Seng Chen

Olympics Day 1: Michelle Kwan Withdraws

Seng Chen - February 12, 2006

After chasing Olympic gold for over a decade, Michelle Kwan announced today that she is withdrawing herself from the U.S. Olympic team for this Winter Games. Kwan has tallied five world titles, nine national championships and silver and bronze medals at previous Olympics (1998 and 2002, respectively) but has been unable to take it all home at the Olympics. In explaining a decision that Scott Hamilton described as "generous", Kwan said, "I respect the Olympics too much to compete... I don't want to be a distraction here." The doctor who examined her stated this new acute injury is not career-ending, but still, not a bad list of accomplishments for a 25 year old.

My Gramma Got Me Plastered

Seng Chen - December 24, 2005

Yesterday I injured myself snowboarding. It wasn't one of those, ‘There’s a tree in front of me, I’d better turn. Hmm, I’m not turning. Oh, now I’m crashing.’ mistakes where you get to dread the possible consequences and visualize your impact before it happens; it was more like, ‘Whuh? Oh, crap.’ where you realize the moment you're about to be launched in the air that you can’t do anything but relax and experience the consequences of your lack of foresight. It’s hard to say whether it was my left foot that stayed in place while everything else twisted around it or whether the rotations were shared equally as my left foot headed clockwise while my left leg, right leg, right foot, upper body and snowboard turned counterclockwise; regardless, the end result was the same: my left ankle was not feeling so good. Snowboard boots provide excellent compression, however, so I stuck it out on the hill for a few more runs.

SunPeaks_20051220-03.jpg
Excellent visibility near the top of the hill

Sex and the Cow Palace

Seng Chen - October 25, 2005

No piece, no peace, hook a brother up.

Last Saturday I went to a very San Francisco occurence- the Exotic Erotic Ball. It's conveniently placed just before Halloween so people are already in a costume mindset and with enough time after Burningman for people to have found treatment for whatever they've picked up out there. Being that this is San Francisco, though, I imagine this event could happen anytime of year and the markers would just change to being between Folsom Street Fair/Cinco de Mayo/Pride/any other excuse to dress up and be seen. Personally, being rather vanilla (and lazy), all three of these time markers pass me by without much notice, but this time around, as is my usual excuse, I was part of the entertainment/background, playing with the SF Samba School, so I just had to stick around to check out the event I would have otherwise not attended.