david w. and i drove out thursday afternoon to las vegas to attend tcona3 (trivia championships of north america) at the new tropicana.  we arrived a little after 5 p.m. to have dinner at todd english’s olives restaurant in the bellagio.  getting to the restaurant once we were in bellagio was a bit of a challenge.  i kept directing david the wrong ( Read more... )

final day of scrabble.  lost the first game by 5 because i was in time trouble and couldn't play my end game right.  made more mistakes in the next two games, but i managed to win the last two and ended up in 28th place out of 99 while i was seeded 52nd, good enough for top third.  not too bad.  i had a positive record of 16-13 and a positive ( Read more... )

the third day of king's cup moved to the 5th floor of the royal paragon hall.  the mall wasn't open yet; so one had to enter from the side through the garage and up the elevators.  there were thousands of schoolchildren everywhere.  if they could stick to the walls, that's where they would be ( Read more... )

second day of king's cup.  not sure i like the schedule of starting at 11 a.m., playing one game, breaking until 12:30 p.m., and then playing 7 games in a row on the half hour.  that's just very exhausting.  by the last game, i was having trouble doing simple arithmetic.  i had a good day today.  6-2, and i got to put down EULO(G)IAE for 131 points ( Read more... )

i will be playing scrabble at king's cup for the next four days; so these entries will be short.  king's cup this year is held in the siam paragon mall.  the first two days of play is in the lifestyle hall, and the last two days will be in the royal paragon hall.  there is no conference room; we play in the middle of the mall where shoppers can see ( Read more... )

i'm beginning to dislike google maps for finding thai places.  we were looking for the intercontinental hotel to have lunch, and somehow, the hotel's website steered us in a completely opposite direction.  we stopped by the royal bangkok sports club to ask for directions, but he didn't know where it was either.  as we walked along the main ( Read more... )

we started our day at 5 a.m. catching up on emails and work.  since we are still not really used to the time change yet.  breakfast buffet at the hotel included some thai fare such as rice noodles with pork.  i also had watermelon, prosciutto, jelly donut, pound cake, and a bunch of other items.  good thing i filled up because joe and i never got ( Read more... )

today we left for bangkok. we had our final buffet breakfast. i bought a few postcards and mailed one. the cab ride was uneventful, and we went through security fine. i was wearing a new shirt and thought i was putting my passport and boarding pass in an inside pocket. about 15 minutes later, i realized that it wasn't a pocket, and i went back to ( Read more... )

today was our last full day in taipei.  we decided to go to yangmingshan national park.  getting to the park by taking the metro to jiantan and then the bus red 5 to go up the mountain into the park was easy enough.  then the confusion started.  we took the 108 bus in the park, which was supposed to allow you to ride around the park an unlimited ( Read more... )

around 10:30 a.m., joe and i met with gabe.  funny thing about gabe.  other than the one time he came to visit me in my new malibu home, i've only seen him in foreign countries, last time in hong kong and now in taipei.

( Read more... )