Since I probably SHOULDN'T be doing this at work...

So this person is bugging me to update my blog and I never seem to find time or remember to update my blogger, I'm going to do this while I still remember. I mean, seriously, I don't know what to say at work 'cause all of my images are at home so I can't upload anything related to NYC. So what to talk about...

Ah, yes, I'm gonna go to USC for the Cal game. Envy me =oP

j/k, I'm going with Thomas, Jess, and Aaron and we're funding this with scalping. Well, not scalping per se, but more like reselling our tickets or tickets that we buy from other people, basically....a secondary market, kinda like the stock market, something like that... I'm sure you've all heard of the many adventures we have when Thomas and I visit Aaron. If not, we do this, now turned tradition, ritual of Asian-izing Aaron with the UAE, or Ultimate Asian Experience and feed him with various horrid things that even some Asians fear to eat but others eat with relish.

In previous episodes, we've had stinky tofu, durian (which he loves, btw), fermented tofu, fermented stinky tofu (which he couldn't actually stomache and none of us would dare touch), pickled alien pod like eggplants, etc. It's hard to beat what we've already presented, perhaps we should give him dog? monkey? I'm not even sure if there's any other crazy stuff that's actually legal out here...

I'm open to suggestions, please let me know what types of things we can put this madman up to. =oP

Each passing day

It seems that with each passing day, I grow a lil' older and a lil' wiser. Or maybe, it's not really getting wiser, but not getting more foolish. Perhaps I have gotten a lot more foolish and dumber over the years and not have known, because...you wouldn't really know if you've gotten more foolish, right?

But this past week, even the past month has opened my eyes up to who I am, who my friends are, where my place in the world is, even what I want in my life. Sometimes, it just takes that extra push over the edge, that smack upside in the head, even the kick in the butt to realize that it's all gone wrong and it's going to be bloody hell to fix it all.

Sure, life's got its troubles, people have their complaints, everyone's got their own set of problems. I'm fairly certain that my problems are the last things on the minds of people in developing countries. Hell, they're probably not even issues that people out here would even care about when their bills go unpaid, their dreams go unfulfilled, their lives in shambles. It's a slap in their faces.

For those of you that stuck around, thanks. For the rest of you that have moved on, best of luck on everything. For those of you that are kind of in between, let's catch up. And everyone else that I have yet to meet or yet to know better, I say cheers. For the future, let us all work for that.

New York City - Part 1

8/14/2006

So I drove down from Berkeley to LA a couple of days before to enjoy the weekend in LA. Taking an early morning flight out of LAX, so early that none of the coffee shops were even out in LAX. Makes you wonder how those crazy businessmen do it all the time.

Hours later, we flew into JFK. It has been years I have been to this metropolitan. My memories of New York City were not fond back then. It was HOT, HUMID, and smelled REALLY bad . But then, I was only 13, what did I know about the multicultural diversity, the fashion explosion, the rapid urban lifestyle, or even the stock market. All I remembered back then was the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Phantom of the Opera, Time Square (and this crazy Japanese group harassing one of the kids in our group), and some pizza from the chain restaurant (you know the one, red with white lettering, italian food place, found in all the malls). That time, travelling along the east coast was an interesting experience.

This time, I came into NY in a completely different way. Granted, we came by air, I've grown a lot older, and I have a college degree, a job, and some pocket money. But this time, New York has changed, hell, the whole world changed on my 18th birthday. Even that hasn't changed New York that much, or so they say.

For me, New York City has become a much bigger place, it was no longer just Broadway and Wall Street. It was Chinatown, South St. Seaport, Central Park, Washington Square, Little Italy, Greenwich Village, Midtown, Harlem, SoHo, etc. It has become Manhattan, a world in of itself, a world that could not be explored fully in a week or even a month. But 5 days is plenty for any tourist in NYC, you eventually run out of fun tourist locations and begin looking for special places that even locals visit.

But this is not all of the culture and wonders of NYC, there's Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Long Island, etc. There's just so much more to NYC than just Manhattan. As a visitor and a guest, I don't know enough about the area to say much anything compared with the NY Times and the tens of thousands of writers that have written about NYC and everything in it.

We'll just walk through this together, I'll go through my memories of NYC again, and you can come along and see.

Tonight, I'll just leave you with a picture from South St. Seaport lookin' up the river at the Brooklyn Bridge (which is not lit due to energy conservation concerns).

Starting fresh

So I'm going to phase out my Xanga blog and start fresh with Blogger. Phase out the past and bring in the present and the future, at least, that's the intention anyway.

Here goes nothing =o)

My First Real Blog on Blogger

I work at Google, therefore I must have a blogger account, too. ^-^