It was such a beautiful and warm day today, I had to get out on my road bike to what has become one of my favorite places since I moved to Baldwin Hills - the Ballona Creek bike path. It's a scenic route that goes from central Culver City all the way down to Marina del Rey in under 6 miles. By the end, you are riding on a narrow strip of asphalt surrounded on both sides by water - the creek on one side, and the eastern edge of the marina on the other.

I finished a tough week (hours wise) yesterday, and getting out really brightened my day. Everyone was out on the marina and at the beach, just enjoying the sun. Sailboats glided by, one after one. The path was actually crowded today - the first time I have seen traffic on any bike path in LA. I just love the fact that I can make it out here, seemingly a world away, in what seems like no time at all.

My only complaint is how quickly I got tired - I guess all that sitting on my butt at work hardly helps. I think it's been a month since I took my bike out for a spin, and close to two months since I really went for a ride. A shame, because I really do enjoy it that much.

I promise to post regularly again. There is so much to fill you guys in on - Ecuador, the Galapagos Islands, the whirlwind of the past three weeks that have been my new job. I'm not quite sure to start.

I haven't updated this blog in nearly a month and a half. So much has changed since then. Here's what I've been up to in just the last two weeks alone:

• In gratitude for our help on some patent law issues, Judge Wu (who works next door to my judge) took Sameer and me to the Magic Castle in Hollywood. The magic was wonderful and we stayed very late. It really made me feel like a kid again.
• I finished my clerkship just before Labor Day. It was a race to the finish, trying to get much down on paper as possible before I had to leave. I had been working on large cases with a very steep learning curve, so it was imperative that I leave as much as possible for the two incoming clerks.
• Over Labor Day weekend, I went to the California Chinese Catholic Living Camp, a retreat for young adults which took place at the beautiful Mission San Luis Rey in Oceanside. It was fun, exhausting, and has give me a chance to re-evaluate and renew my faith for which I am very grateful.
• I went to the Rose Bowl to see Rick Neuheisel's first game as UCLA head coach. The ensuing (and totally unexpected!) upset of nationally ranked Tennessee, along with the fireworks show afterwards, already ranks up there on my list of all-time Bruin memories. More on this in a separate post.
• I had lunch with my judge, Sameer, Pat, and the two clerks that are replacing us on Friday. It's the first time all year that I had lunch with my judge, and it was really great.
• My friend Delwin got married to his high school sweetheart, Allison, on Saturday. It was fun but tiring, mostly because I helped out at the reception.
• I have a girlfriend now, for the first time in a few years. (I haven't decided yet how much I want to post about her on a publicly accessible forum.)

There has been so much going on in the last 3-4 weeks that, until today, I was fatigued and exhausted. I literally drove from my last day at work to the retreat down in San Diego, and then up again and straight to the Rose Bowl for the Tennessee game. I am still tired out from all that. In addition, singing in the choir at the retreat (roughly about four hours over 2 days) and then yelling my lungs out at the Rose Bowl left me without a voice for most of last week. I certainly don't feel like I'm on vacation.. yet. But I am going to enjoy these next five weeks if it's the last thing I do!

Saturday was my 27th birthday. You know how people always ask, "well, do you feel older?" Most of the time, I just give them a puzzled stare. Why would I?

But this year, the answer was, yeah. I do feel older. And it feels weird.

Twenty-seven has symbolic significance. Unlike the preceding birthday, twenty-six, you can no longer rationalize that you are still in your mid-twenties. After all, twenty-six is only one number after twenty-five. But then you realize that twenty-seven is much closer to thirty than anything else. And thirty is scary.

I've always viewed myself, at my core, as a "young" person, fundamentally immature. For the longest time, through high school and even college, when I wanted an excuse to get off the phone with an unsolicited caller, I would tell them I was just a kid. "May I speak with the head of the household?" "Sorry, sir, he's not available." "And what about you? Would you like to participate in a 15-minute commercial survey on XYZ?" "Well, sir, I'm just a kid. Goodbye (click)." In the past few years, I stopped using that excuse, but some of the mentality behind it still remains.

And where am I now? About to begin my legal career, check. Undergraduate and professional degrees tucked under my belt, check. Not living at home anymore (finally), check. But I still feel so green, in some ways, that i just want to cringe. Every day, I feel like I am on the verge of making some stupid mistake because of my inexperience in life.

Part of this is because my parents have (with the greatest care and affection) supported me for so long. Part of it is because I would probably fall in the category that you call a "late bloomer." But it's this number, twenty-seven, that is forcing me to confront treasured, and previously unchallenged, notions of my identity and my place in this world.

A very interesting birthday, indeed!



P.s. In no way, of course, is this a quarter life crisis. Don't suggest that to me.

It's been a relaxing day here in the hood. No barbeques, no parties, but a great day nonetheless. Maybe I'll catch some fireworks later.

If I was going to a party, it would look something like this:

I moved back home last weekend to keep my mom company. Since gas is so expensive, the Red Line is so convenient to Hollywood, and my dad (with whom I can usually carpool) is out of town, I decided to make this week an exercise in mass transit. Specifically, I decided not to use a car to get to work. On Tuesday, I stuffed my suit into a small backpack and rode my bicycle to the Red Line stop at Hollywood and Vine (I left my bike in the parking structure of my conveniently located gym).

Our house is roughly 2 1/2 miles from the subway, which doesn't sound bad at all except it is on a hilly street that presents a 400-500 foot climb from street level (judging from Google Maps' terrain feature, and by how tired I was upon biking up said hill). It's probably a 35 minute walk to the station.

The verdict: even so close to a convenient, dedicated transit route, it is still too much trouble for me to rely solely on the Red Line. Biking turned out to be a logistical challenge, especially since I have to dress up in a suit and tie when I go to work and I don't want to get them all sweaty. It's also tiring. It takes about 45-50 minutes each way (this includes biking, waiting for the subway, riding the train, exiting the station, and walking to the courthouse), compared to a 15-25 minute commute by car. There are other drawbacks: it becomes difficult to carry anything (I started leaving my suits and excess articles at work); it depends on good weather (do you want to walk or bike for half an hour in the rain?). As a variation, I have tried parking in Griffith Park and walking roughly half a mile to the subway. This is more convenient, but it's still a pain, and they tow your car if you don't move it before dark. What if I want to go to happy hour after work?

Basically you give up flexibility, you give up independence, and put yourself at the whim of the inconsistent Red Line train schedule. In theory, it should be easier than it is. For example, one wonders why Metro didn't plan park & ride facilities at Red Line stations, the way that say, BART does in the Bay Area? (My guess is that they were too busy constructing the white elephant that is their lavish headquarters behind Union Station.) Is it worth all this trouble to save on gas?

Cost-wise, yes. Five round trips per week only costs $12.50, which my employer reimburses in full. If you drive, the gas alone will probably run betwen 2-3 times that. Environment-wise and traffic-wise, yes. But in terms of hassle, lost opportunities, and expenditure of energy..

..gas is going to have to get a lot more expensive before that happens.

Anyway, since I live in Baldwin Hills now, and there's no direct public transit from there to downtown, it doesn't matter. I have to drive.

I've spent the morning packing up my stuff so that I can move out to my new place. However, it's taken much, much longer than I anticipated. A big part of that is that I've delayed packing for a long time, thinking that it would be easy.

I'll miss my room. It's been my domain for 18 years now. But despite periodic reorganizations, sometimes the amount of junk -- stuff that is left over from grade school, high school, college -- just overwhelms me. I don't throw it all away (and I have thrown away a good deal of stuff) because of the memories. But then the memories confine me (or at least, all this junk is restricting my freedom of movement.) The best thing I can do is make a clean break.

The cycle begins anew.

I have been living life for the past week and a half in fast forward. After a long stretch of time where life felt routine, everything is happening at once: I've been really busy at work; I need to move into my new place; and I am leaving for my weeklong vacation in Costa Rica tonight. So far, so good...

I went to Angeles National Forest yesterday and had a blast.. and today is my sister's graduation. Argh!

The walls have been painted, the hardwood floors are refinished, and this weekend my family and I moved some stuff out to the new place where I'll live with my sister. I'm really excited. It's still really bare right now, and not all the construction dust has been wiped away. But I just wanted to share a shot from my new bedroom!

Some things you might notice:

• I still need a bed frame.
• The weird window to the right of the picture is the counter of the walk-in bar. I fully intend to make it functional (starting, perhaps, with some bar stools.)
• Henry the Hedgehog is back. He obviously needs some air, as he's spent the last year in storage, in his deflated state.

So, heat has the opposite effect on me than cold. While I just want to lie around in bed and do nothing when it gets cold, a hot day is an incentive to for me to go outside and do something interesting.

Temperatures this weekend hovered in the low to mid 90's. Sweltering, yes, but I had the most enjoyable weekend in a very long time. It was the perfect mix of things - work, play, exercise, friends, shopping, and, of course, sleep. Among other things, I went swimming, went on a bike ride, hung out with a friend at the Santa Monica Promenade, and went shopping at REI for my upcoming trip to Costa Rica. Admittedly, I had to stop in at the office for a couple of hours after lunch (pho with the choir), but even that was enjoyable.

I had to work pretty much straight through last weekend, and that's one of the reasons I feel so much happier and relaxed now. In retrospect, even that wasn't so bad. I made sure to mix in some fun stuff too. I went to watch a concert after work last Saturday -- my friend's friend is in a musical group [The Strada Trio] -- and they were quite impressive. (You can listen to their live performance over the Internet from that link, too.) But the problem with cramming work in with play like that, however, is that there is so much time pressure. Personally, I like having some time to just sit around, think, and well, veg.

Forget work-life balance. I have an inherent need to sit around and waste some time once in a while.

I've always wanted to take great pictures of the moon - in its many ghostly, eerie, haunting manifestations. Yet whenever I've tried, it's always turned out as an atrocious little blob of white on my digital cameras. Tonight, I finally figured how to do it with a tripod and my new Nikon 70-300mm G lens (short answer: stop down to f/11 or f/16, add negative exposure compensation, and take dozens of shots until you get one that's perfectly clear). Anyway, I just wanted to share this picture of tonight's average, boring moon, and hopefully will wow you with more exciting ones in the future :)

I've had some stuff to look forward to, lately. I'll be moving out of home in roughly 2 months, but so much needs to be done before then -- carpeting, painting the walls, perhaps refinishing some hardwood floors. I am also planning a trip to Costa Rica in late May with my friend and former neighbor, Julia. Lastly, I'm also trying to get connected again to my law firm, so that when I rejoin them this November, it will not be a total shock.

Fun times ahead.. hopefully.

I have been enjoying my Thursday evenings for the past couple of months. They start around 7:30 pm with UCLA basketball, and then around 9 pm I switch over to ABC and catch the latest episode of LOST! A killer combination that virtually guarantees I will not go out and party on Thursdays anymore.

Tonight, of course, is a special battle of two top-ten nationally ranked teams for the conference championship: #3 UCLA plays #7 Stanford at Pauley Pavilion beginning in an hour. Kevin Love vs. the Twin Towers. This should be an exciting game with a lot of energy. Now if only the crowd could ignite the Bruins' stone cold outside shot...

As for LOST.. well you never know what is going to happen every week. I think I'm just going to skip it tonight and tune into the basketball game instead. After all, ABC's hi-def episode streaming is a sight to behold, especially on my 24-inch iMac.

I saw a blurb about Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail in today's LA Times and decided to read it. It is truly fascinating to experience King's eloquence -- his passion, his mastery of the great Greek and Christian philosophers, his frustrations, worries, hopes, all felt within the immediacy of the battles of his day -- first hand, rather than through the muddled lens of a history book, or a TV special. So much has passed since the Civil Rights movement that it is easy to forget what it was really about.

From King's April 16, 1963 missive:

For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." . . . We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait."

King wrote this letter after the Birmingham protests and in response to a statement by a group of white Alabama clergymen that ostensibly urged moderation and less confrontational methods. He is quite upset with them. His response, drawing upon religious analogies to ancient prophets and saints, is that "negotiation" is never enough in the face of broad injustice:

But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus."

Yet forty-five years later, it seems like so much has changed. It will always be important to remember what King, Thurgood Marshall, Earl Warren and others fought for. At the same time, I can't feel like living in some sort of post-modern nightmare, permeated by a far greater moral ambiguity. In our world, King is celebrated; politically correct lip service is paid to diversity and equality, whatever those things mean; Ward Connerly extols the color-blind society. Television portrays racism as a black-and-white issue with a black-and white solution. But things just aren't that simple. It is easy to condemn apartheid. It is not so easy, however, to address the real problems.

Clearly, the discourse of race has taken a life of its own. There are the quotas, "reverse discrimination," playing the race card. Racial controversies are manufactured from sound bites that provide only the race of the aggressor and the race of the victim. Our society is incorrigibly race-conscious down to its core. Yet there remain the continuing urban blight of our inner cities and the real disparities that exist in opportunities for social and economic advancement. Why was winning the battle not winning the war?

My other reaction upon reading King's historic call to action, is that surely, the issue of race has moved beyond Black and White. Obviously I am neither one nor the other. Los Angeles is a a bewilderingly diverse city boasting over 250 languages and at least that many ethnicities. Yet more often than not, I am disheartened to see that the discourse has continued to be framed in this either-or dichotomy. Like the moral issues, skin color itself has shaded into gray, brown, and yellow; but perception, not surprisingly, lags behind reality. Frankly, as an Asian-American, I sometimes feel that the issues relevant to me are simply ignored (though perhaps, they pale in comparison to the issues facing blacks, even today.)

As a last note, if you have the chance, I encourage you to check out Frank Wu's Yellow: Race in America Beyond Black and White. It is a highly nuanced and thought-provoking narrative from the perspective of a Chinese-American law professor who teaches at a historically black college. I've been meaning to write a short review/reaction for some time.. but it's certainly worth a look.

When the laughter fades away (ma vie / tout ma vie)
When theres nothing more to say (ma vie / my oh my)
Its the last laugh of the laughter
Sur la dernier page du chapitre
On the last day of the year . . .

Travis, The Last Laugh of the Laughter, from The Man Who (1999)

So it's not exactly Auld Lang Syne. But there's nothing like a little Travis for those times where you want to sit back, reflect and take stock of your life. 2007 has been a good year; a year of change. I am grateful the experiences I've had, the opportunities I've been given, the people in my life. And I do really mean that.

Sometimes I delude myself into thinking that I can step back at any time and find myself, mentally and physically, in a sort of stasis. A comfortable place and time where I can remain forever. But then I look back to January and realize how much has changed. Back in January, I thought I was going to O'Melveny (I didn't interview for my clerkship until July.) I hadn't graduated from law school, taken the California Bar exam, or gone on my bar trip in Europe, or started working life, or become an actual lawyer. I hadn't signed up for an undergraduate Chinese class, joined a basketball league with my friends, signed up for a church choir, or explored the wonderful worlds of Nikon photography or road biking in the Palo Alto foothills. I hadn't made the unexpected friends that I did (both old friends I got closer to, and new friends.) And I hadn't found a job that I truly love (even if it is only a temporary one.) A year is a long time.

I also lost my best friend this year to a silly dispute about nothing, in the last place I thought it would happen. I never could have seen that coming, either. That's something that is harder for me to categorize, to take stock of. But what can you do, except that? The good, the bad... you just have to take it in stride. Or at least that's what I tell myself.

In the end, I hope your year was as interesting as mine. Happy New Year to all.

You should see the view I have tonight of the Los Angeles skyline right. The air is beautifully clear, and -- by some optical trick or another -- every pinpoint of light I can see is twinkling and sparkling. I would photograph it, but it wouldn't come out if I tried. The cityscape looks like a gigantic Christmas tree. It's amazing.

There was a beautiful sunset earlier, too. The ocean was a luminescent band of turquoise across the western horizon. And at one point, one corner of the sky was a fiery red, the last display of the sun; while the faint purple eastern skies showcased a brilliant full moon rising over the Observatory. That was amazing too.

Anyway, I wouldn't mind staring at this twinkling city of mine for hours, I don't think. It's a bit cold, though.

The power went out today when I came home this afternoon around 2 pm and was out until nearly 8 pm. As a result, me and my sister sat around for most of the day and did nothing. The most irritating part was that it wasn't a straight out blackout, but in fact was a very erratic brownout for several hours.

It's amazing how dependent we are on electricity, and it's something you don't realize until it goes out. You can't use the microwave so your food is cold; fans, so you have to sweat it out (it was a hot day!); or, of course, your computer. Even if you have a laptop running on battery power, the cable modem won't be working, which means no Internet. Faced with these limitations, I just took a nap and rediscovered my X-Men comic book collection.

And of course, during the day things are relatively manageable, but at night there's nothing to do!

Life has gotten more interesting lately. I spent most of Friday and Saturday recovering from a out of control Thursday night. I have also been hanging out with my choir friends a lot. (The last two sentences are unrelated.) UCLA managed to lose to an abysmal WSU team in football, and I'm frankly not surprised. I give up on these guys. At least they play well at the Rose Bowl.

The seasonal Santa Ana winds are blowing right now, making for a nice airy evening up here in the hills. It's another Red Flag Day, too, so we have to park all our cars on the other side of the street in case fire trucks want to come up. A lot of smoke and fire on the horizon..fires in Malibu and the Valley, I hear. But all we got here was a beautiful sunset.

I realize I haven't posted much about my life lately, or anything else besides football really The problem is that I haven't felt the need to. Work is going great, the hours are reasonable, my weekends are entirely free.. And my life is sort of boring. I've gone out twice in the last five weeks, and both times were law student mixers (lame, I know). I also joined a choir at my church, St. Bridget's in Chinatown. That's about it.

This is my desk in chambers. It's pretty comfortable; I especially like the two monitor setup. It's easy on the eyes.

I haven't been in the sharing mood as of late. However this was too good not to post! Last night, after going to Rafallo's Pizza with my family in Hollywood, we walked outside to find a twenty-foot geyser of water coming up from a broken hydrant on the corner of Vermont and Fountain Avenues. There were a whole bevy of firefighters and police, not to mention gawkers and bystanders having a good laugh. For some reason, I found the scene to be one of the most surreal and refreshing things I've seen in a while.

I mean sure, you can think about the practical side -- the dumb car, now missing, that managed to knock the hydrant flat on its side (as you can see in the picture), the amount of water being wasted, and the law enforcement and public resources tied up by this snafu. But it's also a reason to snap people out of their ordinary routines and laugh at the irony -- a real fountain on Fountain Ave.! I saw a firefighter dive under the plume of water to see if he could fix it and come out all soaking wet. It didn't help, but it looked like he was having fun.





By way of catch-up, I came back to LA three weeks ago today; I started work at the Federal courthouse in downtown the next day. So far, it's been really quiet, as my co-clerk hasn't started yet, and my judge has been out of the country for the past week. However, it promises to be a wonderful job and I'll have more to post soon.

I thought I had moved my excess junk out after graduation. My dad came up in June with four big footlockers, I filled them up, and he took them down. However, you don't realize how much junk is hiding in your place until you have to move all of it out.. especially when said junk has been accumulating for two whole years. (That's the last time I moved out completely.)

Even though my desk, chest of drawers, and closets are pretty much empty, there is so much crap to catalog and clean up. It is disheartening, especially, if it won't fit in our two cars!