May 6th, 2008 yoshers
So our many adventures (including hitchhiking cockroaches and death defying bus rides) in Hong Kong and Bangkok have come to an end. I realize that doing a big update after the fact is just too exhausting (kind of like our trip) and unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), the hotels that we stayed at charged obscene prices for internet access. So other than a few side trips to very noisy internet cafes (in HK, aka - teenage gaming internet cafes), we managed to avoid the internet and working on our honeymoon.
We actually took a few more pictures than normal - partly due to my guilt of buying a new digital camera. So here are some pictures (including some old pictures from our wedding!):
Honeymoon Trip - 2008 (with an end stop in Laguna Beach for Lei and Bryan’s wedding):
More Wedding Photos (from my camera):
Other New Albums:
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March 26th, 2008 yoshers
Another update accompanied by new Wordpress theme and some nifty updates. At last, with the Wordpress widgets tool and Wordpress-Gallery plugin, I now have a web site that is free of my own hacks! I am not sure if this means anything for the frequency of my updates, but it does mean that there will be more photos in my posts.
In any case, there are no photos to go with this post as I am merely pointing out that Shareena and I will be off to Bangkok and Hong Kong for our honeymoon, followed by a wedding to go to in Laguna Beach.
We are staying at:
1. HK - Harbour Plaza HK (3-9 April) - external link: http://harbour-plaza.com/ (Superior Harbourview Suite)
2. Bangkok - Davis Hotel (9-17 April) - external link: http://www.davisbangkok.net/ (Deluxe Room)
3. Laguna Beach - Casa Laguna (17-20 April) - external link: http://www.casalaguna.com/ (Courtyard Room)
Apparently the both the hotel in HK and Bangkok have rooftop pools. We will be checking those out! Many photos to follow when we return.
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August 14th, 2006 yoshers
Firstly, a little bit about the trip to Vancouver.
We flew up to Seattle and drove up to North Vancouver, staying at Hamersley House (where filming for the L-Word took place on our last day there…which was great as the production crew paid for our last night).
We spent a lot of time in and near Downtown Vancouver, Gastown, Granville Island, English Bay (for the fireworks) and Yaletown. We also took a short side trip to Cypress Park for a hike…more on this later.
Finally, on the way back to Seattle, we stopped by Columbia Winery for Jenna’s wedding. Pictures of the gorgeous couple are in the gallery.
Also pictures of Vancouver 2006 are in the gallery as well.
And the big announcement is…Shareena and I got engaged in Vancouver! Without further ado, here is the story:
We took a short side trip on Wednesday morning (August 2nd) to Cypress Park. What was suppose to be a short, relatively easy hike turned out much tougher as they are building the 2010 Winter Olympic Freestyle slope in the same area as the beginning of the hiking trail. Therefore, Shareena and I had to basically hike straight up the skiing slope for the first part of the hike. Shorter, yes, but steeper and the trail was basically loose gravel (being used as a road for construction trucks).
We did manage to get to the top of Black Mountain and at a lookout point, we stopped and while I was getting down on my knee and fetching the ring, Shareena was getting mobbed by mosquitos! Which, as it turns out, was a good thing because when I opened the ring holding box, the ring fell out onto the ground (due to much jostling on the hike up), but Shareena did not notice this (I had to tell her later).
Anyways, she said yes and now we are a happily engaged couple.
That’s it…now the fun begins. Oh, and here are some pictures of the ring. It is a sapphire centered ring held in place by two dragon claws.
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April 7th, 2006 yoshers
So hey, I am posting an update less than a week after I returned from vacation…I guess either a) I am not busy or b) I am not that tired from vacation.
Pictures can be seen in the Las Vegas 2006 album. Also, added a few new pictures of the cats in Resident Cats, Part 2.
Thursday
Things certainly did not get off to an auspicious start. Shareena and I (and another unlucky person) managed to nab seats in front of three frat boy wannabees. Drunk, loud and obnoxious, these three managed to turn the flight into their own personal rant time and convinced us to stay away from the Monte Carlo.
Upon arrival at Las Vegas airport, we grabbed our bags and took a shuttle to Bellagio. This was mostly fine, although the shuttle driver really likes to talk as well. Of course, our hectic day did not calm down upon arriving at Bellagio as we discovered that our room was not cleaned! Oops, I guess that happens when you have thousands of rooms to manage…
Anyways, we phoned housekeeping first and the housekeeping lady did a great and quick job our cleaning up our room, though with the timing of everything, we felt pretty rushed as we had to get to dinner at Emeril’s Fish House at the MGM. In the end, we did get $50 credit to our hotel bill due to this inconvenience and were able to relax once we got to our dinner.
The food at Emeril’s Fish House was pretty good, though much effort had to be made to keep me from eating anything with shellfish in it (I could not have anything deep fried as they deep fried everything in the same oil).
After dinner, Shareena drifted quickly to sleep and I went off to the poker room at Bellagio (nice, but a bit crowded) and won enough money to cover everyone’s breakfast on Friday.
Friday
As Jansen and Rebecca got into Las Vegas quite late on Friday, we did not meet up with them until Friday for breakfast buffet at “Le Village” in the Paris Hotel. The food was pretty good (though unfortunately, some idiot decided to get 6 omelettes for his whole family and caused quite a lengthy delay) and it was an interesting small European village decor.
For most of the rest of the day, we shopped (though Jansen and I managed to escape to the poker tables at Harrah’s) until everyone’s legs were tired. Unfortunately for me, a very lucky drunk was at the poker tables mid-afternoon and without looking at his cards (and still raising like a maniac), he still managed to luck out and beat me out of quite a lot of money.
Oh well, all was not lost as Friday was date night and Shareena and I were off to Olives for dinner, followed by the late performance of “O” while Jansen and Rebecca went to a steakhouse (sorry, I don’t remember which one) for dinner followed by Mystere. The food was very good and unfortunately, it was too much for our small stomachs! The show was quite amazing, though I am not sure if anyone can follow the storyline.
Saturday
While Shareena was getting a massage, Jansen and I set off at 11am on a poker tournament (rebuy) at Harrah’s and though Jansen did not rebuy and was down to almost no chips at the first break after one hour of play, I managed to bust out (and down $40 more due to a rebuy) at the same time. Oh yeah, note to self, you cannot bully a player who does not understand what is going on at the table.
Anyways, after a bit of lunch, I set off to play some more poker while everyone else hotel-hopped on the strip. After about 3 hours of 1-2 no limit (this was around 5:30pm), I was down and everyone else was tired from walking so much and fortunately (in this case), I was able to continue playing as everyone else needed a break from walking and were not quite hungry enough to eat.
So thanks for tiring yourselves out so that I can win back all my money plus another $120!
We ended the day by going to Rio for the World Buffet…yummy, so much food, so little time and attempted to check out some of the free shows, but only managed to catch a couple of the Bellagio fountain acts before retiring for the night.
Sunday
Not much on the last day. Eat breakfast (crepes and tarte at Paris), fly home, sleep.
In any case, it was a great trip…I think I was pretty good as I did not play that much poker! While Bellagio did have a hiccup (and some odd delayed draining noises in our bathroom), it is a beautiful place and the service is definitely top quality. Now if we can just get that price down a bit…
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May 12th, 2005 yoshers
It has been in the works for some time. After inviting her aunt and uncle from New Zealand last August for her mom’s surprise birthday party, Shareena was offered a reciprocity of hospitality if we wanted to go to New Zealand. It just so happens that the middle of August contains both Shareena’s and her aunt’s and uncle’s daughter’s birthdays, so there will definitely be a bit of celebration for that (in fact, it will be the day after we arrive in New Zealand, can you say “jet lag”?).
I suppose that depending on the method of travel, you have different sort of “official” date of accepting a vacation - a sort of point of very difficult return. In this case, it was pretty much the plane ticket as we were already offered food and shelter as well as a somewhat set itinerary. Shareena is further excited about touring some of the locations where Lord of the Ringswas shot, despite the fact that it will be winter in New Zealand in August. I guess this just means a better excuse to pack more.
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May 2nd, 2005 yoshers
As usual, I am a few weeks late with my latest adventure, but at least I do eventually managed to get my thoughts on the hard disk.
So a couple of weekends ago, I flew off to Las Vegas to meet with my cousins from my mother’s side to have much, much fun. After being picked up by Ken and his girlfriend, Angela; Henry; and Vivian, we hung out at the Hilton Grand Vacation Club, where we had a suite (though we did not take advantage of the kitchen, it was still quite spacious), and after my cousins (originally from Chicago) Angie, Jack and Judy arrived at the suite, we talked some more and before you knew it, there was a bet going on.
As Angie, Jack and Judy were about to leave, Judy asked whether or not anyone wanted to run with her on Friday morning as she is training for a 10 mile run. One thing led to another and before long, Angie and Ken were challenging each other to see who can run better and longer. Eventually, they settled on seeing on who can run 1 mile the fastest and I managed to sucker Henry into placing a wager for Angie with 3 to 1 odds (so I put in $20 for Ken to win and Henry put in $7 for Angie and winner takes all). Well, the race apparently did not last long and a short time after the start, Angie decided to stop and lie on the ashphalt to rest.
Besides this small wager, we had quite a good time gambling, eating, clubbing, drinking and doing all the normal Vegas things. I managed to break even (despite some pretty big ups and downs at the Blackjack table) thanks to my placing 7th (first money spot) in a No-Limit Texas Hold-em poker tournament where Albert, Stanley and Henry also entered (with about 100 players total). I must admit, things did not look very good for me at the first break as I was low on the chip stack compared to my cousins, but a few all-ins later, I tripled up a couple of times and was back in business. In the end, my luck failed at the first “opportune” time as I went all in with A-7, only to be called by the chip stack leader with A-6…and then watching as a 6 came up on the flop. So yes, there is some skill in poker, but don’t kid yourself if you think it is all skill.
All in all, I had lots of fun despite not getting very much sleep (I think I slept about 3 hours a night for 3 straight days), so I suppose I am just now getting back to normal (though it is never normal when as I sometimes come into work at 6am to restart the servers) and that’s why it has taken me so long to write this entry. Now if you believe this, then I do have a future as a poker player.
Picture from Vegas (thanks to Judy).
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April 2nd, 2005 yoshers
Shareena and I headed down to Monterey last weekend for a quick getaway for our 7th anniversary together. Please no comments on when we are getting married…
Anyways, we stayed at a very nice bed and breakfast in Monterey called Old Monterey Inn. We had a very enjoyable stay that featured great breakfasts and lots of amenities including refrigerator full of drinks to raid, lots of good cookies and the usual wine and oer dourves. We did the normal tourist stop at the Monterey Aquarium on Friday to see all the wildlife. The new jellyfish exhibit was very cool as they integrated a lot of artwork in the exhibit to complement the coolness factor of display after display of jellyfish. There were also many feedings including the kelp aquarium, otter and penguin feedings. I always like seeing the penguins and it was quite fun to watch them line up to get their fish. Apparently, penguins are like cats in that they regulate their feedings and will not overeat. None of them look too fat, so I guess none of them are exceptions to this rule like our very own Atticus.
After our trip to the underwater world, we returned to the Inn to get Shareena a massage before we headed over to Casanova Restaurant at Carmel. The food was great and I even managed to get some very fruity German Riesling that Shareena liked. The waitress seem a bit overwhelmed and the restaurant was quite crowded. The funniest thing was that when we were being seated, we were taken outside (through their patio), around the building and then, just as it appear that we were being taken out back onto the sidewalk, we turned into another room to be seated. I guess in their expansion (the restaurant has several different dining areas), they did not think about connecting the various rooms together.
On Saturday, Shareena and I went back down to Carmel to walk around the shops and to check out the beach. The really interesting thing was looking at the real estate offices and seeing 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom places going for nearly $600,000. I guess it is all about location.
After leaving Carmel, we stopped by Gilroy for some quick shopping before heading home. Thanks to having Friday off and going down to Monterey on Thursday, we were able to avoid the crowd and also have Sunday off to relax some more before being rushed back to work.
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