You Don't Look Like You Sing

Have you ever heard a song on the radio and have a mental construction of what the singer looks like, only to find out later that the singer looks completely different than what you had in mind?

Wrong Ethnicity
For example, one of the first ones for me was back in highschool when I heard Paperboy - Ditty.  I totally thought it was an Asian rapper for some reason.  Probably because Viet Rap was all the rave back then.  Does anyone agree with me though?  I swear it was Paperboy's sort of higher-pitched, softer rapping style plus the minimally produced backtrack.  Reminded me of the poor quality self-produced azn rap songs. no? maybe this was a bad example. In any case.

Wrong Gender
How about Nick Pitera?



Yeah, it's a little bit different with video, but if you had your eyes closed you wouldn't doubt it was a girl singing.  Pretty damned impressive.  Props.

Just Plain Wrong
This post came about because of a song by Tracy Chapman - Fast Car that I heard on 96.5 (Lite Rock Less Talk).  I've been listening to this song for years now thinking that it was some white dude in the country singing about wanting a new life, right?

ANNKKK wrong!  check the music video:


Little did I know, Tracy Chapman is a black woman!  That just blew my mind.  Whaaaaaaaaaat. I couldn't believe it, I got both the gender and ethnicity wrong on this one. Nonetheless, it's a great song and great artist.

Wrong.. Species? 
haha just for fun, i'll throw this one in.  Ever heard of Vitas? Skip to about 1 minute. 




Doesn't it remind you of the Diva from The 5th Element?!

Honorable Mentions: 

Charice Pempengco - Little girl sounding like a grown ass woman
Lin Yun Chun - Boy sounding like a grown ass woman

So yea it's pretty interesting how dynamic or different people's vocal tone and range can be.  How do people, especially impersonators manipulate their vocal chords to sound like someone else?  Crazy. 

Terry Fator doing a puppet doing a woman's voice


Skills... so much skills!!

haha man i'm digressing, but here's the extent on vocal chord research we are currently at. LOL HAHAHA i can't get enough of this:


And this concludes my Youtube vomit

Retrospect: SF Weddings!

I know, it's been over the month since I've posted, but it's because I was having too much fun back home.  Now I'm doing a couple of posts in retrospect to reminisce about the good times in June.  The main reasons I came back were because of two weddings.

1.  Xiao's wedding

Wow.  This was the first wedding I've been to without my family, and it was so beautiful.  I remember driving up the windy road through the vineyard hills and seeing the building appear ahead.  Wow.  The word Tuscany came to mind.  I didn't even remember what Tuscany was at the time!  But now that I googled it, I totally agree with what my subconscious blurted out.  I wish I took a picture coming down the road, but here's a close up shot i took.

 The wedding photographer (http://www.dannyphotostudio.com) took a much better picture (snagged from fb)

 Ain't it beautiful? The wedding ceremony was even more awesome.  It was outdoors and they had a harp!  Man the harp was my favorite part.  The harpist just seamlessly and subtly switched from wedding song to wedding song.  I felt like I was in a movie or something.  Actually my favorite part was when the flower girls came through, it was hilarious!  This little 3 year old girl comes in and instead of throwing the petals on the carpet, she tries to plant them into the dirt off to the side!  She totally stole the show and I wish I got it on video. 
 
2.  Leeme's Wedding

I was stoked for this wedding because a bunch of my closest friends were going too.  Originally my brother and I were supposed to play as a duet during the ceremony, but plans were changed.  Oh well, maybe next time! (taking reservations from friends, will play for food haha).  This wedding was also at a vineyard, so it was also very classy.  Hors d' oeuvres and open bar, what more can I say?  We all knew it was gonna be a kickass time, and everyone looked smashing in their get-ups (I heard someone was gonna come in jeans?).



Highlights:

1. The Decor: It was really nice inside the banquet room.  The lit flowery walls were a very nice touch, and it just made me feel classy.  The running slideshow was really touching, back-in-the-day pics are awesome!
   

2. Father-Daughter dance:  Man, I don't see myself as someone who'd cry at a wedding.  Maybe it was too much champagne? too much other misc. drinks?  But when Leeme and her dad started dancing, it hit me like a ton of bricks.  Tears started pooling up in my eyes, and I had to look away to compose myself. I'm feeling it a little even right now godamn!  I think it was the look papa Luong had in his eyes, pure joy and pride.  wah wah wah moving on. 
3. Food:  Leeme did a great job planning her wedding, and the dinner was delicious.  Family style, what a great idea!  Steak, Fish, mash potatoes, pasta, she sure knows what a man likes to eat.  Then there were tacos, sliders, and candy afterwards.   She's a genius.
4. Shenanigans:  I know from past weddings that the dance floor is always slow to start.  Not this time!  Readers listen, if you wanna have a poppin' wedding, you have to invite a guy named Hiep Dang.  Best part was watching him groovin' with the mature ladies haha, I bet it was the time of their life! 
5. More Shenanigans:  We were definitely the younger rowdier bunch.  The Mike! chants, the Lee-ME! chants, the Isn't She Lovely crooning (i think it happened like 3 times, I know theres a video out there somewhere).  Hilarious times. 
6. The After After Party: we all know what went down.  Smell my breath?

 Thanks for the invite buddy, I had a blast!

Who's next?!

(thanks Hen for the pics)

Chadillac the 2nd year.

June 20th! Two years ago I picked up my beloved people mover from the dealership.  I still remember it vividly, hands at the wheel in the showroom.  I was scared to death, because I had to drive through the narrow-ass showroom door.  It was just there taunting me, being extra narrow, impossibly slim.  "You can't get through me!" "You barely know how to drive stick!" "You're gonna scrape your paint the 1st 5 minutes you own this car".  The dealer hands me the keyfob and mutters something like, "Turbo eh? I know how you kids are like with these cars, just be careful out there".  I chuckle and smirk at his snide comment, thinking "kid? f-ing asshole, i'm a college grad".  Then I looked back at the narrow path to freedom. With sweaty palms and a racing heart I slowly creep out into the sunlight.  YES! FREEDOM!! VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM (displaying my middle finger through the sunroof in full fury)

Okay okay,  that last sentence was made up, but that woulda been sweet. 

2 Years by the Numbers

• Miles Vroomed:  24,304 mi. 
• Fastest Vroomed: ~112 mph? (on the track! I only go 65 mph on freeways, officer, i swear.)
• Gas Consumed: 803.304 gal. 
• Longest Tank: 462 mi. 
• Best/Worst/Avg mpg : 33.98/22.45/28.99 mpg  (compare to 32/26/29 EPA estimate, the average is dead on!)
• Total Gas Cost: $2452.51

Just for kicks, the price of gas over 2 years.  That spike is filling up at the track with ultra high octane gas. Can you believe gas was under 2 bucks?


Battlescars - I'm way past the honeymoon period, no more worrying about that 1st scratch.

1. Windshield crack - still lazy to fix, someday
2. Various Rear bumper parking nicks
3. Large but unnoticeable recession in the back right corner from a basketball.  

Is it weird to have a car birthday? I don't think so, I love my car and I'm planning to keep him for many years.  The thing is, I still haven't found the right name yet.  Toyed around with Mickey (the boy Minnie, get it?) one afternoon, but it was quickly shotdown by sundown.  For now, keep on truckin Chadillac the 2nd.

Still giving thrills, holla. 

Modern Day Gandhi?

I talked about the nice sunshine fun half of Saturday, but later on that night things took a turn for the crazy.  I went out with my cousin (let's call him GS) and his friends for some drinks and dancing at a local college bar and it started out like a normal night.  When we leave the place, we're all in great moods just joking and laughing in the streets.  All of a sudden some husky fellar comes over and kicks GS in the behind.  I'm laughing thinking this guy knows GS.  Then the husky fellar starts mouthing off:

"Get the F out of our corner! You're embarassing our house!"  (oh.. it's some douche frat kid)
"I'm in a bad mood today! F off!"

We are all totally confused, this guy was totally looking for a fight so we all start walking away from his crazy ass.  Then from the corner of my eye I see him walk up to GS and straight up punches him.  This couldn't be happening.  I wasn't even sure if GS got punched, because GS was standing there apologizing and reasoning with the guy trying to calm him down.  So I walk toward them to see what was going on.  Out of no where the frat guy punches GS right in the face again.  oh hell no,  something snaps in my drunken state and i go up and shove the guy to get him away from my cousin.  The crazy thing is that GS was completely unfazed by this punch and was still trying to reason with the guy.  When we got back to their apartment we found out that one of GS's friends got punched too.  This was ridiculous.  Who the hell would do this to people who showed no signs of animosity?  We were all outraged and thoughts of vengeance flashed through our minds.  But GS told us to stop, and not to blame the frat guys.  He said that the guy was probably just having a rough day, and was drunk. 

I looked at him and I saw that he was completely sincere.   I stopped my vengeful thoughts and realized that I really respected what he did or didn't do.  I was proud that he took the high road and didn't retaliate against that fool.  I don't know if I could have let it go like that.  We were joking that he was like our Gandhi haha. Before this incident, I always saw GS as the strongest and toughest in our family.  Meaning that if it came down to it mano-a-mano he'd be capable of ending some one.   I remember me and my other cousin GC were thinking that it would be freaking awesome if we got to witness someone getting destroyed by GS.  But we (including GS) found out that it wasn't his personality to resort to violence.  Even though some jerk kicked him, and sucker punched him in the face twice.  He stood tall.  He didn't flinch.  He didn't waver.  He just looked the guy in the eye and taught him a thing or two about humanity.  I really see GS as one of my role models for doing this. 

Unfortunately GS just found out from the doctors that his jaw is broken, requiring surgery to re-align.  Right now only two teeth make contact when he bites down, and if nothing was done his jaw would stay like that.  It's so unfair how GS has to go through this.  It's ridiculous.  That frat fool was probably so drunk he wouldn't remember what happened.  But now GS has to have surgery even though he did the right thing.  I hope everything works out so that those responsible would pay for the medical bills. 

Return, View and Review

Return

I'm back! it's been a while because of this fixture design and manufacturing project that I've just officially finished. WOO! Boy, there was overtime, and weekend working, and major hurdles, but I'd rather not get into details.  This weekend was just what I needed to unwind and I didn't even know it was coming.  My uncle tells me on Thursday night that I have to drive him down to Eugene so that  he can drive my cousin's car back to Portland to get it Smogged.  Oregon has this crazy backwards rule where you have to get the car DEQ'ed (Smogged in Cali) in the city that it was registered in?  So instead of having it smogged conveniently in Eugene, we had to have two cars travel over 200 miles roundtrip to get it done.  Thats great for the environment...

View

But it was a blessing in disguise, because when I showed up in Eugene I found out that we were going to the beach on Saturday.  Woohoo! I forgot how long it's been since I've seen the Pacific Ocean.  I've taken living 1 mile from an ocean for granted.  This portion of the blog shall be in pictures.  I present to you:: Hobbit Beach (credits to LN and JY for their beautiful pics!)

Nice view of Hobbit Beach (left) We spent probably over 2 hours building our  manly wave protection wall hahah.  It was destroyed in 15 minutes.  Damn you nature! (right)

 We then proceed to fight back against nature by trying to destroy boulders.  BAMM!! ROCK SMASH! 

You always gotta do handstands at a beach.  Guess who's the gymnast and who's a good fer' nuthin' scalliwag?

 The Ferocious Five

 I draw the only thing that I know how to draw, Turtle Power!

 I get buried, and it was so comfortable I damn nearly fell asleep!  (feel free to caption-ize this pic)

Heh, thanks to Jenny's action picture taking skills, I had to make this.  He was merely helping me get all that sand off, don't judge. 

 Then we went into town and ate Prime Rib for $12.95.  Hell yes. 

Ahh it was a great Saturday at Hobbit Beach in(around?) Florence.  Thanks for bringing me guys!

What else is new? ah yess, I splurged and bought myself something nice and shiny.  So let's get on to the

Review
I always despised Bluetooth Headsets.  So hard to use!  The first one I got was this crappy cheap logitech one where I was never sure when it was on or connected or off.   It would drain out of batteries cus I left it on, and I probably spent a total of 9 minutes actually using it.  So since then, I stuck with the tried and true wired earpiece or the even more tried and true "cellphone held by wrenched neck" method.

But then I decided to look for one recently, because I had this Call of Duty session where there were 5+ buddies with headsets trying to talk to me, but I remained a mute.  It was like I wasn't even playing with them at all!  And plus, I was tired of the CHBWN method.  And plus, I'm going to be driving a heck of a lot and will need emergency calling to keep myself alert (like last time when I played "I Never" over the phone).  Anyways I scoured through the net seeing what the most recent new fangled reasonably priced Bluetooth headset was, and I came across this baby

Behold the Motorola H17

This thing is so cool! the microphone boom flips open and close to turn the headset on and off! Now I'll definitely know if its on or off, and it's super quick so that I can flip it open, put it on my ear and still be able to answer the incoming call.  Another big feature for this is that it can connect to 2 devices at once.   So imagine this: I'm playing COD with my friends, smack talking, yelling, having a grande time when suddenly my phone rings.  This headset will let me switch over to my phone with one touch of a button, and when I'm done I'm back in my game.  Yay!  Now I understand this use case scenario doesn't apply to a lot of you, but I really love the design of this headset.  Simple, elegant, and it just works.  Plus it charges in 15 minutes haha

So when I'm driving back to home, feel free to give me a call.  I won't end up in a ditch trying to fumble for my phone, I promise! (plus, thats illegal)