This past weekend was great - long weekend..

The main highlight was our now famous Fondue party - it was an exciting yet comfortable mixture of the old gang (Jeff, Ann, Dave(s), etc) some old forgotten rediscovered peeps (Flo, Brianna - who I ran into the day before at a Chinese proficiency test), and new peeps (Violetta, and Linly +1). Luckly we had an expert ex-Swiss(exchange student), otherwise, Amy and I would probably have accidently created a basketball instead of chesse fondue.

Other highlights of the weekend included lots of trashy reality-TV watching, dinner and dimsum with Linda (who came down for a surprise visit), playing Grand Theft Auto and doing unspeakable things (virtually) at Jeff's place, and a lot of hometime comprised of hard-working cleaning up and laid-back chilling out. I think by now, all the major parts of the apartment have been hit, making it quite pleasant and comfortable now.

The highlight of yesterday was almost burning down my apartment twice. Amy and I had made some "Russian Stew" (i.e. Cabbage Vegetable soup) that we were nursing and eating the past few days. Yesterday, the broth level was rather low, so I added some water in, and planned to simmer it all day, it was against my better judgement, but the prospect of all-day simmered soup trumped my better bad judgement. Well, I spent all day at school yesterday. As I came home and walked down the stairwell to my floor, I smelt burnt food - i was in the middle of thinking some negative statement towards a random neighbour when i had my oh-shit moment, dropped my shit, and scrambled into my apartment. I had left the heat on high on a full pot of soup. The apartment was filled with smoke, and while the pot was not actually on fire, the charcol that had been created was smothering. All joking aside, I am really lucky I didn't burn down the whole apartment - I think someone up above was looking down on me and compensating for my stupidity. I think was saved me, was that the pot was filled with with probably 2 1/2 gallons of liquid, which probably took a while to burn off before a real fire hazard came about.

As if fate was laughing at me, Russian soup having been crossed off the menu, Amy and I decided to make some garlic bread for dinner using some of the leftover french bread from the fondue party. This time, to no fault of ourselves, the garlic bread promptly caught on fire.

Anyways, right after the russian-stew-turn-charchol incident, I took a 30 min walk out to Ghetto-DC to buy Erasure and Ladytron Tickets (Erasure is coming out w/ an album! and is touring! in DC!!!). I had a lot of time to reflect. I think I am, by nature, an absentminded, careless person. For the most part, i have realized this weakness and force myself to be organized, and attentive. However, being that attentiveness is not natural and a subconcious characteristic, I can have moments of lapse due to exogenous considerations. For example, I realized I was going to run late meeting Amy for lunch (not that my fire wasn't 100% my fault), or when I lose the many electronic devices I've lost in the past (waking up on a plane just in time to deboard, in a taxi, lost and late for a wedding), etc. I'm not sure what I've learned from this - I still get in absentminded states when I'm under preassure, tired, etc. I guess just be extra-extra careful when dealing with fire(?).

Amy and I just discovered a way to play scrabble over the internet. Here goes another notch on our productivity!

Ah! Have not updated in a while - I've been busy - or rather I've felt busy - Busy seems to be more of a frame of mind than an concrete physical state. There are always things you want to do, limited time, and tradeoffs. Of course at certain times, the tradeoffs are harder and what you have to compromise because of time scarcity is greater, but that does not necessarily have to be related to the sensation of "busy" that you feel, or the ability to get done and be comfortable with what you're able to get done in the time you have. For that, I think it is more dependent on mental and emotional ability "to deal" - I think lately I haven't had that, because I've been feeling "busy" even when I shouldn't be, and I don't think I've been managing my relative free time well - I been neglecting things that are traditionally important to me - keeping up with my friends (I haven't even started writing Christmas cards yet, and didn't write Christmas/New Year emails either thinking that I'd write cards instead), keeping in touch with my family, getting on the ball with school.

Anyways, not to neglect my weblog any longer, here's a brief summary of my Christmas break:
Dallas before Christmas:

Hung out with old peeps, like the plano gang, matt fox, and the old St. Marks gang.

Dinner at Amy's house with her grandparents

Lots of last minute shopping

San Diego for Christmas:

Great steak dinner in downtown SD

Watching Will & Grace late into the night with my sisters

Getting woken up early in the morning by mom so as not to waste our vacation

San Diego Zoo, Pandas, and other animals (like Daisy)

Jogging by the bay

Hanging out with old friends of mom and dad - getting fed more and more food.

New Years and Skiing in Switzerland:

Exploring Downtown Zurich on New Years Day and stopping by and buying Bratwrust on the street.

Lots of Bratwrust and Shnitzel

Did I mention the Shnitzel?

Traditional Swiss New Years party with Maaaahhhk Staaaaaflliiii, watching fireworks all over the city on Mark's roof, and going expensive Swiss clubbing afterwards.

Walking down old city Bern, and walking along the river.

Train ride to Lausanne, Musuem d'art brute, design musuem and going crazy with the camera.

Rainy buy very fun time exploring Geneva.

Freezing but beautiful clear day walking in Montreaux, and visiting an old castle.

Skiing in Zermat. Check out the pictures - they speak for themselves.

Returning to Zurich and hanging out with Wolf and Mark. Looking for the legendary naked Thai rock band in the Red light disctrict in Zurich but not succeeding. More Shnitzel.

And now, back in DC. It's good to see the old peeps again. The day after we got back, I went to two different weddings on the same day - the one in the morning is one of Amy's old college buddies, the one in the evening was Duke and Kim, for which Bern and DLB flew up. It was good to see them again. Sunday, we had Dim Sum with two out of towners, Lily from Dallas and Willie from NYC as well as with John and Hollman. This week was (as mentioned above) busy - running errands, cleaning the apartment, taking care of banking and money stuff.

One year anniversary with Amy! We've been celebrating this for a month now - it's fun. We've gone through so much and gone through so many changes in the past year, in some ways it seems much shorter, and in other ways, much longer than a year, but either way, it's been a good year :).

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Shaq\'s racist comments.

I have opinions on Shaq's recent (June 2002) comments directed to Yao Ming, which i will elaborate on later, but for now, sign this petition if you agree.

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