Memorial Weekend Plans

I AM looking forward to the long weekend. It's been a busy week at work...more of that later.

My best friend Arv is visiting for Memorial weekend from L.A. and Sandy and I are looking forward to catch up with him and his wife--they are expecting a new baby girl, their first. Congrats bro!

Early Saturday we'll be having a BBQ at my dad's place and my sister, a soon-to-be owner of Goomba's Pizza in Cupertino, will be the grillmaster. And then at night she'll make dinner, a three course meal. I'm so looking forward to that, playing with the nieces and nephews, and maybe throw the football around with my brothers.

Sundy, after church Sandy and I will try to catch the latest Pirates movie with my smallgroup. It's been awhile since I saw a film at the theater.

Enjoy the break y'all and have a safe and relaxing Memorial weekend.

Web 2.0 Expo Day 2

My second day at the Web 2.0 Expo and this time around, it is much better, I think. Some of the classes were very informative, one in particular offered a lot of practical ideas. I wished I had more time to hang out and just check out all the companies and their products now that I have an idea of what they do, but alas I have to meet up with a friend for a GS Warriors game vs. Dallas tonight.

Arrgh...wireless connection is so slow right now since everyone is out on their session break and these routers are probably being hit pretty serverely. FREE comes with a price, yes?

Not sure if I have time to come back tomorrow but then again...Weds. are "work at home" days.

I'm beat!

Anyone Web 2.0 Expo-ing?

Ajax, RSS, EC2, SaaS, AWS, RFP...If you know what that means, you belong here with me. Here meaning the Web 2.0 Expo in SF.

At times I'm wondering what am I doing here? I haven't done anything in Ajax yet although if you're developing for the web or interested in ui design, Web 2.0 terms like Ajax and those above are like the in language. To be truthful, I'm not quite sure what those lingos mean either, but I'm sure I'll be using in someday.

Anyways, the free t-shirts from the Expo are pretty nice, and of course all those darn neat-o "Beta" demos. It's so sexy these web 2.0 products!

In any case this has been a pretty exhausting day and I'm ready to just go home and sleep.

Headlines Chinese Style

I saw this in the journal and quickly used wikipedia to learn a bit more about this thing called "chinglish". Apparently there are plenty of these "lost in translation" signs which the Chinese government are irritated enough to do something about (translation, the 2008 Olympic). These signs if anything, are entertaining, albeit in a nonsensical-esoteric sort of way.

Jay Leno's would love these for his "Headlines."

This one cracks me up. More below:

[disclaimer: you may find these offensive, and the author does not subscribe to these humors, except on randomn days. If you see other funny signs like these, it would be fabulous for you to share them.]

How Great Is Our God Concert

Last night, a few of us went to watch Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman performed at SJSU Event Center. The concert was amazing. I have been looking forward to this concert since a month back and had tickets for just as long. So when Sunday night came along, I was pretty excited for the concert. As it turned out, Sunday was also a pretty long day starting with teaching KidZone at church, then the service, moving onto set breakdown, then going to Barnes & Noble to get Freakonomics (thnx Alison for the Teacher's discount), drove back home to meet friends to carpool to the concert, grabbed dinner at La Vic in San Jose, then onto the concert, drove the carpoolers home, read emails, and went to bed.

Despite the long long day, last night was really worth it. It was awesome worshipping God in such a large environment, singing with Chris Tomlin/Matt Redman, and hearing Louis Giglio speak. How beautiful is our God!

Check out pictures here: How Great Is Our God Concert.

GRX Hoops Winter League

The new league season is upon us once again. Get ready for 10 weeks of great games, good fellowshipping, and all in all fun. The league is set to run from Feb. 25 to May 13. Check out the http://hoops.grx.org for more info.

If you're interested please come out to open gym nights: Sunday 2/4, 2/11, 2/18. See you on the court!

Email [email protected] for more info. Spread the word. Thanks!

I Recommend The Departed

Wow it's been awhile. Sandy had a busy busy week and so this weekend was just relaxation. On Sunday after church we ended up playing some badmintons. Sandy complained of soreness afterward but I have to say she is improving, even if she was playing a bit tipsy that day.

After that we decided to relax and catch a movie, something we haven't done for awhile. The movie we saw was Scorsese's The Departed and well to sum it up, it was "really worth the $5.50".

As usual Scorsese's direction was awesome but I think Leo DiCaprio totally nailed it. The original is an HK movie called Infernal Affair starring Tony Leung and Andy Lau. I won't spoil the plot for you but I'm definitely recommending it. Makes me want to visit Boston just to see if people from that city really have those accents.

Lastly, don't eat at that sushi place next to AMC Mercado. They were some of the most tasteless, horrible sushis I have ever had.

A Night Running At The Baylands

While this year's run wasn't as exciting as last year—call it the sophomoric blues—I did manage to finish it a little under an hour.

Official result here.

This year I actually started at the beginning of the pack but felt tired half way into the run. Last year I ran with wuboy which helped my pace a bit, but he had a legitimate excuse to miss the run this time around. =)

Thanks to Judy and the getbufftriing group for the support and the sign.

Final time: 58:42

Again congrats to my bro Wuboy and his new fianceé Browniebear27!!!

A Shameless Knot2Us Plug

There's a show on The Food Network called Throw Down with Bobby Flay. It's actually quite good. But the one that I enjoy the most has to be the effervescent Rachel Ray and her hilarious..."umm..." follow with her eye rolls.

Back to Throw Down. In the episode that I watched a well know hamburger maker was challenged by Bobby. Basically he showed up at this person's house un-announced and challenged her to a "throw down." Anyway I have no point and don't remember where I am going with this except to say that the Throw Down concept can be adapted to so many things.

Nothing Venture Nothing Gain-Knot2Us

My smallgroup Knot2Us will start up again this Thursday night. I invite anyone looking for a smallgroup (after Fall Launch) to come and throw down with us...whatever you have on your plates that night, leave it—come throw down with our Christian smallgroup community. We'll take the challenge to bring you to a relationship with Christ!

We made it back from Napa without any incident, having boozed up pretty hard. We hit up three wineries: V.Sattui, Sterling, and Mondalvi. Of the three Sterling was probably the most memorable since I have not yet been there. It was such a beautiful day, too.

Here are Dabruceski's photos on his smugmug site.

Lastly, our work website has undergone a total makeover. It is now mostly semantically marked up with CSS only. Gone are the HTML table markups. Yay! I'm excited about it!

Seattle Is Pretty Nice

But I don't think I would move there just yet. It's hard to say based on being there for only a few days but what Seattle offers the Bay Area already has...nice weather (at least while we were there), clean air, and an active lifestyle.

At times I felt like I was driving through parts of San Jose, Saratoga, San Francisco, Oakland, etc. About the only thing that was amazing and made me do a double take every time was seeing Mtn. Rainier. You could put it down as it's a nice place to visit, but nothing to fall in love with...like New York or Chicago.

Soon to be posted are pictures of the trip.

[Update] Sleepless in Seattle pics

To Dome And Back

The view from the top was awesome! Congrats Dan, Rich, K-dogg, mongolian deathworm, Ron, thecrystalball, Juliet and David. I even saw Clee up there and my cube-mate from work. Small world!

It was a great experience. I'm not saying it was easy...to hike 8.2 miles up 4800 ft. of elev. gain...with absolutely no water coming back down...but it was worth it.

Turn off your computer. Get away from your office. Go climb a mountain!

My humble flickr set of Operation: Mount Half Dome.

[Update] David Ko's photos of Half Dome. Dan's set.

Congrats to DWAY and JP!

Open Air Pleasures

And since the mountain will not come to me, well, then I will just have to go outside and find the darn thing myself.

Seriously I won't be turning on any computer this weekend. Time for me to get my refreshment somewhere else...some open air pleasures, of the planned and serendipitous type. The best part...I'll be waking up bright and early tomorrow morning to climb Half Dome.

I'll try to bring back snapshots.

Thought Provoking Al Gore Doc For $1

I thought I'd pop in to jot down a quick "I'm still here" entry as well as to say that Sands and I saw "An Inconvenient Truth" last night. In the tradition of docs like "Super Size Me", "Fahrenheit 9/11", and "When We Were Kings" this one posited some very interesting questions, but remains both entertaining and intellectually stimulating.

Here are some notes from what I learned:

- The previous decade from 1998 - 2005 recorded some of the hottest days on Earth. (Al Gore couldn't have hired a better PR to spin this movie as we in Cali just had some crazy heat wave couples of weeks ago.)
- For 650,000 years carbon dioxide (CO₂) level has been pretty consistent. Starting in the year 2000 it jumped A LOT!
- the US produced the highest gas guzzlers while the Japanese produced some of the lowest. Even China is outpacing the US in terms of emission standards and miles per gallons set for their cars.
- Gore's black-and-white point of view is just that. Of course there are lots of gray areas about global warming (as the corporations would like to add) but his main point is still: we have a moral responsibility, no make that obligation, to curb global warming so that our children will be able to survive on this "pale blue dot".

Do yourself a favor. Go see it. It's only $1!!! At the very least it will leave you with a better understanding of the consequences of global warming as well as the diminished quality of life for future generations (our children) should this pattern continue.

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TMI

What is that acidic, gaseous "thing" that comes up your throat while you're running? It leaves a burning sensation that lasts a few seconds and tapers out like. Probably didn't help that I had KFC yesterday and banana this morning. I can't remember this ever happening during my runs. Ugh....

Oh hey if you happened to be in Berkeley check out this creamery gelato place that my friend owns: Gelato Milano. Ask for a RippleFX discount.

Two Reviews: East Bay Express and The East Bay Monthly

Pop's Day At The Zoo

A week after visiting New York's fabulously priced (ie "suggested donations") American Museum of Natural History and seeing the stuffed animals, my siblings and I decided to make it a Father's Day outing at The Oakland Zoo.

To be sure, the real deal is much better.

Situated above the Oakland Hills, the zoo is a constant reminder that there are animals beyond the usual domesticated fares of—the house canines and the feisty felines. While nothing impressive as compared to the San Diego Wild Animal Park, the Oakland Zoo is what it is...a small affair that is family friendly.

The Oakland Zoo is the smaller and more awkward sister to the SF Zoo. There are the usual (unstuffed) african elephants, the elands, gazelles, condors, lions (in a place appropriately named Simba), giraffes, tigers, gorillas, chimps, etc...For a full list of animals at the Oakland Zoo, please visit here.

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Rediscovering New York

Wow it's been awhile since I updated. Since time is money, here is my quick update of the 'rediscoverd NYC' trip in digestable bite-sized bullets.

- Manhattan is amazing. Go. Go there now.
- There are plenty of real coffee and bagel shops, not those Starbucks/Noah's Bagel hacks. Even the restaurants are terrific.
- subnote: Soon to come to New York—a first!!!—a Starbucks will be opened within a Starbucks. Haha. Just kidding...
- Smiling at the crowds is futile, even deemed madness.
- Real walking requires a nice pair of running shoe, like Asics. Doesn't matter if they are old or new. Oh and only tourists wait for the "walk" sign.
- Peace can be found nearby, at Central Park.
- A camera phone won't do when your camera dies, especially when you stumble upon a film shoot that involves Jodie Foster.
- Oh if you can make it to Joe's Shanghai, go. We promise it's totally worth it.
- I uploaded the ONE day pics here: the New York Trip, June 7-11, 2006.

An Italian Weekend, Good Times

For some odd reason Ian (that's SIR to you) McKellen is in all summer movies these days.

Last Friday I went to watch the The Da Vinci Code with Sandy and some friends. Did anyone notice all the super villains making their appearances in this movie? There was Magneto, Doctor Octopus, and The Cleaner. And had they hired Liam Neeson as Robert Langdon we would have Ducard of the League of Shadow.

Some people are still trying to process the movie. I recommend reading the book.

Happy Birthday Euge (PongOR). Thanks for a nice and relaxing BBQ last Saturday. It's always nice to see such a close knit group of friend (the TASers) having fun. And I am glad I was able to become an "honorary" TAS member. Good times, good times.

I uploaded Eugene's Birthday BBQ to flickr so enjoy them.

On Sunday I'm reminded why men don't go to the opera. It's long, and slow, and NOT in English. Maybe because Madame Opera is a tragedy, but I would have preferred a comedy, like The Marriage of Figaro. I don't know, opera just feels like a very expensive anime. Thanks to Markus for organizing and Jen as the guest of honor.

I uploaded the opera pics here: Jen's Madame Butterfly Opera Party.

I Love GRX Hoops

Last night, while doing fellowship before our game, a captain on the other team shared his thoughts on the topic of patience. We go around the room saying, "Hi my name is so-and-so and I do so-and-so for a living." When we get to the captain, he told us he is helping his parent's plastic business. I started thinking of that funny scene about plastic from The Graduate.

Then we started talking about patience, one of the attributes of a Christian. This time I'm looking around hoping to find volunteers. I don't see many hands go up. I glanced back at the captain and saw that he wanted to share.

"Alvin?"

"Um...I'm looking for a new job. I'll be working at church, full time. It's not definite yet but I'm praying for it." The best part, he seemed so excited and full of hope.

Sometimes these kids at GRX Hoops say things that are pretty encouraging for an old worried-wart like me.

Breakfast, Giants, Geckos Win

I'll start by saying I don't really care much for Barry Bonds. I think his career is dwindling, being overly distracted with all the controversies surrounding him. I'm not even a big Giants fan either. But there is something about being caught up in the wave (bandwagon effect) of a comeback and the excitement of a home crowd that makes last Saturday's game a fun one to watch.

Saturday morning we drove up to Belmont to visit my sister—an aspiring cook—for breakfast. We were the first to arrive. The rest of her guests showed up later and so breakfast was ready. There were the usual french omelettes, bacons, sausages, waffels, fresh strawberry jams, butter-cinamon spread, freshly squeezed OJ, and her much prized Illy café. My favorite dish was the eggs benedict served with hollendaise sauce. Yummy. Phenomenal cooking sis! You have come quite a long ways since going to culinary school.

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Some Photos of 2006 Big Sur Relay Marathon

This is probably a surprise as I haven't really mention it before but here are some photos of this year's Big Sur International Marathon Relay. Our time for Team Tsong Yo Bing and Team Pao Mein were 4:24:15 and 4:24:14, respectively. We really didn't train for this so we decided to just enjoy the scenery and run together. Still our pace came in a respectable 10:12 minute-mile. I've uploaded these photos to my Big Sur Marathon Relay 2006 flickr set.

Enterprise Chinese Food

The Panda Express officially opened at the office. Well sort of. This entire week my company is training customers who use our enterprise software. This happens at least once a quarter. For someone like me who is budget conscious this is a blessing. Nevermind that the office is much quieter and security around here has beefen up, the thing I most enjoy is the FREE lunch (read leftovers).

Today it was chinese food á la Panda Express. Nice and cold.

Yesterday it was sandwiches from "the Bay Area's best"—Le Boulanger.

Coincidentally I know of someone who resides in a condo *ahem*castle*ahem* above Le Boulanger in Cupertino. In fact there is a petition to make residents there be more aware of "the danger of Condo-tino". You can read about the hilarious entry here, here, and here. The condo-tino effect goes well with the white flight effect and if the trend continues condo-tino will be inhabited by mostly well-to-do asians. Sandy can probably relate to the reverse of the "let my people go" line.

Back to FREE lunch, who knows what tomorrow's lunch will be? But IF the people at work catches on to this I may have to hurry to the "lunch" line to avoid the stampede. Although I did get the last pot sticker today.

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Give Away Your Old Running Shoes

I left out something funny that I thought I share here, which has to do with what I wrote earlier about the Peking Acrobats. Essentially I left out a "highlight" of the night so I decided to use Sandy's email to our friend who provided us the tickets as the "mouthpiece" for this part of the entry.

We were in the very first row and dead center. I've never had front row seats for a show before. We even made eye contact with a few of the acrobats. One guy was pretty handsome, and he looked at me a few times then he would loook at Mike and give him a dirty look.

Really I didn't think he was all that. Sure he could do cartwheels and fly from one pole to another with ease but could he debug javascript for crossbrowsers, and say "Web Two Point OH" ten times really quickly. Who am I kidding I can't say it that many times either but the point is he's probably not all that threatening outside of his acrobatic tights.

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Peking Acrobats Blues

VP (Vietpower, ie Alin, ie MD) came through for us, scoring us primo seatings to a grand night out at the San Jose Performance Arts Center last night. Why were we (Sandy+me) there? Oh to watch the Peking Acrobats, of course.

Before checking in to the Peking Acrobats, we made a dinner stop at E&O Trading Company in downtown San Jose. A few weeks ago on our way to the Melting Pot we noticed this quaint restaurant with a name more like an investment company than a 4+ star restaurant (according to Citysearch.)

E&O Trading Co. is basically an asian fusion place. Their menu you can download and view for yourself off of the website I provided above. I read through it and came up with these choices with the priority of getting the most varied foods out there without spending a lot of money. This is what we got in order:

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Take Me Out to the Ballgame

It's always pretty neat to watch the Giants play at SBC (or AT&T or Pacbell) Park. Even better is taking off from work at 4pm to catch the game on the few days it did not rain here. The last time I went to watch the Giants Barry Bonds blasted his 44th homer of the season against the SD Padres.

Last night the Giants lost pretty badly against Houston Astros behind the nearly perfect pitching of Roy Oswalt. I should qualify that by saying the Giants had to play doubleheader games, making up for a rained out and cancelled game last Tuesday. In any case they split the games.

If you do make it out to SBC Park one of the best deal is the spicy Sheboygan sausages. (I was lucky enough to get this advice from Nick and Petey who were with us at the game.) The Sheboygan is basically a huge wurst sausage with grilled onion and sauerkrauts, extraordinarily huge, and extremely tasty—all for $6.50. That usually follows pretty well with the Gordon Biersch garlic fries. Otherwise everything else at SBC can get pretty pricey.

Next game? Giants vs. Dodgers in May (schedule.) Next eats? The Cha-Cha-Bowl.

On another note Barry Bonds was in the news although not in a good way. I think it would be ironic if he was 1 run from Hank Aaron's home run record (755) and he gets thrown in jail. Ouch!

Happy Good Friday and I hope all of you will have a great Easter celebration. And remember to always give thanks to our Lord Jesus.

Follow The Greenbelt Road

I am stuck in code freeze limbo, at work that is. So I decided to notch up the fun factor a bit by planning on a short run. So I approached one of my co-worker with the intention of telling him of said run and get his go-for-it motivational speech. Didn't happen.

"You are delaying the inevitable...a year from now BAM! you'll be in the same shape."..."it's a downhill road for us"..."just eat healthy"...and my personal favorite..."that's why we play ping pong."

Did Christmas arrived early or did the bah-humbug bug bit my friend early this year?

And so with that motivational speech lodged in my brain I decided what the heck it IS a nice day for a run. And run I did nearby where I live, a brief one way out and back down the John Christian Greenbelt, a familar haunting place for another runner clieu. In any case it was a struggle of a run and I hated it. Or in Christian terms I strongly disliked it.

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Madness Part Deux

One madness down, one to go. Tip off starts at 7pm at the new gym.

Feel free to leave your post-mortem Bruins comment(s) here.

Time to go for some refreshment, design-wise.

March Madness, Made Easier

Speaking of the tourney, I went ahead yesterday to set up our company's official NCAA® Tourney pool.

I used Bracket Manager over at CBS Sportsline. Really the whole process was just too easy, enabling my product manager to say, "even a monkey can do it." It makes me wonder...

Now from March 16 to April 3 I will be extremely busy with "work." Please do NOT bother me or IM me, unless it is an emergency. (Oh and if your brain magically turns off like mine during those dates, you can go here to recharge your brain for FREE!) Also if anyone is interested I am "working from home" Thurs. this week to watch the opening rounds of the tourney.

Bring on the Madness!

Oh and Sandy just started her new job at Guidant. Wish her luck! =)

Back From Los Angeles

We made it back from LA. While we did visit many places I mentioned, there were many more we didn't get a chance to visit. Here is a quick run down of the places we visited: Koreatown, 3RD Street Promenade, Westwood-UCLA, Hollywood Walk of Fame-Kodak Theater, drove through Sunset Blvd., ate at Roscoe's and La Creperie in Long Beach, Tustin/Irvine. Overall we logged 1,101 miles on our rental Impala in our 2 days/3 nights stay there. Fun but lots of driving.

Yay! UCLA will be going to the NCAA Tourney ranked number 2. If all goes well the Bruins may even go onto the 2nd round and play in Oakland. I might be able to see them locally, although I read that tickets are sold out. A quick search on Craigslist for tickets show tickets as high as $400 for two.

Wuboy, mongolian_deathworm, and jeeyoungi—all you guys excited? Let's hangout and watch Sat's game. (Will end up Tivoing Thurs. game due to smallgroup.) Who is doing the offical pool this year?

[03.23 Update] Uploaded flickr photoset of the trip. You can view them here.

Los Angeles

The next few days starting tomorrow will see Sandy and myself embarking on a short trip down to LA LA Land. It has been awhile since I have been back to LA. Last night while playing around with a "note" widget in Quicken I briefly jotted down the plans for the trip. If all goes well, Sandy will see a side of LA that will be "all over the map." That is to say we will try to cram 8 years of hustling and flowing in LA to a couple of days.

First the practical matters of car rentals. I quickly fired up Firefox and after some multitabbing was able to side-by-side compare five different such rental places: Thrify, Budget, Hotwire, Fox rentals, Alamo. Fox had the cheapest deals so using that as a stepping ladder I went over to Priceline to use their "name your own price"™ system. After 5 minutes or so of "haggling" I got a full-size car for $15/day—from National. Needless to say I am very satisfied with the Priceline experience.

Fearing that the full-size may be some third world country car I called National in SJC airport to confirm that it wasn't. After some initial misunderstanding a voice off in the distant (really 10 miles away) told me that I had indeed garnered a full-size sedan—a good 'ole USA Chevy Impala. Can you picture it? Driving in LA LA with my Chevy Impala. Bom bom bom Bah Bah bom!

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GRX Hoopsters Unite!

Finally the new GRX Hoops site is up. Take a look at it and play around with it, but more importantly sign up today to play in the league. They do get fill up kinda quickly.

Immersion-SNL Kirkwood Ski Trip: 9 guys, 7 girls, 5 cars, 3 days, 2 nights, 1 cabin, 1 bruised hand (Sands). Props to my Sandles for completing the three quarter of "Lift 9" and not doing the "walk of shame." =) Here is the ski trip pictures at flickr.

Another ski trip photo set from 99zeros.

Hi-lights: Pacifica sea food buffet at Harveys, billiards at the cabin, seeing one of our ski instructors telling Sandy, "I'm not abandoning you" as he skis 30 yards away. =)
Lo-lights: Lost one of my brother's Spyder glove. Peeing at the side of the road in a run down Deliverance-like place. Missing GRX's farewell buidling 899 service.

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The One Hundredth Club

I remembered collecting comic books as a kid and the 100th issue is always jammed pack and full of sweet stuff. Well to commemorate this NOT GIANT-SIZED 100 POST you will see to the left The Amazing Spiderman. Haha...rather randomn...

In any case thank you for the surprised bday party last nite. Thanks to Sands for organizing the whole shebang. To MD for being the point man/door-man, jimmyjam206 for being the caterer. I was surrounded by great friends and felt truly blessed. Everyone of you made last night very memorable. Good times! Good times!

I'll sneak in my flickr's WCC2006 Retreat and end this post with a plea...to those with cameras last nite do send me those pix.

Carmel Getaway

On Saturday Sandy and myself went for a quick getaway to Carmel-By-The-Sea. It was one of the best trip ever! (In an earlier post I mentioned using Yahoo!'s Trip Planner to create a Carmel & Montery trip. On Saturday I decided to visit only Carmel since there were not enough time for both. At some point I will reuse the Yahoo! trip.)

One Peaceful Day for A Stressed-Out Couple

Pre-Trip—Morning:
Having arrived at Sands place 1 1/2 hours late I quickly made concessions by complimenting on how beautiful she looked and gave her a big hug. That seemed to help matters.

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Sausalito Getaway

I am finally posting photos from our Sausalito getaway. Below are two places we ate at while siteseeing in Sausalito.

Sandy and I visited the Lighthouse Café where we had brunch. I think it is owned by a Swedish owner as evidenced by the Swedish flags. This probably explains the simplicity in decor and menu as well. I ordered the three eggs omelette with pancakes and bacons. Sandy ordered the corn hash which came in huge chunks. The food are quite good and generous. The place is tiny so expect a wait.

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The Steelers and The Seahawks and Coronas At The Kevin and Mary

Today while driving around in the afternoon I noticed these large clouds way up there. It is sort of depressing. Then it got me to thinking how Seattlites can stand living where they are living. I heard it rains throughout most of the year there. Gloom. Gloom
GLOOM.

However the gloom may change for the Seattle folks if the Seahawk win Super Bowl XL this upcoming weekend. I haven't really follow this year's football season but who cares it IS Super Bowl weekend. Pittsburg Steelers are expected to win. For me I have taken a liking to the Seahawks for a number of reasons.

1. They fare from the Northwest, which most people aren't familiar with.
2. They have a bald quarterback. (There's a running joke on the sports channel about Matt Hasselbeck doing Rogain commercials if Seattle wins.)
3. They have Shawn Alexander.

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Everybody Loves Raymond

My second time volunteering for Kids Club. This time the kids were much less rowdy, specifically two boys Gregor and Mikey (from my groups are ages 9-10 or classes 4/5). You know things go pretty smoothly where we calm the kids down with sweet snack, patiently ask them to be seated, follow the teachers in body worship. Then we have them repeat Genesis 1-22 on the slides. At this point a few of them are just in complete distractions. They are all volunteered by their parents to be here for two hours but to some of them, "it's like prison!"

Mikey and Gregor are best friends. How do I know? Gregor told me after I asked them what were their favorite Christmas gifts were.

Gregor: I got a new Nintendo game from Mikey. It's my favorite cuz his my best friend.

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Butter Art

So at the end of our GRX's vision week during the dinner part some of us got to have a bit of fun, made some stuff out of our leftover, mostly these butter balls that came with the appetizers.

Guys and girls from Immersion, Race, Knot2Us, Stand, Glue, and Crosstraining got to participate. Here are the group breakdowns: Table 1 (ours: Shelly, Alin, Jimmy, Lauren, Sandy, myself) vs. Table 2. (Christine, Alex, Grace, Victoria)

Round	Table 1	Table 2	Winner
1	Chomp Chomp	Mr. Caterpillar	Chomp Chomp
2	Asian Butterfly	None	Asian Butterfly
3	Kissing Snowfolks	Snowman	Kissing Snowfolks

Butter Art Images (compliments of L-Dawg)

         
(Clicking on each thumbnails will open up a larger image in a new window.)

In the end it was just a little bit of fun after a long and sometimes "over the head" theological discussions—oh and I am not endorsing that you play with your food.

Gift Parties and Weekend Plans

Last night Sandy stole back a white elephant gift that is something I have been thinking of getting...a Sony headphone for my old-school G4 iPod™. When you go to these white elephant gift exchanges I learned that it is of advantage when you partner up with someone, say your significant other, i.e. your girlfriend. I'll call this the 'couple's advantage' rule. (NOTE: we didn't come up with this scheme as someone at the party suggested it.)

In return I stole from her what she wanted a: photo wheelset. Hopefully she will use that for our photos. Hint hint.

Two gift exchanges/white elephant parties down, two more to go. Tonight I will not have the couple's advantage...but it's not required as it is a Secret Santa gift exchange, then on to the family during Christmas Eve. Sandy and myself will be lost among the throngs of shoppers looking for gifts for my nieces and nephews and the siblings at the mall tomorrow. To those last minute shoppers good luck and God be with you. haha.

Narnia vs. King Kong

I willl be seeing Narnia this weekend with Sandy although King Kong looks pretty good, too. In the end good old-fashioned C.S. Lewis storytelling along with what I heard are lots of Christian themed ideas won us over. That plus the enthusiastic endorsement by Helen (wife of our church's senior pastor). BTW did anyone see the BBC version with the human scaled Beaver family. They looked pretty goofy. I hope the special FX will be much better in the film.

Pale Blue Dot

Sometimes we forget how big God is. Or rather we don't want to feel how small we are compared to God. During Chris Tomlin's "Indescribable Tour", a speaker—Louis Giglio— talked about our place in the Universe from God's POV. The thumbnail image on the left inside that ray of light is a speck called the "Pale Blue Dot". That's Earth from four billion miles away taken by Voyager 1.

Carl "Billions and Billions of Stars" Sagan wrote about this on his Reflections on a Mote of Dust.

This, a psalmist's reflection: Psalm 8:3-4.

Images courtesy of Planetary Photojournal.

Jerusalem Lions Walk

You know that scene with Jake Gyllenhaal and Jamie Foxx where they are playing Kayne West's "Jesus Walk" song in the trailer of Jarhead—well that is the sort of song I have in mind for this post. Why? Haha Jerusalem Lions are going to the Championship of GRX Hoops ministry!

Finally after having all of the captains predicted us to go last (10-1 odds) it is even more sweeter to go play this weekend. Well to be fair two of my best players were "Dark Horse"—Darryll Burgess and Kenneth Lee. Please come out to Lynbrook High to watch what will be a good game if not a great game between us Lions and Nick Fan's Jordan Gazelles. Here is the direction if you want to come watch. Game time at 7:50pm Sunday night.

The only downside that night is that Sandy won't be able to witness a great game. Have fun in Hawaii Sands. Will miss you on the court.

Bom bom bom bom BUM bom...

New York City

I've been back from New York since last Saturday and here are some photos taken from my 4 year-old Fuji Finepix. I wished I took more photos but was not able to bring it along with me for most of the tour. Aside from the hustle and bustle, the numerous taxi cabs, the tall buildings nestling next to Central Park, New York is one beautiful place. As Sandy likes to put it, "Doesn't New York [City] feel like the center of the universe?"

With that in mind, I have this humble Flickr set of our trip to New York City. Sandy and myself (along with her friends Julie and Erica) were very blessed by the weather there as well as the chance to visit New York together (my first trip and Sandy's third.) Good times. Good times.

SV Marathon By The Numbers

4:38:53.2

+ 3000 est number of runners + 354 bib # + 336 overall male placement + 213.1 total training mileage + 10:40 pace + 70 entry fee cost + 46 age group placement + 22 miles—you could walk faster than I was running + 20 miles—hitting the "wall"—physically out of energy + 18 miles—mental doubt of finishing + 12 weeks in training + 4 PowerBar energy gels drank + 3 doused water on my head/back + 3 races leading up to SVMara: 2x10Ks and 1x5K + 2 Ben-Gay patches on calves + 1 restroom break + 1 ice pack for right knee + 1 FINISHER's medal. WOOT WOOT!!! Continue reading

Main Course: Pasta, Gu and Asics