Posted 4:51 PM by Blah blah

Paid for Advertising. Christina's Yunnan Province Pix

You see those ad links at the top of the page? Out of the blue, a woman just offered to pay me, monthly, to advertise on this blog! So please do me a favor and click on those two online gambling links above.

Yessir, Tiger Cafe is actually making a little cash.

Next, Christina just got back from a vacation to Yunnan Province, in southwest China, about 600 miles west of Hong Kong. See her Yunnan pix!. Lots of countryside and rural folks on horseback. Use login: tigercafe, password: password if needed.

She has some very cute pix here. What is she doing in Pic #39?

Posted 6:22 AM by Blah blah

Interesting! Did you know I met this Asian guy at a party who actually KNEW the first ABC "bachelor," Alex Michel? He'd gone to school with him at Harvard and Stanford. ABC's "bachelor" says engagement is off (AP).

My Ex Got Married

Sorry for being off the Net for a week. For those of you who are coming to read this regularly (and I think I know most of you), thanks for your patience. I'm sure you know I can't be as frank and open here as I am by phone or email.

Sometimes that's the reason I quote articles written by other people. Something raw or notable may have just happened to me, but it's too sensitive to tell. So if you want to know the truer me, please write or call or chat with me. Haven't been in the writing mood lately.

One of my exes, D, just contacted me last week. We'd lost touch for 1-2 years. I was surprised and happy to hear from her. She seemed upbeat and content and happy to hear me again. Said she'd gotten married last year. A quick marriage in Las Vegas with no time for a honeymoon, then back to China for the wedding reception.

D's originally from near Beijing. She used to be a host of a current events TV show in China. She wasn't a reporter but a reader of other people's writing.

She started telling me these little details about things we had done together. "Remember when you took me to that delicious Thai restaurant in Berkeley?...Remember when you took me to the DMV?..." I honestly have not thought about that stuff for years. But each time we've talked since we stopped regular contact, she's brought up little things that I showed her, little things she treasures. And I am flattered.

When I first knew D, she was unhappy. Some bad things had happened in her life, she felt helpless, and she was thinking of giving up life here and returning to China. I tried to strongly encourage and inspire her to keep persisting. And it eventually worked! So I am happy for her. And amazed that she remembers little details of what we did together. I actually made a difference in someone's life!

With so many people coming in and going out of our lives, I felt a strong sense of warmth when she brought up all these little details of experiences we had together. It was talking to an old friend again. And she wants to keep in touch and see me sometime.

I've almost never had a messy breakup. We've usually parted amicably. The time I have met my exes again, they have been very happy to see me, and I felt this rush of good feeling in my tummy too. The chemistry is still there.

Have some funny stories to tell, but no time. Will catch ya later, 'k?

Posted 9:41 AM by Blah blah

Hi to those of you coming here from Joe Club! You guys crack me up!

Photos and Videos from Inside the Columbia Space Shuttle. Foam?

I'm watching the memorial service on NASA TV live.

Sigh. This really makes the death of the astronauts hit home with me: from NASA's shuttle page, see individual bios of the crew, plus

-Crew photos from Day 12 and
-Videos of crewmembers on Day 15. They sounded so upbeat and enthusiastic.
-The start of 16 pages of videos from the flight. This page and this page show the launch, and this page shows the crew talking to the press.

Sadly, NASA now thinks that a piece of foam that peeled off the space shuttle's external fuel tank, during launch, MAY have damaged its heat protecting tiles enough to cause the accident. Engineer's '97 Report Warned of Damage to Tiles by Foam (NY Times).

NASA photo of particles hitting the shuttle's left wing.

This piece of foam was maybe three to four feet long and weighed less than three pounds. Turns out the shuttle "tiles were only two inches deep," but "the impact could have damaged a swath of tile as large as 7 inches wide and 32 inches long, according to an agency memorandum made public yesterday."

Very sad. If so, it means the astronauts were doomed from the very beginning of liftoff, or at least after they first entered space. What is this "foam" they talk about? Something soft like styrofoam??? I assume that at the shuttle's incredible speeds for liftoff, even a three pound object would hit it with a hugely damaging force, like a rock might hit your car on the freeway.

"The report went on to speculate as to why the foam dropped off. As it turned out, to be environmentally friendly, NASA had eliminated the use of Freon in foam production, Mr. Katnik reported. The Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., later concluded that the absence of Freon led to the detachment of the foam. While the formulation was later improved, the episode revealed potentially dangerous new ways in which tiles could be damaged. " [From a 1997 engineer's report on a previous launch of the shuttle Columbia.] Very ironic.

As many people said this weekend, we are so used to space travel being predictable and "safe" that we forget how really fragile everything is, including human life. I wonder what happens usually when space junk and rocks in space strike the shuttle? It must be travelling at least tens of thousands of miles per hour in orbit! Amazing.