Superbowl Weekend

Steph decided to have a superbowl party on Sunday and it turned out to be quite alot of fun. Everyone brought a little something and I made my famous cheesecake. I experimented with one by adding peanut butter and it came out really good! I'll definitely have to try that one again. No one except for Steph and Chad was paying any attention to the game, I guess they were the only two that were into football. The rest of us were paying more attention to the ads than the game. One of the cutest ads has got to be the one for Budweiser where the little pony's trying to pull this huge carriage and as he's coming out of the barn, you see two other little ponies at the back pushing the carriage, helping their friend along. That was just soooo sweet =) After the game, we all watched the very dramatic Grey's Anatomy. It was a pretty good episode except that we didn't like how it left us hanging in the end.

We didn't really do much on Friday evening. Went to the mall and shopped a little and later just chilled out at Steph's house playing cards. Saturday was Emily's birthday. After playing cards all night, I went to MU's Rec center with Dave and worked out the next morning. I did weights and ran for about 4 miles and later just chilled at the sauna, very relaxing. I'm proud of myself for keeping up with my schedule so far. I hope I'll see some results soon. After that we just hung out with Justin and Chad at Cherry St and later met at Pasta House for Em's birthday dinner. After dinner, we all went to Shattered and danced to 80's music.

All in all, it was a fun weekend but I definitely feel that I'm partying it up a little too much. There are many chores at home that is ignored but the way I see it is I should take full advantage of the situation while everyone's still in Columbia. After the summer, everyone will be done with school and only God will know what will happen then. I have a suspicion that my social life will come to a screeching halt. I'm really not looking forward to that but there's nothing much I can do.

TGIF

Yesterday, I saw on the news that Muslims across the world are outraged by some political cartoon making fun of Prophet Mohammed. I know this is a very sensitive subject but when there is freedom of expression how far can it go? Is it black and white or is there a big grey area? There are times when I question this freedom. Recently I learnt that a local KKK/white supremacy group has been handing out flyers on car windshields at a local strip mall. This was especially scary for a person of my racial background to know that there are groups of people like this out there. It was quite disturbing and it's situations like this that makes me question this freedom. Personally I feel that this whole Prophet caricature situation is just blown out of proportion and I kinda like the very PC reply of the Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen where he goes "Neither the Danish government nor the Danish nation as such can be held responsible for drawings published in a Danish newspaper; A Danish government can never apologise on behalf of a free and independent newspaper and This is basically a dispute between some Muslims and a newspaper." You go gurl....fingers snapping...

Today is just one of those days. I have plenty of work to do but I'm just sitting here surfing one website after another, just asking to be fired I guess. These days I just don't have the motivation to work anymore. I guess my theory is I'm just coasting till I finally receive my Greencard then I'll be outta here but till then I'll just have stay under the radar and pretty much just...coast. It's so hard to plan my life when literally every aspect of my life depends on me being a citizen or greencard holder, sometimes I just don't feel that this is very fair but then again nobody forced me into wanting to live & work here. I could've easily gone home and gotten a pretty good job (like my brothers who also came here for school) and be around friends and family but I guess deep down I wanted more. The funny thing is the past 5 years of my life has been so focussed on obtaining a greencard that I'm afraid I might just lose that focus or direction when I actually get that darn piece of plastic but that's of no concernn for another 1-3 years.

Hari Raya celebration at Elleen's with yummy food. Elleen, Joe, Me an H2.

On a separate and more encouraging note, I have started a new workout/diet routine this week. I just got done reading "Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscles" by Tom Venuto and I must say, this book has taught me a lot on how the human body works. I am applying some of his advise to my lifestyle, i.e. eating 5 small meals/day, doing cardio everyday for at least 30 mins and doing weights for 3 days (Mon, Wed & Fri). It's too soon to see any results but I hope it won't be counterproductive for I did not follow everything down to every detail. I am incorporating protein (chicken breast, egg whites, tuna, salmon) into every meal just like he advised and drinking lots of water. I'm running for 30-40 minutes everyday and doing weights every other day. But I did not set a clear goal, nor did I calculate my daily calories and body fat. Hopefully these will be too trivial and I'll still be able to see some results.

Can you read this?

Olny srmat ppoeloe can.
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The pahonmanel pweor of the hmuan mnid, aodcrcnig to a rscheearch at Cbmarigde Uinesrvtiy, it dseont mtater in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a perbolm. Tihs is busecae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Aimzang huh? Yaeh and I awlyas tghhuhot slpeling was itpnoramt! if you can raed tihs psas it on!!

Very interesting....a co worker of mine passed this to me.

Hokkien Song

Wahhhh Lauuu!!! Damn funny, all you hokkien song enthusiast you have to listen to this :) Click on the link below and then click on the "zap" button!

http://blog.galvintan.com/index.php/2005/08/03/ji-pa-ban/

Enjoy!



Chinese New Year Weekend Recap:
Drove in to Kansas City on Saturday with H2. Dave rode along to visit James. Got in around lunch time and hung out at the Plaza, met H2's friend Kenneth and had lunch at Cuppenni's. Later met up with Tze + YS, Elaine + Kyle and we all had lunch at Pine Bamboo. Later that night H2 and I went to the Grand Emporium! It was quite slow at first but slowly picked up and we all started dancing. Met Ken's other half Jeff, they're both very cool.
Next day we didn't do much except for going to Salsa's for the CNY party. The atmosphere reminded me of CNY as there were kids running around in new clothes and adults just talking and having fun. The food was good but not too many options.

Gong Xi Fa Cai

Here's wishing all of you a Happy and Prosperous New Year! May the Dog year bring you lots of good fortune and wealth...

OMG! OMG! OMG!

I just found out from my attorney that my Labor Certification has finally, FINALLY been approved! I know I have yet to receive my Greencard but this is a HUGE step towards it. After 3 long years and it is finally APPROVED! From here on out, I might have another 1 year to 3 1/2 years left depending on how Congress votes on Retrogression so let's keep our fingers crossed.

Visitor from the Big Apple

It's been a while since I've posted. Lately (last couple weeks) I have this feeling of completely zero motivation. I'm really not sure what's the cause, it could be my personal life, diet, work or a bunch of other things that I just don't know about. Anyway this week has improved slightly as I keep trying to psych myself up.

Anyway here's what happened weekend of Jan 21 & 22.

I found out that Fang, a friend of Linli's in NYC, was in Jefferson City for a week on business. I just discovered that she works at Deloitte (just like our blur queen friend Elaine) and was in town to work with scholastic. Anyway we talked on the phone and finally met up on Friday for dinner at House of Chow Chee Bai, where H2 and Dr Matt came along. The dinner was alot of fun; food was good, conversation flowing and our fav dish mei chai khou rou YUM! Later that evening bunch of us (Joe, Dave, Em, Steph, H2, Mas, Eric, Justin, Fang and myself) went out to Generic and partied the night away. Too bad clubs in Columbia close at 1:30am, so we had an after party at my place ;)

The next day, we (Joe, Fang & I) had brunch at Ernie's and then drove down to Lake of the Ozarks for some Outlet Mall shopping. It was fun, I finally used the gift card I received from KC gang to buy myself that nice Coach wallet. Fang went crazy at the Ralph Lauren store, I bet the employees just loooove her there. We got back pretty late but still managed to check out the really yummy Italian/French restaurant Trattoria. After dinner, Fang was wore out so she went back to Jeff City and I went to Soco with Joe, Dave, Justin and Eric. It was not too fun...the music sucked and not too many people there. After that we went to another after party at Ben's (Justin's friend) house and finally left at around 3am.

On Sunday (Joe, Dave, Em and I) drove down to Jeff City to go Ice Skating with Clint. It was fun, I have not ice skated in AGES and I think the last time I did it was in some mall in Malaysia. Didn't really do much after that I just chilled out, watched DHW, GA and prepare myself for another week of torture at the office.

As usual I have yet to upload my pictures....

This upcoming weekend (Jan 28 & 29) will be Chinese New Year! I'll be spending it in Kansas City with H2 and the KC gang...

Pictures from MN Ski Trip

Well I finally got the pictures from Dave (he was the official photographer for the trip)
We didn't take a whole lot but here are some of the better ones.

On our drive up to Minneapolis we decided to stop somehwere in Iowa to have dinner at a Denny's where we confused the heck out of the server.


We got into the twin cities late that night. Next day bright and early we went skiing.


Next day was New Year's Eve we had dinner with Steph and her friends and then later off to clubbing we went ;)




After that was New Years day, the last day of our trip :( We spent the afternoon eating at House of Wu and Mall of America.

Pictures from Xmas in St Louis

Again all these pictures were in Dave's camera, so sorry for the delay ;)

H2 and I drove in to St Louis and had a great time. We watched Brokeback Mountain on Friday 12/23 with Dave, Em and Matt and later went out to the clubs in St Louis. For those of you who has not seen the movie, I highly recommend it but remember to bring a box of kleenex.

Joe and Don joined us later at the Complex which was not as fun as the previous times we've been (maybe it's because it was a Xmas eve eve and a Friday night)


At the basement of Loading Zone playing pool

St Louis is so much fun

Drunk Matt being crazy in the car.

New year, new cars we wish we had

This two definitely caught my eye when I saw it on Autoblog. I've really been wanting a convertible anyway so when I saw this VW, I was totally salivating ;P The first one is the VW Eos (convertible) and the second, Mazda CX-7, I just love for it's forward design.



The VW Eos is a convertible hardtop exactly what I need. AND it even incorporates a sunroof into the hard top, apparently the first of it's kind which goes up in a breeze 25 s, how amazing is that! The U.S. market Eos will get VW’s 2.0L turbo four-cylinder rated at 200-hp or a 250-hp, 3.2L V6.



I was totally in love with the Nissan Murano when that came out but now, I think i like this Mazda CX-7 more! This baby rides on a 244-hp, 2.3L turbo four-cylinder with direct-injection. The motor is shared with the new MazdaSpeed6, though specially tuned for the CX-7 to deliver 258 lb-ft of torque. A six-speed sport automatic will help the new ute deliver a combined estimated 23 mpg which is not bad at all!

Well every year, I have a few cars that I'm just so in love with. Last year it was the Pontiac Solstice and Scion TC. Well maybe one of these years, I might just be able to own one!

You can send your donations to.....(j/k y'all)

New Years MN Ski Trip!

Man oh man...what a trip!!! (more pictures will be posted when i get them from Dave)

I must say it was an absolute blast eventhough it was hair pulling frustrations at times.

We started the drive up on Thursday 12/29 around 1 pm as I managed to snake out of work early. It was pointless for me being there, all our other locations were closed anyway. Em and Matt met at my house and we drove my car to Blue Springs where we met up with Dave. The drive up to MN was good, roads were not too bad until we got into the twin cities where it started to snow, just a little, no crazy ass snow like they usually get (thank god). We stayed the 1st night with KK in Shoreview, MN. I ended up staying up pretty late that night just catching up with KK.

Next morning we got up bright and early as Matt the snowboarder wanted to hit the snow "fresh" (whatever that means). We grabbed a quick breakfast at BK and away to Afton Alps we went. We got there at around 10am and by the time we parked, paid ($34 entrance fee & $19 for equipment) and got our equipment, it was around 10:30 when we hit the slopes. It was a completely new experience for me (ski virgin here) and Matt was showing me the ropes. Amazingly, I picked it all up pretty fast and quickly progressed from the bunny hill to the blue hills within a couple of hours. As the day progressed, I got more comfortable and we raced and even tried the black diamonds. It was great and I can't believe I've been missing out on skiing in the last 8 years I've been in this country. I think this is definitely something I want to do again! The downhill skiing was great fun, I can do that all day but tiring and time consuming part was walking between slopes and trying to find one another. We finally called it quits at around 6pm and headed to Steph's place in Hudson, WI. Her parents had a very nice hot tub which we all made good use of. We were too tired to do anything else.

The next day was NYE! We slept in and hung out at Ikea and later that evening had dinner with Steph's friends Chris and Todd. Dave, Matt and me broke off from the group as they wanted to party in the St Paul area. We left after dinner, got KK and off to downtown Minneapolis we went. We ended up in this club called the Gay 90s and celebrated New Years there. It was a pretty cool club, very big with very "interesting" rooms =) The GOOD thing is no smoking in the bars but the BAD thing is they close at 2am. We got a pizza went to KK's and totally crashed.

New Years day was the last day we were to be in MN. We introduced Dave and Matt to the Twin Cities' best chinese duck restaurant (House of Wu) and later shopped at Mall of America eventhough Matt was vehemently against the entire idea. He ended up finding a comfortable spot with an interesting book. We left MN at approx 5pm and made our way back to Columbia. We got back in town at around 2am.

All in all the trip went really well. The two highlights were definitely skiing and NYE's celebration. There were minor spats with everyone having their own agenda but everyone ended up compromising. I will definitely do it all over again!

Happy 2006!