attention everyone... after one year... and 5 comments left by eric about how his blog sucks.... caleb chu posted again! go visit his blog!

if you missed the hilarious audition, here it is! to give the poor guy credit, he at least stays somewhat on tune, which is more than i can say for half of those other auditions. it's... just... that dancing...

oh man did anyone watch American Idol last night? That chinese fob in the san francisco audition was hilarious. He told the camera he's a civil engineering major at Cal. Ack, he's giving Berkeley engineers a bad name! We don't all dance and sing like him!

pics are up!

happy new year!
arex fob bday
byria's wedding

enjoy :)

Whew, what a tiring weekend... it was fun, but I'm glad it's over. Here's a not-so-brief and probably boring recap (read bob's if you want a better version)

*got to the LA area around 2am Thurs nite... we kept ourselves awake by singing really loudly to each other over the walkie talkies (imagine JT singing "My Heart Will Go On" as loud as he can) and playing the movie quote game (which i really suck at). had to drop off bob's bro, dave, at some random gas station off 405. We probably looked a little suspicious hanging out in our cars in a gas station in the middle of the night. the gas attendant walked up to our cars, but i guess he changed his mind and turned around at the last second.

*had a decently relaxing Friday... got up early to log into work, which didn't matter, because my coworker still called me like another 15 times after i logged off. seriously, i logged in for two hours, and then 3 minutes after i log off, bob and i both get a miscall on our phones, and jt comes stumbling out of his room saying alice is trying to call me. apparently, my coworker called alice to get a hold of me since my cell phone was getting no reception. my other coworker told me that by the afternoon, after like his umpteenth call to me, she could hear him cackling to himself as he picked up the phone to call me yet again. sheesh. ;) we stayed in PV, so we headed down to what used to be kind of a beach, but is now partly covered with a clubhouse & golf course. still managed to walk around on the very rocky beach and hang out for a bit. i was really tempted to grab one of those golf carts and drive around... we even found one by itself in the middle of nowhere with a key in it.

*went to late lunch at The Loft to see Byron & others before heading to our hotel to check in & go to rehersal. got to rehersal about an hour early, where our quartet practiced only for the second time together. thankfully, we didn't mess up too much during the wedding... the music has quite a saga to it, but to make a very long story short, we didn't get the music until a week ago due to the retarded post office system. but hey, at least we did get the music. :)

*fri night, had one of the most hilarious conversations ever... amy, me, andrea, and alice were in bed and somehow the conversation led to oranges. She claims we've ruined her "world of fruit" forever. I was laughing so hard, i was crying, and my stomach was in major pain.

*sat morning, woke up at 6:45 am b/c crazy andrea and alice got up to exercise. amy and i couldn't fall back to sleep after that, so we decided to jump into eva's bed and wake her up. had breakfast with amy, eva, alice, andrea, jean & reni. ate at reni's all-time favorite restaurant, King's Hawaiian. I swear, everytime I go visit reni, we eat there. in fact, the girls who didn't go to rehersal hung out with reni fri nite, and guess where they ate... king's hawaiian. hahahaha. the church byria got married at was literally 2 blocks away from reni's house.

*went back to our hotel, got ready, and then headed back to the church for the wedding. everything went really well, and the ceremony went off without a hitch. the church's wedding coordinator was um, a little bossy, but it all went well :)

*the reception was fun, although our table was a disaster zone. for once, it wasn't me dropping and spilling everything! :) skit was hilarious - andrew ng makes a great gandalf (loved the costume), mike is byron's secret twin, and andrea really played maria up. kleenex and all. hehe. oh and of course, there was arex with his hong kong accent as the shady hong kong ring distributor.

*went to bread of life sun morning with about 1/3 of the canaan ppl who came down. went to lunch, then headed back up... for some reason, it felt like it took forever to get home. pretty funny, i was in geo's car, and we were driving along highway 5, with the other two cars behind us. all of a sudden, we ran into crystal's crv and P. Dan's minivan! hahaha too funny. they joined our caravan for a while until we all pulled over to a rest stop and they took off first. after that we hit too much traffic to catch up to them again.

*had an emergency stop at casa de fruita, because of me. thanks guys :) hey, i was thirsty, i drank a whole bottle of water... what can you say. geo, mike and i had a conversation about where else the liquid in your body could go so that i wouldn't have to pee so badly. obviously none of us were bio majors, because mike told me to go do a lot of exercise... but can you sweat out the liquid if it's already sitting in your bladder? cal engineers at our best. haha. george shared a wonderful story with us about his high school math teacher who went to mexico where it was like 120 degrees and the guy didn't have to pee for an entire week. but when he did, it was super-concentrated. that's just NASTY. anyway, thankfully we stopped, because we hit some traffic on 152. once again entertained ourselves with some singing and movie quotes (it was more like jt & mike playing the movie quotes game since the rest of us didn't know anything). JT drained all the batteries on his walkie talkie singing the entire song of "Born to Be Wild" to us. I could look behind us and see joy trying to grab the walkie talkie out of jt's hand and andrea agonizing in pain, covering her ears with her pillow as he sang. unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?), enoch & bob couldn't participate b/c their talkie totally ran out of batteries.

Thank God, we all made it back in one piece. and it was such a joy to see byron & maria get married. I think this was the first wedding I went to where I really knew both the bride & groom well, so it made it that much more special. I still remember when byron was sending me pics of some potential rings asking for suggestions. oh well, apparently i wasn't much help because he ignored all of our suggestions and went with the ring he wanted to get anyway. ;) hopefully i won't have to go to LA again until September, when we get to venture down there twice for two canaan weddings. fun. will upload pics later - unfortunately, didn't get any ceremony pics since I was behind the piano for most of the time (although because of that, I had the best view in the entire church of the wedding). That was definitely a piano-marathon for me... 11 songs, and we even repeated some of them during the prelude. But overall, I had a great time... and now it's back to the grind. until my pics are ready, you can check out everyone else's:

andrea's
arex's
geo's
jerry's
joseph's not yet uploaded but will probably be sometime.

And off I go to LA tonight for maria & byron's wedding! Praise the Lord I'm not driving because I hate driving in LA. I just hate LA. Mind you not the people of LA, just the general vicinity of the whole southern part of the state ;)

2004 hasn't gotten off to the great start I was hoping it would, and it's been a very stressful month for me, especially this past week. Too many responsibilities with work (year-end on sunday), byria's wedding on saturday, and moving... and way too little time. There is no way I can get through the rest of this week (through the weekend) on my own... today has been the biggest nightmare ever at work, and I'm absolutely beyond exhausted. I think my head is going to explode soon. So I leave you all with a Psalm:

"My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him. He alone is my rock and my salvation; He is my fortress, I will never be shaken." -Psalm 62:1-2

Okay, do people from the south think all Asians are accent-speaking fobs? Because I was just talking to a guy from Dell in Austin... and our conversation goes as follows:

dell guy: So who am I speaking to again?
me: Karen
dell guy: Okay, I should have your phone number...
me: Yes (because he's called me before and I've talked to him on the phone multiple times)
dell guy: Okay, I have (enter coworker's name)'s number ....

slight pause.

dell guy: Is this Karen Chiu?
me: yes
dell guy: oh! (sounding very surprised) Sorry, I didn't realize that... you don't sound like you'd be a Chiu.

Excuse me?! Racism at its best. Seriously. Do people not know that there ARE Asians born in America??

i can't take any more stress.

a continuation of the spumoni saga: this spumoni saga began months and months ago... maybe from the summer? So before it could make its way to the garbage for good, it discovered that olivia loves it! Who would've thunk? seriously, like 10 people have tried it, and they've all hated it. And then along comes o, and it's her favorite ice cream in the whole world. So now the spumoni is BACK in our freezer. We're never going to get rid of that sucker.

I forgot to add another adventure by olivia...

So olivia, being the best friend ever (and this is not sarcastic) came over on Saturday and helped us ALL day by packing and moving boxes and lugging things around and making trips to home depot and target and more. But anyway, I diverge.

alinna and i needed to do some laundry to wash our mats and other things that were left around the apt. Apparently we took longer than expected, because when al and i got back to the apt, we were busy discussing something. and as we were talking i kept hearing this "click clack click clack" noise... kinda like if someone took one of those snapple bottle caps and popped it in and out. anyway, i was wondering what that was, but because we were involved with whatever we were talking about, i didn't think much about it. after a few minutes the click-clacking stops, and out of our bathroom emerges olivia... wearing alinna's tap shoes (which are way too small for her). apparently she got bored, found some of my nvidia stickers, stuck them all over her shirt, found the tap shoes, put them on, and entertained herself in the bathroom by tapping away. yes, folks, this is olivia chung for you. so ends my story. amen.

remind me to never, ever move again.

thanks.

alinna, aka ms. chiu, sure has a lot of nosy little students. They sneak onto her computer, see who she im's, and since we have the same last name think MY sn is alinna's since alinna's screen name doesn't consist of any part of her name. since then, my screen name has apparently been floating around school as "rumors" that it's "ms. chiu's" screen name. so now i have random students im'ing me. some highlights of one my conversations with her student. keep in mind that until i found out he was one of alinna's students, i thought he was a creepy freak:

student: is this ms chiu?
me: who is this
student: [student's name]
me: sorry don't think i know you
me: how'd you get my screen name?
student: [another student's name]
me: who is that
student: lol
student: who is this though
student: is this karen chiu?
me: im sorry i don't think i know you
student: do u know a leana chiu?
me: no

**apparently alinna's students don't know her first name!** continue onwards...

student: i just read your profile and i think you might be lying
me: i'm not lying

**look at that. her students are accusing me of lying!**

student: do u know alinna chiu?
me: yes
student: is she a teacher?
me: yes
student: ooooooooo'
student: thats my teacher
me: oh okay
me: so why does everyone have my screen name?
student: i dunno
student: rumors
student: can i plz have her screen name?
me: no
me: you need to ask her
student: ok
student: gimme her screen name so i can ask her
me: you think i'm that dumb?
me: hahahaha
student: it was worth a try
me: well, nice try
me: :-)

those clever little rascals. seriously.

time of transitions

This past Sunday, p. dan had us turn to our neighbor, and say something to the effect of "with God's help, 2004 is going to be the best year ever!" Without really thinking about it, I turned to my neighbor and repeated the phrase. Thinking about it now, this is definitely a year of transition for me... and with God's help, I really do want to make this a good year. Maybe the changes happening soon will energize me more, because it doesn't quite feel like a new year to met yet. Some things going on:

Alinna and I have been busy packing our lives into boxes to make our move to the duplex this weekend. We've made two trips already, with hopefully the final trip this weekend - on Saturday moving the rest of the little stuff ourselves, and on Sunday, having the movers move our big furniture. That'll effectively end the Central Park era for us, and will begin a new chapter, adding bops as our third roommate.

The new year begins my 2-year stint as a deaconess, this year being fellowship deaconess. As I transition out of our young adult fellowship core group, and transition into this new role, there is a lot to think and pray about. My head is still floating with bits and pieces, mainly because of everything else happening right now. Plus I haven't met with the previous person serving in this position, so I don't quite know what's going on.

As if there wasn't enough going on, I will also eventually (within the next few months) be transitioning to a new job position as well. There will be a lot of new things to learn, but at least I'll finally have a change of pace. I'm getting bored of the work I'm doing now.

Along with these changes, some of my goals for this year are:
*be in bed by 11pm, and get up by 7am (i've already failed miserably at the "be in bed by 11pm" part, although i've been a little more successful about the "get up by 7am" portion.) This is not only just for discipline purposes (since I seem to lack all sorts of discipline) but also so that I can really spend quality time in the morning reading, praying, doing QTs and more.
*take a vacation! (i took two days of PTO last year - January 2 and January 3, to go skiing! I haven't taken a PTO in more than a YEAR.)
*read more books - i have a list somewhere, but it's probably packed away.
*get more rest - that means try not to book out my weekends as much. As I say this, I already have things planned for almost every weekend until the second weekend of march. oy vay. I'm definitely going to be more purposeful in picking the things/events/conferences/etc I attend this year.

There are some others, but I either can't think of them right now, or I don't care to share them here.

So those are the bigger things going on right now - it's definitely hectic (it's also quarter-end at work), hence my lack of blogs. If you want a very brief recap of my New Years holiday, let's just say there was a lot of texas hold 'em, packing and moving (not only myself, but maria and george as well), and lots of meals with friends. alex's fob birthday was definitely entertaining. All these pics will be uploaded later, since everything is packed in a box somewhere.

So begins 2004. Let's make it a good one! :)