The Long Flight Home

I am now at my parent's home in the suburban jungles of Boston, MA for the holidays. Although the cold air greeted me with a bittersweet welcome as I stepped out of the airport, it felt good to be back in some ways. I never thought I would feel this way, as I love Northern California way too much. But a change of pace never hurts.

I had an interesting flight from San Francisco to Boston. Having only gotten an hour of sleep the night before, I was planning on taking a long nap. Little did I know that my plan was going to be completely shattered by the little girl sitting beside me. At first, she was extremely shy and kept to herself. Her father had given her some paper and a pen so she could scribble. At one point, I opened my eyes to see one of these sheets of paper in my face. She had gingerly written 'arE yu korean?' on the paper and was holding it in front of me. I answered with a 'yes' and asked her how old she was. '6.' And from there on, the adventure began...

Apologies for the low-res.camera-phone pics:


This is Eun-Gi, the sweet and highly entertaining little Korean girl sitting next to me on the plane. Because of her, I got not a wink of sleep, endless of hours of laughter, a softened heart, and that warm tingly feeling inside.



At one point during the flight, she was getting pretty restless, so I gave her one of my laptops so that she could play some chess on it. The problem: she didn't know how to play, so every 8 seconds or so, she would tug at my shirt and ask in Korean, 'where should I move now?' I would then, in a state of being half-awake, give her bad advice, which ultimately led to her piece being consumed by the computer. She would then look up at me with a sad face, only to break out in laughter seconds later.

Happy Holidays everyone.

Long time, no blog.

I've been neglecting my weblog these days, but my defense is this: I spend 40+ hours/week in front of a computer, so when I get home from work, the last thing I want to do is sit down in front of my computer and pull a Doogie Howser. It's just that when I get home, I want to do one thing and one thing only: Nothing. But here I am on my laptop, typing a Blogger entry. How ironic.

I went to a house party last weekend and it was pretty crazy, but good times nonetheless. I won't go into detail for the sake of people's reputations. Here are some pictures: Cheers | Iku&Sabs carrying a red Tae | Joanie representing the Boston cap | Sabs and I

So it seems that Gmail is all the rage these days. Hey, I can't disagree. Both my roommate and I have been contacted by "long lost friends," who wanted to "catch up" and also obtain a Gmail invite (on the side of course). We found the emails pretty damn entertaining, actually. They start off by pretending to be interested in what we're upto, i.e. "How are you? It's been such a long time!" They continue by elaborating on what they've been doing for a few paragraphs. Finally, they sign the correspondence with a, "You're brother, _______" and conveniently add a "P.S. Can you send me a Gmail invite?" It would have been ideal to reply with a simple "Hi. Who are you and what's Gmail?" Here's a funny comic my co-worker sent me to tie everything together. Pretty sad, actually.

I went to the Red Sox/Giants game on Sunday and although the Sox lost, it was still a pretty good time. It's surprising to see so many Red Sox fans 3,000 miles away from home. But loyalty and dedication are what Sox fans are known for. There were some really bad calls throughout the game and Timlin gave up a grand-slam which sucked. But one thing I'm realizing is that I do not respect Barry Bonds, at all. Yea, he's a beast and can drill the ball out of SBC Park, but he doesn't play for love of the game. Every time he gets up to bat, he's not looking to drive his teammates home; he just wants another home run to add to his tally. When he's on the field, he doesn't run hard or make diving catches in fear that he'll hurt himself and not be able to break his home run record. And all his crap about Boston being a racist city? C'mon now.. One of my favorite quotes: "Winners forget they're in a race, they just love to run." Bonds tries so hard to drill the ball everytime he steps up to the plate, that forgets why he should be out there in the first place: to play ball.

And in closing, I just want send a big, sorry, shout out to all the Lakers fans out there. And contrary to popular belief, you're not automatically deemed a Lakers fan just because you've: a) lived in SoCal for a month or more b) visited SoCal for a week or c) drove through any given part of SoCal for a few hours. This principle parallels "devoted" Yankees fans who are from NY. Anyways, back to the sad story of the Lakers and their defeat by the Pistons. Even with their "all-star" team, they still couldn't come out on top. Sad. So here's to this guy and the Pistons, for righteously de-throwning the most overrated team in the NBA.

Weekend happenings.

Last night, we went to Joanie and Sabrina's house-warming party at their new apartment. There was a good amount of drinking to be done there. Afterwards, we headed over to VBar on Santana Row (personally, my favorite lounge here) and mingled with a few more drinks. Overall, good times. Some pictures from the evening: Sabrina, Maria, Kev and Ray | Me giving Nino some love | Chris, Jeff, Joanie and me

OK so last weekend, I randomly decided rotate the tires on my car in my garage. I saw that the two front tires were worn much more than the rears (since there's more weight in the front of the car) and decided to swap the front wheels with the rear wheels. The whole process took about 2.5-3 hours and was pretty grueling since I didn't have the most sophisticated of tools. But I managed to clean all my brake calipers, rotors and pad housings while I was in there. Very exciting stuff. For those of you who know what I'm talking about and actually care, you can see pictures of my great automotive achievement here: 1 | 2

My coworker has one of the smartest Beagle's I've ever met and she brings her to work on occasion. Whenever she has to run to a meeting and asks me to watch her, I always gladly oblige since she's such a good dog. I even convinced her to do some work with me. Having a dog around makes the day go by much faster, but on the flip-side, can absolutely kill the productivity. Compromises.

I leave you with this shot taken from our deck. The beauty of Northern California continues to amaze me every day.

RIP: Alpha Kim 2/3/2004 - 4/19/2004.

I came home from work tonight and and started watching the Rockets/Lakers game. It was pretty much dead even until the 4th quarter, when the Lakers started dominating and the Rockets started well, sucking... damnit I hate the Lakers. Anyways, at one point during the game, I looked over at my beta Japanese fighting fish Alpha, who was motionless. I tapped the glass but much to my dismay, he was dead. It then became clear to me why he wasn't eating his food last night; because he was slowly dying and hating me for changing his water too quickly the day before. So I dedicate this entry to Alpha, who was a good fish in the two months we spent together. RIP Alpha, albeit floating somewhere in filthy sewage lines.

On a brighter note, I was able to go to a Giants game last Friday after work, Clubhouse tickets compliments of my friend who got them for free from work. Although the game wasn't all that great, Bonds hit a two run shot in the bottom of the ninth, which wasn't enough to achieve a Giants victory, but it was fun to watch nonetheless. I didn't have a camera so I took some pictures with my ultra-low resolution camera-phone.

Have a great week everyone.

Visual Stimulation.

Happy Easter everyone. I should have gone to church this morning, but I went to the Coliseum in Oakland to watch the A's play the Mariners instead. I couldn't back out because we had already bought the tickets well in advance and I didn't realize that it was on Easter Sunday. It was a good game and it went into extra innings, but I don't think I could justify going to hell for it. I should go repent. Some pictures from the game:

A picture taken from our Club House seats.


Jeff getting beaten up by "Stomper" (the A's mascot) for wearing a Mariners jersey and me.

So I've been getting requests (from the two people that read this?) to post some pictures up here. Is my colorful verbiage not enough to keep you interested? Actually, looking back at my past posts, I can't blame you. It looks like all I write about is meaningless crap. I'll do my best to post some completely irrelevant images to compliment my meaningless entries from time to time.

So ever since my parents sent me my golf clubs a few weeks ago, I've been getting really into it again. Since there's a golf course right across the street from work and the weather's been pretty warm, there's really no reason not to go. My roommate and I frequent Don Sherwood's (a huge golf store here) and spend large sums of money while we're there. =( My most recent purchase was a Callaway VFT Big Bertha Titanium-head driver. The thing is a beast and makes that nice sound when I hit the ball with it. Speaking of golf, I saw a picture of Grace Park in a Golf Digest recently and found her to be kind of cute. I think the fact that she's got so much game attributes to the appeal.

Practicing my short game.


Korean Golf goddess Grace Park , Callaway VFT B.B Titanium Driver

Where do the weekends go? It's already Sunday, which means another week ahead of me...

Hefeweizen, high-speed Internet and the art of Bonsai

I bought a small bonsai plant a few months ago and it's currently withering away on my desk as I type this. For the first few weeks, it looked healthy and I was convinced that it was doing just fine when in actuality, it was dying a slow death in its pot. In a desperate fight to keep it alive, I tried watering it constantly, but to no avail. It just continued to turn brown. Despite this, it has retained some of its green color and still looks somewhat presentable, which is why it still sits on my desk. Yesterday, I tried gently touching the little green branches and much to my chagrin, the branches crumbled into little pieces and fell to the floor. So here I am with a plant that is unresponsive to water, brittle to the touch and probably dead. But I think I'll keep it around until all the green branches eventually turn brown and crumble to the floor. It's a damn shame because I was hoping that I could one day trim the branches like Mr. Miagi did in The Karate Kid.

I've definitely been drinking more beer since I got to California. More specifically, this beer. Up until now, Heineken was the beer of my choice, but ever since the day my lips met the cold refreshing taste of my first Hefeweizen, there was no turning back. I knew instantly, that this would be my brew. For my buddies in Boston, I recommend you try it if you haven't done so already. I've heard a few places have it on tap, Sunset Grille being one of them. Anyways, enough about beer.

OK, so I'll admit it. I'm one of those people that cringe in pain when forced to wait more than 10 seconds for a website to load. Call me impatient, label me a productivity-whore, but that's wasted time people. Do the math: let's say you wait an average of 10 seconds as opposed to 5 while viewing 100 pages a day. That's 16.7 minutes versus 8.3 minutes, nearly 8 more minutes a day which equates to 40 more minutes a week, resulting in 2 hours and 40 minutes a month, of wasted time (sorry, I was just reminded of this at work today when our network was lagging). It makes me wonder how we lived through dial-up modem connections.

In summation, God bless Hefeweizen, high-speed Internet and healthy bonsai trees.

The inevitable occurs

So I had decided to stop using Xanga, deeming it stupid and pointless. Here I am, only six months later writing my first entry on Blogger. I could justify my hypocritical actions by saying that I'm just using Blogger to support Google, but I'll admit that it's a useful tool to keep track of people that you haven't seen in awhile.

Here's some history for those of you who I haven't really spoken to in awhile (basically, a good chunk of my friends from back East) and also for anyone who bothers to read this (all three of you). It's been about three and a half months already, but I finally made the move to the Sunshine State, California. I'm living in NorCal (Silicon Valley) and was lucky enough to find employment within a cool, young, burgeoning company. On a side-note, I eat at IN-N-OUT in regular intervals now (usually at least once a week), and despite the ridicule of my roommate, I'm pretty proud of it. I usually get the #1, Double-Double (that's two meat patties) with carmelized onions and a thick strawberry shake and fresh potato fries. On occasion, I'll get two servings of fries. Isn't that disgusting? Other than that, nothing really interesting to report.

Answers to some frequently asked questions on my move to California:
- Am I glad I did it? (A) Definitely. I felt my cage getting smaller and smaller in Boston. I feel like living out here will definitely give me a chance to grow.
- Do I miss Boston? (A) Of course... well, certain things about it. I miss family and friends but I don't miss the monotony and the sub-zero temps.
- Are the women in California any different than the women in Boston? (A) I'll say this... the sea is vast out here, with many quality fish swimming about, but like parking spaces, all the good ones seem to be "restricted" or already taken.

Well, it's a Saturday night and I don't even want to go out. I enjoy the time that I have, to do absolutely nothing. This is what happens when you graduate and start working 40+ hours/week. I'm not complaining; I actually enjoy this type of lifestyle and my work. I'm just trying to justify staying in on a Saturday night. Failed? Probably.

Until next time...