(no subject)
Long time no post, and now that the reading light overhead is sporadically turning itself off and on for my seat, I’ll spend some time to write up a post on LJ when I get back on the ground and have Internet access.
Boston/New York City Trip
Right now, I’m on a plane to Boston to visit wavilyem (staying at her place for a few nights), and a few other high school and college friends. My connecting flight out of Chicago was delayed as usual, this time due to heavy traffic, although listening in to ATC is rather interesting (one of the cooler things when flying United). It sounded like due to wind conditions, everyone wanted to use the same 2 runways, hence there was a long line for taking off.
I’ll be in Boston for 2 1/2 days - a friend from high school who just got married is on vacation right now and will be back just in time to have lunch on Saturday which means I’ll be taking the bus to New York City that afternoon and will get into town in the evening. In New York, I’m staying with rkane (silverocket will be in town as well), and meeting up with Kerry and yente. I’ll be meeting up with the Microsoft intern gang, Zi and Kevin (not CMU Kevin Oishi) on New Years Day for food and ice skating, and with Adam, another high school friend, who will be coming down from Connecticut on the 2nd. I’ll be leaving back for Seattle on the morning of the 3rd.
I also turned in my free ticket that I got from giving up my seat last time I went to Pittsburgh (I have to turn in a physical voucher at the airport), and booked a flight to Washington DC which I haven’t been back to in almost 3 years. Since my family doesn’t live there anymore, I’ll be staying with Amelia (another high school friend), now living in Dupont Circle between May 3rd and the 9th. The plans are to go back to my high school and visit teachers, visit old high school friends that are now working in DC, and do the "obligatory" meal with the "Aunties" and "Uncles" (in Chinese parlance, these are the family friends of my parents, and not necessarily blood relatives).
Thanksgiving
Seattle has been hit with some freakish weather in the past month. November ended up setting a new record for rainiest month ever and the ski slopes got really good snow by Thanksgiving. Kevin (Oishi) and I got up to Stevens Pass the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend and went skiing (first time in four years for me). I started off rusty, and also went on a slope that was a bit more advanced than anticipated, and on the first hill down, did a full somersault on the snow (ow!) - however, the rest of the day went a lot better, and it was a lot of fun.
Bob did his annual Thanksgiving dinner at his place that Sunday, and that was the first time I played on the Wii. The Wii is still sold out in Western Washington now, but hopefully I’ll finally be able to get one in January without having to wait in line in the morning. Since Splinter Cell: Double Agent is out for the Wii, there is almost no reason for me to get a 360 at this point (sorry Microsoft!) - and of course, the other game I’m definitely getting is Zelda.
Birthday Party
Because of people leaving town for the holidays, I ended up holding my birthday party on the 2nd instead of the 16th, which would have been the more logical date (this was very fortunate though - see windstorm and power outage below). The party was really more of an excuse just to get everyone together for a board games day (I specified no presents although Eric and Emily did get me a gift certificate for gamefly anyway which is a Netflix type service for games). I had a bunch of Microsoft friends over, as well as Kevin and Rori and we played board games (and catchphrase), and went out to dinner at Claim Jumper. We had to split up into two tables at Claim Jumper since I made the reservation late, so I didn’t get to see and talk with everyone as much as I wanted to (playing separate board games also didn’t help in this respect), but it seemed like everyone had a good time, and so that was good.
Weather
The week after Thanksgiving was the "snowstorm of the century" for Seattle - a full inch of snow in Redmond :-p that managed to shut down the city for 2 days since Seattle doesn’t have salting or plowing equipment handy. Last week on the 15th was the "windstorm of the century" - some people ended up without power for more than a week, but we were relatively lucky and only had power out for 2 days and nights. My brother flew in from Singapore on the 16th, so my mom and I stayed the night in the house (where the temperature dropped under 50 degrees), picked him up from the airport the next morning, and then drove up to Vancouver to grandma’s. The plan was to stay as long as the power was still out, but we stayed only for the weekend since the power went back on late Saturday evening. With my brother there, we had enough people to play a full game of Mahjong (traditionally being a game with 4 people). I haven’t been able to find a group to play Mahjong with in Seattle, so it was a nice change of pace to play again (it helps to count tiles, and observe discard patterns, which I still need to do more).
The 21st was my actual birthday, and we went up to Vancouver again on Friday (that being the original plan) to celebrate with, of course, a big fancy traditional Chinese dinner, and cake afterwards. The dinner celebrated: my birthday, my cousin’s birthday (23rd), my Aunt’s birthday (27th), and the winter solstice, which is a big deal in Chinese culture. We went back down to Seattle the next day, took my brother back to the airport the day after, and then 3 days later, now, I am still on the plane to Boston finishing up this post. Hopefully, I will have interesting stories to tell after the trip.
Boston/New York City Trip
Right now, I’m on a plane to Boston to visit wavilyem (staying at her place for a few nights), and a few other high school and college friends. My connecting flight out of Chicago was delayed as usual, this time due to heavy traffic, although listening in to ATC is rather interesting (one of the cooler things when flying United). It sounded like due to wind conditions, everyone wanted to use the same 2 runways, hence there was a long line for taking off.
I’ll be in Boston for 2 1/2 days - a friend from high school who just got married is on vacation right now and will be back just in time to have lunch on Saturday which means I’ll be taking the bus to New York City that afternoon and will get into town in the evening. In New York, I’m staying with rkane (silverocket will be in town as well), and meeting up with Kerry and yente. I’ll be meeting up with the Microsoft intern gang, Zi and Kevin (not CMU Kevin Oishi) on New Years Day for food and ice skating, and with Adam, another high school friend, who will be coming down from Connecticut on the 2nd. I’ll be leaving back for Seattle on the morning of the 3rd.
I also turned in my free ticket that I got from giving up my seat last time I went to Pittsburgh (I have to turn in a physical voucher at the airport), and booked a flight to Washington DC which I haven’t been back to in almost 3 years. Since my family doesn’t live there anymore, I’ll be staying with Amelia (another high school friend), now living in Dupont Circle between May 3rd and the 9th. The plans are to go back to my high school and visit teachers, visit old high school friends that are now working in DC, and do the "obligatory" meal with the "Aunties" and "Uncles" (in Chinese parlance, these are the family friends of my parents, and not necessarily blood relatives).
Thanksgiving
Seattle has been hit with some freakish weather in the past month. November ended up setting a new record for rainiest month ever and the ski slopes got really good snow by Thanksgiving. Kevin (Oishi) and I got up to Stevens Pass the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend and went skiing (first time in four years for me). I started off rusty, and also went on a slope that was a bit more advanced than anticipated, and on the first hill down, did a full somersault on the snow (ow!) - however, the rest of the day went a lot better, and it was a lot of fun.
Bob did his annual Thanksgiving dinner at his place that Sunday, and that was the first time I played on the Wii. The Wii is still sold out in Western Washington now, but hopefully I’ll finally be able to get one in January without having to wait in line in the morning. Since Splinter Cell: Double Agent is out for the Wii, there is almost no reason for me to get a 360 at this point (sorry Microsoft!) - and of course, the other game I’m definitely getting is Zelda.
Birthday Party
Because of people leaving town for the holidays, I ended up holding my birthday party on the 2nd instead of the 16th, which would have been the more logical date (this was very fortunate though - see windstorm and power outage below). The party was really more of an excuse just to get everyone together for a board games day (I specified no presents although Eric and Emily did get me a gift certificate for gamefly anyway which is a Netflix type service for games). I had a bunch of Microsoft friends over, as well as Kevin and Rori and we played board games (and catchphrase), and went out to dinner at Claim Jumper. We had to split up into two tables at Claim Jumper since I made the reservation late, so I didn’t get to see and talk with everyone as much as I wanted to (playing separate board games also didn’t help in this respect), but it seemed like everyone had a good time, and so that was good.
Weather
The week after Thanksgiving was the "snowstorm of the century" for Seattle - a full inch of snow in Redmond :-p that managed to shut down the city for 2 days since Seattle doesn’t have salting or plowing equipment handy. Last week on the 15th was the "windstorm of the century" - some people ended up without power for more than a week, but we were relatively lucky and only had power out for 2 days and nights. My brother flew in from Singapore on the 16th, so my mom and I stayed the night in the house (where the temperature dropped under 50 degrees), picked him up from the airport the next morning, and then drove up to Vancouver to grandma’s. The plan was to stay as long as the power was still out, but we stayed only for the weekend since the power went back on late Saturday evening. With my brother there, we had enough people to play a full game of Mahjong (traditionally being a game with 4 people). I haven’t been able to find a group to play Mahjong with in Seattle, so it was a nice change of pace to play again (it helps to count tiles, and observe discard patterns, which I still need to do more).
The 21st was my actual birthday, and we went up to Vancouver again on Friday (that being the original plan) to celebrate with, of course, a big fancy traditional Chinese dinner, and cake afterwards. The dinner celebrated: my birthday, my cousin’s birthday (23rd), my Aunt’s birthday (27th), and the winter solstice, which is a big deal in Chinese culture. We went back down to Seattle the next day, took my brother back to the airport the day after, and then 3 days later, now, I am still on the plane to Boston finishing up this post. Hopefully, I will have interesting stories to tell after the trip.