i'm alive!!! i survived the surgery!!! my recovery hasn't been too horrible. the procedure went well despite some complications---it was only supposed to be 45 minutes and it turned into 2.5 hours...giving my parents quite the scare in the waiting room. my lil' incident in hong kong had actually caused a fairly large gall stone to slip out and lodge itself in the bile duct, making it difficult to remove the gall bladder initially. what perfect timing...that gall stone could have started up an infection and caused some serious damage. so my surgery came at the perfect time, removing what we were trying to avoid. it took me a really long time to wake up from the anesthesia and i didn't get home until the late afternoon. when we got back, i found these beautiful white roses from meg sitting at my doorstep..what a sweetheart. since coming back, things haven't been too bad with the exception of yesterday morning when i actually threw up bile. i didn't know that was possible....very disturbing. i've been slowly walking around the apartment today, with the help of some very strong painkillers. I'm hoping to take my parents down to the Market today because it's such a beautiful weekend...and olke's having a bar-b-q because his dad is in town.

The night my parents came in, we had a dinner with some friends that they've never met: eugene, eric, christina, ryan and james. We ate at Top Gun, the usual, and had a fabulous dinner. it was nice for my parents to finally meet all these people.

i wonder when i'll be able to return to work. the only pain right now is from any activity using my stomach muscles. it feels like a combination of getting hit in the stomach really hard and having done 2000 situps. plus, i get a little whoozy from the painkillers. my diet has been rather mild so i have yet to test what i can or cannot eat.

had a pretty great weekend considering that i had no plans as of last Thursday. friday night, i hung out with brad...catching up over drinks and dinner at the pink door down in the market. saturday, i went hiking at mount si with eric, jon & felix..what a great hike and a perfect day for it too; however, while up there, i realized had little time to get back to seattle to go to the symphony where one just cannot be late. so i literally bolted down the mountain, making it in about 1.5 hours and eric rushed me back to my apartment where i somehow changed from grungy hiking gear to a nice black cocktail dress with heels and then met up with james. it was my first time going to benaroya hall (for shame) to see the symphony. andre watts was playing the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2--what a romantic, emotional piece that is. Oh, it was so beautiful....wonderful evening it was. Afterwards, james and i were able to get a late dinner at 96 Union, overlooking the puget sound--great food, company, conversation. the weather took a downward turn on sunday and i just stayed in cleaning all day, when i discovered an old tape of mine that i had recorded of me playing the chopin revolutionary etude at the age of 15. ah, the memories. later that evening, i caught up with my friend steve over dinner and a movie: the anniversary party....enjoyable.

last night, the crm team sponsored a bowling night at the imperial lanes where i discovered that my manager is a secret hard-core bowler, scoring a 191 average! i did okay, with something like a 125 average.

my parents get in tomorrow morning--I can't wait to see them again and show them around. I hope the weather'll be nice. i'm so happy that they'll be around for my surgery on thursday--eeks!

it can be so tragic to meet someone so incredibly wonderful but then realize that time and life events are not on your side. but then, to actually know them and have met them and to have them in your life can be all worth it...i hope.

i had a great night tonight. jon convinced me to start taking salsa lessons with him so we headed over to century ballroom this evening for our first salsa class...which was fairly advanced in my opinion for the very first class in a beginner salsa class. but it was tons of fun. afterwards, he and i caught up over dinner at la spiga and then he dropped me back off at the ballroom where i met up with felix for the salsa dance that's held almost every thursday night. it was just so great to see all the salsa dancers...such a free, liberating and articulate dance...yet, people just flow and it looks so smooth and elegant. felix has improved so much since the last time i ever danced with him (which was like early last fall)...i had a really great time and had forgotten how much i love to salsa dance. i think i may actually benefit from these classes for my technique isn't very solid...i've got the hip thing down but i think once i understand and master turns and take note of the leader's slight movement of the wrist, i'll be much better. i'm excited to be taking up salsa again.

the past couple of days have been absolutely beautiful, sunny and warm here in seattle. oh, i have enjoyed the weather.

feeling much better now. wow, i was very sick for quite awhile last week. oh my health. first my eye, then my gall bladder, then my stomach, and next week, the surgery. i'm just falling apart.

had a great weekend. hung out with james a lot and went to the fremont fair where i saw the annual solstice parade, which is just such a beautiful, liberating event. one of my webdevs, javier, invited a few of us over to his place for an authentic mexican dinner and to also meet his new wife--what a fantastic meal that was. on sunday, i went jogging in the aboretum for the first time--it smelled wonderful and was such a nice place to take a run. then went rollerblading, washed my car and had dinner with jon at spaghetti red's to catch up on things.

yesterday, finally went back to the gym for this first time in a long time with meg for a class which was hard but was a good burn...and then watched moulin rouge with betina--the music was a bit funky but i think i really liked it. it was done well....different....nice.

i'm oh so very tired right now and want to go home. still trying to recover from the jet lag of a 15 hour time difference. the trip home was difficult as i was still rather sick. i haven't been able to keep any food down for the past 4 days...today's the first day in which i'm starting to feel a little bit better. the tokyo airport was really neat. you can rent a "day room" for $5/hour in which you get a nice clean shower and a bed. too bad i wasn't there long enough to try to take advantage of that.

i need to get my new mp3 player hooked up at home and see how it works. very exciting.

oh...so much to say about things that have happened in the past few days. Well, for starters, we went to China and Macau..I'll talk about that.

On Friday, we went on an organized trip to Macau. The ferry boat ride there was absolutely gut-wrenching....1.5 hours of hearing people throw up. When we got there, we were disappointed to see that the weather wasn't that far different than in HK, where the "red signal had been raised" (translation: "a ton of rain"---it's typhoon season here). The entire day we were there, it was a torrential downpour. Our first stop was the Macau Museum where we could look at the history of this peninsula...which is rather interesting. Before the turnover to China in 1997, this was a Portuguese colony...so all the street signs, official pamphlets, directions, store signs, etc... are in 3 languages: Chinese, Portuguese and English. There's also a clear Portuguese influence in the style and architecture of the city with cobblestone streets and hacienda-like buildings. The rest of the day we went to touristy points, such as the A-Ma Buddhist Temple, the Ruins of St. Paul (a church that was burned down in the 19th century--only the facade remains) and the Casino. See, gambling is illegal in HK so everyone comes to Macau to gamble, one of the primary sources of income for the Macanese people. I wasn't too keen on it since I've seen too many casinos in my time...especially since it was overly crowded, stuffy and full of smoke. Also, there were all sorts of young teenage prostitutes approaching my brother...he was slightly traumatized. On this trip, I met a nice doctor my age from London named Robin...he was able to tell me more about my eye and my upcoming surgery. Amazing to know that someone my age has already performed numerous surgeries...of course, medical school in England seems to be different than in the US because you can be finished by age 23.

When I came back from Macau, I suddenly felt very ill with an internal chill and extreme headache...I had to go to bed right away...I woke up early the next morning to go on the Shenzhen, China trip and I still felt awful. My sickness had turned into a throbbing pain in my stomach, which is related to my damn gall bladder problems (thus my surgery in 2 weeks). So the entire time I was in China, I was in pain. Our first stop was at a museum where they were having a special exhibition of the Terracotta warrior statues from Xian--they had 3 of them...really cool. After that, I slept...I just could not get up to do anything more so I stayed on the bus. In the afternoon, my family skipped one of the places we were supposed to go to--"Splendid China" which is a place with miniatures of all the major monuments, fortresses, etc in all of China (so in essence, not something horrible to miss)...and we all went to a beauty salon! Can you believe that? We all got foot massages, body massages and my brother got his haircut---all for under $50. It was actually much more interesting because we got to talk to the people there about everyday life in Shenzhen, which is sad. They consider going to McDonald's a luxury dinner. It definitely made me feel bad about the amount I pay my hairdresser currently for one haircut. So of course, all this relaxing treatment made me feel a little better...The only other interesting thing I learned was how business men from HK will come up to China to meet their mistresses (or "second wives/concubine") for the weekend...and these women will get paid thousands of dollars a month to be these mistresses. With that, they don't have to worry about having more than one child.

We got back to HK that evening but my pain didn't go away and I still felt awful...to the point that I went to the emergency room last night. The doctor prescribed me all sorts of pills that I'm currently taking. I'm feeling a bit better this morning..but I'm hoping it'll all go away before my long journey back to Seattle tomorrow. Today, being my last day in Hong Kong, I'm taking it fairly easy. Damn gall bladder.

i swear i'm going to gain fifty pounds on this trip with all the delicious chinese food i've been eating. last night, we had dinner with my grandmother and all her banker friends at this amazing restaurant....it was course after course...don't know how i made it through. The meal consisted of: shark's fin soup, braised abalone, crab, fried rice, pig's skin, some sort of fish, duck's feet, vegetables, soup noodles and all sorts of dessert. and then today, my "ma-ma" (chinese for grandmother on the father's side) took us to the Luk Yu Tea House, which is this famous 100+ yr. old dim sum/tea house...wow, the dum sum there was incredible. Now, I'm in the Times Square Mall, wandering around until I meet up with my mother again.

The other night, my cousin took Aaron and I out to a karaoke bar...how amusing. It was actually quite cheap---just $55HK (a little over $5US) per person...for the entire night...oh, and my cousin has changed her English name from Mandy to Gigi (sounds more like her Chinese name now). She works in some fancy beauty salon in the hotel that we're staying at and has a 21yr old boyfriend. She's the only one in her family still in HK--the rest has immigrated over to L.A. within the past few months.

I've decided I'm not too wild about the new fashion in HK...it's like we've reverted to the 80's. What's really in are graffitti decorated shirts paired with jean skirts and big silver studded belts.
I'm hoping to visit Macau this time....and re-visit the Big Buddha since it's so neat. Much of what we do here is dictated by my grandmother...

i'm in hong kong now, sitting at the "log-in cafe" in some random shopping mall. it's really amazing how the internet access in hong kong has changed since the last time i was here (2 years ago). Back then, it was pretty hard to find a computer to get internet access to--and even then, it was expensive. now, almost every store, shopping mall, street corner has some sort of internet podium that you can use for free....like, surf the internet while shopping. and they just limit your amount of use to like 15-20 minutes....not bad at all.

I've only been here for about 2 days so far...and all I've been doing is catch up on sleep, eat and see relatives. today, we had dim sum with my great aunts #4, 6 & 7. This morning, I took a jog around Kowloon Park, which is right across the street from the hotel....it was amazing. I probably came across 8 different groups of Tai Chi classes and just all sorts of interesting people enjoying the Sunday morning. There was also a bird aviary, full of beautiful creatures.

Shopping is difficult as usual...I had to buy a pair of XL pants...and even then, they're a little on the tight side. Oh well.

I see my cousin this evening...from what I hear, she's quite the grown up now. This store that I'm in right now is so interesting...you can buy everything here. My senses are overwhelmed.