Manhattan Half-Marathon

A question for those who regularly run in races:  Is there such a thing as stalk-racing?  There you are running in a race when you noticed someone in front of you and decided to overtake her.  You did, but then she passed you.  So you pumped a little harder and pass her again, only to have her pass you yet again, and so on and so on.  What is the proper phrase to describe that situation?  I think it is a good thing, something attainable and it keeps you from giving up the race too quickly, especially when you do not run in a group.  I hope it is not illegal or unethical because that was exactly what I did at the Manhattan Half-Marathon.


The race start time was 8 AM, but knowing how unreliable NYC subway was on the weekend, I left the house at 6.  According to some poster I saw in the subway, the D train would not go to Manhattan's Upper West Side directly, but instead in two sections.   Strangely, an F train showed up and stay on the D's regular route until midtown.  That's weekend NYC subway for you, full of surprises.


It was a cold morning.  Approaching the race corral, I overheard someone said it was 9 degrees.  The CNN screen near Columbus Circle said 14 degrees and it remained the rest of the race.  The runners anxiously waited in the corral while moving about as much as possible to stay warm.  Eventually, some local celebrity ended the National Anthem with "In the land of the freezing {wink, just kidding} and the home of the brave..." then off we went.


In the beginning, I stalk-raced some woman in a blue sweater.  At some point, either I outran her or she left me, we were not together.  Instead, I noticed a blond woman in purple, pony tail, with a white in-ear headphone, who kept passing me.  I cannot tell now who started this 2-person race, but we sure kept together and took turn passing each other, for at least the last quarter of the race.  On downhill trips, I would try to get more springy or lengthen my stride.  I would lose her only to have her overtake me later.  At the last water station, I skipped it, same for earlier stations, such was my plan to finish the race faster.  My "running partner" slowed down for water but not for long.  I suspected she only stopped one step to pick up a cup of water then kept running afterward, somehow drank and ran at the same time.  Eventually, she was on my heels again, maybe even passing me again.  Somehow I managed to pass her but this time I purposely slowed down both to (a) encourage her to keep up; and (b) to save energy for the sprint at the end.  I always sprint after Mile 13, i.e. sprint for the 0.1 Mile of the 13.1-mile race.  And sprinted I did, for the last time leaving the "stalker" behind.  Closer to the finish line, some Chinese guy said to me, "Come on, you and me", supposedly a challenge to the finish line.  "Sure, let's do it", I said, although by then my reserve energy was already gone.  I still ran faster than most of the course but I was no match for this latest challenger.  Oh well, I still managed to shave ten minutes from my best Half-Marathon time.  I did see my "race partner" but she was heading toward the park exit.  Years ago, for some 5K race, I did the same with some Asian girl and in the end she thanked me for the encouragement then we went our separate ways.  This time I figured nothing would come out of it so I didn't pursue, uh, the matter any further.

HOLY CANOLI

HOLY CANOLI!

by SA£ SANTU¢¢1

All I want is a canoli

And of course to say “Hi”

To my shrunken Little Italy

The reason, I think, I know why

Better believe it, Mr. Bertucci

It’s what your neighbors call “feng shui”

(One of the things I remember from high school English class is "local flavor" - literature that celebrates something special/mundane but particular to a place. This is my contribution to New York City local flavors. Instead of explaining the poem, I'll leave it to you to do your Googling or looking things up in Wikipedia to get the gist of the matter.  Just so you don't get distracted, I substituted certain characters in the byline just so the real person - I am sure there are many - will be less likely to come across this note.

Oh yes, I am on an eye-rhyme roll! Hmm, eye-rhyme roll... does that not sound like an item in a bento box?)

A Cuppa Joe

The introduction of the "Trenta" size at Starbucks got me thinking about going back to it just once to see how monstrous this thing is.  On second thought, the fancy labels applied to their cup sizes and staff members, among other things, so far has held me back.  Here is what else is on my mind...

Quit correcting me, all I want is a cuppa joe

Don't ask me the size of my shoe

Just add milk and two sugars to my pint

I don't care if you have Wi-Fi by Sprint

Life is short, there is much to do, to live

But your queue makes me feel less alive

As usual, meters in poetry I cannot handle.  Give me a kilometer and I know it has 1000 meters...

No rhyme or reason?  Well, reason yes, rhyme, hmm, only to the eyes.

Qaptain Qwerty Crosses the George Washington

From time to time, I have a personal reason to be in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan Island in New York State, usually with a few hours to kill.  Only recently that I realized I can kill those hours by running to the neighboring state of New Jersey, via the George Washington Bridge.

A co-worker once told me about his bike trip along the West Side Highway northward to the GWB, crossing over to NJ then southward to wherever he lives.  Much as I love to carry out such a bike trip, for me to cycle from the Coney Island area, the southern end of Brooklyn, to Manhattan then northward, the time required can easily take half a day.  I don't have that luxury so running from Washington Heights is the next best thing.

I prefer intersecting vehicular traffic as little as possible so starting out at Highbridge Park (around 160ish Street) made the most sense.  At 178th Street, with a view of The Apartments, as often mentioned in traffic reports, I turned left to head for the Bridge.  I expected a ramp running along 178th Street and leading into the bridge.  Instead, the ramp was perpendicular to the bridge, pointing south then turned 180° to lead to the bridge.

The Apartments, those that are often mentioned in traffic reports.

Broadway and 178th Street.

No ramp can be seen leading into the bridge.

Even though it was cold, I was not the only person on the bridge.  There were some fellow joggers, a few pairs of walkers, and a few small groups of cyclists, all decked out in fancy tights and such.  Maybe because Washington Height itself is already on a high point of Manhattan, I did not feel much of an elevation and before long I was on the bridge's midpoint already.

No snow here!

I was hoping to find signs that say "Welcome to New Jersey" or even "Welcome to Fort Lee" but none was found.  Not in the middle of the bridge nor at its New Jersey end.  Maybe there was some sign on the lower level of the bridge.  On the Jersey side, I only went as far as the entrance to Palisade State Park.  No walking path was visible and there was much snow so I did not venture into the Park but instead headed back for New York.  Again, no sign welcoming the runners and such to New York.  Oh well, I guess it is just a travelers' bridge, not for tourists.

On the bridge, there were many signs about suicide prevention.  Not too long ago, a gay student who was outed by his classmates jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge.  Unlike Manhattan Bridge or the Williamsburg Bridge, the railing on the GWB has no fence so it is easy to do so, if someone feels miserable enough.

The George Washington Bridge.

Welcome to New Jersey.  NOT!

Palisade State Park.

Time to head back to New York.

How do you like the title of this entry?  I was of course thinking of the famous painting called "George Washington Crossing the Delaware."

KOREAN BUFFET BBQ

KOREAN BUFFET BBQ

All-you-can-eat Korean BBQ

With good company, how three hours flew

The designated cook allergic to seafood

Designated driver thought all was good

Beef brisket, pork chop, and chicken gizzard

We were hit with a meat blizzard

Just as we were in food heaven

Hoped the "food" went to bovine heaven

 By and by the hostess cut off our grill

Which was fine as we had our fill

The fun was over

The wallet much lighter

With just T-shirt and jean

We had nothing to dry clean

Forwarders in the Age of FB

Back in the days, when e-mail was the primary form of electronic communication, some people just love to forward every little joke or "warning" that fell into their Inbox.  Fast forward a few hundred years to the Age of Facebook.  It seems those same "Forwarders" are now our FB friends.  Things are a bit different but essentially they entertain us with the latest news about addictive games they are playing, with YouTube videos, with witty remarks like "I am bored", etc ad nauseum.  Or so they thought it is all entertaining.  It is not.  What's worse, because of their sheer volume, these so-called status updates crowd out all the other posts.  It is the equivalent of speaking at a party using a megaphone, or having a seat on a crowded subway car and spreading your limbs all over.  In the beginning of my Facebook experience, I was guilty of inadvertently posting too much about the few games I play.  To gain the widest publicity possible, all apps on FB love to post onto your Wall every little interactions you have with it.  You can take control of the situation by making the proper settings.  From anywhere in FB, go to the upper right corner, click Account then Privacy Settings.  Go to the Apps and Websites section in the lower left and click Edit Your Settings.  In the Apps You Use section, click Edit Settings.  Find the apps that you no longer want it to write to your Wall and click its Edit Settings.  As an example, my dailymile app can post to my Wall.  Should I want to change that, I would click the Remove next to the Post To My Wall setting.

In the ideal world, everyone who reads this article would rush to their FB settings and tell all their apps not to post to their Wall any more.  That will not happen.  Even if it does happen, that would take care of just the posts from the apps.  What to do about the YouTube videos and such?  Hide 'em!  I think everything on your Wall can be hidden one way or another.  Put the mouse over it and an X gadget will appear on the upper right of that item.  Click it to see the different ways you can hide it.  You can hide just that one instance or the person who posted it.  In the example below, and it's just an example because I do not mind posts from the App Store at all, there is a third entry.  Maybe it is there because App Store used that App Publisher to do the posting, who knows.

Use it on someone who posts too frequently to keep your Wall manageable.  You can always go visit their profile page if you think you miss out on something.  Worst case scenario, you can always Unhide them by going to the Most Recent link (or whatever you may have it set to), choose Edit Options at the bottom of the list, and remove your friend from the bad list.  Unfriending someone because they post too often is drastic, so is quitting FB altogether.  Just hide them, it can be undone.

New Year Resolutions, With Feasibility Ratings

All right, here we go with the usual New Year Resolutions, but this year they come with Feasibility Ratings.  Yup, "feasible" is my preferred word over "doable", which is so lame.  For crying out loud, it's just "do" with "able" tacked to the end.  Any decent wordsmith should avoid words formed from a verb and "able".

Here's the list, with Feasibility Rating, 10 being easily achieved and 1 being impossible.

1. Lose twenty pounds.  That's 9.07 kilograms for us Metrics-lovers.  I would have said 10 kilograms but the scale I own has only pounds readings.  Maybe some day when it breaks I will buy a dual scale.  While my exercise regiment from more than a year ago has resulted in some weight loss and a general good feeling, my weight seems to plateau at 190 pounds, my spare tire is still there, if not bigger, and my running pace is still around 11 minutes/mile.  It's time I add a better diet to the formula.  Lose some weight which I believe in return will result in better speed.  Feasibility Rating, or FR for short = 9.
2. Digitize everything I own or can lay my hands on.  Like photo prints and yearbooks.  My mother has a great collection of photos, many in black & white, brought from Viet Nam, as well as more recent photos of our lives in America.  What a treasure trove for the family tree!  I am almost done with my own high school yearbook, but there is the junior high school one, college, and wife's high school.  Someone from her year was looking for it and I offered to scan the whole thing in.  FR = 2.
3. "Possess Less", that's my new motto.  Possessions possess the possessor, so I heard.  At this point in life, I think I have all that I need.  Well, an iPod touch would be nice.  When you know you have something but don't know where it is, or cannot easily locate it, that's when you have too much.  Or not organized enough.  Having less will help you be more organized.  Being a green pack rat does not help, of course.  I just hate to simply throw things out, but at least I live on a street with heavy foot traffic, so things will, mostly, disappear fast when I put them out on the curb.  FR = 5
4. More production, less consumption.  I fancy myself a producer - via this blog and the occasional cartoon or other artsy works.  Of course, Facebook can be a detractor, but I can work my productions into FB, too.  I just hope my contributions won't get lost among the many "status updates" that some of my FB friends churn out by the minutes.  Writing a series of tutorial on how to avoid polluting the FB news feed, or how to keep the news feed free of pollutants, would be a win-win product.  FR = 7

Midnight Run 2011

Happy New Year, blog readers!

Thanks to my newly found love for running, 2010 New Year's Eve was different than previous years. Instead of going about my normal routine then perhaps remember to watch the ball drop in Times Square at midnight, for 2010 I celebrated the new year's arrival near the Central Park bandshell, as a participant of the New York Road Runners' Midnight Run, which was sponsored by Emerald Nuts.

The Midnight Run was rated as a fun run, so there was no official time, you just have to time yourself.  It was more like a run between two parties.  Before the run there was DJ music and healthy food and water, plus a costume contest.  After the run, more DJ music and pretty much the same food and drink, the difference being bagels and tangerines.  It was a good alternative to the Times Square overcrowded party.  You may have to pay to be at the parties but at least here you have toilet facilities and it was definitely not too crowded.

At the stroke of midnight, there was a fireworks display over the big lake in Central Park, a short distance to the runners' left as we waited in the corral to get running.  I usually try to take photos of the runs but at night it was hard to capture anything decent.  Below is a decent video I took of the fireworks. You can hear me getting impatient near the end.  It was very crowded in the corral.  If I do the Midnight Run again, I will just show up at 11:45 and wait all the way at the end of the corral, where hopefully it will not be so crowded.  I hate being packed like sardines in a can.

Last Post of the Year 2010

It is now 12 minutes or so into the new day of December 31, 2010.  If there is anything you wish you could do, or do more often, in the year 2010, now is the time.  Losing weight takes time so that won't count.  So is quitting smoking or changing job.  It has to be that can be done within the hour, I suppose.  For me, that would have to be making a blog post.  How circular, eh?  A blog post for the end of the year, just for the purpose of having something up.

Normally I post at night, at the end of the day.  As my exercise regiment requires, lately I do not stay up past midnight.  Need to have a good night's sleep to wake up early the next day for an 8-km run.  Or some form of exercise.  Today is an exception.  For the past many years, I always welcome the new year at home.  Some years I remember its arrival and watch the festivity in Times Square on TV, some minutes before the ball drop.  More often than not, I totally forgot about it and would realize it only when people on the street tooted some horns.  This year, it will be different.

I have signed up for the Midnight Run, organized by the New York Road Runners and sponsored by Emerald Nuts.  The runners theoretically will run from the old year into the new one.  Just something different to do.  It will be a short, 4-mile run with no official time.  I don't care too much about the pre-race party and don't look forward to the subway ride home, but much as I hate changes, I'll take a chance on this one.  Maybe I'll have some photos to share 24 hours from now when I arrive home safely...

Blizzard of December 2010

Click on the collage to see the bigger picture.  Sorry for the delay, but I want to play around a bit with some software I have laying around.  Posterino 1.6 was used to make the 3x5 grid of photos then Comic Life Deluxe was used to add the snowflakes.  Using the Spray feature of Comic Life Deluxe, I was able to overlay the snowflakes of various sizes.  Alas, unlike real life, these flakes are not all unique.

Merry Wordscraper Christmas

Merry

Christmas

to

my

Wordscraper

friends

on

Facebook

Check out the game at http://apps.facebook.com/wordscraper .

If you find waiting for your turn unbearable, play some "word games"in the forum.

My favorite forum games are "Sleepless in Seattle etc" and 

"Quite Witty Even Reasonable Typewriter Yack"

The Running Jokester

Some short time after the Queens Half-Marathon, I decided to run in the New York City Marathon.  It is one thing to want to run the Marathon and something else altogether to be accepted for it.  Some speedy people may get in automatically but for regular slowpokes like me the lottery is one of the few options available.  About 15 years ago when I ran the NYC Marathon, I don't recall of a 9+1 system, i.e. run 9 qualifier races and volunteer for one event and you are guaranteed a spot in the race.  I really dislike the lottery system, especially now that it cost $11 just to be in the lottery.  I am going for the 9+1 option, although I decided to run too late into the year and won't have enough time for the 2011 race.

The recent uproar over the NYRR's selection of runners for the NYC Half-Marathon didn't paint too nice a picture of it.  It appeared money-hungry, ready to grab as much as it can, without a second thought of serving the local runners community.  Still, to me, it's the volunteers that I come across the most during the races.  It seems a lonely and possibly unappreciated job, as people rush about aiming for their best times.  I try to greet them and thank them as I pass them during the runs.  I like to be funny and even quip jokes with them.  I hope they didn't mind but here are some of my "running jokes":

1. Where are the Four Loko?  (Asked at a water station.  Four Loko is a caffeinated alcohol recently banned in NYC.  Supposedly it worked too much like a drug.  I got a few loud chuckles with this one, or at least I heard people behind me laugh, not sure if it was a coincidence...)
2. Where's the shortcut?  (All the races I ran so far weaved through the streets or the park.  Surely there must be a shortcut, although you would be cheating yourself only if you take one.)
3. What are they serving at the finish line anyway?  (It's a good way to encourage oneself to keep going, but I knew for sure it would be cold bagel, banana, or apple.  No toasted bagel with cream cheese, orange juice, or coffee.  I guess that's what the stores are for.)
4. Should I keep going?  (Best asked a mile or half a mile from the finish line.  The answer, of course, should be "Yes!")
5. Can I borrow that?  (Shouted to a bicyclist passing by.  I got some laugh along the Grand Concourse during the Bronx Half-Marathon.)

Ted Corbitt 15K

This morning I ran in the New York Road Runners' Ted Corbitt 15K Race. It was a cold morning, somewhat like the morning I ran from my home to Manhattan's Chinatown, about 16K away. I did the 16K without stopping for water, not that I had any with me and most stores were not open yet at 5:30 in the morning on a Saturday anyway. I only paused here and there to not get in the way of the typical NYC drivers, who turn whenever they want and more often than not don't yield to pedestrians.  The experience prompted me to try a new strategy to improve my time in today's race.  I stopped for water only once, which was also the time when I slowed to a walk.  It would not help to get choked by water going down the wrong pipe because I run and drink.  I still had to sprint near the end, at the 9-mile marker.  (I know, it was a 15K race but all the markers are in miles.  I suppose the NYRR hasn't upgraded their signage to go with the metric system.)  My best time, up to today, was at the Bronx Half Marathon in August of this year - 11:54 minute/mile.  Today's time is 10:57, almost a whopping minute, which is a lot in racing circles.  Of course, the Bronx Half's distance was 13.1 miles while today's race was 9.3, so who knows, another 3 miles more and I may not have a better pace.  On the other hand, maybe because it was my first race in Central Park, there appeared to be too many hills on the course, so it may not be as long as a half-marathon but definitely more challenging.

Running without taking in fluid along the way is probably not the best way to run, but we all have different capabilities so find your limit and try to exceed it.

Oh, no photos this time either.  What would be the point of trying to shave a minute off your pace only to spend some time pausing and taking photos?  I will just have to wait for Bright Room to make their offerings.

What's the word for...

So "refudiate" and "vuvuzela" are the popular words of 2010, but there are words that I wish to know to describe certain popular scenarios or activities.

In these days of multitasking on the computer, with instant messaging a popular form of communication, a typical computer screen can have multiple chat windows up at any given time. Eventually, you end up typing a response intended for someone but sent to another. Hopefully it will not be something like "I really do not like Mr. So-and-So" and sent to Mr. So-and-So! The chance of having such a mistake increases greatly if you use Microsot's Office Communicator. A new chat someone initiates with you simply jumps to the front and commandeer whatever chat you may have going at that time. So, what do you call such a mistake, which involves sending an intant message to the wrong person? Instant mistake? Lame AIM? Mis-chat?

Another typical office faux pas involves conference calls. Leo Laporte wants everyone, or at least everyone who listens to his many podcasts, to use GoToMyPC or GoToMeeting, but I don't know anyone who does. I do spend a good percentage of my time on conference calls, the old-style one with everyone on a phone, voice-only conference, that is. Unless you use some old phones from the late 90s, your phone probably has a mute button. Maybe you have a sudden urge to eat potato chips during the conference call, or need to chat away on some obtrusive OCS window, that is, typing noisily. So you have the mute button pressed. Then suddenly your name is mentioned in vain on the conference call and you need to defend yourself, verbally, of course. You rant on and on about how much money you saved the company by whipping up some kick-ass KiXtart script blah blah blah for twenty-five minutes. Then you realized you were still on mute! What do you call that? Malk (short for mute-talk)? Tomute (talk-on-mute)? Mutestake?

As Foreigner once sang back in the 1980s, I want to know what that word is, I want you to show me.

Friend Finder - Beyond Facebook

Facebook is a great place to find high school classmates but it should not be the only option.  Explore all the avenues.  One approach is to use the average search engines, be it Google or one of its contenders.  The trick is to enclose the full name in quotes.  Just typing "John" and "Smith" into Google's search box would give results like "John Wong" and "Peter Smith", among other   Things get better if you have the middle name or middle initial.  When searching with middle initial, be sure to use it with and without the period.  For example, search for "Joe M Wong" as well as "Joe M. Wong".  Always go for the more unique names although I did get lucky and found someone with a common first and last name thanks to his middle initial and a business photo.

There are many other social networks that you should explore.  One big hassle with the web is the need to open accounts as you come across new sites.  Luckily, some of the popular social networks, such as Plaxo, readily accepts accounts from the popular sites, like Google.  Even if you have to create a new account with a site, take the plunge.  Some sites have school networks so there may be someone you know from high school waiting to be found.  I must say my own venture into Friendster, Gather, etc got me only messages from scantily clad women and no new leads.

In this day and age, the ideal contact would have an email address but you don't always get that.  There are many web sites that cull info from the white pages etc to give you info on phone numbers and addresses.  I used ZabaSearch, WhitePages, SwitchBoard, etc. and actually found a few people through those phone directories.  Again, unique names help, although in general these phone directories also list the members of the household.  If you happen to know the names of someone's siblings, high school sweetheart, or a parent, the extra info can help narrow down the results.  With free weekends and weeknights, it may not be so bad, cost-wise, to call people in series until you are done with the results list, but it is better to go with the more likely names first.

With the philosophy of leaving no stones left unturned, find high school friends outside of Facebook means using search engines, coupled with using quotes to keep the first name and last name, or even middle initial, together. Join other social networks and look around.  Every person found can potentially lead to another person, or more. Lastly, while email is ideal phone contacts should not be overlooked.

Find High School Friends On Facebook

I recently had a 25-year reunion with my high school classmates.  Some people liked the event so much they wanted to have another soon, like for the 27th or 30th anniversary.  A committee was quickly formed but it was decided that they will use a professional organizer for help with the locale, hotel, air travel, etc.  I don't know what they will do about finding more classmates.  We had about one hundred classmates for the recent reunion, with perhaps 200 to 300 on Facebook.  Like sending out resumes, the number of people actually going to a reunion will be a percent of the people located, so it helps to find as many people as possible.  Here's what I and other members of my reunion committee did to find people.

Recall that we already had a Google Doc with all the student names from the yearbook and the commencement roster.  The next thing we did was to search for people in Facebook, the definitive social network of the day.  I discovered that there are a few high schools named Newtown around the world.  There was one in Australia, another in Pennsylvania (albeit that one was Marple Newtown High School), one named exactly the same as mine, right nearby in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.  My Newtown was in Elmhurst, Queens, New York.  Facebook is smart enough to offer the choices but people still make mistakes so not everyone who indicated that they graduated from Newtown High in Elmhurst really belong there.

With about 300 people indicating they are Class of 1985 from Elmhurst's Newtown High, the search is almost over, right?  Even if you subtract 5% for those stumblers from the other Newtown, you still have about 280 people to put together a party with, yes?  Unfortunately, some of those people may be just placebooks, i.e. inactive people on Facebook, like those fake books that take up space on a shelf just to show what a full shelf looks like.  Take away another 5% or so.  It's time to tap into the general population on Facebook.

In these days and age, some people think it is easy to find people on the Internet.  Those Classmates.com ads make it sound easy, but it is far from it.  Especially if you don't want to spend any money.  Still, everyone is on Facebook, right?  All you need to do is type in the person's first name and last name then your old friend would be a Friend Request away.  In reality, many of the people we tried to locate had common names that when searched by names alone returned too many hits.  "John Smith" is understandably too common a name, but names in other ethnic groups that may sound uncommon to us turned out to be extremely popular for those cultures.

The clever idea my search partner, M.P., in the Reunion Committee came up with was to search for unique names.  Sure there are some names that we were mistaken about their uniqueness but there are some that are truly unique.  Remember that I mentioned before about the commencement roster listing middle initials?  Combined with the unique names, the middle initials can really help pinpoint a person.  There are many people to find and some people keep in touch with a small circle of friends years after graduation.  Always hope that those people with less common names are still friends with those with common names.  Sometimes we get lucky and the person has a photo that is recognizable.  One of the fun in locating high school classmates was seeing how people change yet certain traits remain.  Find 'em, Friend 'em, let's party!  M.P. was so good at it that she triggered FB's spam detector and got her account suspended.  The lesson here is to go easy with the friending on FB.  Spread the work out among the other board members.

Life is not always so rosy.  There were cases where we found the people, confirmed their identity, maybe even befriended them, only to have them, for whatever reason, drop off FB altogether.  Whenever possible, grab your friends' regular email address and keep it somewhere safe.  Someday FB may start charging money for its use and people may leave it en mass, like some of those groups that sometimes proclaim.

High School Reunion - Friend Finder

In the old days, I imagine, looking for high school friends so many years after graduation means getting together physically to pore over the yearbook and call people one after another.  Perhaps two people would open their own yearbook and call each other then go over the names and assign them accordingly.  Depending on how long back you go, there may be no telephones to use and you would send out copies of a form letter to the last address known for a person.  Clacking away on typewriters, running the letter through photocopier, fill out the blank after "Dear", sign the letter then fold it, stuff it into the envelope, and address the envelope.  Finally, lick the stamp and affix it then lick the envelope to seal it.  What fun!

My recent search for high school friends didn't happen like that at all.  We were well into the Information Age, with the Information Superhighway running through our houses, at high speed no less.  We didn't have to get together physically.  One of us was on the west side of the U.S. and three were in New York City, although different parts of the city and rarely see each other, at least for me.  We got on CONFERENCE calls, not one-to-one calls like the days of yore, to discuss things to do and progresses.  We actually sent out a few paper letters and they didn't do much good.

One thing we had in common with the old-fashioned approach was the yearbook.  Regardless of how the process of finding friends is done, it has to start with the yearbook.  However, we had a "copy" of the yearbook in the form of a Google Doc, a spreadsheet, to be exact.  It took some time to type in all the names but it was worthwhile.  We could sort the list by last name or by first name, or later as we got more info about the students, by other columns, like whether they were on Facebook or indicated they were interested in the reunion.  Having all the student names in digital form allowed us to also use the search function to find the names.  After 25 years, some of us may remember only the first name of a classmate.  By searching for just that first name and coming across all the last names that go with the found first name, perhaps something in our mind would be jolted to come forward.

Besides the yearbook, we also had access to the commencement roster.  For some reason, the roster had few or no typos at all so it was a good source to fall back onto.  After typing in the names from the yearbook, I also added the names from the roster.  An additional bonus with the roster was many of the names had middle initials.  If you have to find someone whose first name and last name are common, the middle initial makes a big difference.  Yet one other usefulness with the commencement roster is that it may have names of people who somehow were not in the yearbook.  Maybe someone transferred into your school after the yearbook photos were taken.

Whether you plan to do the work of finding high school friends with your committee made up of classmates or use professional search service, the yearbook, in digital form (read: searchable), plus the commencement roster if possible, will get you to a great start.  It is good to have a pack rat on the committee who can type at decent speed.

How To Run A Successful High School Reunion

Five hours, two years, a quarter of a century.  Amazing as it sounds, they all went by in a flash.  Just a few days, I had my high school reunion, a Silver (25 years) Reunion as a matter of fact.  It took about two years of planning and lasted five hours.  I was part of the Reunion Committee and based on the feedback it was a great success.  Partly for me to look back some day on the event and what led up to it, partly for anyone wishing to organize a high school reunion, here are the process on how to run a successful high school reunion.

You need a committee.  It is a lot of work for any one person.  We were lucky to have people who good at dealing with the various vendors (catering hall, photographer, DJ), taking notes during meetings and sending them out, finding old friends or at least reaching out strangers with the same last names and first names in hope they are your old friends, balancing the checkbook, make polls, keep lists of attendees, and taking care of many other tasks required of the committee.  Not only we put in the work, we also put some some money to get things going.  After all, vendors mostly require deposits.

You need a place to hold the event.  Not one who cares about dancing and drinking, I would have suggested some quiet place to reminisce the past, like a library of sort.  Luckily, we decided the event to be held in New York City so there were many choices to choose from.  We settled upon the Astoria World Manor and pricey as it may be, it was a great choice.  Great location, not too far from the two airports in Queens and near a major highway, roomy hall, great parking, good service, and fancy décor.  Of course, depending on the size of your party, you need to find something that fits.  Whatever, you cannot go wrong if you have dancing and drinking.

You need lots of participants!  According to my yearbook, there were over 800 students, a large population.  It was 2008 so naturally we went mostly with Facebook (FB) to locate those 800+ people.  One nice thing with FB is that when opening up an account, people get to indicate their high schools and such.  The info is then collected in one place, sorted by graduation year, ready for others to pore over.  We found many people this way but it helped also to have our own high school group.  We also had premium accounts with Classmates.com and MyLife.com and they helped somewhat.  Don't forget the personal connections.  Many people kept in touch with their own small circle of friends over the years.  If you are lucky enough to connect with an individual from these circles, you have a good chance of locating even more.  Don't be surprised or discouraged if someone responds coldly upon being found.  Twenty five years is a long period of time, people change, or maybe no longer care about certain aspect of their past.  Or maybe they are too tight with their privacy and freaked out when they somehow got found.  Just move on to the other grads.

I got pretty good at finding people, both through free services on the web or premium accounts so perhaps I can delve into that area in greater details.  The process may not be earth-shattering amazing and probably can be found out there in the library or on the web, but it's something that worked for me.

Happy Organizing!

Thin Different

"You lost some weight, are you OK?"  "I did not recognize you at first."  Those two phrases were addressed to me in recent weeks by people I have not seen in months, maybe even a year or two.  I don't usually care enough about my look, but these observations made me happy.  All that running has paid off.  Even though my weight still hovers between 185 pounds and 210 pounds (83 kg and 95 kg), supposedly there is visible change in my appearance.  I unreasonably hope that my 95 kg really contains some muscle mass.  I do see the love handles getting smaller, so maybe I really lost some fat.

It all started almost a year ago, September 2009, that for some reason I decided to lose some weight.  My family went on vacation with a big group and perhaps there were other men in the group who were overweight.  Perhaps the men made a bet on who would shed some pounds.  Strange that I don't remember the details from last year's event.  I remember back in 2007 I was upset that my ring finger was so fat I almost couldn't remove the wedding band.  I was also on vacation and went through some exercise routine after coming back from the vacation.  It also involved jogging but I gave up after a while.  Maybe the cold weather set in and I got discouraged.  This time around my Facebook friends definitely helped with the good words of encouragement.  I started out running 6 times around the nearby park, totaling just 3K or a pitiful 1.8 miles.  Slowly I worked up to 9K or 5.5 miles.  Then my right foot started to hurt so I switched to cycling, around New Year's Day.  I am sure cycling has its benefits, but I was still operating a machine, so the energy I use in an hour on the bike is less than an hour running.  About four months of cycling and I switched back to jogging.  This time around I introduced longer distance on the weekends, 15K (10 miles) or more.  Warm or hot weather, I was out there putting in 8K to 15K each run.  The work culminates in the 2 half-marathons I ran recently.  Before running the half-marathons, I was not sure if I could even run them in less than 3 hours.  I eked by with the Queens Half, at 2:54, but with the Bronx Half, I completed the course in 2:35.  Now I am so gung-ho about the whole thing that I'm considering running the full marathons in the New York metro area, perhaps a bit further out as far as Philadelphia.

It takes time to exercise regularly.  In my case, I have to give up being a night owl so I can get up early in the morning, like 5:30 or 6.  Just do the run in the morning and carry on with normal activities during the day.  I get home late in the evening so this is the only solution for me.  It really helps that I don't have to cook or wash the stinky clothes, for I have mother and wife to thank for.  Still, I have to drag myself out of bed in the morning.  I no longer stay up past midnight playing Wordscraper Blitz or some other games I have installed locally.  No more random surfing of the web looking for a particular piece of software.  Or just checking out free Mac software just because they are free.  I already watch very little TV and DVD, now I do so even less.  I just have to make do with podcasts and paper books, something I can consume while commuting.

If you have the need to lose some weight, or take better care of your health, I hope my story inspires you to put wish into actions.  It may be hard to get started, but if so start small.  I started at 3K and worked up to 15K, over almost a period of one year.  Yes, you will have to sacrifice some time, but the outcome is worthwhile.  On days that I go jogging, I feel energetic and alert the whole day.  Food tastes better and sleep comes easily at night.  Let me know if you are inspired enough to do something about your health!

Bronx Half-Marathon, Bonus Questions for Vietnamese

After the Bronx Half-Marathon, I attended a luncheon for my wife's grandmother.  To be easy for others, it was held in the much-hated, by me anyway, Manhattan Chinatown.  Will anything ever be done so it's easy on the drivers among us?  It was next to impossible to find parking in the area.  The sea and mountain of people in the area were just staggering.  I was a bit tired from the race and felt even worse upon arriving in Chinatown.  I ended up parking far away at some municipal parking lot.  At the end of the long walk from the parking lot, I met the paternal grandmother, plus others, for lunch.  What's the Vietnamese phrase to describe the situation?  Hint:  I was tired then I saw the paternal grandmother.

Only Vietnamese speakers need to try!