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The Artist: Natural Rai

I am Rai (pronounced "rye" ...like the bread I guess). I am Maui built--born and raised. In '95 I moved to Silicon Valley for school and to make a lot of money. In Hawaii, there aren't many tech jobs...most of the work is in the hotel/restaurant/tourism industry. So I came to the heart of the tech boom to study Electrical Engineering, and get my piece of the pie.

For 3 years I worked as ASIC engineer for Philips Semiconductor, making good money (not nearly as good as the startup-chasers 2-5 years older than me), as I watched the economy climb high, only to plummet into nothingness with the fall of the dotcoms. This led to the termination of my group in favor of its European counterpart. Argh. Engineering jobs these days (or companies even hiring for that matter) are few and far between. I am currently taking a risk, walking a new path as a business partner of sorts, designing automotive performance parts. Totally fun. Totally creative. Totally broke. *sigh* ...we will see where fate takes this.

If it wasn't for fish, I would be a vegetarian. Mmmm...snapper... I eat chicken sometimes because it is there. Still, I am considered the "token vegetarian" among my hamburger-eating friends. Thai food owns me. Curry owns me. I like my rice moist and sticky. The secret to using the microwavable rice-cooker (when no stand alone rice cooker is available), is to double the amount of water needed, and to cook it slowly in increments. Stirring in between, adding water if neccessary.

Man, I love cars. Japanese cars. Sport compact cars. Custom cars.

I love building stuff. Random ideas get into my head, and I am never satisfied until I see them come to life. I consider myself creative, and after being taken out of my home environment and placed among the many machines that are engineers, and the non-imaginative city-suburb-northern-california-folk, I guess I consider myself "artistic." I am not a REAL artist. My brother however, is. So to call myself an artist is probably an insult to his talent and those in his field. But whatever.

What's with the ugly, generic-ass layout?
Sometimes I have really bad ADD, or, "Attention Deficit Disorder"...(self diagnosed, of course.) When random ideas pop in my head, I drop what I am currently doing to pursue them (into at least one half-assed form or another.) My Freedom Force mod is a good recent example--after getting the game from Mike for my birthday, I was totally psyched on downloading the Editor and making my own X-men based game. I did nothing but learn python and script for several weeks straight. I finished about 9 out of 12 levels, and then never got around to finishing it... hmmm... maybe someday. This website is another example... Today, I feel "artsy". --For whatever reason, I feel the need to see what happens if I call myself an "artist" and post stuff up on the net. Why? I dunno. Maybe I was inspired by this random sk8er girl's website I stumbled upon while doing a search for "Spongebob Squarepant" on Google image search. ...but who knows if tomorrow I'll give a damn about this idea. I could end up working on the Honda again. In fact, as you're reading this, I'll probably have totally forgotten about this site...

But anyway, so what does all this mean? --it means I have no time, patience, or dedication for things like, a "fully-custom-site, built-from-the-ground-up, that-is-banner-free-for-a-low-low-monthly-fee" (or for things like spelling and grammatical errors for that matter). So this is what you get--a generic template site from www.freeservers.com .

Freeservers totally kicks ass for those like me! ...when impulsive flashes of spontaneity blast into your mind, and you have the urge to drop everything and build the idea into a physical something, freeservers gives you all the tools to do so, and more importantly, do it FAST and effortlessly. It may not be the prettiest, most customizable site, but it's free, easy to use, and brings ideas to life for no other reason to get it out of your system.


Shoot me an Email
Natural_Rai@hotmail.com