobias are fears, and that you could use "fear of getting stuck in a closet" (closet sounds like claustra) as a trick to remember this. I explained that there are lots of words with "phobia", for example "arachnaphobia" - fear of spiders.

Tonight, over dinner, we turned on the Discovery channel., and to my dismay, it was a documentary about phobias. There was an extended section on arachnaphobia, and various techniques overcoming it (including virtual reality - virtual spiders!

Dec 25, 1999

Christmas with the family. My parents gave me the Reader's Digest New Complete Fix It Yourself Manual. Laughing, I said "this is great, now we can fix our rice cooker" (which has been broken for a little while). I opened to the index under "R" for "Rice", and "Oh well, it's not here". I put the book aside for a minute. Next time I picked it up and opened it, I was stunned to see a perfect picture of our rice cooker. The caption was "Steamer" - in the index under "S", not "R"!! I guess now I have to really fix it!

A minute later, my dad picked up the book, and opened it directly to a page about fixing computer printers. He yelped with surprise, as he had been trying to fix his color inkjet printer on Christmas eve (to print a special book for my nephew which my mom and dad had written).

Now, this being a magic book, my brother-in-law picked it up, and we all said "what do you need to fix? decide before you open it!". Alas, the spell was broken, and he opened to something totally irrelevant. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted.

Dec 25, 1999

Later in the day on Christmas, someone put on a recording from 1973 of my two sisters talking at Christmas time. It's funny to hear, because they both had heavy Australian accents then (which they've long since lost). On the tape, they were reading some Christmas stories and chatting, and then they said, in their cute young voices "Happy Birthday Nanna" (my grandma's birthday is Dec 26).

A minute later, the phone rang, and it was my Nanna calling to say hello!

Mar 1, 2000

I was thinking the other day that Chunling and I should see Ferris Bueller's Day Off - a ridiculous but fun movie from the mid-80's. Chunling only knows Matthew Broderick as Feynman in Infinity (every time she sees Broderick, she says "Feynman!") - so I thought she should see the much lighter side of the actor. Tonight I turned on the TV, and it was on - ok, these media influencing coincidences are getting kind of old. We watched a couple minutes (it was the very end) then switched channels.

A few minutes later we came across a biography of Charlie Sheen, with scenes of him doing his early screen tests, etc. I paused for a laugh, and then was somewhat dismayed to hear the narrator say something like "it wasn't until his bit part in the John Hughes movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off that his career took off" - followed by the two minute scene in the police station with Sheen as a punk, and Jennifer Grey has Ferris' sister.

What's strange about all these TV related synchronicity things is that we really don't watch TV that much - but when we do, these things tend to happen.

Mar 5, 2000

Oh no, not another TV coincidence! Ok, tonight we were flipping thru channels, and we briefly paused to watch bemusedly as some faith healer guy was, in the name of Jeeeeeesus, healing a woman who was blind in one eye. We actually stayed to watch it, because she didn't speak english, so an interpreter was, for the benefit of the half-blind lady, spewing out a translation of this loud, gawdy faith healing nonsense. I wonder how well it translated? Anyway, mr. faith healer guy placed a red cloth over her blind eye, and then started singing some Jesus stuff, and then took it off, and pointed her face into a bright light and said, "Now has Jesus made you see?" (Crazy translation). She answers, with the sorta not-so-exciting translation "Not so clearly". Of course, the faith healer guy takes this as a major triumph - "NOT SO CLEARLY!!!"

Anyway, as we switch back to The Learning Channel, Chunling was telling me she thought this kind of stuff only happened in China, where Qi Gong masters put on demonstrations where people in the audience were supposed to feel the master's qi emanating through the room. As we looked back to the TV, a program called "Unmasked" was starting on The Learning Channel. The narrator was introducing the topics, which would include master gambler scammers, psychics and seances, and, of course, the unmasked fraud of faith healers.

Mar 6, 2000

I started reading William Gibson's, All Tomorrow's Parties a few days ago. Very good book so far. One of the incidental characters names is "Buell Creedmore", and I remember pausing as I read his name for the first time, that Buell is an unusual name which I'd never heard before.

The day after hearing Buell for the first time, Chunling and I watched episode 10, "Galileo was right", of From the Earth to the Moon. This episode details the training of the Apollo 15 astronauts in geological analysis. In one scene, their adopted geology professor takes them on a hike in the mountains - I was only a bit surprised to see that the nameplace of this rocky mountain retreat was Buell.

The next day (today), I was scanning CNN headlines, and came across this headline: Buell Students Attend Classes... which escalated this whole thing to being worthy of a coincidence.

And to top it all off, I just added a coincidence here a couple days ago about Ferris Bueller's Day Off!

Mid-April, 2000

At Borders Books in Emeryville with Chunling. I came across a Bob Marley song book (sheet music with lyrics), and decided to look up an old favorite Is This Love?

Later, as we were leaving the store, I heard Chunling humming the melody to Is This Love?

I said "Hey, were you looking over my shoulder!?" And she, having been in the gardening section the whole time, had no idea what I was talking about!

Good one!

April 24, 2000

Chunling and I were digging out an old tree from our garden. We found a bunch of broken glass buried in the dirt. We wondered if someone had robbed the house in the past, and no one had picked up the broken glass; or maybe one of the builders broke a window when they built the house ten years ago.

Anyway, I left Chunling pulling out roots and glass while I went to look at our roses for a minute, and in the distance I could hear some vaguely familar song on a radio. I remember not really paying attention to the song, but some part of mind thinking it was some song from the 80's - maybe Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves. I heard Chunling call out to me again "Where did all this broken glass come from?!" And then the vague song in the distance snapped into place, and I realized it was Annie Lennox (from another 80's band Eurythmics) singing Walking on Broken Glass. Broken glass! Ok, ok,it doesn't sound anything like Walking on Sunshine, but it had the word "walking" in it!

The next day, over a huge sushi lunch with my friend Matt, what song played up on the radio? Walking on Sunshine.

June, 2000

My mom gave me a unique blue glass plate for birthday. It's a very unusual shape, and I'd never seen it before. We thought it would be good as a fruit plate, so we brought it home and put it next to our frldge where we usually keep our fruit, and put some bananas and mangoes on it.

A moment later, I noticed the calender hanging on the side of the fridge,which is one of those free calenders you get from a local food store (we got it from Ranch 99) - the theme of this calendar was seasonal fresh fruit. This month's picture just happened to show a plate of fruit sitting on the EXACT same incredibly unique blue plate!

June 15, 2000

I'm currently readlng Neal Stephenson's new book- Cryptonomicon (excellent book!). Part of the book is set in World War 2, and there's a chapter in which one of the Japanese characters, Goto Dengo, is being sent home from New Guinea, and one of his fellow soldiers is asking him to memorize a letter to his family back in Hiroshima. The omnipotent reader knows the pointlessness of memorizing the letter, while Goto Dengo, unaware that Hiroshima will have ceased to exist by the time he gets there, tries feebly through his malnutrition and morphine addiction to memorize the letter.

Next night, I flicked on the TV, and land instantly upon a History channel documentary all about the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima.

June 30, 2000

Meandering around the web today, I suddenly had the urge to visit 800.com which is where I purchased my DVD player a year or two ago, but haven't visited since.

To fully appreciate what happens next, remember that I've moved to a new address since I bought that DVD player from 800.com, and I haven't done any business with them since.

So a few hours after visiting their website, I went to check the mail (at the mailbox in front of our house, not on my computer!) and was dismayed to find a glossy print advertisement addressed to me at my current address, from 800.com!

July, 2000

I had a strange dream last night - it was my birthday and everyone was giving me Dali prints. I was uncomfortable because I used to like Salvador Dali ten years ago, but I don't enjoy his art enough anymore to hang him on my wall. I guess, in my dream, Chunling had told them that I liked Dali.

Anyway, I had completely forgotten this dream until in the car this morning, I heard a hilariously goofy radio commercial in which the guy makes a play on words between Salvador Dali and the Dalai Lama - "Salvador Dalai Lama".

July 24, 2000

Another radio coincidence. Driving to work today, I listened to a bit of the typically offensive and only sort-of amusing Howard Stern show. He was interviewing Joe Eszterhas about his book American Rhapsody. The author relayed an embarassingly sleazy story from his book about how Farrah Fawcett was at a celebrity party, and was so fed up waiting to use the bathroom that she went out to the lawn in front of the house, in full view of the other guests, and just sorta hiked up her dress and did her business on the lawn like a dog. Ahem. Ok, so I flipped the radio to another station after my morbid curiosity passed. But of course, this left me thinking about Farrah Fawcett and what's up with her, and what an unusual name, etc, etc.

As soon as I got to my PC, my yahoo home page started up, and as I scanned the headlines, almost the first thing I see is a headline in the entertainment section "Destinys Child says goodbye to group member Farrah". Pretty meaningless story to me, but strange to see two big stories about someone with such an unusual name.

August 14, 2000

On Saturday night, Chunling had some scary dreams about being attacked by bears. Today on the phone, Rob tells me that he had a fun camping trip this weekend, and on Saturday 3pm, they even saw some bears!

Then Rob tells me that he's been listening to Mighty Lemon Drops "Happy Head", which is a record we both listened to back in highschool - and pretty much haven't thought of since. Bizarre that he should mention that, as I had just had a dream that I was playing guitar on stage with, of all bands, the Mighty Lemon Drops.

August 15, 2000

I had just sent an email to Chunling telling her about the new Chabot planetarium, and how we should definitely go. I sent her a link to a yahoonews article about it (since deleted).

Then I received an ICQ message from Rob: ""Rob: (11:56 AM) I had a dream last night that you were showing me some new music project you were working on that somehow involved the solar system. You had a large wall display on which you were showing me how the positions of the planets could be interpreted as a waveform that formed an underlying rythmic theme that you were building on."

I laughed and said I had just been thinking about going to a planetarium, so I'd let him know. I sent him the link to the article, and he quickly mailed back a quote from the article: he pointed out the last paragraph of the article:

"`The beauty of astronomy is that it not only feeds wonderfully into the other sciences but also into art and music,'' Reynolds said. "`The beauty of the universe is artistic, whether it is something that is painted or something you hear.''

September 4, 2000

Last night I put on Elliot Smith's XO for the first time in a long time. It sounded excellent, and kicked myself for not listening to it more often. This morning, I received an ICQ from Rob: "I saw elliott smith in concert yesterday." !!

September 4, 2000

Watched Splash on TV last night. Silly, but fun movie. While we were watching it and laughing about Tom Hank's character yelling "She's a fish!" Chunling poked me and said "Are you not human??" During the commercials we flipped to The Learning Channel, and the banner on the screen read "Are You Human?"

Woah!!!! OK, this is a good one. I'm four months behind entering in coincidences here, so it's actually January 31 today -- I'm looking at my notes and entering in coincidences here. So I just finished typing this silly Splash/TLC coincidence, then I went to IMDB to find the URLS's for Splash and Tom Hanks, then I went to find The Learning Channel's webpage, so I tried www.tlc.com, and up it comes, and in the center of the page is a huge banner "Are You Human?" hahahahaha!

October 12, 2000

On the plane home from China, I was reading Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio and had just finished reading a section of the book about the government considering an enforced abortions for women (infected with a strange virus), using some modification of RU-486 (the morning after abortion drug).

Putting down the book, I decided to check if there were any news magazines available on the plane, as I'd been out of touch with western media for the previous three weeks. I picked up the mid-October issue of Time. On the cover was a picture of a hand balancing a pill on one finger, and the headline was "The Abortion Pill", featuring stories about the FDA approval of RU-486.

December 3, 2000

Had dim sum lunch with John Weir at Hong Kong East Ocean. We mentioned that Trader Vic's was just down the road, and how neither of us had ever been there, heard it was very expensive, etc, etc.

That night, reading Arthur C. Clarke's Lost Worlds of 2001, I read a scene in which Arthur and Stanley Kubrick meet for a meal at, yes, Trader Vics.

January 17, 2001

Last night we watched the Gladiator DVD - intense excellent movie. In the DVD extras, there's an interview with Hans Zimmer about composing the soundtrack.

This morning, I posted a message to the pulsar-scope mailing list, mentioning that during the Hans Zimmer interview, he was running Pulsar on the screens behind him.

Shortly after sending that message, the phone rang, and Steve Hales and I launched into a lengthy work-related conversation. In the background on the phone, I could faintly hear some music playing, and I recognized the voice distinctive voice of Lisa Gerrard - I said "hey, is that Dead Can Dance?" and he said, "No! It's the Gladiator Soundtrack" (which extensively features Lisa Gerrards heavenly voice).

January 17, 2001

Called my sister Catherine tonight. The phone was busy. Hung up. A minute later the phone rings, and it's Catherine. She tells me she was just on the phone with a friend of hers, who was asking after me (asking how my eyes were, as I recently had LASIK surgery). That's exhibit A.

Exhibit B is that we started talking about books, and what books she's read recently, and what she should borrow. Chunling, standing across from me mentioned Dianne Ackerman's Natural History Of the Senses. At practically the same instant, Catherine mentioned Natural History Of Love (another book by Dianne Ackerman)

February 10, 2001

We watched a little bit of the obnoxious TV show, Who wants to be a millionaire? - a show which I usually refuse to watch. But this time, I got caught by the question "Near which US state are the San Juan islands?". The guy got it wrong, choosing Texas over Washington. I thought that I wasn't sure where those islands were either - strange as they're just off the Puget Sound of Washington, where I've been a couple times. .

Today, my sister Catherine loaned us a couple books (as mentioned in the previous coincidence). . I was flipping thru one of them, Snow Falling On Cedars. On the very first page is a map of the San Juan islands!!

February 19, 2001

This morning, I was glancing through the current issue of MicroTimes which I haven't read in quite some time. I was particularly interested in one advertisement for Central Computer, because it appeared by its address that it was located very close to my friend John Weir's office (and he had called me a couple weeks before desperately looking for a computer store near him, so he could replace a broken computer, and I didn't know of any, but I told him to try to find a MicroTimes to look for one). The advertisement also had a picture of the front of the building.

This afternoon, we decided to drive over to the Metreon to look around. As we parked on the 5th floor of the 5th Street garage, I ran over to the edge of the lot to get my bearings (se we'd know which way to walk to get to the Metreon), and just across from me was the front of a building which looked very familiar but at first it didn't connect. Then I saw the sign at the top of the building: "Central Computer".

February 1, 2001

Listening to Fresh Air on the radio on the car this morning on KQED, I heard an iteresting story about Leo Marks of the SOE, talking about code-breaking in World War II. It was a fascinating story, so when I got him, I looked him and his book up on the internet, and ended up browsing a website about Bletchley Park (secret British intelligence office during WWII).

That night after dinner, I turned on the TV, and after watching part of a hilarious episode of "Whose Line Is It Anyway", I flipped the channel and came across Nova, and the episode was all about code breaking at Bletchley Park during WWII!

March 3, 2001

Chunling and I were having a conversation today about Wants versus Needs, and how some people tend to only focus on the things they need, but never on the things they want.

Tonight, we saw Mojave 3 in concert, and it was excellent. I haven't heard their new album yet, so many of the songs were new to me. The first encore was a real highlight, sounded excellent. I heard him singing something like "she's got everything she needs, but nothing she wants", and smiled!

(That song is "Baby's Coming Home" from Out Of Tune).

March 4, 2001

Today, I convinced Chunling to eat at Phuping Thai, where we've only eaten once before. We never feel like going in, because it's always really empty. But the food today was was great!

Afterwards, in my office, I was cleaning off my shelves, and came across an old calendar. Opened it up, and the second page I flipped to was: "November 26, 1999: Rob Visits from Seattle- Phuping Thai for dinner". Haha!

June 20, 2001

ICQ'ing with Rob, he was telling me he sold a bunch of CD's. I was saying that there's tons of CD's on my shelves that I'm sure I'll never listen to again, and I should really sell them! I glanced at my shelves to look for the worst offenders. I was about to type "This old Jesus Jones CD has GOT to go". But before I did, I went over to E-Bay and did a quick search for Jesus Jones to see what it's selling for (not much!) Just as the E-Bay result came up, "Liquidizer CD RARE EXCELLENT" (hah!), an ICQ came in from Rob:

"Rob: (10:46 AM) I was really not expecting to get as much back as I did. Some of the stuff was total crap, but the only 2 CDs they wouldn't take were my two Jesus Jones discs :)"

September 2001

I've been working at my new job att Korg for about a month, and unfortunately, I've been too busy to keep in touch with my former boss at Beatnik, Chris Muir. Today, I remembered that he had asked me a loooong time ago, to ask the guys at Korg whether anyone had tried running an OasysPCI in a Magma chassis.

So today, finally remembering this, I went into Dan's office and asked him, and he said yes, So I came back to my office to sit down and email Chris, and surprise! There's was a new email, just arrived, from Chris Muir, asking how my new job at Korg is! Haven't received mail from him for over a month, and now, just as I was finally asking his Oasys/Magma question, he's sending me an email!

November 28, 2001

Chunling and I were just entering the YMCA to work out, and we observer the yoga class in session. Everyone was kneeling, touching their foreheads to the floor. I laughed and said, "That's the advanced KaoTou" class!

Later, I was on the treadmill, and I started up my current audible book, The Diamond Age. Just about a minute into it, the main character, Bud, was forced to kaotou in front of the judge.

January 14, 2002

Last night, we went to Barnes & Noble to browse around. Looking through the humor section, I came across Isaac Asimov's Asimov Laughs Again : More Than 700 Favorite Jokes, Limericks, and Anecdotes. Never really thought of Asimov as as jokester, so I picked it up, flipped open a page, and read a joke that went something like this: "An architect is standing on a bridge. He says to his friend, I built this bridge, but no one remembers me as Joe the bridge builder. I built that house over there but no one remembers me as Joe the house builder. You suck one little cock, and no one ever forgives you". Asimov's version was more detailed, but equally unfunny - I thought I must have read it wrong. I thought it must have been some obscure cultural reference I didn't get, or an obscure play on the word "cock". Whatever, concluding Asimov perhaps wasn't such a funny guy, I put the book down, and picked up an amusing behind the scenes look at the making of the Monty Python movies.

Today, at lunch with my coworkers, Andy, our resident expert joke teller and funny-voice-guy, starts rattling off some jokes. Then he says "You haven't heard the one about McGregor??" And he launches into this hilarious scottish-voiced joke about McGregor the architect who's sitting in a bar complaining about how no one remembers him as McGregor the architect, etc, etc - with the punchline being "You f**k one goat, and..." It was much funnier with Andy's funny fake scottish accent, and the more brash ending, but I was laughing more because I couldn't believe the coincidence of this stupid joke turning up twice in 24 hours.

January 18, 2002

Today, we had a couple visitor from Italy at our office. One of them, a German guy name Juergen was wearing cowboy boots, jeans, and a big belt buckle. I told my coworkers that he reminded me exactly of a German friend that once visited me, also named Juergen -- he came to visit San Francisco after a week-long vacation on a dude ranch in the mid-west, where he got to be a cowboy for a week, learned to ride a horse, and to castrate cows (or something!) Sounds fun huh? Anyway, as I was saying all this, I remember pausing after the words "dude ranch" wondering if that was the right expression for a place like that, as it's not an expresion usually in my vocabulary!

A couple hours later on the bus home, I picked up the book I just started reading Jian, and within a few paragraphs, I came across a sentence saying something like "It looked more like a dude ranch than a ..." Hah!

January 18, 2002

Hm, a cluster of coincidences... Am I just paying more attention, or is something going on here?

Tonight, we went to the store to buy a cell phone. As we left, I was reading over the box, and considerng the monthly payments and the contract for a year. I was reminded of my friend Mark Moran who was one of my first friends to have a cell phone, way back when - he had offered to sell me the remainder of his cell phone contract because he was moving or something. Almost at the very same instant, the radio, which was on a news channel, said "And here's Mark Moran with a report on [some sports thing which I didn't hear because I was too surprised by the synchronicity!!]"

Late 2003

Following the previous cluster of coincidences, I basically let a couple of years go by without paying attention. Of course, coincidences happened, but their ephermeral nature makes them very hard to remember, if I don't make a note of them right as they happen, or soon after.

Or maybe sleep deprivation and busy-with-baby has something to do with it! :)

In any case, here's one I do remember from January. I had just finished reading Michael Crichton's Prey- a rather abysmal book, but page-turner nonetheless. It's about programming using techniques based on biological evolution, and emergent behaviors in an evolutionary progression. After I finished reading it, I was considering what to read next, looking at the stack of unread books on my shelf. One caught my eye that I had inherited from a friend, and held for a few years without so much as a glance at it. But now, I picked it up, Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker. The first few chapters are about how to model biological evolution in simple programming excercises, to reveal the surprising emergent beauty in the evolving patterns.

Then, a few days later, I found myself reading an article in Wired a guy who develops animation algorithms for movies, for realistic human body interactions- he uses genetic algorithms to evolve the behaviors in the models. Turns out his inspiration was Dawkins' book!

April 28, 2004

My brother-in-law Mike called today to ask me if we liked the restaurant Trader Vics - I said we love it, but haven't been there in a looooong time. Years. He said great, he's sending us a gift certificate for Trader Vics as a gift! Nice!

Tonight, while Chunling and I were giving Sophie a bath, Chunling suddenly completely out of the blue, asked me "what did we order last time we ate at Trader Vics"? I couldn't believe it- we don't regularly discuss the place! I thought she was playing a game with me, and she must have also talked to Mike today. Turns out, no, she said it just popped into her head. Bizarre.

...more entries here as I remember them, and as they happen...