happy (belated) new year!

so.. the situation has changed a little bit. after nearly two years, i'm no longer working at redwood city. it was really nice too - they had a little send off breakfast for me and then i had lunch with jeannie and pat. then i packed up my stuff and said goodbye to cube-life. jeannie and pat are both women i really admire and respect - i hope i can keep in touch with them. also, i've reduced my (already little) schedule at the bank - instead of working there fridays and saturdays, i now only work saturdays.. a whopping five hours a week!

so i've essentially left the working world behind to concentrate on being student.

i'm attending hayward right now and i gotta say that student life is weird. i feel so OLD. seriously, those six years make a huge difference. i'm sure i'll get used to it eventually but i feel like i'm on a different plane than a lot of the other students. Working for the past two years has really given me a different perspective on school. it's only second week and i'm already staying late, trying to keep up with all of my readings, but i feel like i'm the only person on campus when i stay past 6pm.

anyhoo, i'm totally stoked that i got all the classes i wanted. it was kinda scary with one of the classes because it was so full, but i ended up getting in at the very last minute. now i just have a lot of readings to catch up on.

phew...

late is better than never.

phew.. i've finally gotten my pictures from london AND paris organized. actually it was easier than i thought it would be because i found this handy site called flickr - which is really awesome, by the way.

anyhoo - pictures is what you want, right?

(drum roll please)

paris - march 2004

london - november 2004

tada! that wasn't too hard now, was it?

christmas time already?

when the seasons sort of mush one into the other like they do in california it doesn't really feel like the holiday season even though the calendar tells you otherwise. i haven't started shopping at all and i'm dreading the thought of stepping foot in a mall. if money wasn't an issue and everything i wanted was right in front of me, then i'd love shopping.. but it doesn't really work like that, does it?

i don't think i really wrote much about london/paris - but i think my favorite part in the trip was this one night in paris. it was so cold and we wanted to go back to the hotel so badly, but nessie wanted to stop at les galeries lafayette (a huge department store) to look at the lights. as we came out of the metro station, this is what we saw:

i've never seen anything like that before. i just remember walking out to the station and being completely awestruck by the lights because it was so beautiful. people were clustered around the store windows and we walked closer to see what was going on. as we approached, we saw that each display window was done up elaborately with models and animated puppets - i don't know how to explain it because words just don't do it justice. parents brought their children simply to look at the displays and the kids would immediately run up to the windows and press their noses against the glass.

on a cold night in paris, i felt like a kid again and christmas was magic. i just wish there was some i could capture everything from that moment in time and store it away.

merry christmas, everyone. make it magic.

(les galeries lafayette is maintaining a christmas page for now, click on the site to enter and click on the green ornament on the right to see videos of some of the window displays. it's still not the same, but it's better than anything i could ever write.)

turkey

mom and dad's 30th aniversary was yesterday. because of that, they've left me, matthew and david to spend the holiday on our own, while THEY go on a mexican cruise.

sooooooooooooo.. tomorrow's turkey day will be fresh (store-bought from safeway) and we're driving to auntie lil's to celebrate. i love lil by the way - she's just the kind of woman i would want to be like when i grow up.

grow up... ack, did i mention that i'm now TWENTY-FOUR???

...

happy thanksgiving, everyone.

ramen!

i found a new favorite restaurant! it's called ringer hut and it's located in san jose. the champon ramen that les ordered was super-good and when i asked them what song was playing over the speaker system, the owner actually took the cd out of the player and gave it to me.

hehe. it's the little things that make me happy.

mind the entry

got back from london, simply amazed that people are able to exist in that sort of weather since my wimpy californian body is unable to handle anything under 50 degrees fahrenheit. weather aside, we had a good time. we had our share of rough spots, but overall it went off really, really well. (amazingly, no major drama!) now i'm home and trying to adjust to post-vacation life. i still have yet to do my laundry and my room looks as if a small tornado's passed through.

ugh.. when's my next vacation?

good news!

my cousin is getting married today! kind of expected/unexpected. he and his girlfriend (wife??) bought a house just recently and they've been living together for the past year or so, so we've been expecting him to pop the question.

but he just called my mom yesterday night and told her that he and pam (pam jei-jei?) are going to register this afternoon in san francisco city hall. mom's delighted. she's been worried about him for years, especially since it took him a long time to get over his last ex.

i'm super happy for him. i just hope it works out...

planning, planning

so we're leaving for london in a couple of days.. A WEEK AND A HALF. i can hardly believe it since we're still trying to plan. les has found an awsome airline called ryan air which is super-duper cheap and we're SO TEMPTED to book tickets for italy or spain right now. it looks like we might just do it too - we're still looking to see how feasible the plan really is, but hehe.. italy.. spain.. it sounds like a dream!

i've always liked this part of trip planning, the anticipation before actually going.. it's like waiting for christmas. i'm really looking forward to this trip. i just can't believe it's coming up so soon...

one problem i've had lately is shopping for this trip. i keep going shopping, telling myself to buy sweaters because i just KNOW that i'm going to be a frozen popcicle when i get to london, but when i go shopping i get distracted and end up leaving with tees instead of sweaters. now i have three new tees and no sweaters...

oh - and as a mini epilogue. grant came and went. the deadline was last, last friday so since then it's been quiet. i've gone from going crazy back to going comatose. i kinda lovehate deadlines. it's nice to just keep pushing towards a deadline cause you just have this rush while you're doing the work and once you're done it's just an awesome sense of relief. but up until the deadline it's stressstressstress.

still pushing through the apps for the local csu's. after two months (maybe longer), csu hayward still hasn't admitted me - i feel like i should be a little more mean and harass their admissions office more.. but i just don't have the energy for it. i need to get the apps for sf and sj done as well.. i've been putting it off (lazy, lazy) and i'm planning to finish them once i return from london.

which brings me back to london.. LONDON. less than two weeks to go and i haven't planned or packed a thing!

i'm still at work...

and i'm eating salsa - not salsa with chips, mind you, but straight up salsa. i think i'm craving vegetables, but unfortunately my workplace lacks decent snacking veggies.

i'm helping my coworker on some text for a grant and it's been keeping me busy, the past two nights i've stayed in the office past 7pm, yesterday i set a record at 8:30. and they say government employees are lazy, pheh... the good people of redwood city BETTER be appreciating me, this is their hard-earned tax dollars at work!

...

ha.. that sounded bitter. actually, it's not-so-bad. i'm actually glad that i'm working on a real project for a change and i know that i'm prolly thinking too far ahead of myself, but it'd be awesome if we won the grant money.

they say that if you lose track of time while working, you're doing something you love. so maybe all of these overtime hours actually equal a good thing.

kpop!

i'm addicted to this kpop song 'how do i say' by shinhwa right now-VERY POPPY AND AZN. i guess music is where the azn in me comes out.

anyhoo, today i'm going to a bonfire on the beach in carmel, i'm pretty excited because i've never been to anything like this before. mayne's turning 20 (she's such a baby!) on monday, and we're going for her birthday. it should be pretty interesting, yesterday night we went to a spanish club-me and les were the only asian people, until mayne's chinese-peruvian friends showed up. you know, although chinese-chinese people probably think i'm weird, i can't get over hearing chinese people speaking spanish.. it just sounds odd. it was fun though, and the music was good, different.

i'm lookin' forward to going to the beach!

london (continued)

so it looks like right on the heels of china and france, i'm going traveling again. hee.. what can i say, i'm no good at saying no. i justify it to myself by telling myself that i'll be in school for the next two years anyway and then working after that so this is my time to travel.

jo has an aunt in london right now, and we'll be staying there. it looks like i'll have a second chance to see paris too because jo and nessie want to take the train to paris. i'm getting really excited as we're starting to plan, and i'll be using my mad excel skills to make another spreadsheet-this time on london. i'm recycling the paris one too since i already have that down. (see i knew it'd come in handy again!)

in other news, i sent out my ucla transcript to csuh-so it LOOKS as if the application process is moving ahead. my (tentative) plan is to finish those two prereq courses (physiology and chem) at csuh and then apply for any program that'll take me. i'm kind of worried because so many nursing programs are impacted right now. but i suppose where there's a will, there's a way?

ai.. i certainly hope so.

LONDON!!!

details to follow.

bachlorette no more

i'm going to a bachlorette party this weekend. amy-yes, my apartment-mate amy is getting married. i've never been to a bachlorette party before so i'm kinda looking forward to it while not knowing what to expect.

eep.. what's with all of these weddings lately?

who's next???

spain

i'm happy to report that (fisshy) jen made it to spain alright.

she's in the southern part of spain on a dig and she'll be back in a month. lucky girl! imagine being in the mediterranean during the summer.

...

wish i was in the mediterranean right about now.

china.

i've heard about china all my life, but i didn't really know what to expect. first thing i noticed as we touched down in beijing was the smog. the air was this horrible combination of fog, smog, and humidity-so everywhere you went, the air felt like a sticky and dirty blanket. i never realized that clean air and blue sky was such a luxury-thank you california, for anti-pollution laws.

beijing was good, despite the heat and humidity we walked across the forbidden city (which is HUGE). it's amazing really, but after seeing your umpteenth amazing building in stiffling heat, you get kinda numb. i'd hafta say that the highlight of beijing was seeing the great wall-pictures do not do it justice. it's just amazing when you see the first segment of the wall, and then see it continue over hillside after hillside.

after a couple of days in beijing, they flew us down to shanghai. i really don't know enough about china to generalize, but it seems to me that the historical center of china is beijing, but the financial center is shanghai. it was a completely different world-i had gotten used to seeing the patches of poor conditions in beijing and middle-aged men with their bellies (!!) hanging out of their shirts, but shanghai didn't appear to have any of that. by contrast, the city and people seemed completely metropolitan and the buildings reached towards the sky.

from shanghai, they drove us to wuxi, suzhou, and hangzhou.. and garden, after garden, after garden-all very beautiful, but like the forbidden city, you get numb after a while. we spent a lot of time on the road, but the drives were interesting. the houses are right next to the freeways, so as you pass by, you can see people at work or in their homes, just going about their daily lives. just from observation, their lives seem very different from mine, simpler maybe?

we then drove back to shanghai, and FINALLY got a free day. after five days of having our wake up call anywhere between 5 or 6 in the morning and then having a packed schedule until 9 in the evening, it was a huge RELIEF to have at least one day where we could do our own thing. so, we did what made sense: we went shopping.

later that day, we flew back. when we landed in sfo the weather was in the 70s and misty.. heading out of the peninsula, the mist cleared and it was blue sky all the way. although it was only a week, it feels like we did and saw a lot and although i'd love to have another opportunity to go back, there's no place like home.

quickie...

china was really good! i'll write more later.

until then, here's a picture of me and shanghai's funky-wunky pearl tower (it looks even weirder at night):

my car must hate me by now.

something that i forgot to mention about los angeles. i HATE driving in l.a.

a couple of reasons:

1) TWO parking tickets in THREE days,

2) running up curbs and scaring everyone in the car,

3) and of course.. i got rear ended as well.

luckily, i got rear ended exactly where i got rear ended before, so now i have a collection of cracks on the left-hand side of my rear bumper. insurance is figuring it out right now, but thankfully.. nessie is more level-headed than me and we got a license plate number and vehicle description.

oh, and i think los angeles driving karma followed me up to the bay area, 'cause today i forgot about my headlights (third or fourth time this year, i think.. i've lost count) and my battery died.

eep!

i haven't visited los angeles for AGES. so this weekend, i finally went down. it was really good.

first off, i got to see so many people that i haven't seen in so long. jo and all the girls, pearl, jen, nessie, marie.. seeing all these people remind me of just how much i miss them. this is also the first time that we actually went to l.a. with an agenda. usually, we don't really have much of a plan, it's more like let's just go and see what happens.

this time, we actually had a chance to see all the touristy-type things that as a student, i never got to see. i (finally) saw the hollywood sign, the hollywood walk of fame, and mann's chinese theatre.

there are so many things.. i can prolly go gushing about on and on. but the biggest and best thing?.................................................. I SAW TOM CRUISE!

eeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!

aiwa.

so i finally emailed julie today and told her that i would not be able to volunteer for aiwa next semester. i'm going to miss doing aiwa, but with all the things coming up, i doubt that i'll have the time for it. most of all, i'll probably miss my students-they're a great group.

thanks to joanna, i'm (finally) starting to get things together for going back to school. i finished an application this weekend, and i'll start doing the others in august when applications for winter 2005 become available. kind of scaredexcited to go back to school, but i think it'll be a welcome change. also my application for volunteering at washington is also starting to move along and i have an interview on wednesday.

busy, busy. eep!