early birthday celebration!
Category: Life

I celebrated my 23rd birthday today! My actual birthday is next Friday, but we (my family) celebrated it today because my father will be out of town during that day. We had a great dinner at the Olive Garden! (We were originally going to eat at Red Lobster, but it was way too far.)

Unfortunately, I have a statistics midterm next Tuesday, so I really ought to continue studying.

In other news...

I went to a dance on Thursday. Click here for the review!

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a rather uneventful Labor Day weekend...
Current mood: tired
Category: Life

Well, my Labor Day weekend was rather uneventful. While the workload from my classes isn't very heavy at the moment, we didn't really get to do much because my mother hurt her foot recently.  Ugh. I hope her foot recovers soon!

Another unfortunate thing was that my laptop got infected with several viruses and a bunch of spyware, and it took my father and I an entire Saturday evening and a Sunday morning to get it cleaned. Yep, fun. It seems some people deserve a few roundhouse kicks to the face from Bruce Schneier.

Other than that, we did go shopping at a few places, so I guess this weekend wasn't totally boring!

Currently reading : GRE Vocabulary Builder Interactive Flashcard Book (Flash Card Books) By The Staff of REA

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back to school for Fall ’08!
Current mood: stressed
Category: School, College, Greek

Well, I can't believe that summer is over already. I just moved in to the dorms today for the Fall 2008 semester. My classes don't start until the 27th, but I decided to attend this year's Welcome Week (even though it is intended for freshmen) because last year's looked quite fun! Unfortunately, it turns out that this year's Welcome Week won't be quite as fun. I guess it's because of those stupid budget cuts. However, I'm still quite excited!

Oh, and the cool thing is that this year's theme is "games." Incidentally, my suitemates had brought a s**tload of video games. This year should be quite exciting!

Summer 2008 in review

Simply put, this year's summer was pretty fun. Right after the Spring 2008 semester, we took a trip to Yellowstone National Park and the Upper Midwest. After that, I took physics class at UC Berkeley. I learned many cool things, but I had to miss out on my cousin Ann's wedding in Taiwan.

After the summer classes, we took another fun trip to Southern California. We hadn't been to Southern California for ages, so it was a pretty fresh experience. On August 21st, my father's boss' son Jonathan came over from Singapore and stayed at our house. As you can see, this summer was packed!

Summer 2008 - by the numbers

Here are some stats for the summer fo 2008, for those curious:

Family trips: 2

Pints of sorbet consumed: 1

Pints of ice cream consumed: 7

Pints of ice cream remaining: 5

Comic books read: 4

Summer classes: 1

Weddings missed due to said classes: 1

Movies watched in the theater: 1

Movies watched on DVD: 5

Total experience gained on RuneScape: about 1,500,000

Currently playing : Donkey Kong Country

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back from our Southern California trip
Current mood: tired
Category: Travel and Places

I just got back from Southern California!

We were originally going to leave on Saturday, but we were unable to make the appropriate hotel reservations, so we had to postpone our trip by a day. Anyways, read on to learn more about our trip!

Day 1: We left our house at around 10:00 a.m. and headed towards Paso Robles. On the way there, we stopped at Paraiso Vineyards, where we had lunch. It was quite a special experience! We also visited several other wineries that were along on the way. (At one of the wineries, a woman mistook my mother for my "brother." As you can imagine, my mother was quite pleased!)

The total drive was 180 miles, but we arrived at Paso Robles pretty early since traffic was fairly smooth. After we checked in at the hotel, we drove around to the nearby cities. We then had dinner at a beachside diner, and the food was quite good - albeit a bit rich.

It wasn't too late by the time we got back to the hotel, so I decided to watch a movie or two. There weren't many good movies on TV, but luckily, I had some DVDs I borrowed from the library a few days ago. I ended up watching Sunshine (the 2007 one) on my laptop!

Day 2: Our first stop of the day was Solvang. It was a rather small town, but there were many interesting shops. For those curious, the wares mostly consisted of antiques and Danish products - fruit pastries, yum! We didn't buy anything, but we still had a great time looking around. To me, this was the best part of the trip. We then arrived at San Luis Obispo, where we checked in to our hotel. The awesome thing was that our hotel gave us two free DVD rentals!

Our next stop was Santa Barbara, where we visited UC Santa Barbara, which was quite different from UC Berkeley! (A bit of trivia: when I applied for college several years ago, UC Santa Barbara was one of the those that offered me admission.) We then had lunch at a Japanese restaurant, and the food was really good.

It was pretty late by the time we got back to San Luis Obispo. We had dinner at a Chinese buffet restaurant, and the food was pretty good as well, although it was a bit too salty.

Back at the hotel, we decided to use the free movie rentals. I watched Blade while my mother watched a comedy. However, it was pretty late, so we both stopped halfway through the movie and went to bed.

Day 3: After finishing the movies, we made sure to explore San Luis Obispo thoroughly. We also stopped to visit Cal Poly, which was another school that I had applied for.

After driving around San Luis Obispo, it was time to head home. We stopped at the Gilroy outlets, where we shopped for shoes. We then arrived home, but not before having a nice pizza dinner. It was a spectacular end to a spectacular trip!

Head on over to my Flickr account to see the photos!

Anyways, my fall classes are starting next week, so I better start studying.

Update: the photos are now available!

Currently listening : The Collector’s Series, Vol. 1 By Celine Dion Release date: 2000-10-24

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new dual core laptop!
Current mood: excited
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

We couldn't leave for SoCal today since we were unable to get the appropriate hotel reservations, so I thought I'd post about our new laptop. (My father actually bought it several weeks ago, but I didn't have time to check it out until I finished my summer class.)

The laptop is an HP Pavilion dv2700 notebook. It has a 2.0 GHz "Core 2" processor, 2 Gb of RAM, and two hard drives with a total of 230 Gb. Slick, huh?

Oh, and it uses Windows Vista. I haven't had much experience with Windows Vista, but I think it's got a pretty slick interface.

Currently watching : Fantastic Four - Rise of the Silver Surfer (The Power Cosmic Edition, 2-Disc Set) Release date: 2007-10-02

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Summer school is over!!
Current mood: relieved
Category: Life

I just finished my summer physics class, and it certainly wasn't easy. I'm glad I got this over with. I did learn many things that are related to lasers, one of my favorite hobbies. Anyways, I hope I did well on that final exam!

Unfortunately, I tripped and damaged my microwave while moving out of the dorms. Shit happens. (It actually looked easy to fix, but I didn't want to run the risk of being exposed to harmful radiation leaks. Oh well.)

Oh, and I might be leaving for Southern California tomorrow. I need to enjoy summer while it lasts!

Currently reading : Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? By Alan Moore

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God damn 'hackers'
Current mood: pissed off
Category: Web, HTML, Tech

It looks like someone "hacked" (or should I say, cracked) into my Yahoo! and Gmail accounts this morning. Not only did the "hacker" change my passwords, but they also changed my account recovery answers. Ugh.  I was able to recover my Gmail account with relative ease, but I had to call customer support in order to recover my Yahoo! account.

I'm pretty thankful that those two accounts did not contain any sensitive information.

Whoever got into my account needs some roundhouse kicks to the face from Chuck Norris and Bruce Schneier.

In other news...

On a more positive note, I just came back from a swing dance event on campus. I didn't dance with anyone, but it was still quite fun.

Also, I just realized this is my 100th blog entry. W00t!

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pictures from Ann’s wedding - part 1
Current mood: happy
Category: Blogging

Well, my mother got back from her trip to Taiwan last night. She took some photos at Ann's wedding (she didn't feel like doing so at first, but she changed her mind at the last minute), but unfortunately, many of them did not come out too well and were not worth posting. However, I still found a few photos that were good enough to share.

Anyways, enough talk. Head on over to my Flickr account to see them! (These are not the photos that Ann has promised to send me.)

In other news...

One interesting thing to note is that I was the only person to send Ann a wedding card. (For some reason, Asians rarely seem to send each other cards. I guess it is a cultural thing.) As you can imagine, Ann and Lawrence were extremely pleased!

Also, we had a handyman fix our plumbing system today. Hopefully, that means no more kitchen messes!

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4th of July weekend report (2008)
Current mood: jealous
Category: Blogging

Well, my Fourth of July weekend was rather interesting. Since my mother went to Taiwan to attend my cousin Ann's wedding (more on that in a bit) and visit my grandfather and uncle, it was just me and my father.

The good news is that I got to set off some fireworks this year! We drove to Newark and bought almost $20 worth of fireworks, and I had a hell of a good time lighting them. I still have some fireworks left over, not to mention 40 party poppers!

Since I had to study for a physics midterm (which was postponed, thank goodness) that was originally going to be on Thursday, we didn't do much else except hike at a nearby recreational area. Just as we were about to leave, we noticed that one of our neighbors' alarm system had gone hayware. It had gone off for no reason and we helped her fix it, but it went off again within minutes. I guess the alarm needs a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to the face. Luckily, this ordeal didn't take too long, so we were still able to go hiking.

On Sunday, my father was trying to unclog our kitchen sink when he noticed that some of the welding beneath the sink had rusted and cracked, resulting in a nasty leak that made a huge mess in our kitchen. I guess the plumbing needs a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to the face as well. (By now, you could probably tell that I had been reading way too many Chuck Norris jokes.) Fortunately, it didn't take too long to clean up this mess.

Earlier in my blog, I mentioned that my cousin Ann was getting married this weekend. Well, Ann got married in Taiwan last night! For those who are wondering, the name of the lucky young man is Lawrence. I would like to congratulate Lawrence and Ann on their incredible milestone, and I am absolutely sure that they will make a great couple. Sadly, I was unable to attend Ann's wedding in person due to my academic duties and budget constraints.  (After all, it's pretty hard to get to Taiwan and back within a short amount of time. I'm not the Flash, mind you.) However, I was told that the wedding went extremely well, and there were well over 400 people in attendance! I'm extremely proud of Ann as she is the first of my generation on my maternal side to get married, but I was also a bit sad that I couldn't go to the wedding. I did "attend" the wedding "in spirit" by pulling some party poppers and lighting some fireworks - just because I can't go to the wedding in person doesn't mean I can't celebrate it!  I'm looking forward to her anniversary parties, though.  (OK, maybe I'm being overly optimistic, since it seems that Asians rarely have anniversary parties. Even then, most people don't have anniversary parties until many decades after their wedding.)

Anyways, Ann said that she was going to send me a CD containing pictures (and possibly videos) from the wedding, which I will post as soon as I get them!

Oh, and I also went to a dance last Tuesday, but I was too lazy to blog about it. The dance was really good, though; click here to read the review!

Currently listening : Turn Me On By Kevin Lyttle Release date: 2004-09-28

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predicting a somewhat disappointing 4th of July :(
Current mood: pessimistic
Category: Life

Last year, I "ranted" about not being able to light fireworks for the Fourth of July. There's a chance that this might be the case this year as well. :(

Around last October, I found out that one of my mother's friends lives in Fresno, a city where consumer fireworks are legal. She also enjoys lighting fireworks with her family and was more than willing to let us light them at her house. Unfortunately, the recent gas prices are making it extremely hard to justify such a long drive. (I had planned to cancel the trip if the price of premium gasoline went over $4.50 per gallon, and it is almost $5.00 now. I somehow doubt it's going to drop below $4.50 overnight.) Driving 320 miles all the way to Fresno and back seems rather silly when the cost of gas would exceed that of the fireworks!

There is, however, a sliver of hope. Like in the past three years, I'm taking a summer class at the University of California, Berkeley. Fireworks are legal in Newark, which is on the way to Berkeley from my house. However, due to the recent efforts to ban fireworks because of the wildfires, I don't know if I'll be able to light fireworks at Newark, either.

I did buy several bags of party poppers around two weeks ago. In the worst case, I will at least have some party poppers. True, they aren't much compared to the fireworks I usually buy, but I guess they're better than nothing.

Oh, and there's anothing thing: my cousin Ann is getting married in Taiwan next week! Unfortunately, as luck would have it, I am unable to attend the wedding in person due to my summer class.  Technically, I can skip a few days of class, but since summer classes at Berkeley move very quickly, I feel this is too risky. Plus, plane tickets to Taiwan are extremely costly right now. This will be quite bittersweet for me. One on hand, I'm very proud of Ann as she is the first of my generation on my maternal side to get married, but I'm also a bit bummed out that I can't attend her wedding. I guess I'll save some of my 'works (or party poppers) from the 4th of July to celebrate her wedding back home in California.

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