found + lost

a while ago, i lost track of where i put one of my travel pouches and a necklace. i figured they were somewhere in my mess of a room and if i ever got around to cleaning it, i'd find them both. but last weekend, my mom found my necklace still tucked in a little bag in something i'd borrowed from her. and then, this friday at youth group, i noticed my travel pouch sitting on the table (i'd brought it for the winter lock-in as a first-aid kit....yeah....it's been THAT long...).

Hurray! i went home SOOooooo happy that night. everything i'd been looking for has been found and i didn't even have to clean my room! =P But then, as i was changing clothes, one of my earrings fell out and after crawling all over my room inspecting the floor and bedspread, i was still unable to find it. Boooey. those were one of my favorite pairs. *sigh* so i didn't get to enjoy not having anything lost for very long. :( are you looking for something? if so, what?

imma

yea yea...i took that personality dna survey..you know i'm a sucker for those things. anyhow i'm supposedly a Benevolent Inventor. but i'm not sure i agree (with the inventor part especially). what do you think?

what's in a zip code?

Just saw an article on yahoo on the 50 most expensive zip codes in the U.S. and then flipped thru the slideshow that forbes did on it. CA & NY totally dominated the list. Altho most of the CA entries are SoCal, a few NorCal cities made the cut too: Atherton, Los Altos, Saratoga, Los Gatos... Just looking at the pics of those sprawling estates (the word "house" doesn't even come close to describing them...unless we're talking about some of the CA ones ;)...). But there is one pic that doesn't quite fit in.... #46 - Nantucket, Mass. who'd pay a mil for that??

Nantucket shack

wouldn't mind owning either of these 2 places tho! :)

and so the uploading begins...

prague pics are up.... view the slideshow if you want to see the captions
and check back later for the rest of the cities!

wat? no TV?!

Right when I'm just about caught up on all my TV (just watched TAR semi-live today!!! & one ep of Lost to go), i read about a grassroots TV turn off week movement that is Apr 24-30 (this week)!! Uh....guess i missed it this year. ah well...maybe next year. =P

Today was my group's annual Habitat for Humanity Day. So i was up at the crack of dawn (ok...7am) to head up to Daly City (sOOooooooo close to SF & yet so far away!) to help out on a couple houses that they're building for low-income families. I worked on exterior painting and others in my group worked on putting up a fence, irrigation and making a back patio (labor intensive!!). The painting was done for the most part, so after finishing up, we spent most of the afternoon touching up everywhere...attn to detail very key...and trying not to mess up the stuff that was already there. I got paint all over me, but on the bright side, my clothes are clean! haha And the nice part was getting home by 5:30pm. I had the rest of the day all planned out...so much to do....read my Bible passages for the day...sort & post europe pics...email some ppl...prayer mtg @ 7pm. And after a nice hot shower (of scrubbing off paint), i promptly crashed on my bed till 9pm!! haha Thus wiping out all my previous plans, but just in time to watch 2 eps of pre-recorded TAR. Guess it was more tiring than i thought. But i'm thankful for the much-needed downtime. Too bad it's back to reality tomorrow! But on the bright-side, hump day's over and thur = ultimate. yay!

just plain wacky

I had the weirdest dream last night. I don't remember all the details anymore, but it involved some gigantic, ritzy hotel suite that had a white grand piano in it, an asian lady who brought a purple sleeping bag, some guy, Richard Gere and another woman. And I was laughing at something so hard my stomach hurt. When I woke up, for a split second, i thought it was monday already (that was the true nightmare..."what?! what happened to the rest of the weekend? oh. whew....it's still sunday. but oh shoot! it's already 8:30?! i'm gonna be late for church!!").

On a side note, I came upon this passage while I was doing my BIAY saturday that was encouraging to me so I wanna share it. 1 Cor 1:25 (NIV) "For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." It's really a relief that when I don't know what's the best thing to do...I can pray to God, who knows all things, is gentle and wise beyond my comprehension. And when I'm tired and running out of steam, God has enough strength and enough love & compassion to pick me up and carry me. I'm so thankful for Him!

cubicles: the great mistake

while i'm on this rampage against work...here's an article from a while back about how even the creator of cubicles regretted his invention. I just got around to reading it. :) Just looking at the pics of those cubicle spaces is depressing!


and for your amusement:


wasn't there a news story from a while ago about a guy who died in his cubicle and wasn't discovered for like a week?

want a drink?

I've mentioned how great intel employee discounts are before in a previous blog. just wanted to give you an update on the latest generosity of this great company!

recently, there was a sign in our cafetria stating that "all paper plates/products, cups, sauces, condiments, etc are for the express use of cafe customers". So, instead of using their cups for water, I have taken to bringing my own water bottle in when i need a refill. it's a good practice in helping the environment anyhow...but the sign left me with a rather negative feeling towards the cafetria maintainers. And I guess that didn't stop other ppl tho, cuz monday, we walk into the cafetria to discover that now cups are $0.10 (for all ppl, customers or not!). Wow....$0.10 for an empty cup. Niiiiice! (ok, this is not quite accurate, the cups are $0.10 only if used for water. i guess the cost of sodas have included the cup price...and they still provide some dinky free cups if you really only want water....but STILL)

nothing's free here. no free coffee/tea/hot chocolate (not even the vending machine kind like most other companies give)....no free snacks (like some of the better companies)...no free meals (unless you stay late during crunch time)....ooo. wait! we get free internet connection!!! and hey! parking's free. yippee!! =P

hodge podge

I've barely been home a week and yet it already feels like i never left...europe? that was all just a dream, right? wasn't i right here all along? So Sad.

Sunny days, sweeping the clouds away...
Just LOOK at that gloriously blue sky!! With the weather so nice, it's tough to come into work and sit in a cube all day. *sigh* It's soooo nice to wake up to such great weather tho. all that blue peeking thru the blinds is at complete odds with my inability to get out of bed. it's finally beginning to feel like spring! yay! :) and it's hard not to feel hopeful, like everyday's gonna be a great day and like something exciting's in the air (even tho i know full well that today's just gonna be another day at the office). But on the bright side, it's tuesday! monday sure flew by fast and we're one day closer to the weekend already! (photo taken today courtesy of SJSU's live camera)

Super Buffet
Went to Super Buffet (saratoga & stevens creek) with the fam on saturday and was impressed by how much seafood there was. i'd heard so many rave reviews (and so had my mom & bro) that we were afraid of being disappointed. plus, my bro was asking how good can it be with a name like that? and have you ever heard of freakonomics? it's a book and there's a part in it about how using certain words in an ad for your house can increase the selling price or decrease it. (for example, "fantastic", "granite", "state-of-the-art", "charming"...which do you think increase and which decrease? answers in the comments) but back to the buffet...there really was a lot of seafood (as advertised)...fried shrimp, clams, mussels, crab legs (i always avoid these tho cuz i'm too lazy and it's so messy to eat =P), some sashimi, limited sushi, and even lobster (you have to line up and you're limited to 2pp). i didn't think i ate that much, but man! was i full afterwards. And for $16.99 weekend dinner price, definitely worth it. But it reminded me how much i really prefer normal restaurants (unless it's indian buffet) cuz i hate stuffing myself...and generally buffet food quality really ain't all that. Overall, not bad tho. I actually have a chance of eating enuf to merit the cost here (authentic chinese thinking)!

In the news!
Check this out! a friend's start-up (crispynews.com) made it into the SF Chronicle. neat!

Europe?
Yes. yes. europe pics. don't worry, i haven't forgotten. (altho, are you sure i was even gone? if it never happened, that would explain why i'm taking so long...but then where was i for that whole time? hrm...) ok ok. it'll be up sometime next week probably. i'll even have some blogs about it since you've been so patient. :)

dilbert on intel

ever feel like your day's like this?

can't concentrate at work, so here's the route of the trip! :) We began in Prague, overnighted to Krakow, another overnight to Budapest, 3-hr train ride (bliss!) to Vienna and the another overnight to Frankfurt. Stayed ~2 days at each place. Way way tiring. But very very smart that we went from eastern europe to western europe!!

i am returned

after 12 days, 6 hotels, 5 countries, 4 planes rides, 3 overnight trains, 300+ pics and countless stories, i have returned! did you miss me? :) i wanted to post a pic of our trip route at least, but blogger's having problems. so ah well. bleh. i can't believe i have to go straight back to work.

kudos to those of you who noticed that the trip ran longer than the original plan (11 days)...of Course there's a story behind that, but you'll have to wait to hear it. hee hee
OH YEAH! and if anyone's got last week's eps of 24, TAR or Lost, please let me know! No one in my family adjusted the clocks (ie. the VCR clock!!) for DST, so all the times were wrong for my programming.

just as a warning, should i ever get around to blogging the trip, it will appear post-dated (on the actual dates of the events), so watch out for that!