Gilroy Garlic Festival, triple digit temperature and my friends are chowing down crawfish! Yuck!

Saturday night... Nothing new... Gather with friends, sip on bubble tea and play some Big2. Happy happy joy joy!

MoBlog - I'm loving this Moblog thing! Here's my car as I get ready to go home from the office.

MoBlog - this is pretty darn cool! I'm sending blog using my cell phoned!

• If you are sick and tired of the world you live in...
  
• If you got money burning holes in your pocket, and want to invest in new real estates...
  
• If you are a Star Trek fan...
  
• If you are simply bored at work...
  

Then...

Check out the map of the Moon!
(brought to you by, no one else but Google!)

Vivian developed a sudden appetite for watermelon at around 10pm last night, and being a good boyfriend (and for the sake of storing up some “goody-points” with her) I made a run to the nearby Safeway for the fruit and even picked up some ice cream bars.

While I was lining up at the cashier counter, (yes, it was well after 10pm and yes, there was a line at the checkout) a young lady holding a huge bouquet of red rose and a birthday card queued up behind me. My eyes glided along those well-tanned, nicely shaped arms holding the roses and saw “I'd Rather Be With You!” line of text printed on the chest area of her tiny, tightly fitted t-shirt stretched around her buxom upper torso.



Now, for the record, I usually don’t obnoxiously check out strangers’ curves in public, hehee, I do it discretely, and with a good dose of respect. :-) but this girl, let me tell you, had Vida Guerra's butt, Jenny McCarthy's chest, and a tiny little Barbie's waist in between. Sounds good? Well, it was all good until you manage to pull your eyes to her face level. She was the symbol for “Butter-face” and the emblem of a “Monet”, meaning she was all good “but-‘er-face” and a piece of work when viewed at a distance, respectively.

Anyways, the point I am trying to make here is actually not regarding to her hour-glass figure, but rather, it was the “I’d Rather Be With You!” on her shirt that made me ponder. From the red rose and the birthday card, she is obviously celebrating her significant other’s birthday. However the “I’d Rather Be With You!” implicitly implies that besides her boyfriend, she is also spending quality time with someone else. I might be inducing too much here, but I thought those are fairly valid inductions. I hope her boyfriend will be happy to learn that his girl rather to be with him than with her second choice, and that alone, is worth celebrating!

Ok, time for bed, I am not making sense here...

Some loves her, and others hate her, I think she is cute... as hell.

Does your mug shot look as good as hers?
No? I didn’t think so...
Yes? By all means, let me see!

Read the complete story on how her National ID picture leaked out. (along with a dozen other Chinese celebrities')

Monday: Taco Bell
Tuesday: Taco Bell
Wednesday: Taco Bell
Thursday: Carl’s Jr.

See the pattern emerging here? Yup, I am on a “Supersize me” fast food run, not really by choice tho. Been too busy this week for a proper sit down kinda lunch, and the company cafeteria is revolting, which left me with no choice but to Run for the Boarder (I wonder if Taco Bell is still using that as their slogan?)

But frankly, that Six-Dollar burger meal tastes oh-so-good!!

I never wrote a blog about the Sonoma trip Vivian and I made back in mid-June, and perhaps I will write about it, soon. Neither Vivian nor I wrote a blog about it because we are both still waiting for me to publish the trip pictures so our blogs can reference to it. And since this was a special trip, to us at least, hence, we placed exceptionally high expectations on this particular photo page, and therefore, explains the delay...

We went there to attend a Lavender Festival hosted inside of the Chateau St. Jean winery. Lavender, along with lily, is Vivian's favorite flower but I have to admit that I find lavenders pretty groovy too. It was huge fields of blooming lavenders, sending off a faint, calming scent that sooth the nerves. We bought lavender embedded pillows, blankets and even two young pots of live lavenders.

After getting home, we planted the lavenders in the backyard, near the lily shrubs we once had (neighborhood raccoon feast on it awhile back, and ate all the flowers). Without knowing how to raise lavenders, we fully anticipated failure, but hey!! A month later, it is blooming!! I hope Vivian does go berserk and transform the back yard to a lavender jungle.

We had a picture perfect weather this weekend, bright sun, gentle breeze and not a cloud in sight! It was pretty hot tho, at noon, it was 85-90F, enough to encourage people to seek shade while outdoor doing things. The interior of the car was unbearably hot even with all the windows cracked while parked and I almost scorched my legs as I sat on the hot leather seats.

However, the pros out weighted the cons, and this weather puts everyone in a good mood. As the sun grew gentler and more inviting in the late afternoon, I wanted nothing more other than loose the sweat dampened T-shirt, put on my shades, grabbed a cold Coke and stretch myself on the lawn chair in the backyard greeting the California sun. Ahh… It was comfy, satisfying, and very relaxing.

An hour and half in the sun playing basketball...
An hour in the sun walking around the mall with Vivian and friends...
Another two hours in the sun lying out in the backyard with my T41...

Jiaying working on his tan and getting ready for summer!

Three years zoomed by in a blink, and I am not exaggerating; it feels like yesterday when I sat across the table from you in Dave & Busters, trying my dearest to convince you to be with me. You were unsure, yet tempted. I am still unaware which one of my lines convinced you to take the risk, to get involved and eventually share the best years of your life with me.

Three years went by in a heartbeat, and I am not lying; our harmonic relationship marched along a rhythmic path that we discovered together hand-in-hand. Although our journey has been smooth, it was never taken for granted; we have been true to each other and kept each other in check.

Three years flew by in a flash, and I am not dreaming; it is amazing how much we have accomplished, the countless trips we have taken, the myriad events we have attended, and the innumerable affairs we have encountered. We handled them well, and handled them with smiles.

You see, time goes by very fast while we are having the time of our lives, but baby, don’t worry, there are abundant amount of collaterals to remind us of the moments we shared... We got a web site filled with activities we did together; a box packed with matches we gathered; a drawer full of postcards we collected and a house worth of items we placed... the evidence of our happiness appears everywhere!

Happy Anniversary baby!

Still at work... *sigh*

...and today is our anniversary...
think I am gonna screw work and head home...

Yea! I will do that!

Today, our dear Nancy had reached the quarter century mark, arguably the next major road mark following the 18th and the 21st birthdays. While 18 means you are an adult and 21 allows you to legal get drunk, 25th birthday offers something more practical -- lower car insurance!

To accommodate the relatively large group, Nancy decided to host the party at Monte Carlos Club/Restaurant, and conveniently Michael was promoting the event there that night, which means, dinner upstairs follow by thump-thump downstairs, one place, and one night.

Nancy wasn't the only... (More...)

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

Funny how people change over the years. I was always a math-and-science kind of kid growing up, and would rather die (not literally) before finishing up my essay homework assignments. I do keep a diary over the years, but it is more like a yearly entry of list of things I have accomplished since the last entry, and should hardly be considered as a diary. If it wasn’t for Vivian’s request to setup something so she can doodle, this blog would never exist. It surprised me that I actually kept up the blogging efforts instead of turning this sub-domain in to a dead link.

Truthfully, there are a lot of joys in writing these blogs, despite however pointless, dry and lack of aesthetic values these entries might be, they do serve as good seeds in helping me to reminisce those blissful events I encountered; my only regret is not doing it earlier.

Most of my friends are engineer, the math-and-science types like me and logically, blogging is not their cup of tea. I was delighted to find out a good friend of mine, whom I met in Shanghai -- Eric, upkeep a very enticing blog site! Well, it all made sense after I recalled he was a finance-guy...

Eric, the ABC (America Born Chinese) from California, is going through some very similar experience as I had last year: ditch the immaculate California weather; bite the bullet and move to a distant land; waste our youth away by working for Intel-Shanghai and engorge as much Shanghai-culture (which is very different from the rest of China) as we can. Eric’s majestically crafted blog entries on his Shanghai adventure resonated well with my venture to the Orient, and my eyes were glued to his site for hours while trying to recollect my own share of all-so-similar fun and frustrations.

I am gathering energy and motivating myself to go back in time, comb through my neurons and jot down whatever hazy memories I had for the year I spent in Shanghai. It would be terrible sin if I let those memoirs slowly fade away...

Vivian and I first eyed this piece of wall décor/candle holder at Crate and Barrel back in March, but it was produce in very limited quantities and very popular among the shoppers. We had to put down the deposit and pre-order it, and it finally arrived three months later!

It was definitely worth the wait. It is simple, elegant, and flat out gorgeous! The walls in our house is so empty, this candle holder fit on the dinning room wall very nicely!

Only few hours left before the long Independence Day weekend officially begins! No work on Monday!

Day offs are always nice, but unfortunately, the Independence Day doesn't mean I can declare my independence from work. Work has peeped into all my awaken hours... usually the last thing I do before going to bed is to check my work email, and it is always the first thing I do when I get up everyday as well. It is not because I am a good employee (although I'd like to think so :-P), it is just the nature of the job. Especially with the ever expanding globalization movement, I work with colleagues on the other side of the globe more often than those down the isle from me. Munich, Sydney, Seoul... all those time zones meaning issues are generating at all hours, and hence, work no longer has the eight-hours-in-the-office boundary anymore.

If you ask me, I like it this way, and I am a big supporter of globalization. It adds more dimensions to the boring workplace. Wanna hear a good joke on Globalization? Ha! It is a classic!