Bloggin'......

Warren and Viki's Pre-Wedding Rehearsal

Tonight was a big night. It was the first run through of Warren and Viki's wedding, the night before, with the full wedding party. We all met at the Trinity Episcopal Church in San Francisco, and for some of us, it was the first time we had ever met. It was all good, though, since we were all there to support our friends in their wedding day. It was obvious pending event was starting to get to Warren, because he was starting to snap (at people, seriously!).

We went to dinner later that night at R&G Lounge Restuarant, where supposedly they have the best Chinese food in all of Chinatown. In all seriousness, the restuarant was where the nitty gritty dirt for tomorrow's event was hashed out. Most scary, was seating assignments during the reception. You'd have to imaging Warren pointing his finger at you, telling you your assignment, and then telling you to repeat it back to him.

"I escort Ellie to her table (14) and then go to my table, (2)." This will serve as my reminder!

Day at the Track

Today was another edition of the annual Mercedes-Benz Driving Event, and this year they were introducing the new 2006 M-Class, the ML350 and ML500. There were two road courses available and I got to drive both cars on them. When you realy drive a Mercedes, you really have to know how Mercedes cars, because those Germans are really quirky when it comes to interior car design and ergonomics. During my first run, I couldn't find the shift lever, because now they use three buttons on the right steering column stalk to switch (instead of shift) from park to reverse and drive!

Paintballing with Warren

Yesterday was just one of those great days. I had never gone paintballing before, but at Warren's request, for his Bachelor party (he is getting married April 30th), he want to give it a try. Neither one of us had ever really shot anything before, but we figured this was something he had always wanted to try and could invite a lot of friends, as well. Twelve of us, in all, met up at Paintball Jungle, in American Canyon, just north of Vallejo and the San Francisco Bay.

My first thought when I arrived, was I had entered red neck country, where everyone was a gun-toting lunatic. I didn't see any gun racks in back windows of the trucks or other cars, but because of something in the air, I certainly felt there should have been a few. But we had our own private party, where we just went against each other and I have to admit, it was very therapeutic. Of all the people playing, it seemed Ivy of all people got into it the most. A girl. She looks petite, but do not get her mad. She dove for cover, snuck up on people, and terminated them. Diminutive, she is not.

I shot a lot of people too, but the one who got it the worst, I shot Danny Chu, point blank, 10 ft away. I also got Mike(snipered, never saw me), Josh, Ivy, Alice (2x pretty hard), Jen, and Jason, but the real game came down to a final match, a match between me and Warren, man on man. I had him pinned down, but he shot my gun, which splattered me. Dang. Game over. Warren, I hope you can have a good wedding, now.

Afterwards, we all went over to Warren's cousin Ed's house in SF where we all washed up for dinner. Of course, we all started to compare wounds and bruises, almost right away. After having taken showers, each person discovered welts and dicolorations they'd never seen before. I was blamed for amost 50% of the wounds. Not a bad percentage, I'd say. =)

Dinner was at Palomino along the Embarcadero in San Francisco. Food was great, but the service was pretty snippy. While waiting for our table, a few people had ordered a few drinks and an appetizer. Our table came, and the staff offered to move our drinks to our table. The offer was nice, and unexpected, but I shouldn't think that it would be uncommon for a good restuarant. Some drinks came, everything else disappeared. We inquired and the staff became confused. Not by my fault eiher, I was actually late, and never ordered anything. Then the snap came, "next time, you should carry your drinks over." Ha! Well, luckily we all calmed down, and everything was settled. New drinks came, and we all had a great dinner. I had the Steak Frites, a NY steak with their house made Provence butter. It was only an OK steak, though.

I'mmmmmm Ba...aack!

I'm back in the states now. Surprisingly on this trip, I flew United Airlines to Asia. Usually it goes against all reason, because my very first flight to Hong Kong when I was a kid, our flight was canceled, and I have heard just about every horror story from all of my friends who have flown United to Asia. My colleauges from Singapore; the air conditioning broke over Hong Kong, so they flew the next ten hours to San Francisco in a hot, stuffy, over crowded plane! My friend Greg also flew fom Hong Kong, and some circuit had burned out, stinking up the entire plane! Try to imagine what an electrical fire smells like, for two hours from your destination! I was supposed to fly United on my last trip to Shanghai, but the plane broke down on the tarmac! They routed me through Hong Kong from Shanghai, an additional twelve hours, to get home! So, you'd have to be saying what in the world am I flying United for? Corporate policy, I guess.

But to my surprise, and to United's credit, the seats are more spacious than Singapore Airlines! I could slouch in my seat and still be comfortable! The food still sucked and they don't have in-seat entertainment like Singapore Air does, but these seats are truly worth considering. Of all the meals on the plane, the best part was their cup-o-noodles! Happy travels to everyone and welcome home when you get there!

Barbeque in Hong Kong

So after getting back from sightseeing, my friends called and asked me if I wanted to go Barbeque up in the New Territories, a section of Hong Kong north of the city. I thought, sure, thinking that it was something like a sit-down-Korean-barbeque restuarant. Hong Kong is so diverse, I thought, Korean food is not so out of the question. But nope, it really was barbeque, in a pit, over a grill. It was called the Whitehead Club, located near the shoreline, next to an old army lot, where apparently they used to hold Vietnamese refugees during the seventies. Wierd!

But now-a-days, parts of it has been converted into this barbeque area and a huge golf driving range. I was suprised, because I think these people really have something going for people to barbeque close-by to the city. Well, kind of anyway. It's so far, that I think I could have gotten a nosebleed just thinking about it. But the whole concept is intriguing. In a shack, you can buy everything you need for a barbeque, meat, vegetables, seafood, and even marshmellows! Everything is prepared for you, and you just have to show up and cook your own food. We even got a whole baby pig to roast. We are carnivores, by the way....

And then, who could pass up messing around on the driving range, too?

Afternoon with the family

This afternoon, I spent doing a little shopping and sight seeing with some family in Stanley, in the southern tip of Hong Kong Island. I hadn't been there in years, but from what I remembered, if I had known I was going to Stanley, I would have turned around. I forgot how much of a tourist trap it was. It's a popular area, because it is where a lot of ex-Pats will live or hang out in Hong Kong. There are a lot of Irish pubs and English pubs and such, but it's not where you want to go if you want good food or interesting sights. Oh yeah, lunch sucked, we all agreed.

Shenzhen, Again

View of the the Shenzhen shopping district, across from the Century Business Tower of the Pavilion Hotel.

Shenzhen, China

Today was a pretty busy day. I took the train into Shenzhen and, as soon as I got there, I checked into my hotel and promptly headed off to work. My work is not difficult, but it gets busy real quick. We had a few meetings, until dinnertime, for which we all went to a local restuarant for some good spicy Chinese food.

Something interesting in the hotel I never noticed, they supply a variety of ...pillows! Surprising, but they offer not just the usual cotton and polyester pilows, but pillows of chrysantemums, buckwheat, feather, flossy, and magnetic pillows.

Amazing considering pillows in China were made of twigs and straw twenty years ago. However, I don't know what is a flossy pillow.

Hong Kong

First day first, I stopped over in Hong Kong before going on to my ultimate destination, Shenzhen, China and DongGuan, China. An interesting coincidence, my friends Cindy and Allen had just moved back to Hong Kong last week, and we were able to meet up for part of the day. Interestigly enough, I traveled halfway around the world and we went out for Italian food. It was really good Italian food too! Classic!

Here's a little panoramic of Central district on Hong Kong Island, that I put together. I'm a little disappointed because I don't think some of the picture angles came out as nice as I had hoped. But I'm trying to make these fun-w-pics features more grander, as I get better at it.

Greetings From Hong Kong!

I am traveling through Hong Kong right now, on my way to China for work again. But not before I visit a few friends and family before I head into the mainland. I got in pretty early in the evening last night, and took the city bus to my hotel. I've gotten more comfortable now as I travel within Hong Kong and China. It's not as easy to get around as in Singapore, where everyone speaks English, but I've managed to get by with my broken chinese, and even surprising a few friends when I called to let them know I had arrived. The Hong Kong airport is about 21 miles from the city, so getting lost is always a high concern of mine. =)

I had an enjoyable flight over here, though. I flew with United Airlines this time, shocking really, since i usually fly Singapore Airlines. I was most surprised about halfway into the flight, I realized that I had at least 4-6 inches more legroom than other flights I have taken in the past. Though the entertainment system is still something to be desired, I miss the on-demand movies of Singapore Airlines.

I always seem to meet interesting people on my trips. One guy I met in airport back in SF, he was an Englishman carrying a Snowboard, so I had to ask if he was on his way to a ski holiday. He was actually returning from holiday in Lake Tahoe, going back to Hong Kong where he is a high school math teacher. Pretty cool.

I'm meeting up with a few friends today for lunch in Central, so hopefully I will have enough time to get around Hong Kong.

My downfall

In our office, our breakroom is routinely stocked with foods from COSTCO, but this time I was overcome by my weakness for candy. Our admin had gotten Jolly Rancher candies and I was reminded of just how much I liked them when I was a kid. When I took these pictures, I could've swore I started off with more...

Mountain Biking Arastradero Preserve

For this week's biking trip, I simply didn't have enough time to plan anything. In fact, I didn't even have the time to pick a park, plan a route, or even print a map, but when we got to Arastradero Preserve (1)(2)(3) in the hills above Palo Alto, I said to my friends, screw the map, let's just go out and get lost. Thankfully the guys said ok, though I thought for sure they were just playing along and really planning to club me in the back of the head.

Luckily, the preserve turned out to be much nicer than I had anticipated. The trails were very smooth, and I think we just came at a really good time of the year, while everything was still green and blooming. We turned the bike ride into a race against time to see as much of the preserve as we could. The weather report for the day was that it was going to rain late in the afternoon. We went up and down the hills, and through the mud. It didn't faze us. I'll definitely have to come back here before summer comes in and dries out the the tall grass.

Fondues and Fon-Don'ts

So for this night, Mike invited us all over to have fondue at his apartment. Diana pointed out how funny that he refers to it as his apartment, when he actually shares the apartment with Jen. Eh, I'll let them fight it out, but Mike had made a wonderfully good cheese fondue, followed by a red wine fondue and an oil and rosemary fondue. Dessert, of course was chocolate fondue, with "all" the fix'ns.

It's just good to hang out with friends on as good of a weekend as this was.

After hours

What a rush at work this week. I've been busy testing our latest release of our software, on top of my normal weekly routine, conference calls with Singapore, Application projects, and simply trying to stay ahead of the company manufacturing schedule. I was so glad today when I finished my report and sent it off to the management. My boss said something to me that really resonated with me, and I think I'll have to come back to it one day, but it realy made me happy. I "closed up shop" around 4, and if you really know me, that is early!

After work, I went and saw Sin City. It opened today, and when I realized it was directed in part by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, I had certain expectations for the movie. Not to give away the plot, I realized afterwards when it all made sense, stylistically, the movie was very Rodriguez-ish, if you think Desperado, shot at night, in the rain. Then, of course the scenes with Miho, were pure Tarantino, samurai swords and all.

Afterwards, we went out to a little bobba tea shop called Bar Code. It wasn't too shady of a hangout, but closed promptly at midnight. There seriously is not many good late night hangouts in San Jose. But we made the best of it, and actually started playing Speed Scrabble up to closing time. Pretty fun, but these people are pretty serious!

Fun with pictures...

Volleyball during the week

I've been bumming the idea in my head for a while to start playing league volleyball, so I joined a few friends at the City Beach in Fremont and formed a team. It was a rocky start, but I started to just go out there and have some fun. So far, we're 5-3 after three weeks, two of the wins were by forfeit, but hey, can't complain....

I realized how hard it was to play again, because I hadn't played in almost a year and a half! It wasn't because I didn't want to, but I could never set aside the time or the commitment to play continually. I'm forcing myself out now, and I have to say it's pretty fun.

Mike swung by for our last couple of games and got some pretty darn good pictures, of which I've swiped a few. = ) His pictures can be found at http://www.ocliw.com.