peter requested i post this picture.



unfortunately, peter seems to think he looks like this:



people, please set his mind straight. thanks.

more from the "it could only happen to me" department...

so i was looking at a packet of paper stapled together, and as i proceeded to flip the paper over, the corner of the packet caught me straight up in the eyeball. what the heck?! have you ever heard of anyone getting hit in the eye by a stack of paper?? i instantly recoiled in pain, and as i tried to open my pained eye, i noticed that it must have flicked my contact off center as well because i couldn't see anything. after more pain, i discovered that not only did the corner of the stack of paper hit me in the eye, it also managed to knock my soft contact right off my eye and onto my chair! anyway, i'm okay now, i just have a really red eyeball and my vision is slightly blurred. the blurring is probably more from a dirty contact than impairment of my actual vision.

also, finally paid the $10 fee for my expired registration... on a car i don't own anymore! good riddance to the volvo forever.

well, much has been going on in the past week...

my car has been fun to own so far. everyone wants to see it so i've been giving random rides around. we tested george's bluetooth phone with the car (since i don't own one) and it works well. :) i'm just happy to drive a car that is hopefully more reliable than that piece of crap volvo.

i forgot what it was like to be allergic to long-haired dogs, but i unfortunately rediscovered this when we went to visit ev last night. Even though i wasn't even near her dog (he was like two rooms away), my whole body went beserk. eyes started itching really badly, sinus got clogged, and hives broke out all over my legs. it was very unpleasant - enough so that we had to leave ev's house and hang out in alinna's car. it was good to spend time with ev before she left for hopkins this morning... we just sat around in al's car in the dark, talking, reminiscing, and praying for ev. random nights like that are the best. and since my roommates and i already killed the environment by driving to evelyn's house in three different cars (i came from home after cooking dinner for my dad, al came from our place, and jenie came from a restaurant after dinner with her family), we decided to do a little experiment. So all three of us took different routes home to determine which way was the fastest. jenie took the all-local route, going straight up saratoga-sunnyvale. al took the one-freeway route, taking 85. I took the two-freeway route, taking 85 to 280. The result? we all arrived a minute within each other. jenie got there first, although i think in normal conditions, when it's not a sunday evening and all green lights, local would be slowest. alinna and i arrived at our stoplight at the same time, but we came from opposite directions. she made a right while i had to wait for the light to turn left, so she beat me there as well. so the conclusion is basically... it doesn't matter which route you take.

i guess the theme of my weekend was visiting people before they move cross-country, because i also went up to the city with sanj and gabe saturday night to visit amyn before he takes off to go to northwestern for b-school. every time i see my old ieor crew, lots of memories come flooding back. on our ride back home, sanj and i were reminiscing about how we met amyn & dave in the first place. i had totally forgotten... it was actually pretty funny. it all started the beg. of sophomore year when sanj & i were in stat 134. oh the horrors of that class, it was horrible! our first taste of upper-division and ieor, and man were we getting rocked. marcia wanted to introduce us to one of her floormates, who was also an ieor major and also dying in the class, and voila, we met amyn and started doing homework together (we actually met a lot of fellow ieor majors through that class because the only crazy ppl who would take stat 134 were stat majors (um all 5 of them) and ieor majors) anyway, one day we were in class before it started, and sanj, amyn, and i were going over our homework to make sure we got everything before we turned it in. some random guy sitting behind us suddenly asked if he could look at one of our homeworks, so sanj handed him hers, and when the guy took it, to our shock, he started copying her homework. and lo and behold, that is how we met dave. and that is how our ieor group, known only to us as "cscs," began. we sure had our fair share of memories, after spending almost 24/7 together for the rest of our college careers. since then, we've met up for dinners every couple of months (and only every couple of months because it takes us at least a month or more to find a time when we're all free, as sad as that is) and we always have a good time. some things just never change. :)

unfortunately, some things do change... and someone in our office passed away unexpectedly last week. it was a shock to find out just because he was so young (early 30s) and just got married two weeks ago. i didn't know him that well, but i did work and interact with him some... i still have emails from him flagged because i hadn't responded yet. i had talked to him the day before, and the next morning, he was gone. it's times like these that bring you back to reality... who really knows when God will choose to take your life away? We tell each other to live every day like it was your last, but how many of us really do that? I sure haven't. Someone was passing a memory book around to sign for his family, and so when it was my turn, I was having a hard time trying to figure out what to write. how do you comfort someone's family if the person wasn't a believer? What do you say? I remember someone wrote something to the effect of "i know you are with the angels in heaven," but the hard cold truth is he isn't. the most i can do is pray for his family, for his widowed wife, that they may discover the real Truth. something like this definitely puts the sense of urgency back into my life. as horrible as this was, it was a good reminder to me to get off my lazy butt and re-examine my life and how i can live life to the fullest - how i can live to exemplify and glorify God the most.

so those were the bits and pieces of my week... i've been kept pretty busy at work, so unfortunately i don't have the time to blog as much. these random updates (and pics of the ugly volvo ;) will have to do for now.

OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

In the span of four days - YES, four days - our household, the household of jenie, alinna, and karen, have become VOLVO-free!!

for alinna's story, check her blog.

for my story, ask me, i'm too lazy to type it out now. maybe later. but believe me, i definitely was NOT expecting to come home with a newly-purchased car today! i don't have it quite yet, but in the meantime, since my volvo now belongs to them, i have a big fat MDX loaner. i don't drive cars that big. let's pray i don't crash it somewhere...

so some ppl came over tonight to watch the pistons-lakers game. go pistons!

anyway, eric, the biggest laker-hater ever, was late because he was on a mad search for a detroit pistons shirt. After discovering that these shirts cost too much, he decided to make one himself. so in comes eric, proudly wearing his blue shirt, with "DETRIOT Pistons" written on it.



HAHAHAHAHA berkeley education, what can you say?

so our household decided to create another quiz. come all and take it! these are fun.

quiz version 1.2

see our scoreboard

did i not say life gets more interesting when o comes back?

the highlight of our dinner at house of prime rib was not the food (although that was definitely good stuff), but our conversations with our waiter. or.. more like olivia's conversation with our waiter. as he comes around to take our orders, he encounters olivia:

waiter: what would you like?
o: house of prime rib cut, please.
waiter: how would you like your meat?
o: oh...um... what?
waiter: and how would you like your meat?
o: um... (as olivia hems and haws, i thought she was just being indecisive)...uh... yes. (let me point out her "yes" was said with quite some emphasis as if she was sure of her answer)
tomio, alice and i were cracking up by this point, so i had to help interpret for olivia.
me: no, olivia, he's asking how well would you like your meat done?
o (totally embarrassed at this point): ohhh... um... medium (waiter writes down "medium")... rare. yes. medium rare.
thinking this was all too funny, tomio tells the waiter: sorry, she doesn't really go out. this is her first time out of the house.
waiter: oh, you must be enjoying yourself then.
olivia, totally embarrassed, had nothing to say.

after dinner, the waiter offered to take a picture for us - he went and got the polaroid and a cover for the picture. as he was putting the picture in a house of prime rib cover, olivia comments to him: ohhh, this is all too exciting!
waiter: well, aren't you glad you got out of the house today?
this time around, olivia is so embarrassed she just buries her head in her arms. so of course, tomio has to jump in again, asking her: so, olivia, where do you want to go tomorrow?
waiter: you should take it slow m'am. one step at a time.

HAHAHA. eric was still laughing about it as we were walking back to the car, and even said he wanted to go back to the restaurant and give the waiter an extra $5 on his tip. Needless to say, we tipped the waiter really well. I haven't laughed so hard in one night in quite some time.

Oh, and some pics from janet's wedding, courtesy of joseph and george (one downside to being a part of a wedding is that i never get to take pictures)

george's pics of the ceremony
george's pics of the reception
all of joseph's galleries of the wedding