Author: Doris

The Good New Times.

It was a good, but tiring weekend in LA. I drove down Thursday night and got to Ted’s place at around 1am. I found him and his roommate, James, playing Gears of War on Xbox 360, so of course I had to play for an hour or 2. Ted and I ended up talking a bit too – didn’t sleep until about 4am.

Friday, I woke up late, Ted had to get his new stereo install at the very same Circuit City that I had tried to buy Mom her original iPod nano. Anyways, they messed up the install, and now the stereo whines when the car revs. Grounding problem? New Amp? Dunno. But we went to the Circuit City no less than 3 times this weekend. 🙂

We hung out a bit with Nolan and Huong. They are always really good hosts to me. Never can seem to pay for my own dinner when we go out to eat. So thanks Nolan. Also Nolan was the keeper for my old Klein Attitude hardtail, affectionately known as, Bluesy. I got it back from him considering Nolan now has at least.. 5-10 bikes in his stable. 🙂 Well, now I’ve got 5 bikes in my stable, that I’m not quite sure what to do with, but we’ll think of something.

We did some time trialing also. This is good cause I signed up to to the time trialing portion of the Wildflower Tri with Yi-Ling and her friend Meera. 56 miles, racing. Yikes. Our team name? GunningForNotLast. 🙂 Ted and I raced on the way out to determine our handicap, and then raced on the way back, with Ted starting ahead of me based on the handicap. He beat me by 30 seconds… grrrr..

Also I went to catch a one-woman show. It was Carrie Fisher’s Wishful Drinking. Basically a satire on how fucked up her life was, and it was pretty fucked up. 🙂 Best line of the night: “Dating your Ex is like the victory of hope, over experience.” 🙂 Oh yes, I forgot to say that I had my first celebrity spotting in LA. Leonard Maltin was not only at the play, but he also ate at the same pizza joint that Ted and I went to before the show. ha ha!

Not a lot of pics from the weekend, Here’s some of us hanging out in Old Pas. Ted, you’ve got a good eye, you should take up photography.

Oh yeah, also more confirmation that my Orange Jacket is cool. a random stranger came up to me at Ralph’s and told me that she liked my jacket. 🙂

And if TJ Houshmandzadeh outscores Chris Henry in tonight’s Cincy-Indy game, then I’m in the Fantasy Football Super Bowl! Woo hoo!

 
Ted hanging out at Mi Piace.
 
Huong, Nolan’s wife, also chilling out. 

On vacation from our vacation.

It’s a shame that once on vacation, I don’t blog, because lots of things happen when we are on vacation and I don’t want to forget about them all!

First, before I forget, I wanted to thank my secret pal for the oodles of wonderful gifts for me and the kids. I especially loved the yarn bras – I was just thinking of buying some for myself. Vince went crazy over the Spiderman motorcycle, that thing is amazing. Edda (who is pretty hard to shop for) seemed to enjoy My Little Pony.

Secret pal

Thank you! Thank you!

So we made it to New York, and wore our winter jackets around.

Out for a walk.

As soon as we got over the worst of the jet lag, we flew to another time zone. Austin is only 1 hour off New York, not as bad as the 12 from Singapore. Austin is the best town in the US. I love it so much, it’s hip and cool and there are great places to eat and run. But most of all, it is the home of many of our friends! We got to spend most of the weekend hanging out with the Strickers who have been family friends of the Martins for over 40 years. Jeremy mom Katherine and Scott’s mom Rolleen became friends when Katherine was in high school and Scott and Jeremy grew up with each other in their lives and now our children are becoming great friends. It’s really nice to see.

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This is one of my favorite photos from this weekend, you can see all the Strickers and most of us going on the morning dog walk in their neighborhood. We didn’t do anything special, we just hung out at their house and played and ate and talked. The weather was wonderful.

I also had the wonderful chance to see Kate and Abby, who are my good friends from Singapore. Abby just turned 1 and is so cute and chubby and about a minute from being able to walk around. So cute!

iPod 2nd Generation

Mom would like to have a new iPod. I searched the web today and found out that the closest Apple iPod store is at Charlottes, NC. – 3 1/2 hours drive away, on way.

Since the weather was good and, along the way, we could also enjoy some music together. So off we went to the South Mall of Charlottes. Well, this mall is a bit fancier than the Augusta Mall. A “Neiman Marcus” is in there too. Mom looked at one jacket was 20% off. Guess how much? It was merely ~$2,500.00. There were a lot of them hanged there along several racks. This jacket was really good, 100% cashmere. I liked it. The color along with the style was good too. Well, may be next time.

Too bad, we just found out this mall by accident. Or else, I am sure Mom would like to go there often. Eventually, I bought Mom a 4 gigs iPod. With lanyard, it was about $250.00. Of course, it came without all those small things, such as bag, ear covers, etc. included in the 1st generation iPod.

I just finished setting the new one up. I inherited the old one of 1 gig that Mom had.

So, if we are getting tired of hearing each other too much or really mad at each other, we all could plug our ears with iPod. Hope we don’t have this “2-iPod Moment” too many. “1-iPod Moment” is always there, Mom said 🙂

Surprise Choon!

Last Night we had a surprise birthday party for Choon! Details to follow when I have time, but some photos. Enjoy!

(edit)

So it was Tuesday Night. Choon and PS were off dropping Joe at the airport. They left their house around 8:45ish? I snuck in thru the side door and was the first one there at 9:15. And so while bored, I proceded to set the high score on Choon’s Bot It Extreme. (Too bad they use an 8 bit counter so the high score only goes up to 250. (Yes an 8 bit counter goes to 255, but that’s just a weird number to end at for non-CS people)) Ha. Everyone soon came in afterwards. We piled into the new office of Choon’s startup waiting for them to come home.

We got a bit of a warning, but Xin barely made it out of the bathroom before Choon opened the door. Unfortunately, Choon, instead of walking to the rear of the house where we were, he decided to walk towards the front, and while turning out the lights he noticed all our shoes on the back porch. 🙂 And then the gig was up! I don’t know why we didn’t just rush him to begin with, and I’m surprised that he didn’t hear us in the back room. We were whispering really loudly.

Laff. Lynn provided the cakes – a chocolate vegan and the better one, the tiramisu cake with lady fingers. Also instead of candles, we used the illegally imported british sparklers. Who knew Zaniab was in the smuggling business.

Some of the photos below are Lynn’s. I gave her a quick lesson in apeture and depth of field. Wheeee!

 
Sparklers instead of Candles. Go Brits!
 
Lynn’s. I like.
 
YA Lynn’s. She’s learning to be a pro now.
 
Toro – the centerpiece!