Hohoho presents

What Christmas is really about... Presents!!!
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Morning of lines

What is up today? Lines everywhere. Argh.

I was in this weird state on the plane today. Fell asleep and couldn't wake up. Freaky.
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Normal line

Winds 3 times like a ride at Disneyland.
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"Priority" line

Monday mornings at the airport. Even the priority line is long. I guess that's still better than the normal line. Sadly life is all relative.
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Fingers crossed in Vancouver

I spent the day in the Richmond Hospital in Vancouver with my grandfather. Hospitals are very depressing. In case you were wondering about the wonders of Canadian universal healthcare and an example of a bad scheduling process, here's what's been happening.

My grandfather was rushed to the emergency room yesterday morning and after running some tests, the doc said he need surgery right away. They spend the whole day doing tests, and then put him on morphine and antibiotics. He didn't make it on the list yesterday because he wasn't urgent enough. He's was also not urgent enough for night surgery either. Doc assures us that he
will be able to have the surgery today. Wait all day, during which he had no food or drink for the past 12 hrs already and at 4pm they come back and tell us he won't get to have surgery today either because once again, he was not urgent enough. Thank goodness for morphine so he doesn't feel anything.

It's a very strange situation where the sicker you are, the faster you get treated, which I guess makes sense, except for the fact that because of limited capacity, you never get to treat the sort of sick until they become very sick. I wonder how you solve this problem since it seems like a process that can be improved.

Crab feast

Looks pretty impressive but taste left a little to be desired.
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Snowing in seattle!

Winter is here! Pretty when you don't have to be in it.
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32 ounces and a long bone

Special of the night at Del Friscos. 32 ounces of Kobe steak on a long long bone. The bone is clearly just for show, and no I didn't eat all of it myself. I probably had 75% of it. It was pretty good, although like all steaks, too much and it just doesn't taste that grat any more.

They also had this crazy white chocolate cinnamon creme brulee that was exquisite.
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Here comes the cold

So yeah. Denver. In the winter. Great.

At least the snow is fluffy.
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Why planes are big

I never really thought it made a difference whether the plane was big or small before. Now I've realized it really is a continuom between a tin can and a jumbo jet. Small plane - more like tin can in the wind. I'm done with small planes. Why would any one want to fly themselves on these tiny jets?
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That's what I call presentation

Brings back some great memories of minced beef and egg on rice back when I was a kid in Hong Kong. $5.45 in LA.
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Scary little plane

This is probably one of the smallest planes I've been on. Will this little thing actually fly 2.5 hrs?! The things I do for an extra 1.5 hrs of sleep.
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Thxgiving dinner!

Ribs, ham, turkey... meat galore woohoo! Nice family dinner. Happy thanksgiving everyone!
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Flying late day b4 thxgiving

What a weird day. Very little traffic to the airport, no security line, and the plane is half empty. Huh?! Of course still delayed though.

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wow.. i know someone famous

I can't believe I know someone one of these lists from a magazine. Went to high school with her.

http://www.esquire.com/features/best-brightest-2007/mirukim1207

Sounds a little freaky... but super cool she's on the list.

Visiting Minneapolis - not

It's been almost 4 yrs since Joe started his campaign to get us to visit him in Minneasota and sadly he success rate hasn't been all that great. I almost went a few yrs ago for a product launch but got someone to cover for me at the last minute.

Well he just tried again - turns out Forbes ranked it the most affordable state in the US or something - and right after replying with a snide comment I walked by this sign. Maybe it is a sign that I should go. Maybe not.

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Almost xmas

Lights are up. Yay!
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Amazing roll

Who would have thought rolling up spam, spinach, carrots, tempura, egg, pickle, rice, and seaweed (and a little bit of love) tastes so good. I must've had 40 of these this weekend. Ridiculous.

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Happy birthday Nick

Sigh. I'm such a bad friend. Nick got me a totally kickass gift for my birthday and I didn't even send him a card. I'm so heartless.
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Bb with gps + camera

I knew they were coming out with bb that had bb with both gps and camera, but I didn't realize it would be so soon. Sigh. Now my curve that only has a camera seems so lame. Well at least it's only on at&t right now. Always takes longer to have it on Tmo since they add wifi (which is not all that useful since the browser is lame).
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Magnolia hotel denver

Somehow every hotel in denver is full this week so I ended up having to stay at this random Magnolia hotel. The room is large, it has a full kitchen, and a cool bath tube. But there's lint on the pillow cases from being washed too much, it takes 10 mins for the shower to have hot water (which I learnt after mid-way thru my cold shower), and there's no desk for working. With just a little work it could be a nice hotel. Alas, it's not meant to be.

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Good ole comfort food

Awwww yeah. There goes the 4 pounds.

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QFC is useful for something

I guess high prices aren't the only thing QFC has. They also have the sweet sake for almost 50% the price of Ume.

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Beautiful girl in a beautiful cafe on a beautiful day

What a nice start to the day. :)

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Mamma melina's

Shrimp and calamari pasta - not bad.

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Warm and sunny

Oh look. What a difference 5 hrs makes. Too bad I had to go to work during the lousy weather and working during the good.

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Cold foggy day

How is it colder than boston and denver here in seattle? What is wrong with the weather? At least when it's cold in other places the sun is out. Sigh.

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Almost forgot

Also had some ma la niu jeen (spicy beef tendon). Yeah that's the stuff. Not photogenic but darn good.

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Mmmmm - gotta love it

One of the few things I miss about boston. Cheap too. No wonder I got fat in college. (Still doesn't explain why I got even fatter though)
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Hou hou yummy

Found an awesome sweet sparkling sake. Hou hou sho at Umi. Good call Umi :)
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Crazy for cake

So this is where all th "cool" kids are - sitting in the back scarfing down cake. Mmmmm cake is goood.
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Birthday kids

Look at the crazy birthday kids. Happy birthday Noreen and Kabir. Good times :)
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Flourless choco cake

Oh boy. Dangerous when homemade cake is this good. Way to go sweetie!
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Colossol onion rings

That's what they're called and that's what they are! What's up with the big food?
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Monster pear

The size of my fist!
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Halloween?

Looks like I'm going to be a dwarf to match snow white.

Btw godiva and coffee liquor is goooood.

Testing blogging from my device

Finally got my blackberry. Have been waiting for the tmo curve. It's pretty
but I must say windows mobile software is better.

Spoiled on attention

Sometimes I feel like we focus too much on "quantity time" rather than "quality time". I suppose the reason we do that is because quantity is something tangible/measurable, whereas quality is something more subjective. Then when a small quantity of time is high quality, we believe that having more would be even better.

I wonder though if there is a trade-off between quantity and quality. I know that I'm nicer to my mom because I don't see her as much, and when I see her for a long period of time I start getting annoyed easier - does this extend to other relationships?

Maybe at the end of the day, I'm just not a "people-person".

Good and bad movies

Been watching a bunch of movies lately since TV season has started yet. It's amazing how some good movies get overlooked, and how some other bad movies people actually watch (ok maybe people don't actually watch them, it's amazing they actually get made...)

So what have I seen lately?

Stardust was very entertaining. The pacing was a little weird, and it started out a little random but it was overall very good. There was a part that was especially sweet about love. 8/10



The Nanny Diaries was surprisingly entertaining. I wasn't sure what to think, especially since the movie wasn't really hyped all that much, but it was also pretty good. It tried to be a little too Devil Wears Prada but hey, that was a good movie too, so why not. Very timely as Sara and I was just talking how much time I would spend at home and with our kids. A good movie to keep me in check and remind me of the important things in life. Oh and she though the little kid looks like me when I was young. 7/10




Ok, now on to the random crap movies.

My Boss's Daughter - OMG, total trash. Stopped after 20 mins. Tara Reid used to be hot though, it's really sad how she's ending up. 1/10

Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen - Totally random. it's amazing how different a script can be since Mean Girls was so similar. Megan Fox was in it though. Nice. 2/10

Bring it on: All or Nothing - I don't understand how Hayden Panettiere is famous. She's short and stumpy. Feel bad for Solace Knowles, Beyonce's sister - she's not nearly as pretty as her sister. She should go do what Ashley Simpson did.

I kind of want to watch Good Luck Chuck and Balls of Fury, but I know I'm going to regret it, so I have to hold out. Sigh

New shoes...

Oh btw, Songi got me those Puma's - she rocks. She found a discount online, and since there's no Puma store in Washington, no tax.

I can see why girls get so happy about shoes now. Big pimp'in.

6 month checkpoint...

Without fail, at the beginning of everything month I remark how quickly another month has past. I can't believe it's September already. It's already been 4 months since I started my new job, 6 months since I quite my old job, and 6 months since I've been 27! I'm 27 and a half! OMG.

The only good thing about freaking out is that it forces me to think about where I am now - something I guess I never really do. Since I've grown up as a gamer, I tend to think of life progression of an accumulation of stats.

Relationships
Significant Other: +, things are going very well amidst a change with my new job
Family: +, hung out with my LA family, talking to my HK family
Friends: -, haven't been keeping touch/seeing my friends that much
Co-workers: same, lost some old ones, gained some new ones

Career
Work: +, content is more exciting and diverse with new challenges
Learning: +, learning more and lots of different training
Income: +, making a little more, and spending a less since I don't pay for things when travelling
Opportunities: +, meeting more people and more interest from headhunters

Personal
Health: same, working out more but also eating a lot more
Fun: same, trading off some personal fun (RPGs, anime) for more group fun (movies, Wii)
Happiness: same, work is interesting but new lifestyle is definitely harder on personal life

The problem with thinking this way though is that 1) you end up being competitive about your stats, and 2) you have to decide if you want to be a well-rounded average character, or a super strong specialist character. I think these are both issues I just need to think about and maybe re-position.

I used to think that there was one category of stats - career. Naturally, overtime I realized that there was really more to life than that but still I considered career first - in some sense, I always thought I would be a "career specialist". But this past year my priorities have gradually evolved. I've been hearing and seeing how these people in Asia just work, and true, there's probably more opportunity and possibility of promotion by working harder, but I guess the American in me is really questioning if this is the right balance, especially since I really am happy when I'm with Songi. She's away this weekend and my life just seems kind of empty. Then again, maybe I would feel just as empty if I had no career.

Makes me wonder if there's some way to maxing out your career, relationship, and personal stats. I've always been fond of the well-rounded character.


------------------------------------
Btw, watching Comedy Central, and they just had a Girls Gone Wild commercial right after a Gerber baby food savings account (wtf?) commercial. There is clearly something
wrong with the way ads work on TV. No wonder TV advertising is in trouble.

Sweet photo editing

By using some crazy algorithms, these folks are able to change the size of pictures without messing them all up by getting rid of the "boring" parts. I wonder how long before Adobe licenses this from them.

DROOL... PUMA DUCATI BORGO

I'm not sure why but this is one of the first times when I saw something on the self and just REALLY wanted it. Good thing I still have some self-control. $120 shoes is just a little ridiculous... I can't believe I'm all excited about shoes... wtf.

BOREDOM IS BAD FOR YOUR WALLET

I have no idea how people (e.g. Sakura) can spend all this time surfing the internet. I've read a bunch of news sites, configured an iGoogle page, accepted Facebook requests, cleaned out my work and personal inbox, and watched a bunch of cool soccer videos on YouTube. I even looked up Red Vs. Blue again and started watching that...

Ugh. The thing that sucks is that I'm just waiting around for a deck from the client for the work to hit. Dum dee dum dee dum.

Btw, there's this random beer garden (really just a restaurant that serves beer) in the middle of a Japanese garden down here in San Diego. Went there for lunch. Pretty cool.

Oh and someone just told me that Sushi Ota is the best sushi restaurant on the whole West Coast - supposedly they fly all their fish in from Japan. Can't seem to find it on any website though - is it that good?

I almost forgot - now I'm just shopping online. Just makes me want to buy stuff. BUY BUY BUY BUY BUY!!! Boredom is so dangerous...

GOOG under $500? AAPL under $120?

Oh and of course MSFT is under $29. Good thing I got out at $31. Wow looks like the market is really starting to crash now. The S&P is actually down for 2007 after 10% gains for the past 2 years. MUST BE PATIENT. Need to wait out the slump. dum dee dum dee dum...

In my job, sometimes it's crazy busy, and sometimes we don't have much to do - I guess that's similar to lots of other jobs. The annoying thing is that because we're always on site, there's not a whole lot we can do when we're not busy. There's some talk about being proactive, but most of that is just busy work.

I just want to go play. :)

Up and down and up and down and...

What the heck is going on with the market? You think it's going to crash, and then it picks up the next day, and then you think everything's fine, and then it tumbles again. So ridiculous.

Still keeping myself liquid for now earning my 5%, but I wonder at what point I'll be comfortable with the market? Now I'm just making some small investments in things I use - e.g. Nintendo which has already made such a run this year, but we just got a Wii and it's just ridiculously fun. And my brother and sister can't put their hands down their DS - my little bro kindly reminded me that all his cousins have one. Oh and I can't believe Pokemon is still popular.

New city!

Denver, CO

Denver has an uncannily large airport considering no major airline has their hub here. Took about 45 mins to get to the hotel although the cab ride wasn't too bad. Was talking to the cab driver the whole time. He was going to be DJ-ing at a bar after he dropped me off. He's also an aspiring musician. Judging from his looks - long shaggy hair, white, scrawny - I pinned him as rock & roll if anything. Turns out, he does hip hop. I even got him to rap for me - his band's called Captain Fresh and his whole act is that he comes out in a bath robe and shower cap like he just came out of the shower... and you wonder why he's driving cabs...

In the hotel lobby waiting for the client to arrive now. We have to look through a deck and then I have to rush off to Kinko's to get it printed for tomorrow morning. Splendid. Naturally all their flights were delayed.

Considering how much I see her, I am constantly surprised how much I miss my Sakura. Our time together this week was shorter than usual, but we definitely had fun. We got Rayman Raving Rabbits for the Wii, and that was just deadly. Can't wait for the new one in November. I guess in the end, it's time spent together is about quality, not quantity.

Oh and we got people some presents this weekend. A necklace each for her mom and my step-mom for their birthdays. Naruto 3 for one little sister, and Cooking Mama and Bratz Ponies for my other little sister. Hopefully they're not lame.

Ok, back to waiting. Sweet.

When in doubt, do nothing...

Usually when I have doubts/reservations about doing something, my first instinct is to not do it. The funny thing is of course, is that because I've realized that's the way I am, more often than not, I end up overcompensating and forcing myself to do something against my gut feel.

It was like that when I bought these shares in this really stupid timeshare thing - ultimate scam - and now, having learned my lesson, I guess I'm going to stick with my instincts on buying a house. I was really looking forward to being a land baron - owning a place that we could fix up and enjoy - but after the thunderstorm my little house buying parade went through, it's just very hard to justify.

My plan is to leave Seattle in 2-3 years. Not sure where to yet, but we're definitely going to move to a different city. As such, the only way it would make sense for me to buy a house is if I could rent it out to almost cover the mortgage, or the home value skyrocketed so I can sell it. I actually modeled the rent and invest down payment scenario and compared it to the down payment and buy scenario, and there's a rough break even point at about 7-8 years, at which point it's all better to own a house. Sadly, that's not my time horizon for actually living in it. Although we could get someone to manage the home for us afterwards, given the slim likelihood that we would actually ever live there later in life, and the hassle/cost of managing the renting process, the math just doesn't add up.

So I'm back to being cash rich and home poor. Now the question is what to do with the cash? The stock market is all over the place, the bond market is stagnant... what to do what to do...

Oh btw, I'm super annoyed that I missed out on Garmin - I said I was going to buy them like a month ago, but I've been holding my money for the house in case I was going to buy one, and of course, GRMN went up 10% today. ARGH!!!

I guess I just need the market to correct again before I buy in. In the meantime, it's a renter's life for me.

The end of the tale...

How sad - I just finished reading the last Harry Potter book and as always at the end of a good story, I feel a sense of loss and bittersweetness. It's quite strange since not only is the story fictional, but it's just from words on a page - I wonder why it has such an effect on me.

As such, I'm always excited to see more information about what happens afterwards and there's a chat with Rowling on Bloomsbury where she talks about what jobs Harry (head of Auror), Herminone (ministry of care of magical creatures/magical law enforcement), Ron (runs the crazy toy business with George), and Ginny (stay at home mom - boo.. she should've been a bad ass auror too) have later on, and other random stuff.

Sigh.. back to work. Bye Harry Potter - thanks for the good times.

One down... how many more to go?

My first study is officially complete - software strategy validated, recommendations for improvement made.

All kinds of fun reviews happen now - always framed in the context of self improvement - for me, the team, the people we worked with.... surveys galore. At the end of the day though, I think only these 3 dimensions really matter (on a scale of 1-10)

Learning: 3
Even though this was my first study, since I knew the content, and I know how to build slides, I didn't end up learning all that much

Impact: 2
Client was on the path already and working through a lot of the issues. We helped them a little bit around putting things together and providing an objective opinion, but these guys knew what they were doing - just needed a kick in the pants.

Fun: 6
The team was very casual and people were friendly. Lots of mentorship and Sakura got to come to spend an all expense paid (well sort of) weekend. Can't complain. Of course there were some late nights and random deadlines that were kind of crazy.

Next stop, San Diego on Monday. I almost had to go to Denver / Dallas, but at the last minute, a partner on this study snatched me up. Another short study, and I have a feeling this one is going to be even more insane.

For now, I'm trying not to think about it - my mom just got us a Wii and a few games, as well as Guitar Hero II. Oh and Harry Potter as well - more than enough to keep me occupied. So much to do and so little time... sigh....

Thinking about being a land baron

Been thinking about buying a place recently since it seemed like things were stabilizing with all the subprime loans blowing up. Looked a few of the foreclosures and stuff, but seems like a lot of work just to go through the process - yes I'm super lazy.

Any ways, found this townhome that was pretty cool actually - walking distance from a bunch of stuff, all new things, etc and the seller's a poor guy who bought the place with his fiance, and is selling it 3 months later since they broke up (sad for him, good for me). Well just found out today that the one car garage it has might not even fit a Honda Accord. WTF!!?!?! yes.. that's what one of the neighbors mentioned. WHO BUILDS THIS CRAP!?!?! Checking on it right now, but if it's true then it's a definite deal breaker. How stupid is this builder.

Looks like it's back to looking through the foreclosures. Ah well.

OMG this is so true...

I must say it's quite depressing how true this is. And the best part? This is exactly what I'm working on - despite the fact that I keep saying how it's impossible to do without really sitting with the individual contributor developers.

I am Bob & Bob.

"Hey this should be pretty easy..."

"...why don't you just put this together tonight - shouldn't take you more than 10 mins."

Hey, why don't I just give you a swift kick in the nuts?

After flying in on a redeye to attend a very useless meeting of a few partners pondering life's great mysteries (blah blah blah - repeat, repeat), spending the day frantically getting stuff done, waiting around to chat with the partner only to continue to get blown off, then go home and wait 2 hours for a conference call with the team, only to also have that cancelled, and then right before I planned to go to bed, get a call from this guy - man....

This is why we need video games - so there's an outlet for aggressive - not because it makes you aggressive. Would've been good to throw a car at someone or something last night.

Food shots... yumm.....

Pete Miller's... yeah that's bacon wrapped scallops... you know you love it.

Le Lan..... awesome....

v1 is supposed to suck...

I don't think Apple got the memo - v1's are supposed to suck and you're supposed to at least wait until the service pack comes out before you go out and buy it. I guess they're following in Nintendo's footsteps.

Good thing Sony and MS can still be counted on for shipping crappy v1 products, otherwise where would we be?

The iPhone's not bad, but $599 for a phone plus 2 year contract is hurting. Oh and the damn thing gets hot.

Still lots of rumors that Google's working on a phone. Picture a future where Apple owns the media phone space (when they start offering a TV service, then it's all over), Google owns the feature phone space, and MS owns the productivity phone space. Other than Apple, the other two don't even have to make their own phones - and all the poor OEMs become just like the PC OEMs - box makers. Lovely.

Work hard, play easy

After a pretty long and intense week, I finally got to duck out Friday to pick up Sara at the airport. Checked into the W City Center, which was a pretty decent hotel, although it turns out it was the lesser of the Chicago W's due to it's location. Ah well, who knew you could go wrong with city center. Then it was off to Sushi Samba for dinner thanks to some awesome pre-planning she did. Food was ok, but we had this sake called Hakujura or something that was really awesome. It was like champagne but sake tasting - and of course cost like it too. After dinner we had a nice romantic stroll through the city back to the hotel. Felt like an old couple. :)

Spent Saturday wandering around the city - Millennium Park, Magnificent Mile - and just by chance it also happened to be the Bite of Chicago. We tried a few things but as with all Bites, I ended up being disappointed - somehow eating just a small portion of overpriced food from desperate vendors is not very satisfying. Of course I'll keep going just so I'll have something to complain about. :)

That night we went to a totally awesome restaurant. Le Lan. Beef carparccio, crazy good scallops, lean duck breast... damn man... just kicked ass. Well done Le Lan.

We then went up to the top of the John Hancock Tower for dessert and drinks. Although service was crap and there was a long line, the view was spectacular. Well worth the trip. Too bad we missed the fireworks by 15 mins. Argh.

Lazy Sunday. Got stuck in pig fat for 2 hours and when you don't realize why traffic comes to a stop in a new city, you feel pretty bitter about the city government. Turns out they were trying their best. Ah well, best to give people the benefit of the doubt. Well at least we still made Live Free or Die Hard



THE MOVIE WAS AWESOME! Ok - seems like a lot of awesomes on the trip, but seriously, it was cool. Go see it. Watching the trailer just made me want to see it again. Damn.

Checked into the Westin and then went to eat at Pete Miller's. More awesome. Clearly you can never go wrong with bacon wrapped scallops, but their prime rib and fillet mignon was great too. Nice.

At night we snuggled up in bed and watched the Adam Brody movie In the Land of Women. The movie was kind of whatever but I did like the look of the daugther. She had the whole punk thing going on. Maybe it's cuz I've been listening the new Avirl CD... it's really fun and it's great to shout in the car when your going nuts at work.

What a great weekend. And the best part? Company picked up her plane ticket, weekend hotel, and dinner one night. You wonder how they keep suckers like me working.

I'm clearly underpaid...

Ok if I knew I was going to be working from 8am-3am every day I'd would've gone and been a banker or worked in private equity. At least I would have a monster bonus to look forward to. This is ridiculous.

Talk about a cluster....

The Difference a Day Makes

Tuesday night
Walk into hotel lobby to find no one behind the front desk and a woman rocking a crying baby in a stroller back and forth. She gets up and checks me in. No room service or mini-bar, so I walk next door to the Citgo convenience store to get dinner. Convenience store has no hot food other than pizza. Dinner consists of Combos, Chili cheese flavored chips, maltballs, and Vitamin Water. Hotel room has air conditioning unit and TV, but no Internet (thanks goodness for Verizon wireless card)

Wednesday night
Walk into hotel lobby that’s palace like with a curved staircase, chandeliers, paintings, etc. Checked into a room with great view of San Francisco. Continental breakfast costs $21. Using the gym costs $15. At 9am, there is construction racket in the room next door.

Funny enough, I feel kind of whatever about both hotels. The first one, Days Inn, was obviously just rather sad, but livable. The second, the Fairmont, was classy, but way overpriced. That being said, I’d still always choose the latter as long as I’m not paying. J

1st Assignment and 1st Day

Thursday afternoon - no info on where I'll be
Thursday night - still no info
Friday morning - nothing
Friday afternoon - nothing, hey maybe I'll be on the beach next week!
Friday evening right before I head to the airport to head back to Seattle - email asking me to call

Discuss project starting on Monday and told that we (he) will decide on Monday morning if I will join the project of not

Monday morning - show up at office and told that I will be on the project and need to head to Chicago ASAP. Multiple conferences in Chicago makes booking hotel almost impossible, stuck in crap hotels.
Monday afternoon - head home to pack and then off to the airport. Turns out ticket hasn't been issued yet so I have to call travel to have ticket issued. High call volumn so on hold for a while, and travel person is abrupt and short. Almost forgot to book rental car - didn't help travel person's demeanor.
Monday evening - reading background information on the plane, napping
Monday night - arrive in Chicago airport. Rental car area is so far from the gate. Not a gold member so have to wait in line. Some other guy forgot his bags on the bus. Poor guy. Get in the Pontiac Vibe (never heard of this car? neither have I. Can't even speed it's so underpowered) and head to hotel. Stuck with smoking room facing car park. Gym at hotel sucks.

Tuesday morning - wake up at 6:45, 4:45 in Seattle. Room service breakfast and then head to office downtown. Should take 30 mins, I allocated 1 hr, and I end up using that up and more. No parking at the building, need to go around in circles and park at a lot 5 blocks away. Rush to meeting - it's hot and I'm sweating.

The rest of the day doesn't go any better
- first task is to educate the partner on the industry that I only kind of know, ugh...
- sent off to the client with no time for lunch, pick up Micky D's and eat in the car. Of course something drips on my shirt
- traffic and shirt changing makes me late, partner asking me where I am
- had to change hotel to avoid 2 hr commute back and forth to client. The only hotel is Days Inn. Big pimpin
- stuck at client working until 9:30
- didn't want Mickey D's again, so bought snacks at Citgo convenience store (benefit of staying at Days Inn is that Citgo is walking distance)
- stupid Varejao takes the last second shot and Cleveland loses - WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS?!?!

Ok, time for bed - meeting the team at 8am tomorrow for a full day until I head out at 10pm to San Francisco.

Instigator

I've found that at parties and other social gatherings, the mood is generally pretty somber until someone starts getting everyone riled up. I'm not really a big fan of this role, since it usually involves:
1) drinking a lot
2) making a fool of yourself
3) annoying more sensitive people
However, somehow I increasingly find myself in these types of roles because I really just can't stand how boring these things are otherwise. I guess this of my way of not having to have rather polite conversations with people and makes me seem more outgoing than I am. The funny thing is that I always have a good time when I do this, even though the day after is usually less than stellar.

Last night at dinner, I started by ordering a round of shots for everyone in the room (of course I wasn't paying), and then proceeded to encourage drinking games around the table. Good times. Oh and dinner was good too - New Orleans Southern comfort food - tasty! The place is called Nola's. Worth a try.

You think you know what's funny

This weekend we watched Knocked Up. Although usually I'm very gung-ho about watching comedies, lately I've been a little hesitant about watching non-blockbuster movies in the cinema since it's just not very economical. Also, I don't think Katherine Heigl is all that hot, and clearly that guy Seth Rogen is not particularly attractive. Naturally then, the movie was good since that would only make sense - all the movies that are supposed to be good aren't, and all those that aren't, are. This was just made more apparent for me since I just watched Blades of Glory on pay per view in the hotel. Will Ferrell + Jon Heder + male ice skating duo = awesome right? Nope. Snooooze. I mean there were some funny parts but come on!

Just proves movies are so hit or miss. You never know.

Got "oriented" and getting "ready"

After 3 weeks in Austra, last week I was back in Seattle for a weekend and then off again to San Francisco for orientation. Pretty interesting.

First off, I got my laptop - a sweet HP with a Duo Core Centrino, 2GB of RAM, 128MB ATI graphics card, and a 100GB HDD.

Secondly, I enrolled in all this HR stuff. The benefits aren't bad, but it's hard for me to be content since my previous benefits were supposed to be the best of the best. Compared to that, these benefits are alright... I think I'll need to work at an average company to know the difference.

Thirdly, I got to meet all these summer folks who are in the middle of business school. I think there were 3 people from HBS and 3 from Sloan - I think these schools ended earlier so they started earlier? It was pretty interesting talking to them and hearing their perspectives. All of them made it very clear that they thought business school was worth it, although I must say a few of them would probably have had a hard time working at a consulting firm if they didn't go to b-school given their previous careers. Naturally, none of them thought that they would be consultants since I'm sure that does NOT make a good career aspiration essay, but somehow they ended up in the same place as me... haha.... the true test is to see how many of them actually come back full time next year.


This week, I'm down in Silicon Valley for consulting readiness training. That's right, one more week of training before they let me out in the wild. It really does say a lot about a company who's willing to train you for 5 weeks before you do anything. Also, I found out that I'm actually free to the client for the first few projects. Boy those guys have a steal ;)

Fantasy geek & crap Thai

I just finished The War of Souls Trilogy. Yes, even while I'm in Austria working on cases and business-y stuff every day, I found time to finish it. It was a little slow to start and the ending was kind of random, but it was pretty entertaining nonetheless.

They served the most un-Thai food today. It was terrible. An insult to the Thai people. I was all excited about it that I even ate less for lunch to save room. Just utter and total crap. Cream soup? Turkey? Blueberries? WTF?!??!?!?!! They made good Indian food so I thought they had some skills. So disappointing.

It's great to be an executive

I knew executives made lots of money, but generally I thought they deserved since I assumed that they only got rewarded if their business did well.

Turns out at least in one case that's not necessarily true. MSFTextrememakerover has a great post on Microsoft's $6M+ (Per Year) Man - Robbie Bach. I had no idea he was making that much money. He's a cool, smart, charismatic guy and all, but come on... does he have any business that makes money? Oh right - MS Hardware, Mac Business Unit, and Windows Embedded, the three units he's not investing in. Nice.

I wonder how I get his job?

Reading news about Microsoft just depresses me. I'm just glad I'm out of there. Phew.

Those poor Europeans

The non-European team killed the Europeans today in basketball. Of course that was expected, any other result would be embaressing. ;)

So that's 2 for 2. Sadly I don't think there's any other sport the non-Europeans can win at. Tennis, ping pong, table soccer... maybe pool.

I'd hate to keep beating them... muhahaha

Enjoying an Active Sunday

Over all a pretty good day today. Started out with me not being hung over from the decent amount of alcohol consumed yesterday. I stuck to whisky and rum and it seems that works much better for me than wine, although clearly all alcohol is bad news. The weather today was perfect as well, so it was a good day for me to actually check out Kitzbuhel.

Turns out, there's not much to see in Kitzbuhel. I wanted to take some photos but there really isn't much to take photos of! All the stores close on Sunday and the whole village (since I don't think it even deserves to be a town) is about 4 blocks.

There seems to be a big deal about cemetaries in Austria. They had something like this in Salzburg too.


Setting a timer took some skill. I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to take photos in the church, but no one was there... I guess, except God. Sorry God.


And there's this random statue. Totally random.


The most impressive structure? The AlpineUniversity/hotel. The minimum security prison I've been in for the past 2 weeks.


But in all its smallness, Kitzbuhel does have a Chinese resturant! Here's some free advertising for my fellow Chinese.


I actually rallied a bunch of folks to go there on Friday and the food was surprisingly good and so I went back today for a bowl of noodles. It wasn't quite like ramen, but decent.


The owners are from China and immigrated to Kitzbuhel about 20 years ago. They speak very good German actually. Very random. Got to bust out my Mandarin. :) Good fun. The bill came out to 10.10 euros, but they let me off with just paying 10 and no tip. I felt bad. :(

In the afternoon, I arranged a soccer game between the Europeans and the Americans. I thought it would be pretty competitive, with the Europeans coming out on top, but alas, we Americans were surprisingly good.

Europeans: Vitterio (ITL), Patrick (ITL), Christian (GER), Jamil (DEN), Lola (USA but playing for Europeans)
Americans: Kenny (DC), Bryan (CA), Anton (NY), me (SEA)



Final score, Americans 6: Europeans 1. Awww yeah. Of course it helped that we had two marines on our team, one of which used to play D1 in college...

Afterwards I went to check out the climbing wall. 50 meters of rock in the middle of the hotel. Ridiculous. I hate to admit it but it took quite a bit of convincing for me to attemp the climb. Childhood trauma... in 9th grade in front of all my friends I couldn't make it up the rock at camp. Yes the fat kid couldn't make it. :( But after seeing all these random ppl make it up, I couldn't quite bring myself to chicken out. Up I went. It wasn't that bad actually, although now my arms are quite sore (yes I was using mostly my legs, but there were ledges where you had to use your arms). Made it up all the way. Wassup!!! Turns out I'm more fit now then when I was 14. Who knew?

Oh, and I hate Indian food too. It's the perfect combination of spice, grease and meat and I had two helpings at dinner. Yeah... so about that diet....

Note: I saw 2 other guys with Crocs today. That's right, crocs are in.