First 24 Hours in Hong Kong...

We've been in Hong Kong for less than 24 hours and I already feel like we've done a ton....or perhaps I'm just really tired from traveling. Matt and I left for SeaTac airport at 10:15am on the 24th and finally landed in Hong Kong around 11:30pm on the 25th. Whew. Our flight over was actually incredibly stress-free and quite enjoyable: we took Korean Airlinesand got one of the newer planes which is equipped with an In-Flight Entertainment screen for every seat---we all had access to over 20 movies to watch in our own time (and recent ones, like Click, Little Miss Sunshine and Scoop), lots of music, games, etc. It also helped that the food was great and the seats were roomy. There was even wireless Internet available! It honestly made the flight pass by like that...and I only slept for maybe an hour out of the whole 12 hour flight to Seattle. Matt and I ate udon noodles in the Incheon Airport in Korea for our Christmas dinner--just hit the spot! We finally arrived in Hong Kong and took the Airport Express to Kowloon and met up with my parents at the hotel for a quick chat and catch up before hitting bed....although we didn't really fall asleep until nearly 3am.

We woke up around 9am and were on the road within the hour to get some breakfast beef congee..then wandered around shopping for a bit before meeting up with my mama, auntie and uncle for dim sum at Luk Yu Teahouse in Central--yum! After that, we whisked off to the shopping center and fitted Matt for a tux and suit. Yup, he now officially has his wedding day tux all selected and picked out! That was some quick shopping! We then headed over to the IFC Mall to get some wedding jewelry for me and then browsed around a bit more shopping. I'm back to feeling super fat as I go into stores and have to ask for the largest size possible. Matt tried on a jacket in G2000--the largest size they had--and it was still too small for him! I'm debating whether or not to get a tailored cheongsam or to attempt to find one that I can fit in pre-made in a store. I'll have to shop around a bit. In the evening, we ate dinner at the Verandah at the Peninsula Hotel...again, delicious. We called it an early evening with jet lag setting in...and here I am in my parents room blogging. Long day!

Puget Sound is shut down....

About a million homes are without power (not me! yay!), the 520 bridge is still closed, traveling on I-90 is total madness, fallen debris everywhere, hundreds of flooded homes and the entire Microsoft campus is without power right now----so I guess I'm not going to work since I can't do anything except sit in the dark in my office!

The biggest storm since Inaugural Day....

Sheesh. Seattle's been getting some crazy extreme weather lately. This week has seen some unusually strong winds and precipitation...but I didn't realize until today that we were getting one of the biggest wind storms since "Inaugural Day" (apparently, some crazy storm hit the Puget Sound on Clinton's Inauguration back in '93). Sure enough, by around 3pm, a ton of my co-workers had left for the day to deal with traffic and avoid any bad weather. I held out until 6pm when the office lights started flickering and news of the 520 bridge potentially closing as early as 9pm. I immediately hit the back roads, which was actually a stupid idea because everyone and their mother was taking the back roads. After 30 min. and only 20 blocks, I decided to just jump on the highway. Sure enough, the highway wasn't as bad as I expected (since everyone was taking the back roads)--within another 30 min., I was back safely at home. I know others didn't fare as well...and I definitely ran across a few larger-than-I-would-have-liked puddles of water on the roads on my way back.

But check out this Incident Report on the local news. (and another) It sounds like pure chaos over here:
- the 520 bridge is now totally closed (what I take everyday to work)
- some dive team had to rescue a woman was found underwater in her house (who later died)
- firefighters had to rescue some folks on Mercer St., below Aurora Ave., because their cars were completely submerged in water
- five landslides have been reported in various parts of Seattle
- 2 people have died from falling trees

It's kinda hard to sleep with the wind just banging against the building. It's 12:49am right now and the heavy/bulk of the storm is supposed to hit after 1am. Let's see if I wake up with any electricity!


Cars submerged on Mercer Ave.

Snow day!

With all the craziness of yesterday's snow on campus, they "closed" campus today! No lobbies open, no shuttle service, no cafeterias open, no food/drink service, all operators on auto-answer, etc. Every meeting of mine was cancelled/postponed (including, sadly, the second half of a conference I was attending that obviously took a lot of work to put together)...so I'm having myself a snow day! Of course, I'm logged in and still doing work from home...but funny to think of having a snow day...from work!

A bit of snow

It started snowing again today. But a bit more than last night--just around 4:30pm, the snow came down and it actually stuck (at least in Redmond it did). Oh boy, that meant bad traffic (and for you folks on the East Coast--this is not even an inch of snow. You'd laugh). After getting out of the meeting I was in at 5:15pm at the MS Conference Center, a coworker (Tony) and I called a shuttle to head back to our building.

5:20pm
Shuttle picks us up

5:42pm
Shuttle drops us off at the same spot after circling around and trying to get out of the driveway of the conference unsuccessfully. Shuttle is stuck and can't take us to the building.

5:44pm
I call Lukasz who works 2 buildings away from where I am. I try to see if I can maybe hitch a ride in his car back to my building since he has an A3 and should be able to make it. I find out that he's just pulled out of the parking garage.

6:01pm
I walk over to 40th St to catch a ride in Lukasz's car. In the 15 minutes it took me to walk over, he's moved about 20 feet. Tony and I get in the car. Lukasz is going to drop Tony off at our building (which is literally less than a mile away)

6:11pm
I call Matt and decide not to go to the ProClub after work and, instead, just hitch a ride with Lukasz back to Capitol Hill.

6:28pm
About 3 blocks from our building (note it took 30 min. to go less than a mile). I call Gabe to see if he wants a ride since we notice that the HOV lane on 520 is open.

6:40pm
Finally cross 40th St. and get to Building 119. Gabe jumps in.

7:28pm
Get back home at last. And that was using the HOV lane which saved us at least half an hour. Whew.

It's snowing

It's actually snowing in Seattle right now. Weird (it rarely snows in Seattle). Man, we should try to hit the slopes soon---Crystal got 69" of snow since last Tuesday. Damn.

Our Thanskgiving weekend

Overall, nice and relaxing Vegas Thanksgiving holiday. Matt and I took off Wednesday afternoon to Vegas to visit my parents. Shortly after arriving, we got some Chinese for dinner and checked out the Red Rock Casino (where Betina & Justin are getting married next year) since it's rather close to my parent's house. By evening, my brother along with my 2 uncles' families had all arrived. One of the more amusing experiences from this weekend was the new karaoke system my dad had bought, already filled with hundreds of English, Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese songs. Everyone was belting away including my 80-something year old grandparents, singing some sort of old Chinese song. My dad even convinced Mrs. Chan (Betina's mother) to sing along when she came over for Thanksgiving dinner! I got a lot of great video!




Also--Matt, Aaron and I finally learned to play craps this weekend. We got rather addicted and pretty much only played this game the whole time.

Friday night, I took Matt to check out the Beatles' LOVE show with Cirque du Soleil at the Mirage Hotel. Man, it was a fantastic show. 2 hours of Beatles music and the imagery associated with it, care of the wonderful dancers and acrobats of Cirque. Highly recommend checking this out if you're in Vegas, especially if you're a Beatles fan.




B-List Celebrity Sightings: if you ever watched Hell's Kitchen, then you'd remember that the winner, Heather West, got her own restaurant at the Red Rock Casino. Since we were there, we wanted to check out her restaurant, Terra Rossa. It was closed but as we peered inside, we saw Heather herself prepping for the Saturday night dinner crowd. She turned around and waved to us. Ha! And earlier while at Red Rock, while playing craps, we saw Garrett walking by. Fun stuff.

Hello Hello

Sorry it's been awhile since I've posted. It's like holiday season is here and time just flies by. Matt and I head to Las Vegas tomorrow to spend Thanksgiving with my family--my popo and gung gung are already there: they took the bus from L.A.! How cute is that? And for only $20--it was seriously the Chinatown bus: pick up in Monterey Park and drop off in Chinatown, Vegas. Good deal.

Not much aside from wedding planning and working. I got a bad cold about a week ago that took me out of work for about 3 days. Thing is, it wasn't that bad (I've been more sick in my life) but it was just bad enough to make me uncomfortable and not motivated to work at all. In between, I pulled up enough adrenaline to make it to the Emerald City Swank since I'd been planning on attending that for over a month. Great event again (my 3rd year) with a fun turnout (I got a good 12 people at my table). Didn't get any major live auction items this year but Matt and I scored with a few silent auction items: tickets to see 12 Angry Men, tickets to the opera, and a painting! I got really lucky afterwards as someone dropped a $75 gift certificate to Whole Foods out on the street (which was obviously an auction item): finders keepers!

Back from the San Juans!

We had an awesome time up on San Juan Island this weekend. It was a first trip for both of us and, although we were there for just over 24 hours, it felt like a nice weekend getaway. We woke up bright and early Saturday morning for the 1.5 hour drive up to Anacortes to make it onto the 9:35am ferry ride. We arrived at the island 70 minutes later to a bunch of fog. Right next to the ferry landing was Island Dive, the dive shop we planned our dive trip with. Fortunately, in the time it took us to fill out the paperwork and get the gear we needed, the fog lifted and we were reading to go diving! This ended up being a great trip because a bunch of people from the shop came along with us: Dawn is the scuba instructor and former roommate of OUR instructor (she made it clear she was valecdictorian of their instructor class). Niki was the shop manager, Chris the divemaster and Captain J who chartered the boat:

Here is a bunch of the tanks and gear all ready as we headed out to Larry's Lair at Griffin Bay, our first dive stop. You can see the fog had lifted and it was a really nice, sunny day:


Matt and I before heading out for the first dive:


Here I am along with Chris after coming up from the second dive at Bell Island (excuse the redness on my face from the mask). This was an amazing dive as I saw a giant lingcod, a sea slug the length of my arm, and lots of beautiful starfish, fish and sea anemone. I even "accidentally" went all the way down to EIGHTY feet! Being a basic open diver, my max is supposed to be around 60' but I was following Dawn, the instructor, down and we were all at 80' before I knew it. She told me later to consider it Dive 1 of advanced diving--ha! In any case, it was worth going down that because that's where all the cool life was.


Chris, the divemaster, took a bunch of pictures on our dive trip--check them out so y'all can see what we saw! (although he saw way more since he went as deep as 112'!)

After diving, Matt and I ate some clam strips and drove out to the Lakedale Lodge where we were staying for the night. This was a beautiful log cabin lodge perched alongside a peaceful lake. It was just what we needed after the diving. Here's a view from our balcony:


We also dined at the Friday Harbor House and had a wonderful meal--highly recommend it. The next morning, we slept in late (since we gained an hour with Daylight Savings) and headed into town, parked the car for the ferry line early, and got lunch at a pub so Matt could watch the Seahawks v. Chiefs football game. (K.C. won! Woot! Woot!) Soon after, we took off on the ferry back to Anacortes--here's a shot of cars loading into the ferry...it was POURING rain for about an hour before we boarded.

Vote with the rest of the Asians

It's Election Year right...and I just got a voicemail that went like this:

Hi Audrey, this is Betty from the Asian American Pacific Islanders of King County. I just wanted to let you know that the Asian Americans of King County are voting the following this year [proceeds to tell me yes or no on various proposals]. It's very important for Asian Americans to vote as they can really turn things around in King County.

Seriously? I don't know why I found it so silly but I just felt like being told to do what the other Asians do.

Can't wait for this weekend--Matt and I are heading to San Juan Island this weekend for some good rest and relaxation. I'm finally using up a certificate that I won at least year's Emerald City Swank, good for a stay at the Lakedale Lodge and dining at the Friday Harbor House! If we can work it in, we'll attempt to go diving or kayaking too.

We're diving!!

I just got a photo from Michael, one of the instructor's assistants from the dive class that Matt and I took a couple weeks back. He took a picture of us while we were in the murky waters of the Puget Sound. Ha! Man, the water looks really green....

Another 7/7/07 Bride!

Congrats to my good friend and fellow Smithie, Megan Neumeister!! She just got engaged!! And her wedding date? Same as mine! Ha!

Adult-Proof Ringtone

NPR did a story on a sound that apparently only teenagers can hear---very few people over the age of 30 can hear it. It was used initially to ward off teenagers by British shopkeepers but it's now being used by high school kids as their ringtones so that they can get text messages and phone calls without their teacher knowing.

I just played it in my office and cranked the volume up because I couldn't hear a damn thing. Suddenly, Spencer and Yili (both 24) came running into my office yelling "What the HELL is that? Turn it off! It's such an obnoxious sound!". Damn, I'm old.

Download the mp3 of this sound yourself and try to hear it.

***********
Update: after closing my office door and CRANKING up the volume, I could finally hear it. But interesting how I couldn't hear it at a certain volume and others could.

Relaxing weekend of doing a bunch of stuff....

Been awhile since I've had such a busy weekend yet it was really relaxing. Friday night I went to a Wine & Cheese party at Vidya's while Matt checked out a punk show at the Funhouse with his co-worker, Simon. Vidya had a good 40-ish people show up so I got to catch up with a bunch of people I hadn't seen in a long time.

Saturday, I headed up to Shoreline to attend Amy's bridal shower. No games--just good 'ol food and fun conversation. I didn't know many people--just Erica and the Infusion ladies (Gen and Kim). I heard an interesting saying at the party: "If you put a penny in a jar for each time you have sex prior to marrying your husband, and then start taking a penny out for each time you have sex after the marriage, you'll never reach the last penny." Ha! All the married women in the room seemed to agree. Hmm...

In the evening, Matt and I got some quick yummy food at the Triple Door before walking across the street to Benaroya Hall to catch our 1st show of the symphony season, starring Barry Douglas playing Rachmaninov's Third Piano Concerto which was pretty freakin' damn hard. This is the same piece exhibited from the movie, Shine, and there's a reason for it. Now, to finally experience the piece in its entirety in person, it was just amazing seeing the pure stamina needed to get through all the running passages of this piece. I was in total awe. I'm so excited that Matt and I decided to subscribe to the symphony's season--it was something I did for a few years with my good friend, Fred, until he left Seattle to go to business school. I really missed it and it makes me so happy to share this experience with Matt.

After the symphony, we headed back up to Capitol Hill to toast to Sumit's 29th birthday at the Cafe Metropolitan---Happy Birthday!

Today, we met up with Sumit (another Sumit) and Shiwani to go sailing. Fortunately, the weather was absolutely gorgeous and sunny. Unfortunately, there was practically no wind. We still had fun, floating out slowly to the middle of the lake and then indulging in mimosas, strawberries, cheese, hummous and chocolate. After that, Matt watched football with Petey while I met up with the girls for another day at the spa.

I can't believe it's already October.

little milestones

Little milestones hit today....

Matt and I officially made our first 2 open water scuba dives ever! We woke up at 6am to get ready for and meet our class up at the Mukilteo Ferry Dock to go diving at 8am. Fortunately, the weather was perfect--that is, little wind, sun, no rain, currents good. And, much to my surprise, I was not cold whatsoever in the wet suit! I've been dreading the idea of freezing my butt off in the Puget Sound this weekend, but I remained rather comfortable for both of the dives! It was only near the end of the first dive that my toes started getting a bit cold, but otherwise, it wasn't bad! I can't believe I was in the water of the Puget Sound this morning. We saw some neat stuff--lots of crabs, baby jellyfish and really interesting starfish. I even saw a toilet at the bottom--ha! Two more dives tomorrow and we'll be officially certified as basic divers! Yee haw! I should note that one of the reasons we're getting certified is so that we can honeymoon somewhere tropical and go diving...so we're getting interested in places like Belize now....

Matt caught Zuki using Misha's litterbox. Last week I caught Misha using Zuki's litterbox. Know what this means? The cats can share a litterbox! So we got rid of the one in the main bathroom upstairs (thank god) and hope that a single litterbox household will work for the 2 cats! What else is cool---we've noticed that they are willing to eat out of the same food bowl, by virtue of the two of them constantly eating in the other's bowl. Sadly, we need to keep their food separate due to special dietary needs for Zuki....but hey, we're psyched. We really thought we'd need to keep two litterboxes around for the cats.

I finally switched to Vonage.

i heart spinach

When will the spinach fiasco be over? I, for one, love spinach. It's the one green veggie that I'll throw into anything--salads, as a side, in my sandwich, in my pasta. So it really bums me out that I'm banned from spinach right now. Okay, I just had to say that.

That time of year when the seasons change.....

It's gone from sunny days in Seattle to consistent greyness and rain. And with that, the temperatures drop and my body goes "bye bye". I caught a sinus cold over the weekend and am staying home from work today (took yesterday off too). I'll hopefully be better by tomorrow as I'm missing a lot at work! Ack. Just the stress of what I need to catch up to gets to me. Of course, hanging in a pool for 2-3 hours on Saturday and Sunday learning scuba diving probably didn't help me ward off the sinus cold. I probably didn't realize I had the cold until Sunday-ish...and by Sunday evening, my body had gone to kaput.

So scuba diving's been fun. Matt and I are taking a course that takes place over 2 weekends. Next weekend, we take our final exam and then hit the cold open waters of the Puget Sound up near Mukilteo. This last weekend was intense as we spent all Friday evening and most of Saturday and Sunday in class or in the pool learning our training moves. We've learned rescue swimming, sharing regulators, putting your weight belt on in the water, removing your BC and putting it back on in the water and general buoyancy. There was a swim qualification test on Saturday which I feared doing as I really don't know much about swimming--I get by and can float. Fortunately, I passed: we had to swim 4 laps (back & forth, back & forth), then tread water for 10 minutes and finally swim underwater holding our breath for 50 feet. I'm so excited! Our goal is to head somewhere tropical for our honeymoon and go diving.

Anyhoo, time to go downstairs and take some Sudafed...

Quick update...

It's been about 2 weeks since Matt's moved in and the place is surprisingly clutter-free, mainly due to a surprise visit by my parents, grandmother and auntie this week (in reality, the clutter all moved to closets or side areas). Zuki is out of the bathroom (she's actually sitting in the closet currently) and the cats seem to be...faring better than we would've expected. Misha's been incredibly patient and just curious, always wanting to play with Zuki. Zuki's growls, hisses and occasional swats don't seem to faze Misha at all which is good. For now, they "deal" with each other.

Matt and I started taking a beginner open water scuba diving class last night--it's a 2 weekend course and is so exciting! Our goal is to book a honeymoon somewhere around ocean and dive sites. On our first night of the course, we hit the pool after about 2 hours of instruction--it was so fun learning various things in the pool such as buoyancy and getting water out of your mask.

Zuki hiding in the cubby

With Misha on guard outside the bathroom door all the time, Zuki's hiding in the cubby...

Misha sniffin' Zuki

Oh, he's curious all right.

Moving in together...

Today is it. Matt is officially moved into my place--there are boxes everywhere and clothes waiting to be hung (I've been bad and unable to figure out how to clear my closets of my own clothes). We're going to be spending this Labor Day weekend unpacking and getting his stuff settled in. Whew. Big step for me as I've never lived with a significant other ever--of course, he's my fiance so there was no question after we got engaged that we wanted to co-habitate as soon as possible. Personally, I'm super psyched. Married friends of mine always talk about how much it helped to live together prior to getting married.

But you know what I'm scared of? The only thing. Having Matt's cat, Zuki, meet my cat, Misha. I've been researching this and have even talked to my vet---and for at least the first week or two, we're lockin' Zuki up in the upstairs bathroom. I know it sounds cruel---but everyone says that the new cat needs a safe room. The cats will have an opportunity to smell each other which is the most important thing. [sigh] I hope this goes well! Matt is packing up the last of his stuff as I type this---and Zuki is the last thing he's bringing over. Let's see how it goes!

summer is rushing by...

Man, sorry it's taken so long to post. Summer keeps rushing by and I can't believe it's the end of August already. Much has happened since my last post....

My parents came into town to meet Matt's parents, which went really well (this visit documented in my wedding blog)

Matt and I enjoyed another amazing, fantastic wine pairing meal at Rosebud--sponsored by Mondavi Winery. It was a meal with heirloom tomatoes, duck leg, elk, the list goes on. Highly recommend going to the next one.

This weekend, I had a bellydance performance at the Sand in the City festival in Olympia, WA which was neat because I've barely ever been to Olympia. I stopped by there once for lunch and had no idea there was any sort of waterfront. The festival was a sand sculpture competition and it was really fun performing at it.

Otherwise, been helping Matt slowly start moving in---he and his cat, Zuki, are moving into my place at the end of the month (that's less than a week from now!). We have boxes of his stuff so far and the shoe pile in the closet is pretty ridiculous. We put up his car, couch, dresser and bed on Craigslist yesterday and it was unbelievable the number of responses he received. Within 6 hours of posting the ad on his car, he got about 50 voicemail messages and 15-20 email messages. Craziness. It was actually quite amusing listening to all of them---because some were like "I'll pay cash right now and will pick it up anytime", we immediately deleted messages like "um, can I take it to a mechanic first...".

Anyhow, Matt and I are going to interview an officiant this morning and then head off to the Red Sox v. Mariners game in the afternoon. Afterwards, he'll hopefully have time to unload all his stuff!

Aaron stuck in London

My poor brother. He flew to London last week for an interview. Then all the craziness over the last few days happened. He was supposed to fly back today at 2:30pm. He sent e-mail last night saying he was planning on leaving for the airport around 6:30am just to play it safe. Then we started monitoring the flight information, as it went from 2:30pm to 4:30pm to 6:30pm to 9:45pm and then finally cancelled. Ugh. We then got this email from him:

15 hours in airport so far: short story

new flight monday, 14th, at 2:30

Virgin pays for hotel in london tonight.
I will stay with friend sunday night, and return to airport monday and do this again.

from what i know, it might take over 1 week. as over 1000 plus ppl are stranded.

everyone is yelling here. it is crazy, but not too bad..i am calm but will have to cancel some projects that started this week.

supernova & more reality

I've been watching Rock Star: Supernova to satisfy my reality tv craving for the summer. I really like this show--it's better than American Idol in that all the contestants are pretty damn good and have amazing vocal abilities. Anyhow, my thoughts on the remaining people:

Dana: great voice, young, definitely improving, probably will get cut near the end
Dilana: just awesome, most likely final 3
Jill: looks like Pam Anderson with a voice. She's okay, too girly girl for the guys methinks.
Josh: he's fine. not memorable.
Lukas: he's Cure meets the Butthole Surfers. Strange. I just don't see him making it. His performance this week sucked.
Magni: solid guy. Has a chance to be in the final 3
Patrice: voice is very plain. She rocked it this week but was totally overshadowed by Tommy Lee. Not good and not surprising. She's out soon
Ryan: I really didn't think much of him until this week's rendition of "Losing My Religion". That performance was just jaw dropping amazing.
Storm: She looks like a cross between Lindsay Lohan and that red-headed Spice Girl. I've never liked her possessed by the music strange eyes but I do think she has a really awesome solid voice.
Toby: I really liked him at first but don't see him growing much. Good voice, will market well.
Zayra: She's just a crazy chick. They're just keeping her on to see what crazy outfit she'll wear next. She doesn't fit the band though--she needs to be the next Bjork.

Speaking of reality tv shows, anyone seen One Ocean View? I caught the pilot this week--it cracks me up that K.J. is cousins with Eric, one of the original Real World castmembers. Not hooked yet, we'll see.

Other reality tv shows I'm watching...

Project Runway
Woo Woo! I love this show. A little early to say who's gonna make it, but 2 of my favorites so far are Alison and Uli. Angela has got to go next show--she totally annoys me.

Hell's Kitchen
It's down to the Final 3--this is a show that Matt and I love to watch. I say Heather wins the whole thing. I can't believe Keith made it this far and Virginia has just worked hard and been lucky. She'll probably be the next to get kicked off.

So You Think You Can Dance
Damn, everyone is so good. I've grown to really really love this show and be constantly amazed by the contestants' versatility. It's really difficult to go from hip hop to the quick step to contemporary. I mean, that's really not realistic (or is it?) 6 people left---I think the final guy/girl will be Benji and Heidi---and that Benji will win the whole thing.

More Nomaditude

Here's an awesome photo of my bellydance troupe, taken shortly before our performance at MedFest---such wonderful ladies to dance with!

Beckham coming to Seattle!

Yes, seriously--David Beckham is coming to Seattle....D.C. United and Real Madrid finalized plans just today to play a friendly game in Seattle on August 9th at Qwest Field...and lucky me, I found a pre-sale password from a Microsoft DL and just bought 4 tickets at a really great location to watch the game with Matt and my parents. I've been fortunate to have actually seen Real Madrid play once in Madrid with Sri couple years ago (after much bargaining and sweet talking in Spanish around Bernabéu Stadium on our first night in Spain) -- but I'm really excited to check it out with my fiancé, who's a fútbol fanatic and my parents!

Sweltering heat

Oh dear lord. It's 93 degrees right now and it is HOT! Now, I know for all you midwesterners and east coasters, that's nothing compared to what you've been experiencing lately. But here in Seattle, we're used to our comfortable mid-70's summers...and with it hitting the 90's, the heat is really getting to me. I just spent about 45 minutes with my team playing an altered version of bocce ball (for our team "Friday Festivus") and I just got back in. I think I may've even gotten a decent tan during that time.

I'm going to head out tomorrow again for another hardcore day of dress shopping with the girls--this one is packed, visiting FIVE places. Hopefully, I can narrow down to a few dresses by end of day so that when my mom visits in a few weeks, I can pick the final one with her.

VoIP?

Got my phone bill today - $56.47. One of them for a 7 minute phone call to Hong Kong that was about 26 cents a minute. I just checked out the rates on Vonage and it's 4 cents a minute to Hong Kong. Plus, they have a package that really suits--just a flat rate of $14.99/month which includes 500 minutes anywhere in the US, Canada or Puerto Rico. I talk less than 500 minutes easily on that phone. Tempted to switch---and I keep that number just cuz' I've had it for 7 years and it's, sadly, my junk phone (where I send all telemarketers and what not). Also, my mom still calls me on it. What are you experiences with Vonage?

Nomaditude!

After a fabulous wedding dress shopping spree at Marcella's on Saturday, I whisked off to West Seattle to perform at MedFest with my bellydance troupe, Nomaditude---and it was so much fun! This was our second performance ever but definitely to the biggest crowd and we had a fabulous time. I was also oh so psyched to see the number of friends that showed up to see me perform---way more than I expected! And some I didn't expect so it was an extremely pleasant surprise. To those friends that showed up--THANK YOU for coming! It really meant a lot to see so many familiar faces in the audience on this beautiful, hot day! Also, thanks to Jigna for taking a bunch of great photos---check them out!

wedding stuff

Somehow, I got on some mailing list for brides in Seattle. I'm starting to get totally random postcards and mailings from reception sites and wedding boutiques advertising "the dream wedding" in Seattle. Ha Ha. Matt swears it's because I'm registered on theknot.com. Grrrr. This weekend, I'll be wedding dress shopping for the first time: there's a Monique Lhuillier trunk show at Marcella's La Boutique, which sounds pretty cool. I have no idea what happens at trunk shows but it sounds like a great way to kick start this dress shopping.

It's rather ridiculous the number of wedding magazines I've acquired in the short time I've been engaged. It's like, after having the ring on the finger, there's a lightbulb that pops in the head and makes you pay attention to everything wedding and in between. [sigh] Speaking of weddings, I was excited to see in Seattle Bride's 2006 "Best Of" edition, Newcastle was listed as the Best Sunset Wedding spot. Yay!

Weekend wrapup

Great weekend--on Friday, we finally went out and watched An Inconvenient Truth after a yummy pizza dinner at Tutta Bella. Al Gore puts on an influential powerpoint presentation, which surprisingly is quite entertaining in the form of a movie. The movie is definitely thought provoking and I'd recommend anyone to check it out.

Saturday, we went hiking with Petey, Carrie & Erin on the Lennox Creek Hike near North Bend. Man, what a hike! It ended up being way more difficult and strenuous than I had expected certainly. We literally hiked along a creekbed which, at times, got extremely muddy and full of vegetation, to the point where we felt like we needed a machete to get through the thick bush. It was a much more technical hike than any of us anticipated--still, it was quite fun and beautiful. Sadly, we never saw Anderson Lake, which was the end of the whole hike--but alas, the hike took longer than we had planned. One thing that contributed: the road to the trailhead was washed out--so we had to park down the river a bit and hike 2 miles to even get to the trailhead. That added 4 miles roundtrip! By the time we got down, we were tired and hungry and more than satisfied with our McDonald's dinner. Here are pictures.

Sunday, Matt and I headed over to Gray and Aileen's for their BBQ in celebration of both Gray's birthday and the accomplishment of the relay Seafair marathon that Sandra, Mike, Gray and Aileen participated in earlier that morning. Super fun just catching up with people we hadn't seen in awhile.

Photos from the weekend

I uploaded the pictures I took over the weekend from Sumit & Neha's wedding. Here are the photos from the Sangeet and here are the photos from the actual wedding.

Smithie in Seattle news...

I just found out that the new assistant conductor at the Seattle Symphony beginning this fall is going to be an ASIAN-AMERICAN FEMALE who is a CLASS OF 1999 SMITH graduate! How awesome is that?! It's Carolyn Kuan, who I totally remember from my economics classes. I'm excited since Matt and I subscribed to the symphony this year---I'll have to try to ping her to see if we can get a backstage tour sometime!

Old friends, new lives...

Just wrapped up a fabulous Fourth of July weekend. Saturday evening, I headed to the Alibi Room to meet up with an old, really good friend--Jon Pak--who was in town for a wedding. Jon and I hung out a ton when I first moved to Seattle as we started around the same time at Amazon and lived down the street from each other.

On Sunday, Matt and I drove down to Portland to attend Sumit & Neha's wedding. Sunday evening was the Sangeet, an evening of mehndi, song and dance. Below is a great video that a few of our good friends organized in honor of their wedding---check it out!

Overall, the weekend was wonderful and it was incredibly special to attend the wedding. The weather was ridiculously warm and all the guests sat baking in the hot sun for the 1.5 hour ceremony. Indian weddings are so full of song and dance, it's wonderful. I could only hope for that much dancing at my own wedding...

Drove back today, just in time to join Spencer & Gabe grillin' up on the rooftop for Independence Day. The fireworks, as always, were beautiful to see. Happy Birthday America!

BTW, before leaving Portland, Matt and I caught the Italy v. Germany game---what a game! To score a goal in the 128th minute was ridiculous. To score another goal, like, 30-45 seconds later was even more ridiculous. What an ending. Congrats Italy.

Grind Grind Grind

I'm a grinder. A tooth grinder that is. I first learned that I grind my teeth at night when I went to college and had a roommate for the first time. Anna used to tell me how she would wake up to the really large crunching sound, as if "I were chewing on marbles". Eeks. Strangely, I never really realized it. I never woke up with soreness around my jaw nor felt my teeth really rubbed (although a cavity here or there suspiciously may be a result of my grinding). I spoke to my dentist about it recently---and today, I picked up my custom-made night mouth guard, which is a hard plastic mold fit perfectly to my mouth so that when I grind at night, I grind against plastic instead of my own teeth. I'll be sleeping with it for the first time tonight. Hmmm. I found an interesting thread online about the use of night mouth guards---I guess bruxism (the acto of grinding one's teeth) is a more common issue than I realized.

Review: Veil Restaurant

I forgot to mention that Matt and I checked out the Veil Restaurant in Queen Anne Saturday night. First impressions upon walking in: very chichi, very Bada Lounge like, slightly reminiscent of the decor at Crush with all white tables and seats. We had made reservations for 9pm and walked in right on time but had to wait in the lounge (which looked very nice). Although the cocktails we drank while waiting were yummy, we still waited half an hour---the good news is that the host was apologetic and comp'ed our drinks. To start for appetizers, Matt got some diver sea scallops while I tried the foie gras w/bing cherries, which literally melted in my mouth. This is how good it was: Matt doesn't like foie gras. He liked this foie gras. For an entree, Matt and I both got halibut served with this interesting cous cous with lobster side which was absolutely delicious. Finally, for dessert, we shared their salted peanut butter ice cream, which is to die for. If anything, come to Veil for a drink in their lounge and snack on this ice cream. Matt and I left very satisfied, impressed by the food and very happy with the service. We highly recommend it.

"Turn Around, Don't Drown"

I woke up this morning to hear the radio DJ saying "Turn Around, Don't Drown". I'm in Houston, TX where I arrived super late last night to torrential rainfall---and I mean TORRENTIAL. Like, I haven't seen this sort of rain since a tornado was nearby in Kansas. I checked into my hotel and kept waking up to the pounding of the rain against the window. In the morning, I found out that parts of Houston was flooded and some of the major highways were closed off. I heard that at one point, an inch of rain fell in 11 minutes. Sheesh--that tells you how hard and fast this rain was coming down. Unfortunately, half of the people we came to meet (I'm on a customer site visit for MS) had to postpone today because they either couldn't make it into work with the highways or their homes were flooded and, well, prioritized that over meeting with a bunch of mobility people from Microsoft.

Off to the South!

I leave for Houston in a couple hours for a business trip (my first with Microsoft!) to visit one of our customers/partners and conduct a mobility usability study. It looks hot in Houston---like upper 80's/90's everyday. I'm not looking forward to the flight over---7 hours long as I go through Phoenix (a direct flight was way out of MS policy). Will be arriving late tonight at 11pm. I'll be back in Seattle on Wednesday!

Who wants an Ikea doormat?

Someone stole my cheap Ikea doormat at my condo. Bastards. How random is that?

One of my favorite reality cooking shows is back, Hell's Kitchen.

And I have to admit, although I had absolutely no interest in it the first time around, I'm starting to really like So You Think You Can Dance?. It's really amazing to see a trained swing dancer shakin' his booty to hip hop...or a popper attempt the Viennese Waltz.

busy busy busy

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I've been busy either with work (got slammed after returning from Portugal) or crazy wedding planning. I've been talking to my mom almost every night---which is insanely frequent. Matt and I have now visited NINE potential wedding sites in the Seattle area...and the good news is that we think we still like the first one we visited (Newcastle). Our main goal is to have both the ceremony and reception at the same place...and a lot of places we've seen are either awesome ceremony sites (i.e. Woodmark Hotel) or awesome reception sites (i.e. Fairmont). We have about another week with the contract from Newcastle to make a decision.

Otherwise, Matt's friend, Tom Frank, is in town visiting from San Francisco for a wedding---he's going to be one of Matt's groomsmen. That's one thing that Matt's way ahead of me on: deciding on his set of groomsmen. He's already asked all of them except for 2---Brad, the guy who introduced us back in 2001, is going to be the Best Man. I don't know when I'm going to come up with my bridal party at all. Ack.

Some fun news: the new bellydancing troupe that I'm in, Nomaditude, had its debut performance at the Hafla Durga last night up at the Phinney Ridge Community Center, dancing to Groove Armada. I think the performance went really well and we were all psyched. This new troupe formed while I was in Portugal and it's made up of select dancers from Sharon Moore's intermediate class. I'm really psyched about actually being able to perform on a regular basis (the previous troupe, Shaia Tribe, seemed to only get together to perform once a year at the Phinney Ridge Winter Festival). Our next performance is supposed to be at one of the Pacific Northwest's largest bellydance festivals, MedFest. Yay!

wedding planning begins...

This last weekend was the first time that Matt and I took a tour of potential wedding sites. I've learned that Seattle brides plan WAY ahead of time and start booking places MORE than a year in advance. We saw Newcastle, Willows Lodge and the Columbia Winery---of those, we totally fell in love with Newcastle. We'll probably see a few more places this week and hopefully we can book a place soon!

After wedding site shopping, since we were at Willows Lodge, we grabbed a dinner at the Red Hook Brewery (yum!) and then hopped over to Marymoore Park to see Cirque du Soleil's Varekai show---as always, I totally enjoyed it and loved seeing all the acrobatic acts.

Tonight, I went to the High Dive bar in Fremont with Jigna and Asayo to check out Infusion Tribal for the Pyramid Lounge--an evening chock full of bellydancing! It was great seeing everyone as I've been out of commission for bellydancing for over a month! (so strange!) I haven't taken classes since before I left for Portugal....and ha, I've got a performance this weekend (with the new troupe that I'm a part of, Nomaditude). First rehearsal (for me) is this Thursday. Eeks!

It's been a year...

I thought I was in trouble today when I suddenly got a meeting request from one of the lead PMs to discuss some thing about the release I've been working on. Upon arriving in the dark meeting room, my co-workers jump out and yell "SURPRISE!". They had cake for me and Spencer as it was our 1 year anniversary for being at the company. Man, a year has gone by. Can't believe it! How sweet for everyone to have done that.

Watched the American Idol finale tonight---good for Taylor. I liked both him and Katherine and they're both going to do fine. But can I comment on how ridiculous the guest celebrities were? It just seemed....weird. I mean, at first, Live with Chris Daughtry sounded like a good match--yay that he gets to sing with one of his favorite bands. But then Katherine McPhee gets matched up with Meatloaf for a duo? Meatloaf?! And then there's Mary J Blige seeing alongside a pretty wimpy Elliott Yamin...then out of the blue comes Dionne Warwick. Finally, with Prince appearing near the end---that was just weird. Come on: freakin' PRINCE on American Idol? WTF?

Jetlag is killing me at night. Waking up around 6:30am easily every morning..and barely hanging on at 7pm. Usually get a second wind around 9pm but exhausted by 10:30pm.

Highlights of Portugal

Okay, so I don't even know where to begin with the trip to Portugal. There's so much to tell and share because it was such an amazing trip (asides from getting engaged on it!). Instead of blogging about it, I'll put together a neato parto of my site with photos and stories---so watch out for that! Meanwhile, I will mention some highlights from the trip, personally:

Getting engaged!

Listening to Fado singers at Café Luso in the Bairro Alto in Lisboa

Riding Tram #28 through the Alfama district while 2 people cling onto the tram from the outside

Tasting the yummy pasteis from Belém

Standing at the westernmost point in continental Europe

Going port wine tasting in Vila Nova de Gaia at places like Sandeman, Croft, Offley and Ferreira

(for Matt) Watching F.C. Porto win the Portuguese Cup at a bar in Porto

Cruising down the Rio Douro

Seeing old Celtic Iberian ruins near Braga - Citania Briteiros

Relaxing next to a pool overlooking the Douro Valley vineyards and river

Meeting the Father and all the wonderful people at the Casa Alta Lodge in Ourém

Driving behind the insanely fast Portuguese drivers on the A1

Seeing the Basilica in Fatima, which is twice the size of the one in Rome

Seeing the cathedrals at Batalha and Alcobaca

Seeing the coastline in Nazare

Trying ginginha with cherries

Eating delicious seafood like bacalhau and giant tiger prawns for dinner

Drinking café com leite with a croissant mixta for breakfast practically every morning

Hanging out with our good friends, Debbie and Saevar

Bom día! I love Portugal...

Greetings from Portugal!! I´m currently in Braga staying at a lovely quinta and we just ate the yummiest Arroz con Mariscos dinner at Da Bouro restaurant. Today has been our first opportunity to jump on the internet since there´s one at the hotel. Since I´ll want to write about the entire week we´ve had in chronological order, I´ll wait until returning to give the full scoop on that. Meanwhile, I just wanted to share some wonderful news...

Matt and I are engaged!! He completely (like, totally shocked) surprised me when we were in Casçais, staying at our lovely fortress by the sea. We had just finished having dinner with Debbie & Saevar and had returned to the hotel. Matt had wanted to take a nice walk along the beach but I wasn´t having any of that because the Guincho Beach was dark and insanely windy (we learned that this beach often hosts the World Windsurfing Championships---that tells you how windy it was). So then he resorted to Plan 2 by pouring some port and going out to the balcony. Next thing I knew, he had whipped out a ring and was proposing to me. Of course, I said yes.

So that´s the super exciting news so far from this trip! We´re heading to the Douro Valley tomorrow and then slowly down South, eventually back to Lisboa. Can´t wait to share all the wonderful things we´ve seen and done here in Portugal! Ciao!

10 hours to go....

...before Kutta takes us to the airport and off we go to Boston. I've got a ton of work stuff to complete and basic packing stuff to do. Yeah--pack. I have yet to do that. I've got the suitcase open and that's about it. I've started jotting down a list of everything I need to do: that's the type of organizer I am---a list person. Before every trip, I write down a huge list of things I need to do. I also write down a list of things I need to pack that I haven't packed yet, just so I don't forget last minute. So much to do...

Itinerary in Portugal

As y'all may've noticed by now, I'm about to take a lil' trip to Portugal next week for about 2 weeks. Am I excited? Damn straight I am. Here's the itinerary that we have laid out:


Day 1
Arrive in Lisbon. Relax.

Day 2
Explore more of Lisbon

Day 3
Explore more of Lisbon. Maybe check out some Fado.

Day 4
Head over to Cascais and check into a 17th century fortress on the beach. Suh-weet. Explore Cascais and Sintra.

Day 5
Explore more in the area. Maybe head to Obidos and Nazare if there's time.

Day 6
Drive up to Oporto---port region!
Check into the Hotel Pestana, which forms part of a block of town houses dating from the XVI, XVII and XVIII centuries and is classified by UNESCO as part of the World Heritage site which extends along the Douro River. Nice.

Day 7
Explore more of Oporto and check out some of the port vinyards.

Day 8
Check out Braga and Guimarães

Day 9
Drive to the Douro Valley and explore the countryside and any other port quintas. Stay in a cute B&B.

Day 10
Start driving back down south and explore Coimbra, Conimbriga, and the Buçaco Forest. Check into a former royal hunting lodge.

Day 11
Explore the area and look at Fatima (a pilgramage site that Mel Gibson may make a movie about), Batalha and Leiria

Day 12
Drive back to Lisbon and celebrate our last day in Portugal

Work people on IM

Over the past few years, I've experienced different IM clients, from ICQ to Yahoo to AOL to MSN. During that time, as an employee at Amazon, if I ever wanted to chat with my co-workers, I had to add them to an internal Windows Messenger IM client (mainly because all other IM clients were blocked). As a result, the majority of my buddies on my MSN Messenger are actual, personal friends. Since joining Microsoft, I notice that a lot of people use MSN Messenger and I get requests often from co-workers for my MSN Messenger account name so they can add me to their buddy list. So I'm now moving into the territory where my IM experience is muddled with both personal friends and coworkers. Hmm. I guess I feel strange about it because I want to be able to sign into Messenger from home and not have coworkers see me go online. It's that feeling of being unattached from work--to be able to IM with friends and not feel like your coworkers are in the room too and can contact you as easily as your friends. I use Communicator at work, which works for most people. But what do I do with coworkers who ask for my MSN Messenger address? Do I give them my usual? Should I create another account and maintain that one? (which I'll likely never sign into?). I wish there was a feature where I could "hide" myself from a particular group of messenger buddies. Call me paranoid.

Last day at work...kinda

I got kicked out of my office at 5pm today because the movers came in. My whole team is moving literally across the street to the building next door, but because it's a massive move, none of us really have offices available to work in until Monday morning. Meanwhile, those with laptops will chill out at home and continue work there (that's ME!). What that also means is that today was essentially my last day, physically, in the office before I take off for Boston/Portugal this weekend. Woo hoo---cuz that means I have time at home to pack my stuff in between the e-mail and spec updates I'll be doing.

I'm meeting a bunch of former and current Amazon ladies for dinner tonight at Pasta Freska, this Italian restaurant on Westlake that has a "no menu" policy: the chef walks around and asks people what they don't like..and then constructs a dinner based off of that. Shall be interesting! I can't wait to see how the experience turns out!

gas

I spent $47 on gas yesterday. Ugh. I really need to switch to the bus.

Massive Attack

Matt, Petey (Happy Bday!), Derrick and I checked out Massive Attack tonight at the Paramount....and it was an AWESOME show. Supposedly, they haven't toured to the United States in 8 years, and on this tour alone, they're only hitting 4 U.S. locations: Seattle, NYC, Chicago and Coachella. Nice. They brought on a bunch of old favorites like Angel, Teardrop, Safe from Harm, etc...and they were all powerful and explosive. It was fantastic to hear them live, in particular to catch parts of their music that I couldn't hear before, like a backup vocal or the bass line strumming. One really cool bit of their performance was that there were TWO drum kits on stage. Pretty amazing. There's only 1 album of theirs that I haven't heard yet--100th Window: anyone heard it? Is it good? Anyway, fabulous show. Check them out if you're a fan.

Life in the big city...

There've been a lot of shootings in Seattle recently (or maybe the media is paying attention to it suddenly) and one of them happened last night in Capitol Hill at the corner of E. John and Broadway, right in front of Twice Told Tales, the cute used bookstore with all the cats. This is a block away from my first apartment in Seattle (and still a 5-10 min. walk from where I live now). Craziness.

Scheduling woes

Don't you hate it when you schedule a meeting with all these people to a room that CLEARLY is available on the free/busy tab...only to then shortly get a "DENIED! YOU LOSE" email from the conference room saying that it's actually, in fact, busy but likely unknown to me because people with special powers booked it without saying so in the free/busy tab?!?! argh.

Weekend wrapup

This has been a really nice, chill weekend. Friday, Matt and I attended Jocelyn's dinner-ish party where for the first time, I was in an environment where most party guests introduced themselves by asking "So..are you an attorney also?" (Jocelyn and her boyfriend, Ivan, are recent Seattle U. Law School graduates). I did get to see another former Amazonian there, Daniel--so it was nice to catch up with him a bit. Saturday evening, Kabir invited me and Matt over for dinner with his parents, Sri, Noreen and his former boss, John. We had a yummy homecooked meal c/o Kabir's parents and just an overall good time catching up. And today's weather was gorgeous--sunny and nearly 70. Matt and I took a stroll through downtown shopping and then came back up the hill, got some chardonnay and cheese and went up to my rooftop for about an hour, reading magazines and soaking in the sun. [sigh] The realities of work are starting to sink back in soon.....only 2 more weeks for Portugal. 2 more weeks...

Yesterday, Matt and I saw Thank You for Smoking and really enjoyed it. It's fully of clever one-liners and very entertaining. Aaron Eckhart is so fitting for the role as the fast talking lobbyist for the cigarette companies.

Also, over the weekend, Betina and Justin got engaged: CONGRATS!!!

Clip about Aaron from Doug Hall interview

Okay--I went ahead and edited the podcast interview with Doug Hall to show on the clip that references Aaron. It's about 2 minutes long and it's an mp3. Check it out. Note that this radio interview was taped way before the show aired but it was already after the taping of the show and the finalists determined.

"It's fun, he's fun..."

Here's the brief clip of Aaron on American Inventor from last week. This clip's shorter than the previous one but at least you can see his name written on the screen. I talked to Aaron a bit more about the audition after he was eliminated. I complained about seeing so little of him in the Top 24 show and he told me that during his final presentation, a pigeon came out of nowhere and landed 2 feet in front of him. Because of that, he thought that was why they didn't show a clip of his final preso. (Personally, I thought that would've made some funny tv) He also told me that the judges grilled him a bit on the similarities of his anemone clock to Clocky, which is another alarm clock idea out there which has gained a lot of press. The two, in essence, are really different--but alas, it sounds like Aaron didn't defend himself enough. What's cool is---if you download this podcast, which is a 22-minute radio interview with Doug Hall (one of the judges), Doug tells a story about Aaron which starts off not sounding great, but in the end is really flattering. He doesn't mention Aaron's name but Aaron confirmed to me that it was definitely about him. Fast forward to 12 min. 12 sec. in the podcast interview to hear him talk about Aaron. It lasts for about 2 minutes.

Finalists of American Inventor

Well, I sat through the grueling 2 hours of American Inventor tonight, hoping to see some more good airtime of Aaron---instead, I just saw more and more of the inventions we've already seen, like those edible snowglobes and the wig lady. What I also did see was a lot of Aaron sitting dead center in the middle of the whole group of the top 50. Hour 1 ends----Aaron makes it into the top 24. Yay! Okay, onto the 9pm show. Surely, in the next full hour with the top 24, I'll see more of Aaron. Near the beginning, there are some quick frames of him with the group of contestants. Ooo--I think he's wearing the sweater that I bought him for Christmas (here comes the awww...big-sister-is-proud moment) I wait and wait and wait...and I just see the same damn contestants over and over again. All right, I get it--it's a bike for someone to ride in the front. The hour's almost up and they go through and deliver the good or bad news. Wait, where's Aaron? They end up showing only 19 of the final 24. Come on. Seriously. If people make it to the top 24 out of thousands of people that auditioned, at least have the decendency to give them some airtime so we can see if they make it or not. Sadly, in the final bit, they run through the final 12 and Aaron isn't there. Bummer. He should've gotten more airtime. And he definitely had a better invention than some of the people in the top 12---everyone needs an alarm clock. I don't get the Nia doll. The barbell lock system thing sounds like something that's been done already. Argh. Aaron just wasn't the type to give the whole "I sold my kidney, spent $100,000 and am living out of my car" sort of sob story like the rest of the final 12. Guess that's what makes good TV. Oh well. I still think Aaron's clock was a much better invention---either way, great job lil' bro. It's still pretty freakin' awesome that you even made it into the TOP 24 for American Inventor!

No Tango on Inventor tonight

It looked like tonight's episode of American Inventor was the last of the general auditions and that next week's show will show the top 50 contestants, who will then get narrowed down to 24 and then to the 12 finalists. What's exciting is that my brother, Aaron, appeared in the previews for next week's show....meaning he's at least in the top 50. And in the clip that he was in, it was joyous group celebration clip, which I hope means that perhaps he even made it to the top 24. Who knows--he's not telling anything to the family. In any case: for all my friends that I've mentioned to about my brother and this show---TUNE IN NEXT WEEK! Cuz' it looks like Aaron will have a lot more air time then!

Past two weekends...

I haven't had time to write about what's been going on for the past 2 weekends, so let me get it out of the way quickly. 2 weeks ago, Matt and I headed back to Kansas to attend my high school friend, Matt Hillmer's wedding in Lawrence (did I mention the best man was a Matt and the usher was also Matt?). Fun times and I got to see a lot of people that I haven't seen in a really long time, so there was a lot of catching up. The time in Kansas was short and sweet---we ate dinner at an old favorite, the Savoy Grill, in Kansas City on Friday night. On Sunday, we got dim sum in K.C. and saw the Kongs again. Then, Matt and I watched the UConn v. George Mason game at the airport while we waited for our plane to arrive (and what a game!). All of the basketball games that weekend were pretty ridiculous to watch. Fun!

Last weekend, headed up to Whistler with 12 friends for a quick weekend of snowboarding. I only went up the mountain on Saturday but we had a fabulous time, hitting Blackcomb Glacier immediately as our first run of the day. It wasn't a full powder day but it also wasn't super icy or anything. It's so nice to get a good day of snowboarding in. I also went through the BoarderCross for the first time (it's like a lil race track) which was super fun---only went through it once but I can imagine how fun it would be doing it over and over until you're really familiar with it.

Congrats also to my friend Jed in Kansas for getting married to Christa this past Sunday. I wish I could've made it to the wedding!

Once in a century moment

Coolness. Tonight, it will be 1:02:03am on 04/05/06.

Aaron on American Inventor

My brother auditioned for American Inventor a few months back---and he finally appeared on it briefly on Thursday night's airing. If you want to read more about the project that he brought onto the show, click this link. Check it out!

"Hi. You look tired"

I hate getting that line. Especially on a Monday morning. It's like a nice way of saying "Hi--you look like crap" I heard it twice today.

Drive stick?

Parking has gotten so bad in the buildings I work at in MS that they hired a valet service beginning last week to basically illegally park our cars for us. Sounds cool. I went to retrieve my car today and it took forever. When they brought it to me, I was like "What took so long?". The guy said "Sorry--I was the only valet attendant that knew how to drive stick". Sheesh! Wouldn't you think that the basic qualifications for being a valet attendant involved the ability to drive a manual transmission car?

Weekend wrapup

Had a pretty relaxing weekend---started off on Friday night catching the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater at the Paramount with some girlfriends. I've been wanting to watch this troupe since I was young and I was absolutely floored by the passion and excitement that they exude in their body movements. The choreography was powerful and the dancers so full of grace. I highly recommend checking them out if they tour near you.

Otherwise, spent most of the weekend catching the first couple rounds of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. Man, I'm so incredibly bummed that Kansas lost in the first freakin' round (AGAIN) to Bradley. Who the hell is Bradley? They haven't even been in the Sweet 16 since something like 1955. [sigh]

On Saturday night, Matt and I had dinner with Betina & Justin (who were visiting from San Fran) and Owen & Amy at Chez Gaudy, which is this cute little restaurant down the stret on Bellevue (owned by the same folks at Bleu Bistro up on Broadway). It was a fabulous time catching up with all four of them and we all had yummy meals. I had a really simple "Verona" dish which was simply pasta with chicken, but it was done well and lightly..just the way I like it. Matt had a scallop dish which was very generous. Apparently, they have a wine night on Tuesdays where patrons can score $6.99 bottles of wine that they uncork themselves--I'll have to check it out sometime!

Also got a chance to see V for Vendetta in the theaters. Great movie---it was better than I expected. There were a lot of interesting controversial themes that weaved throughout the storyline, which is what I think draws the audience in. Although it takes place in the future, it's not some crazy futuristic setting like the other Wachowski Brothers movie, The Matrix. Definitely recommend checking this movie out.

Fallen tree

Here are pictures of the huge spruce tree that fell onto our driveway from the storm on Sunday. Sheesh. It's so huge---I still can't believe it got rooted out of the ground.

KU cancels classes

KU cancelled classes today because of concern for the safety of the students with falling debris everywhere----heard on NPR that 60% of the buildings at KU are damaged. Damn. Have I mentioned that my house is only about 5 minutes away from the KU campus?

There goes the tree...

The storms that hit the Midwest this morning actually hit my hometown pretty hard---Douglas County has been declared a disaster by emergency management. Fortunately, my parents are on vacation so they weren't there this morning. I called them and it sounds like there's a lot of property damage across the city. At our house, there's a gigantic tree that was planted ~20 years ago---apparently, the winds rooted the tree out of the ground and it's currently laying on its side in our driveway! Good thing it didn't fall the other way and hit the house, or else there'd be a huge hole in my bedroom! (my room faces towards this tree) Electricity and phone lines are out across most of the city, including our house. Strangely, our guest house still has electricity, which ended up being a savior because all of our indoor tropical fish at the house were suffocating with the water pumps being down. Some family friends of ours were gracious enough to go over today and, with some crazy-ass long extension cords, plug the water pumps back in and save all the fish. I'm going home in 2 weeks and will be curious what damage there is across the city. I read the roof almost completely tore off of Danworth Chapel up on KU---so sad. I've attended weddings there before.

How much is your blog worth?

Interesting--thanks to Eric for posting. This guy created an applet for determing the value of your blog based on data from Technorati and research from Tristan Louis, which essentially says that blogs should be valued based on conversation, as represented by links and indexes like Technorati. Wow, my blog is worth a lot!

My blog is worth $1,129.08.
How much is your blog worth?

IE 7 and Salon

Argh.  I’ve been dogfooding IE 7 Beta 2 for awhile—for the most part, I love it.  But it doesn’t work with Salon articles at all.

Are you in or are you out?

Watched the finale of Project Runway---congrats to Chloe! She was a favorite of mine from the beginning with her clean lines, outfits made for a woman's body, cheery personality, and of course--have to admit it--she's a fellow Asian American woman. At first, I wasn't too sure of her collection. It was a bit 80's prom-style to me with some of the pieces...but when I saw the rest of her collection, it made more sense. I thought Daniel was definite competition--I thought his collection was exquisite. I don't know what the judges were thinking but I definitely saw a theme in his collection, especially with the necklines in each piece. I was also extremely impressed by the diversity of his outfits---not easy at all. Lastly, Santino: ah, Santino. We all just loved to hate him, but knew that deep down inside he was one creative man. He will surely be seen more. I appreciated how he humbled himself more after seeing the show over the course of designing his collection. I was surprised by the judges' reaction after they spent all season pushing him to tone down his designs. Kinda funny. In the end, I think Chloe was a great choice. She does have the passion, has proven her ability to market and be a savvy businesswoman, and I think she'll fit right in with the fashion crowd. Congrats!

Face Transformer

Thanks to Hallett who pointed out a fun Face Transformer site. You just plug in your photo and then transform it to see yourself of a different race, age or whatever. Here I am!

original	baby	older adult
afro-caribbean	west asian	caucasian
modigliani	manga

"The Good Body", sushi, and other things...

Tonight, Sri and I decided last minute to check out Eve Ensler's "The Good Body", playing at the Moore Theatre. I'd seen "The Vagina Monologues" a few years back and really enjoyed that play, so I was expecting to be just as entertained. While there were some amusing moments in "The Good Body", it wasn't as interesting to me as Ensler's previous work. My problem: there wasn't focus. I felt that with "The Vagina Monolgues", she picked one topic and went really deep with it, illiciting wonderful stories that all weaved around one central theme. With "The Good Body", she also could've taken one theme and went deep with it but I didn't feel the same here. Some stories had to do with physical things women went through to conform with societal beauty, others had to do emotional pose. She kept talking about her own stomach...and that just got tiring in the end. In the end, I just wanted her to go deeper and give me more. Now, the play was still entertaining and Ensler brings variety with her various characters by including women from Africa, India and Brazil; however, my expectations were high and this fell short of the brilliance of her previous composition.

On a good note, Sri and I got some quick food afterwards at a fairly new sushi restaurant that I'd been to twice before, Red Fin, in the new Hotel Max. Only 4 months old, the same owners of Wasabi Bistro bring the same excellent quality and taste of sushi to customers. The menu also offers more beyond sushi which makes the restaurant even more delicious. The last time I was here, I got a special: lobster pad thai---yum. Some things I'd recommend: the Togarashi-seared Dayboat Sea Scallops, the Uptown California Roll (they add shrimp tempura) and Coconut Shrimp. Either way, whatever you order, you can't go wrong. I have yet to try something here that has disappointed me. The service is humble & excellent and the plating pleasing to the eye. Because it's still fairly new, this restaurant is undiscovered and it's really easy to walk in on any weekend night and get a table. If you live in Seattle, check it out before it's difficult to make reservations here!

Watched the finale of Dancing with the Stars tonight---great job Drew Lachey! That was well deserved and he definitely carried himself well throughout this entire competition. Now, I was EXTREMELY surprised that Jerry Rice ended up with 2nd place, with Stacy Keibler being 3rd. Anyone who's been watching this show MUST KNOW that Stacy is a far better dancer than Jerry. Oh well. It came down to the popularity contest with the viewer vote and Jerry had enough fans to push him beyond Stacy. My kudos to him for even making it this far. It was certainly entertainment--particularly with his freestyle afro-totin' 70's dance last week.

More of reality TV returns with this week with the season debuts of The Apprentice 5 and The Amazing Race 9 (oh good, they're back to couples). Oy vey...I'm gonna have to buy a 2nd TV tuner for my media center in order to keep up!

All Roads Lead to Kansas

Matt H. sent me a cool link over "Wired News: All Google's Roads Lead to Kansas". Basically, if you go to Google Maps and zoom in all the way, it takes you to Coffeyville, KANSAS. Even cooler, on a personal note, if you use Google Earth and zoom in all the way, it takes you to LAWRENCE, KANSAS---my hometown! In fact, although it's a bit fuzzy, it zooms in right into my neighborhood. The house I grew up in is less than a mile away from the center point. Freaky!

25 for $25 Dine Around Seattle March 1-30

Yay! 25 for $25 is back in March! Anyone up for dinner in the month of March?

I just had to mention that I had a wonderful Valentine's Day, care of the best boyfriend. I came home to candles and a vase of red tulips. Matt went all out and made 2 things for dinner: crabmeat stuffed baked avocado and a tenderloin roll filled with spinach and goat cheese. Yum! It was quite the treat and tasted absolutely delicious...extremely impressive!

Sri and I finally decided to go to Big Sky with Kutta & gang but flying in Wed night since we didn't want to take the whole week off. I'm psyched---the Big Sky trip last year rocked and it'll be nice to get some more great snowboarding in this season. We head out next week for it--wahoo!

Speaking of trips, Matt and I finaly booked our flight to go to Portugal in May. It's all set, with a brief stop in Boston along the way so I can meet more of the Sousa family. Next, we just have to organize our time while in Portugal. We mostly want to go in and out of Lisbon the first week and then over to the Porto region. Anyone have any tips on traveling to Portugal? Any must-sees? Great hotels?

home sick

I'm home sick. Ugh. Caught a cold that started on Friday and has progressively gotten worse. As far as colds are concerned, it's not as bad as ones I've had in the past---but I'm completely stuffed up right now. I still have a voice (which is good) but I just feel tired and am blowing my nose every 5 minutes. This is my first time being sick this winter, which is amazing considering that every year since I've moved to Seattle, I've gotten sick at least 2-3 times by the time February rolls around. Personally, I attribute it to a less stressful work environment (oh, little do I know...I'm sure Year 2 at Microsoft will be more stressful). [sigh]

Watched the Seattle Seahawks lose the Superbowl yesterday. Bummer. Matt's taught me enough about football now that I can watch a game and understand what's going on. I still think we should've gotten that touchdown in the 1st Quarter--that "foul" was barely a touch...more like a balancing act to move in the other direction. Well, it was a good first try.

Media Center Extender

I had gotten Matt an XBox 360 for his birthday and we finally set it up at my place yesterday (since I had the bigger TV he wanted to set it up at my place). Anyhoo, I installed the Media Center Extender this afternoon---had some hiccups with the installation of .NET Framework 1.1 SP1---but finally got it installed! I'm impressed---I can now access all the photos and music from my computer upstairs in addition to the Recorded TV that I have upstairs, which is nice since I use my Media Center as a 3rd tuner for recording TV (since the Comcast DVR downstairs has a dual tuner). But now, instead of going upstairs to catch up on Jon Stewart, I can just stream it downstairs. Reminds me of when I had the TIVOtoGo set up back when I had the TIVO. I also, for kicks, connected my iPod to the XBox and sure enough, the Xbox found it and was able to access it completely. Woo hoo. Because I only have 1 Component Input for my TV, I had to disconnect my DVD player in order to connect the Xbox---but that's fine since the Xbox plays DVDs just fine. Man, this lil' puppy can do a lot of stuff!

Pandora

Check out Pandora which, in theory, puts together a playlist of music for you based off of a favorite artist or song you give it. Really neat! (Thanks for the link, Carrie)

Pow-dah

Just got back from an AMAZING weekend in Whistler with a bunch of friends, staying in a ski-in/ski-out townhouse right on the mountain. We were incredibly lucky and got some great powder days. I'll never forget the Peak to Creek run---it was a good hour and a half for us to get down but MAN, it was awesome. Personally, for me, I'm excited because I discovered over the weekend that I can still snowboard....see, I've only been, like, 2-3 times so far this season and I haven't been riding very well. In fact, it's just been horrible, full of complaints and whining. Recently, in Stevens, I almost gave up on snowboarding all together because my feet were in such pain. I thought that perhaps my feet were just not cut out for snowboarding. Anyhoo, on the first afternoon after arriving in Whistler, I went to buy some new bindings with a toecap cuz' I hear they're great (I got the Burton Escapades---they're really freakin' amazing, so comfortable and give me a lot of control). Since I was doing so, I brought with me my right foot boot for sizing purposes. While I was at it, I decided to get some new Superfeet arch supports just to further help my feet. I asked the saleslady if she could cut the arch supports down for me while I was at the store--she said sure and pulled my boot lining out so she could pull out the current arch supports....and she pulled out my LEFT FOOT boot lining. This is why I've been riding horribly all season---I've had the wrong foot boot lining in my boots! I completely switched them around! Talk about pain...but silly me just assumed my feet were acting up and never thought about taking a look at my boot linings. WHEW! Glad I figured that out--cuz' once I got the right boot linings with the right boot, put in the new arch supports and then started riding with the new bindings, it was great.

In other news, Gong Hay Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year to all---Year of the Dog! This is an unusually long year too: 13 months. Supposedly, a 13-month year occurs only 12 times during the period of 23 centuries from 221 B.D. and 2100 A.D. The last time a 13-month lunar year took place was in 1944. Interesting. It's also supposedly a good year for marriage because it's such a long year--encompassing two springs, which is considered lucky. This is completely opposite from last year's Year of Rooster which was considered an extremely bad year for marriage because it didn't have a spring at all (evidenced in a drop of Asian weddings last year). Check out your horoscope for this year!

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile...went to Vegas for CES and saw tons of amazing stuff. Got back to work afterwards and just haven't had time to blog at all. Here's a quick rundown of the past week or so.

Vegas/CES: Awesome. CES was definitely a great convention to go to. I ended up spending most of my time there with Eric as a result of showing up about an hour after everyone else, which ended up being great since it was just 2 of us and we were able to cover a lot of ground. Some of the highlights for me:

Toshiba's scrolling tablet

Listening to Creative's X-FI sound

Checking out the Creative ZenM, their video mp3 player which won Best of CES. Honestly, the only thing the iPod has over this is size; otherwise, the ZenM's usability kicks butt.

Motorola Mini Blue. I know it's not the tiniest bluetooth headset (shall we say earset?) out there, but it certainly made me want to buy it!

Motorola Pebble phone. I really liked this phone.

I can't name them all--but all the huge plasmas. Awesome.

The LG booth. Lots of fun, random cell phones and gadgets.

The plasma mirror display by Phillips shown in the Yahoo NextGen House. I want to buy one of these now.

Previews of the PS3 games.

Bypassing the hour or so line to get into the NextGen house just because I was a Microsoft employee. Wahoo.

MS Women's Conference: I spent 3 days attending the Microsoft Women's Conference. The highlight: seeing Steve Ballmer. The lowlight: getting my car towed by freakin' Microsoft Security while attending the conference (I don't even want to get into this--but yes, Microsoft will tow employee cars parked in company parking garages if they're parked "illegally"--i.e. not in a parking stall). Anyhoo, I was just happy to be attending a women's conference at all. Sure, there were some topics that could be geared towards both genders...but I found many talks interesting. For example: "Women Don't Ask" -- a session on women's negotiating skills (or lack thereof) because women, in general, don't ask for what they want. Congrats to Microsoft for even putting something like this women's conference--it really makes me feel good as a women to be working for a company that does things like that, especially in an industry that's so male dominated.

Feliz Ano Nuevo

Happy New Year everyone! I had a fantastic ball by inviting a bunch of good friends over for a potluck dinner party (a rather tame party compared to the Halloween one)--about 25-30 people showed up with all sorts of delicious appetizers, entrees, desserts and drinks. It was overwhelming how creative people got! Thanks to you all for bringing such great dishes. We celebrated the stroke of midnight by joining all my neighbors up on the rooftop to watch the fireworks set off from the Space Needle--it was awesome. May 2006 be a great one to all.