Newton never dies. It just gets new batteries!

After all these years, the Newton line of handheld and mobile computing products continues to amaze me. The product has been officially dead since late February, 1998, but hundreds of thousands of users are still dedicated to using and developing for the product. One of the excellent examples of how powerful the device is today is Newton Personal Data Sharing (NPDS), a suite of applications that turn any Newton running Newton OS 2.0, into a powerful, full-fledged web server!

I recently rediscovered NPDS from a thread on the newly revived Newtontalk.net mailing list. Since then, I’ve tracked down a 3Com Ethernet Card, dug up my old Newton MessagePad 2000 (upgraded), and downloaded and installed the software needed to run NPDS. I’ve got a cable modem at home, and the installation and configuration phase went without any problems.

Now, I have one of the smallest and coolest web servers in the world! Who would have thought that the Newton could do something like this? To access my Newton on the World Wide Web, point your browser here.

With NPDS, I can serve content from my Date Book, Address Book, or Note Pad. I guess you can think of my Newton Web Server as a personal FusionOne or Yahoo! Calendar on the Internet!

I’ve gotten in touch with one of the developers who is continuing to support and enhance NPDS and the Newton platform, Paul Guyot. This guy is fricking amazing with what he’s developed over the past few years. His ATA Card Drive, when finished, is going to be rocking. Imagine slapping my IBM Microdrive into my Newton for a full gigabyte of storage space! I can see why Paul was nominated as the Newtonian of the Year in 2000 by This Ol’ Newt. He’s the preeminent Newton developer in the community today!

It’s 00:36 on Friday, June 29, 2001, and I’ve been communicating with Paul, who lives in Paris, France, via my Newton. With NPDS and the WebPager module, he can send me instant messages from his browser that appear directly on my Newton’s screen! To reply, I just enter a note in the Notepad application and he can see it by grabbing a screenshot of my Newton’s screen. How cool is that?

This application is so neat, it might even make me crack out my copy of Newton Toolkit 1.6.4 to get back into development. It’s been sooooo long since I dealt with Newtonscript and NTK. I’m not even sure I can program anymore for the Newton. But, as we say in French, “On le verra.” Yes, we’ll see indeed.

There are a number of people setting up their Newton’s as personal web servers. There is a tracker available on the Net which lists people who have Newton web servers. Give ‘em a looksee and be sure to sign their whiteboards. Finally, if you’ve visited my Newton, make sure you sign a message on the public whiteboard or on my main web site’s guestboook.

Update: Here’s Dardy’s commentary from our night out at Lucy’s Teahouse.

I’ve known Dardy Chang since my days at Stanford, but my memories of him consisted of two facts: (1) he was very tall (for an Asian), and (2) he played Taiko. It wasn’t until I came across his web site on the Rice Bowl Journals that more substance was added to the skeletal mental representation I had of Dardy.

Since I found Dardy’s scribblings, I’ve been hooked, reading his journal religiously. I am often in stiches laughing at the things he writes, where as Eric puts it, “he holds nothing back.” It’s refreshing to see someone be honest in discussing his feelings and emotions at the moment, be they good or bad. Reading Dardy’s stories about people we both knew at Stanford adds greater depth to my own memories. The journal entries transport me back to my days at Stanford, days filled with the sights and sounds of accomplishments and disappointments of a young college student. Has it really been 8-9 years since we were freshman? I look around at the students when I’m checking my mail at the Post Office and think to myself, “Wow, they, they’re so, sooo… young!”

I really wish that I was more of a photographer when I was a student. I wrote in my journal nearly every day, but the memories that I recorded on my computer have become faded over time. I think that my college experience would have been more memorable had I taken more pictures. The only ones I have after all were from my time in France during my junior year. Today, I’ve gone to the completely opposite end, taking my camera everywhere that I go, despite its obvious heft. I showed him my S100 that I carry in my bag, saying that while I take the little digital camera with me everywhere, it usually stays stuck in my bag. I’ll admit it, I’m addicted to the picture quality from the D30. Anything less just doesn’t cut it, I guess.

Being Chow Yun Fat

As I was driving up to meet him in Mountain View at the New Tung Kee Noodle House, I saw him sitting at a bench and remarked to myself, “He is Chow Yun Fat!” In the picture to the right, we see Dardy starring as Detective Nick Chen alongside Mark Wahlberg in The Corruptor. He’s got to get the strut down, have a toothpick omnipresent in his mouth, and practice his double-gun draw, but I think that he’s got a future as a Chow Yun Fat impersonator!

It’s strange how time changes a person. I don’t think that I would have identified him with Chow Yun Fat if I saw him at Stanford 5 years ago. I remember him being a bit thinner. It’s like he went from being a small forward to a power forward in the past four years! Lately, I’ve been feeling a little bloated… time for me to start reshaping my body into a lean, mean machine again; otherwise, I’m going to become Jabba the Hutt, bloated and unsightly! Dardy made a comment about how my hair was really long. For the past three days, I’ve let it down, giving me the Lorenzo Lamas Renegade look. I’ve been wondering lately if I should get it trimmed or just keep letting it grow until it’s long enough for me to cut all the hair to one length. Ah, decisions, decisions!

After we met in front of the New Tung Kee Noodle House, we drove over to Lucy’s Teahouse at 180 Castro Street in Mountain View. I had heard of this hole in the wall venue from a number of my friends, but I never knew where it was until Dardy showed the way. Man, this place had an ambiance that reminded me of the old Stanford Teahouse! Everything from the lighting to the color of the walls to the booklet menus screamed, “Cool!” to me. I’ve been looking for a good hangout ever since I was a manager at the Teahouse, and I think I’ve found it.

Over pearl milk tea and an almond tea, Dardy and I discussed a whole variety of topics, from online journalism to relationships to ESPN Sportscenter. We talked about what makes a compelling web site that keeps us coming back day after day. There are so many people out there on the Net who have online journals, but are only a few are able to capture and sustain our interests over the long-run. For me, Dardy’s journal is so intriguing because: (1) I know the author, (2) I appreciate the fact that he’s honest in writing whatever comes to his mind, and (3) he writes in an easily digestable and fun manner. There are a few authors who match those two criteria, and Dardy and Eric’s web sites headline that short list.

Social Ven Diagrams

The two of us have some interesting social circles that have a surprising amount of overlap. I bet that when he visits Eric’s place next month for the Vienna Teng concert, he’s going to meet some more people that he knows either personally or through his existing social network.

Oliver Miao stopped by Lucy’s for some late-night studying and took a few minutes to chat with us. The last time that I saw Oliver, it was at Justin Min’s 26th birthday party at the beginning of June. Dardy was commenting that he saw Oliver at Shoreline a few weeks ago; he recognized Oliver’s face from one of Eric’s journal entries, but held back from walking up to him and saying, “I know you from Eric’s web site!” Now that would be strange to have someone that you don’t know walk up to you saying they recognized you from a web site. That’s the price you pay for putting your face and thoughts out on the Internet for all to see, right?

Speaking of people that we both know in common, I just realized while talking to Dardy that Clara from Starlit Flashes was none other than the Clara who used to be good friends with my cousin, King Jung, who just graduated from Stanford two weeks ago! It really is a small, small world, isn’t it? I never knew that she was an online journalist since 1996!

Back in the BBS days of the early 90’s, I used to attend these BBS Meets in San Diego. This was a group of people who got together at the local mall or on the softball field to meet, chat, and swap stories and warez. It was fun back then since we were able to identify the faces and names behind the handles. I can still remember meeting people like Killer Klown, Seduction, Fistandantilus, The Evil Master, and The Crypt Keeper for the first time. Meeting up with these online journalists would probably bring back similar memories and feelings, I’d imagine. At the same time, part of me wants to keep a certain distance from them. There’s a certain mystery in being able to peel away the layers of a journalist’s personality simply by reading his or her web logs. After a point, however, I think that I’d need to meet them in person to gain a better understanding of who they are.

Dunno, maybe Eric, Dardy, and I will be organizing a Bay Area Online Journalist Meet with personalities such as Amabelle, Gary Cruz, Stephanie Wong, Rita Lee, Jennifer Wade and many more in the near future!

Final Thoughts

I really enjoyed meeting Dardy and hanging out with him this evening. I’m certain that he’ll be posting his thoughts on the evening in his journal entry tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it with both interest and trepidation. Interest in that he’s probably going to write something about me and trepidation in that I don’t know what he’s going to write about me! Whatever he writes, however, I’m confident that it’ll be his honest appraisal and opinion. After all, I’m looking mainly for one thing from people: honesty.

I found out that Vienna Teng was playing at an open mic at the Red Rock Coffee Company in Mountain View minutes after I stepped into the house. I wasn’t aware that she was playing at an open mic at the cafe, but Eric informed me that she was. Not wanting to miss another opportunity to hear Vienna play live, I inhaled my dinner, changed, and got back into the car to drive down to Castro Street.

When I stepped out of the house, I saw a most wondrous site: a rainbow stretching across the Southern sky in a perfect 180 degree arc. I stopped my car, got out and began shooting the scene with my D30 and the 17-35mm f/2.8 lens. Because of the 1.6x focal length multiplier on my D30, I wasn’t able to get the entire arc of the rainbow without using special Photostiching software. At the ultra-wide angles like 17mm, the image get distorted enough that stitching is difficult; still, I was able to get a decent panorama of the scene, showing the grandeur and beauty of this rainbow.

Vienna started playing a few minutes after I arrived. She played three songs from her new Album, Waking Hour. She started out with drought, followed by enough to go by, and unwritten letter #1. I didn’t hear many of the artists play, but I just felt like her music was received more warmly by the crowd than the others. Maybe it’s a bias on my end, I don’t know.

At Randy’s birthday party on Sunday, Bill made a comment about Vienna’s music being great, but that it was a bit hampered by the use of a digital drum machine. Now, I’m no musician, so I can’t tell whether the drums in her songs were synthesized or not. I guess I’ll have to ask her the next time that I see her. She seems to be booked at the Red Rock for the next several weeks before heading up to play at Eric’s in the City. I can tell now that there’s going to be a lot of people at that event.

I hope that Vienna doesn’t mind me popping up at her gigs all the time; I’m genuinely excited to see someone like her pursuing her dreams and goals. She’s starting from ground zero, building momentum with each gig. Attending and documenting them makes me feel like I’m tracking her progress in print. I doubt that I’ll be able to attend all of her upcoming shows, but I am going to try to make enough of them to be able compile a set of photographs that could be entitled, The Early Years of Vienna Teng.

I’ve converted the photos above into a duotone/film-like format. While the originals are in vibrant color (my low-light skills were a bit off this evening, creating less than tack sharp photos), there’s something about seeing them with grain and in black and white (or duotone) that screams, “Photograph!” I like the look of color, but black and white, it feels more photographer for some reason. One of those other things that I’ll keep pondering over and over!

After Vienna finished her playing, I left the Red Rock to go over to the Printer’s Inc. Cafe to work on the web page for the past weekend. After a couple of hours, I finished much of the commentary and photos for the web page. By that time, it was closing time at Printer’s Inc. I left to go back to my car, passing by an already closed and cleaned up Red Rock Coffee Company. As I was turning the corner to get to my car, I noticed this building with the sign, “Chinese Dance Club and Studio.” I heard Chinese music blaring through the door and up the stairs. After pacing around for a minute or two, I walked up there. I had to see what the heck was happening in this place.

I thought that I had left America and walked into a club in Hong Kong! There was a singer (karaoke or professional) who was singing these Chinese songs. There weren’t that many people in the club, and I wasn’t going to pay $23 to sit around and listen. Still, the place was very intriguing. If I ever get the urge to go to a Hong Kong club, I’ll be coming back to this Chinese Dance Club and Studio one night.

This weekend was filled with a ton of events, from going away lunches to birthday celebrations. Here’s what I did the weekend of the 23rd of June, 2001.

Friday was Nancy’s last day at work at Palm; she was leaving the company to pursue other opportunities in the technology sector. As is customary, I took her out to lunch in Milpitas at McCarthy Ranch. Up along Highway 237, one has two choices when taking the McCarthy Ranch exit: either go left to the center where there are a plethora of predominantly American or European fare or head to the right to the Asian sector. We chose to travel to the right and eat at a sushi restaurant near the Ranch 99 market.

The last time that we went to this restaurant, it was to say goodbye to another Palm contractor, Asao, who had decided to leave and travel around the country before returning to Japan. I recall at the time that Vince, Nancy, Asao, and I ordered a giant Family Boat filled with sushi. This time, Nancy and I felt that we could handle a boat all to ourselves and subsequently ordered a Happy Boat of sushi, tempura, and teriyaki.

There was a waitress at the restaurant who, in my mind, was really pretty. Fortunately for me, Helen was also very nice and allowed me to take a picture of her. It was a bit of trouble to get her to smile, but when she did, it was great; unfortunately, the pictures I took caught her only in a half smile. I guess I’ll have to come back to the restaurant again!

Nancy and I finished the Happy Boat with time to spare. We talked about the handoff of responsibilities after her departure, as well as her plans after Palm. I didn’t dwell too much on the former, since I feel that work is never a great thing to talk about over a goodbye lunch. We discussed briefly my little idea to travel around the world one of these days, plotting my route from Australia to Europe.

After lunch, we returned back to work and met up with Ryan, one of the engineers I’m working with on a project at Palm. For the rest of the afternoon, we engaged in few hours of extreme programming, or collaborative programming with engineers working side-by-side. It’s a different approach than what I’m more familiar with, that of locking myself in a room for days on end to emerge with a finished product. Extremem programming can be beneficial since you can throw ideas off of each other to be more efficient in coding.

On Friday evening, I went out to dinner with another co-worker of mine, Mindy. She and I went to the 24 Hours of Adrenalin at the Laguna Seca Raceway about a month ago. Both of us were involved in minor accidents at the race, but thankfully, we have both since recovered. We ate over at Los Portales in Mountain View, a restaurant that I frequent often. I was stuffed from earlier eating sushi with Nancy, but somehow I found the space in my gullet to have a Juan’s Special Enchiladas. That dish has three yummy enchiladas with three different kinds of sauces, accompanied by refried beans, Mexican rice, and a salad. Absolutely yummy and extremely filling. We made some preliminary plans to see Startup.com, a recently released movie/documentary about the rise and fall of an Internet dot-com. I’ve heard good reviews of the movie, and I’m looking forward to seeing it!

Tomb Raider and Photography

Before I’d watch Startup.com, however, I had two movies to view. Another one of my co-workers, Jon, has an extensive DVD collection. When I learned about that, I quickly hit him up to be my local Blockbuster Video store. The first two DVDs that he gave me were Terminator 2: The Ultimate Edition and Gladiator. T2 contained the special edition of the movie, which I had never seen before. I had this illustrated screenplay of the movie back at home in San Diego, and I was fascinated by the production stills and commentary about some of the cut scenes from the movie that made their way back into the Special Edition. It took me a couple of days to complete watching the movie, but it was worth it, as I felt that the additional scenes enhanced the overall movie experience.

On Saturday, I met up with Kanishka and Joe at the Hobee’s in San Jose, one of four of the many Hobee’s I’ve been to in the Bay Area, including Palo Alto, Mountain View, and Sunnyvale. After a quiet lunch discussion about weddings and photography, the three of us drove over to San Jose to watch Tomb Raider. I’m not much of a gamer anymore, but I have played Tomb Raider a few times on the PC and on my Mac (yes, games like this do exist on the Mac!). The movie itself was mindless fun that I would give a 6 out of 10. Nothing too intellectual with lots of eye candy if you like Angelina Jolie or the game. Still, I think I’d rather play the game than watch the film if I had the choice.

Angelina Jolie’s got a lot of tattoos on her body, and I was wondering how the makeup artists would handle concealing the tattoos during the movie. For the most part, they did their job admirably, but in one particular scene at the end of the movie, they got a bit sloppy. Lara Croft was in the water in one scene, and you could clearly see her blue tattoo showing through the dissolving makeup on her left arm. I wonder if digital enhancement could have been used to better effect than makeup. Guess we’ll have to wait until Tomb Raider 2, no?

After the movie, I went back to my home and noticed that the peaches are beginning to sprout on the tree outside my door. Cool! The peaches are still a little tough, but they should soften up in no time. Last year, some neighbors of mine stole all the peaches from the tree and sold them off! They’re not here anymore, so I figure that there’ll be plenty of peaches to go around the neighborhood.

It’s amazing to see life more in cycles. For the better part of the year, the tree looks like it’s not doing much of anything. But, life is growing within that organism. Sight unseen, but growing nonetheless. In a flash during Spring, the leaves begin to bud and the peaches are revealed! Absolutely beautiful and amazing!

Flash’s Biennial Party in Palo Alto

Every two years, Flash holds a party at his place near the Fourth of July weekend. This year’s party was held on Saturday evening at his place in Palo Alto. On his balcony, there’s an absolutely beautiful view of the Stanford campus and nearby foothills. Fortunately for me, I brought my tripod with me which helped to stabilize some of the landscape shots that I took.

Some of the usual suspects were present at Flash’s house Saturday night, Lunatic E’Sex, Zander and Rebecca, and Flash’s mother, Nancy. Kenneth Albanowski rounded out the list of party participants. In the beginning, while we were waiting for the rest of the people to arrive, Flash, Kenneth, and I gossiped about the latest happenings at Palm, where we all currently work. We had a fun time talking about “being Tow’ed” a new term being bandied around the office that I must leave for a future day to explain.

Zander and I had a great conversation about digital video and still photography. He has been doing a lot of DV lately and was a great source of information for all the questions that I had about the field. It’s an expensive field too, about as expensive as still photography is getting to be for me. When you want to do some beautiful and edgy work, however, you’ve got to invest the money and the time needed to master the art.

Over Indian take-out food, the seven of us engaged in a rather exciting conversation about Star Trek, precipitated by Lunatic’s questions about the upcoming new series, Enterprise. I don’t think that I’ve ever been in a room where there were sooo many people that were so knowledgeable about Star Trek! We talked about, among other things, the mother Horta from Devil in the Dark, the question of whether or not Trellane was Q in The Squire of Gothos, how they will handle the look of Klingons in the new series, and whether or not the Enterprise 1701-A was really the Yorktown. At home, I have a an unopened copy of Trivial Pursuit: Star Wars Edition that I’ve been meaning to crack open and play with a bunch of hardcore friends. Too bad it wasn’t the Star Trek edition, or we would have been at Flash’s house into the wee hours of the morning!

As time would have it, I drove my way back home after 1:00 am on Sunday morning. Sleep was rather uneventful, and I woke up around 8:00 am. For some reason, I seem to wake up earlier on the weekends than I do on the weekdays. Perhaps it’s something about the day being filled with so much promise; my body wants to make sure I spend every hour soaking it up!

Sunday in Sacramento

My Dad was in Sacramento for a reunion during the weekend, and I, being the strange person that I am, decided to pay him a visit before he left to return to San Diego. It was designed to be a surprise, with me driving up 130 miles to see him at the Sacramento International Airport. I had his itinerary that he sent to us before he left, and I figured that he would have kept to the plan of record. I arrived at Gate A17 around 12:07 pm and waited for him. I noticed that people were starting to enter a plane headed for San Diego at Gate A14, which was directly across from A17.

I wondered and wrote down in my journal if he would have taken that earlier flight. As time went by, I grew more and more concerned, especially when 1:15 pm rolled along and the plane he was supposed to be on left the gate! It turns out that he took the earlier, 12:15 pm flight instead of the prescribed 1:15 pm flight. He must have been walking down the airplane causeway right when I was walking up to the gate. I drove, round trip over 4 hours to get up to Sacramento with the hopes of spending 1 hour with my Dad. It’s funny that it boiled down to literally minutes separating our two paths. Although I wish I could have seen him, I don’t regret doing what I did. It would have been worth it. Now, it’s just another thing to mention and laugh at when looking back!

The drive up to Sacramento was uneventful, but the drive back was filled with a long stretch of stop and go traffic. I’m glad that I don’t have to do these types of drives on a daily basis, because I absolutely hate traffic jams. There’s such a feeling of powerlessness when you’re behind the wheel during a traffic jam. Fortunately, I had my camera with me and was able to take some interesting shots, including one while standing out of my window!

Before returning back home, I drove by the Berkeley area and hung out for an hour with Edna and Erik. It was good to sit down after sitting in my car for the past 2.5 hours. At the end of the day, I had drive 260.4 miles. Phew! I don’t want to plan on doing those that often. Maybe this was preparation for my future road trip around the country. Now that would be fun, to travel across the continental United States, with the goal of seeing America and its “blessed way of life.”

Randy’s Birthday

Capping off Sunday evening was the celebration of Randy’s 26th birthday. Juliana and I arranged to have a little party at my place at 8:00 pm that night. I got back to my place around 6:00, giving me a couple of hours to clean up the house and prepare dinner. I was thinking of being a cheapscape and ordering a couple of pizzas, but the cook in my intervened. I ended up making two batches of my delectable Ma Po Tofu dish, using two containers of tofu and about a pound of pork. I started cooking at 7:00 pm and finished everything by 7:45 pm, giving me a few minutes to relax and unwind before everyone arrived.

The birthday boy and Juliana arrived first and with the birthday cake that I put in the fridge. Over the next 60 minutes or so, the rest of the gang arrived, Joon-Mo Ok, Denise Morris, Constantine, Bill Metzger, and Stephanie Wong. We all had a cheery time chewing the cud (my oft-used term for hanging out) and celebrating Randy’s birthday.

I demonstrated my command of the Rodian language to the group, which brought out cheers from the gallery. In addition, we listened to the popular Kerpal: Kicked My Dog telephone prank and to a variety of music, including Vienna Teng, Aimee Mann, Britney Spears (yes, Britney), Fiona Apple, and Tori Amos — as my co-worker, Dave, would say, “Adam’s chick music.” And, as Kerpal would say, “You know damn right!”

Happy 26th Birthday, Randy!

This weekend, starting on Friday, was very full. I’m not sure which types of weekends I like more, the lazy ones where you loaf around the house all day long, or the ones that are filled with so much stuff that you’re exhausted come Monday. The latter is certainly more conducive to entertaining journal entries, but the former is very good to help recharge empty batteries. I guess both are required for good balance.

June 20, 2001: I went out with Eric and Sophia this evening in San Mateo. I was actually able to leave work a little earlier than normal, which has been quite the rare occurrence lately. Driving up Highway 101 around 6:00 pm can be a harrowing experience if you’re easily distracted or annoyed as a driver; luckily, I haven’t had the pleasure of doing the long commute thing, so I’m not afflicted with that unfortunate malady.

We met over at Building 100 at Oracle, off of Ralston, around 7:00 pm. Sophia took me up to her cute little office on the 7th floor; Oracle’s buildings are definitely different than the ones at Palm. For starters, many of the engineers have offices; at Palm, everyone is stuck in cubes, from the CEO to the engineers to the contractors, a vestige of our days as a business unit at 3Com. This can be a problem at times, as it’s difficult to filter out hallway conversations when you’re trying to concentrate. Fortunately, all I have to do is turn up the volume on my Vienna Teng album, and everything will be all good.

As I said during my Stanford Graduation 2001 photojournal, I haven’t had much opportunity to hang out with Sophia. I was planning on having dinner with a co-worker Wednesday evening, but she had to cancel due to relatives who were in town; as a result, Eric’s offer to hang out with him and Sophia suddenly became available!

Dinner

We went to dinner at Macaroni Grill over in the Hillsdale Mall. While waiting for our table, Sophia, Eric, and I engaged in a discussion about engineers vs. product marketing managers, the never-ending battle between different functional groups at a company. I’ve done my share of being antagonistic towards past co-workers, but hearing Sophia made me rethink my approach that I’ve been taking in recent years. I’ll endeavor to be a little more sensitive and sympathetic to what they hear, so as long as they do the same for me. As always, it’s a two-way street, much like a relationship that you have to nurture and sustain on a consistent basis.

Macaroni Grill has these paper tablecloths on which you can draw on with crayons or pencils. I flexed my artistic skills in drawing a portrait of Sophia; it turned out so-so, but I realized that I need to improve my life drawing skills. If I draw from my head, everything is fine, but drawing from life is still difficult. Easily rendered with practice, however!

Dinner itself was okay; recently, I’ve noticed that I haven’t been able to eat as much as I used to. Then again, maybe that was because I was a pig over lunch on Wednesday, chowing down some Chinese food at the Crossover Cafe at Palm. We had calamari for appetizers. I have started to eat the little ring-shaped calamari, but I just can’t bring myself (yet) to eat the ones that have all those tentacles on them. It must be something about the tentacles coming to life in my stomach and crawling all over the place which make me queasy just looking at them! Eric and Sophia didn’t have a problem with them, however, as they chowed them down with gusto.

We had a nice conversation about that age-old topic of relationships. Tony Leung Ka-Fai popped up in the conversation a number of times. Sophia definitely saw the resemblance, as did Randy’s friend Joon-Mo, and a number of other people. Looks like Winnie is right, I do bear a resemblance to Tony Leung!

eric cheng: thinking of you

This is a great picture of Eric and Sophia, taken with my Canon D30 Digital SLR and the 50mm f/1.4 lens. When I saw it, I instantly knew that this was a keeper. Sophia thought the same, though she encouraged me to take her out of the picture. No, it’s a classic shot when the two of them are together. However, when editing the shot, I realized that Eric looks like he’s straight out of an album cover! Given that Eric’s a wonderful musician, I decided to transform him, for one day, into the famous Taiwanese Pop Star, Eric Cheng!

This is the debut album of cellist, Eric Cheng. His deep and haunting melodies will bring out all of the memories of past relationships. Both the good times and the bad times with your ex’s will be revealed to you in Eric’s masterful control of his musical art. The New York Times calls his music, “Engrossing,” while the San Francisco Chronicle notes that his music, “begs you to listen to it over and over.” Don’t waste a single minute. Purchase Eric Cheng’s thinking of you today from fine music stores or online at echeng.com.

Hey, I’d buy his album if he ever decided to make one on his own or with his orchestra friends. As I’ve said before, the amount of creative power that my friends have is amazing. If we ever got together to build a company together, be it a technology or an entertainment company, I think that we could rock the world. Dreams for one day to accomplish, I figure.

Pictures at Oracle

After dinner, we drove around San Mateo before settling down at the lake at Oracle. We sat there and chilled (literally speaking, it was sooo cold out there in shorts and a t-shirt for me!) for the next hour or so, talking about all sorts of stuff and taking tons of pictures. It’s great to have a digital camera that can take great shots in the dark. I only wish that the autofocus system on the D30 was a little better. Dreams that will be fulfilled one day once Canon gets their act together and releases a professional digital SLR whose build quality it on par with their EOS 3 or EOS 1-V series!

Sophia was a great sport in letting us take tons of pictures around her. With Eric and myself, who needs to spend a few hundred dollars taking glamour shots? I have a few friends who absolutely do not want to get their picture taken. While I understand how they might feel, it hurts me a bit since photography is a big part of my life. I want to be able to remember them in print, not just in my memories or in my journal. While I respect their wishes, part of me is a little sad or angry toward them. But… in the end, something is better than nothing, and I’m grateful to have their company.

Finally, around 11:30 pm, we all decided to call it a night and return to our respective homes: Eric to San Francisco, Sophia to Fremont, and myself back to Mountain View. After I got home, I started processing the images that I have taken for the past few days before collapsing on my couch and falling asleep!

Photos

Here are some more photos from my night out with Sophia and Eric:

Has it really been four years since I graduated from Stanford??? On Sunday, June 17, 2001, I attended the fourth Stanford graduation since I walked down that red carpet and said goodbye to my college years. There were only a handful of people that I knew who were graduating this year, a far cry from years past, when I congratulated many of my friends on their graduation. This Sunday, I was able to meet up with my cousin, King, Randy’s girlfriend, Juliana, and Jerry Chang’s sister, Jennifer.

Juliana and Jennifer were both graduating from the International Relations Program, so I didn’t have to run between diploma ceremonies across campus The IR ceremony was held at Dohrman Grove next to the Art Gallery. I was hoping that I would run into Jennifer’s family, including Jerry and his brother, John, but I couldn’t see them anywhere in the crowd. I did see someone who turned out to be their dad, and he was sporting a huge white Canon lens. Yes, it had the red stripe on it, meaning it was a Canon L lens. I never knew that he was a photographer! Jerry and John, unfortunately, weren’t able to make it to the event; I was a little disappointed in that, since I really wanted Jerry to meet Randy; those two people mirror each other in many ways. No wonder they are my friends!

I did run into Randy, who was sitting with Juliana’s family. Graduation days are always strange events. You meet for what’s usually the first time the families of your friends. You get to see them interacting in a dynamic that you’re not necessarily used to seeing. After all, you’ve been hanging out with “John” or “Jane”, thinking that you “know” them until you meet people that have known ‘em for 18 years longer than you have! But, the question begs, “Who knows them better? You or their families?”

After taking pictures of Juliana, her family, and Randy, I walked briskly over to Maples Pavilion, where my cousin, his family, and my grandmother were celebrating his graduation from the ME Masters Program.

I had spotted my grandmother and my cousin and was walking towards them when I heard someone call out my name! I turned around and it was Sophia Tseng, one of Eric’s good friends. Sophia and I have been playing meet-tag, as we never have gotten around to hanging out with each other due to our busy schedules. She was planning to come to Vienna Teng’s open mic this past Friday, but circumstances forced her to cancel. And, I haven’t been attending many of Eric’s concerts at his place, so I’ve been remiss on my end at meeting her. But, chance had it that we met at Stanford by Maples Pavilion!

On my way out, I noticed these crates of water just sitting at the gates to Stanford Stadium. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to snag some free drinks, I drove my car to the stadium and proceeded to stash about five palettes of water into my car. The back end was doing some serious sagging from the weight of all that water! I later brought some of it to my workplace, which no longer gives out free water. No worries, now that I have my own Special Reserve!

Epson Stylus Photo 1280

On my way back from graduation, I decided that I wanted to give Juliana and her family a little graduation present: a photo of Juliana from graduation. The problem was, I didn’t have a color printer! I certainly had the digital camera and the images, but there wasn’t anything with which to print my colorful photos!

So, I decided to bite the bullet and drive over to the local Fry’s in Palo Alto (Western theme!) and purchase the printer I’ve been eyeing for the past several months, the Epson Stylus Photo 1280. When it comes to color printing, there is really only one choice: Epson’s Stylus Photo printer series. And so, I walked right into Fry’s and talked to one of the salesman by the printers, pointed to the 1280 and calmly said, “I want to buy that one, the 1280.”

I’m not going out on a limb by saying that most of the people who work at Fry’s are… shall we say… challenged, but this guy, whose name I can’t remember, was actually quite friendly and helpful. He got the printer out of the backroom and promptly printed the paperwork that I need to give to the cashier. I was a little suprised at how good he was, since the salespeople usually are brusque and not very knowledgeable.

At any rate, I took the printer back home, unpacked it, set it up, and printed my first photo. And, it was… well, let’s just say that the colors were just a wee bit off! In an instant, I welcomed myself into the wonderful world of color management. Man, this is going to take a long time to become an expert on, I think! Undaunted (or ballsy, take your pick), I looked at the picture’s colors, and by sight compensated for the colors in Photoshop. I then printed a second print which looked a little better than the original. I packed the two pictures up and drove over to Hunan Homes, where Juliana and her family and friends would be celebrating her graduation over some Hunan-style Chinese food.

Dinner

Dinner was fun and remarkably filling from a food perspective. Normally, I can chow down Chinese food like a vaccuum cleaner, but this night, I got full pretty quickly. Dunno what caused that… maybe it’s my body telling me to stop eating so much, lest it bloat into Jabba the Hutt size!

I got to meet with with Juliana’s family again, some of their family friends, and Charlotte Wu and her mother. I first met Charlotte during my 26th Birthday Weekend at, you guessed it, Hunan Homes with Randy and Juliana. It was good to see her again, and just in time, as she’s off to Italy for the next two and a half months.

Also present at the party was Jenny Zhang, a soon-to-be senior at Stanford majoring in Digital Art. After meeting sooo many musicians over the past several weeks, it was fun to finally meet a fellow artist (yeah, artists unite!). We talked about digital photography and filmmaking, something that I want to get more involved in after watching the kick-ass short film, Duality. Jenny’s off this summer on a URO grant to work on a film up in San Francisco; man, that sounds like fun… be able to do something creative and have someone pay you in the process!

Evercrack and Digital Cameras

Charlotte just got a Canon PowerShot A20, the digital camera that she was planning on taking with her to Italy. Unfortunately, she didn’t have many accessories for it and was planning on going abroad with only an 8MB CompactFlash card and AA batteries. I offered her an “all-purpose loan” of my 64MB CF card and a PC card adapter (so she didn’t have to lug around an extra cable and install extra software). I would have loaned her the AA battery charger that I had, but the voltages only matched America’s voltage system. Hopefully, she was able to purchase a battery charger and some rechargeable batteries before her trip, as that camera sucks normal alkaline AA batteries like a vampire.

While I was giving her the goods, her boyfriend, Mike, dropped by to take her back to the City. We chatted about a variety of interesting, mostly computer related subjects, including this upcoming Star Wars game based on Evercrack… err, Everquest. Man, that game makes me drool just by looking at it. Imagine being able to roleplay in the Star Wars universe, where you can be anything from a human to a Rodian! Greedo can indeed live on!

Randy brought over a couple of videos, Chungking Express and Happy Together, two films by Wong Kar-Wai and staring the suave Tony Leung Chiu Wai, not to be confused with the equally suave Tony Leung Ka-Fai from L’Amant. I didn’t realize that there were two Tony Leungs out there in Hong Kong cinema. The former is called the Little Tony, since he’s a few years younger than the latter, Big Tony. They both starred together in Wong Kar-Wai’s film Ashes of Time, which I have yet to see. Also starring in Happy Together was a young Chen Chang, who played Lo in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. These actors sure get around, don’t they! Chungking Express was an interesting movie, though we only saw the second portion of the film (which is separated in two separate stories). Faye Wong, one of my favorite Chinese pop singers, was fantastic in the movie as Faye. You gotta love the short hair look on her!

On Saturday, June 16, 2001, I went to a BBQ at Ocean Beach in San Francisco. I was invited to the party by Eric a couple of days after I had arranged to meet up with a former colleague, Jen Leibhart, who was attending a conference in SF from New York. I figured that I could catch two events on the same day and coordinated to meet Jen at Ocean Beach at 6:30 pm.

Me being the great San Franciscan that I’m not, I struggled to find Ocean Beach. The party was originally going to be held at China Beach, but that venue closed at 7:00 pm, which would have made for a short BBQ party. So, the organizers, Amabelle and Felicia Sze, made the last minute change to move the party to Ocean Beach. On the corner of Lincoln Way and the Pacific Coast Highway, it was pretty easy to find, unless you got your Lincoln’s mixed up as I did! San Francisco can indeed be a confusing place to navigate in, but luckily I had a map and an ample set of directions from Felicia, Eric, and my Aunt, whom I called while parked near China Beach.

I’ve seen pictures of my parents when they were younger and living in Hong Kong. I have also seen pictures of Eric’s parents when they were around our age. These photos depicted our smiling parents with their friends and family, out hiking around the countryside in Hong Kong or Taiwan. It hit me the next day while looking at these pictures that we were recreating what our parents did years ago. The scenery had changed, with the ocean and the beach replacing the hills and the mountains our parents climbed. The faces changed, from our parents and their friends and family to their sons and daughters. But, the line that kept them together remained: weekend adventuring and photo documentation. Just thinking about it blows my mind; despite the many differences that we perceive exist between our parents and our generation, there are just as many common threads. Fascinating.

Photographers

There were three SLR photographers at the BBQ, Rita, Eric, and myself. Rita was using a manual Canon with a 50mm and a 135mm lenses, Eric was toting his D30 with the 28-135mm IS lens, and I had the 24-85mm and the 50mm, which was handy when the sun went down. Other people at the event had a variety of point and shoot digital cameras. What I found fascinating about the event was the different types of shots that people took at the beach. Check out the following links:

• Eric’s web coverage
• Amabelle’s web coverage
• Rita’s web coverage

Eric and I have been covering many of the same events lately, and it’s fascintating to see and compare what he shoots and what I shoot. In the book, Shutterbabe, Deborah Copaken Kogan describes how ten photographers at a blazing housefire would produce ten completely different set of photographs of the event. The same could be said about this event, not only in pictures but in words. Everyone has their own set of memories regarding the event, and it’s quite informative to read up on their impressions and thoughts on the event.

Feeding The Animals

Eric’s friend, Allon, brought his dog, Reno, to the beach. Reno was remarkedly well-behaved for a dog and definitely smarter than its human companions. As night fell, he was smart enough to dig a hole for himself in the sand, which served as a mini-heater. Jen and I noticed this and later buried our feet under the sand; while cold, it was definitely warmer than having our feet on top of the sand in the cold evening!

Whenever Reno saw someone with food, he approached ‘em and looked longingly with his puppy-dog eyes. Reno even raised his foot up so as to shake it. I shook it a couple of times and gave him some of my food, a hot dog and a burger. Most pets have to eat the processed, Kibbles and Bits type food… man, I don’t think that I could be a dog or a cat. To live life eating the same thing over and over again sounds very boring!

Jen

I had met Jen originally through work a few years ago. We were working on a project together across two companies and the continent. I was based in Santa Clara, and she was in New York. We kept in touch over the years, but didn’t get a chance to meet up again until Saturday. At the BBQ, a bar between Larkin and Polk, and finally at Mel’s Diner on Van Ness, we got each other up to speed on all of the happenings in our lives, talking as if the two and a half years were never there.

We plotted my ’round the world trip, and how, given the time and guts, I’d start travelling to the East, with my first stop in Australia and New Zealand. Then, I’d make my way up into Asia, visiting locales such as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and China, before heading towards India and the Middle East. I don’t know how long I’d stay there before travelling to North African coast. A few countries later, I’d find myself in the former Eastern Bloc countries and Western Europe. A flight across the Atlantic to Central America would top off my travel before I returned to the states. I don’t know how long that would take me… 6 months… one year? If I ever did this, I’d have to figure out a way to update this web site on a frequent basis. After all, I would like my friends and family to be able to keep tabs on all of the places that I’m travelling and exploring!

I don’t know if the technology is good enough to be able to pull off such an adventure at this time. I’d need to travel to countries with ample electricity (i.e. not California!) and reasonably fast Internet connections. That limits me to the places that I could go, unless I just resign myself to the fact that I’ll be using pen and paper for parts of those trips, along with film-based camera equipment. We’ll see, however, as there’s lots of planning to undergo if I ever decide to pull this caper off. Jen was great in encouraging me to go. At 26 years of age, I feel that you’ve got to do something like this before you’re 30, or at least before responsibilities like kids and a family come into effect.

The question for me isn’t whether or not I’m going to do it, it’s when I’m going to do it.

More Pictures

Additional pictures from the BBQ at Ocean Beach:

I’ve been listening to Vienna Teng’s album Waking Hour, for the past several weeks, both at home and work. At Palm, it’s getting to the point where my co-workers are beginning to say, “Uh, Adam, did you know that you’re playing the same music over and over?” or, “You still listening to that chick music?” The answer to both of those questions, rhetorical or not, is an emphatic, “Yes!” Late at night, when I’m still slaving away at the office, I have Vienna on full blast on my Harmon Kardon speakers and am singing along to the likes of Enough To Go By or Gravity (Lake Version). Hey, there’s no shame to expressing your musically side when it’s all good, right?

On Friday, June 15, 20001, Eric and I went to the Mission City Coffee Roasting house, located at 2221 Alameda/82 in Santa Clara, to listen to Vienna play at an open mic. Eric hadn’t yet heard Vienna sing live, as he couldn’t make it to the Waking Hour Release Party earlier in the month. We arrived about 30 minutes late, just as she was starting to play Gravity. We sat down with a couple of mochas and spent the next three hours listening to enchantingly beautiful chords and lyrics from Vienna and the other performing musicians.

Seeing and listening to an open mic brought back vivid memories of high school. Those were the days when I went coffee shop hopping across all of San Diego, from La Jolla to Solana Beach. On Friday nights, I could often be found at a cafe, listening to music, writing in my journal, or drawing. The first musical performer that I distinctly remember going out of my way to see was Randi Driscoll, formerly of Rekless Abandon. She played often at the Beans Coffee House in University City. Beans was the place where I had my first art exhibition. I can still remember sitting at Beans, soaking up in some great music while drawing a kick-ass picture of Spider-Man. All of these feelings, emotions, and memories were bubbling up in my consciousness on Friday night at the Mission City Roasting Company.

At the coffee house, there was a kid sitting at our table playing on a color Gameboy. Soon after we sat down, he started talking to us about games. Daniel was 15 years old and was living, curiously enough, in Escondido. It was strange for Eric and I, who both grew up in San Diego, to meet someone so close to home! We talked at length about computer games, such as the ones he was playing, Galaga and Galaxian. I used to play Galaga over and over at the Round Table Pizza restaurant in University City on half-day Thursdays when I was in elementary school! Now, Galaga fits in the palm of your hand and doesn’t cost 25 cents a game! It was to try to relate to Daniel, a representative of the younger generation growing up in high technology America today. He had never played an RPG game, like Ultima, Wasteland, or Baldur’s Gate. And, bizarre as it might sound, he didn’t even have an email address (that he checked regularly)! Eric and I figured that everybody in high school would have an email address and be on the Internet constantly for communicating with friends.

Daniel was very loquacious, probably the most so of any 15 year old that I know or used to knew! He just kept talking and talking, especially during the musical performances that we were straining to hear. It wasn’t that annoying, but it did get in the way whenever I was trying to listen to Vienna’s songs. It was good to see him take the initiative to talk to people, and for that, I commend him. At one point, Daniel asked us if Eric and I were brothers. He’s the second person who has asked that question, the first being someone at Justin Min’s Birthday Party. Hey, better they think of us as brothers than gay lovers! Hah, I was brushing my teeth just now (3:30 am) and thinking about the whole brothers/gay lovers deal when I looked at Eric’s web site and he posted the exact same thing on his web page! Maybe we’re like the Tomax and Xamot from GI:JOE or the Wonder Twins from Superfriends. Wonder Twin powers activate! Form of a Canon D30! Shape of an EOS 1-V!

Okay, I’m digressing… where was I?

After the open mic ended around 10:30, we helped Vienna pack up her music equipment, and went over to Pho Hoa, the Vietnamnese restaurant that closes at 2:00 AM in Mountain View. There, we ran into Dean McComb, one of the musicians at the coffee house, for dinner. We talked about life in the high tech world and compared the fast paced lifestyle of the Silicon Valley with the more sedate one in San Diego. Dean himself used to live in San Diego, and Vienna recently found herself down there for the weekend. How strange is that to have my hometown be such a large part of the day’s conversation!

This evening was a definite case of “what’s old is new again.” I met up with friends from my past, such as Eric and Vienna, as well as becoming acquainted with some new people, like Dean and Daniel. Weaving throughout the evening was my hometown, San Diego, and memories of coffee shop hopping and listening to music. Late night conversations about all topics topped off the evening. These are the types of thing that make life rewarding and fun. And tomorrow, which has already begun (it’s 3:37 am at the time of writing), is another day of potential.

I’ve been thinking lately that I should start a Vienna Teng fan club web site; I’ll probably be the first, but I definitely won’t be the last! And so, without further ado, welcome to the Inaugural Vienna Teng Fan Club Web Site!

On Sunday, June 3, 2001, I attended the official release party for Waking Hour, the debut album from Vienna Teng.

The event was held at La Maison Française at Stanford University. Originally known as Guthrie House, the La Maison is the French Academic Theme House at Stanford. During my senior year, I served as the Academic Theme Associate for the French House, where I organized theme-related events and taught several elective courses. Another responsibility I had was handing out housing draw-priority for those students interested in living at the house for the following school year.

One of the students that I interviewed was Vienna. At the time, I knew nothing else about her other than the fact that she was a bright-eyed freshman looking to get into the French House. As I did to each applicant, I asked her about her interests in France, her language background, and what kinds of activities she might want to do in the house, all in French. Although I don’t remember, she must have done well, as I gave her priority to get into the house. When the draw came to pass, Vienna found herself with a ticket to live in the French House the next year!

Passion In Life

From sophomore year on, I led a double life at Stanford. No, it wasn’t much of a secret life, nor was it filled with salacious details. Rather, my double life involved my passion with technology. I had begun my company, Foundation Systems, during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years. I carved out pieces of time during my school years to work on my software projects, some of them which became the foundation for my company. Being holed up in my dorm room coding on Friday nights didn’t exactly help my social life at Stanford, but I rarely complained to anyone but myself. After all, I felt like I was building something for the future… and given the choice of spending Friday night partying at Sigma Chi (a.k.a Sigmachi and Party Tonight!) or working out a difficult coding problem, I usually chose the latter.

I have been fortunate to have transformed what I did in my spare time into an interesting career. How does this apply to Vienna? For the longest time, I didn’t know the depth of her interest in music. Sure, I remember during my frequent visits to the French House from 1997-2000, I faintly remember her humming some tune or playing the piano. I chalked it up to the fact that she was musically inclined. Little did I know that Vienna also had a passion that was fueling her life, one that would culminate in her debut album, Waking Hour.

In her own words, Vienna describes her experiences at Stanford:

… my intention upon arriving as a freshman at Stanford was to be a biology major and a music minor, so music had already figured prominently into my plans. in general, my parents impressed upon me that college was the time to pursue anything i found interesting, so of course i worked music into my curriculum and into the ways i spent my “spare” time.

that said, i think my passion for music, and my decision sophomore year that i would make it my career at some point in my life, was one of the major factors in my decision to abandon the premed track. in addition to questioning whether i had the mental stamina to survive medical school, and feeling discouraged by my impressions of life as a doctor, i couldn’t figure out how a music career would fit into it all. it seemed like either a burnout or a lifelong regret waiting to happen. in the meantime i’d become interested in fields whose careers weren’t quite as rigid, and i ended up going with a day job i figure i can always quit.

I’m continually fascinated when I meet people whom I knew at Stanford who are now doing exciting work in fields such as music, journalism, acting, medicine, and technology, to name a few. It’s amazing to think that just a few years ago, we were all hanging out in the dorms and being college kids! There’s sooo much creativity and ability in the people that I know that I wonder what things would be like if we all banded and created a company together. I have no idea what we’d do, but I think with all the brainpower and skill, we could fashion something exciting and groundbreaking. Yet, we’ve all moved along separate paths, paths that crisscross only occasionally during the year: a wedding here, a party there. Work often gets in the way of meeting more often, and again I wonder what things would be like if we all said, “Forget the office! Let’s work together on something great!”

Singing and Covering Fiona and Tori

I remember the first time that I saw her Vienna’s face on her web site. I practically screamed in my living room, “Wait a second! That’s… I know who that is!” After downloading and listening to the MP3’s that she had posted on her web site, I remember being absolutely enthralled by her musical skill. It’s certainly better than a lot of the stuff playing on the radio today. On her web site Vienna lists as her musical influences artists such as Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, Sarah MacLachlan, and Ani DiFranco. Those influences are evident in her album Waking Hour. I absolutely love the song Gravity (esp. the Lake version), Enough To Go By, and Momentum.

At the release party in the French House, Vienna played a number of songs, some from her album and some not, to a small, enthralled audience. There’s something about hearing a live performance, especially an intimate one such as this one, which feels so special to me. I can see why people connect more with music (in my opinion) than they do with art. With a musical performance, you can see the musician playing the instrument, singing, and giving it her all. With art, you often see the finished product, not the hours of labor it took to create the art piece. I’m an artist, not a musician, so sometimes it pains me to see the musicians getting all the credit and glory, but I can certainly understand why they do… I was all wrapped up into the moment just like everybody else!

At one point in the evening, Vienna asked if there were any requests. My friend Randy asked her if she would do a cover of China by Tori Amos. Humbly beginning by saying that she didn’t know all of the words, Vienna then proceeded to perform a wonderful rendition of China. After that song, I asked her to play my all-time favorite song, Never Is A Promise, by Fiona Apple. I didn’t expect her to know the words or the music to the song; after all, most people who are familiar with Apple’s work know only her songs like Shadowboxer or Criminal (or they know of her kiddie-porn romping in the Criminal video). I was pleasantly surprised, then, to see that she did indeed know the words and the music to the song!

Every year, I choose one song to represent the entire year. I think for the 1997 and 1998 year, that song was Never Is A Promise. It captured so well the events that happened in my life at that time. Even today, it feels so real and relevant. Yeah, I’d say right now that is my favorite song of all-time. Hearing Vienna sing that just made me sing, err… lipsync the words along with her in the French House! The other people probably thought that I was psycho, but it didn’t matter to me.

Autographs and Final Thoughts

After her performance, Vienna began to do something that she’s going to have to get used to, sign autographs and get her picture taken. Randy and his friends posed as Vienna Teng Groupies for my camera, which was alternating between my 28-70 and 17-35. I wish I’d brought the 50 since it would have worked much better in the low-light situations than the others.

During this time, I met up with a bunch of her friends, including a few who lived in the French House in the years after I had graduated, such as Jeremy and Serban. I reintroduced myself to Eric Miller, a fellow Symbolic Systems alum, who worked extensively with Vienna on the album. Jess, a friend of Joe Norman, was also there, and it was good to see her back up in the Bay Area again.

Someone noted to me that there weren’t that many people at the release party. If you look at the pictures, it’s true, there were less than two dozen people who showed up. Some of my friends weren’t able to make it, as they were either out recuperating from a long weekend or had arranged other plans. As for me, I think nothing of the small number of people who were at the party. In my opinion, this was a clarion call for a new phase in Vienna’s musical career. All new beginnings begin as small moments, insignificant when compared to the events in the coming months and years. This girl’s got what it takes, and she can make it. This small group of friends and fans isn’t going to stay small much longer. I for one am looking forward to seeing that group get larger and being continually enthralled and mesmerized by this talented musician.

Resources

Additional resources on all thing’s Vienna Teng:

• Official Web Site of Vienna Teng
• Buy Vienna’s CD Online
• Upcoming performances by Vienna

Photos

Here are some additional photos that I took at the Waking Hour Release Party, held on June 3, 2001, at the French House on Stanford campus: