Hmm, is it me or does the year seem to be flying by? It seems like just yesterday we were ringing in the new year and making our resolutions, and now, we’re almost done with March! It’s craziness I tell ya, pure craziness!

I wasn’t feelin’ too hot today, so I decided to work from home instead of spreading my germs and possibly infecting my co-workers. I felt an itch in the back of my throat last night after working out and I felt something coming on, so I immediately doused myself with airborne and vitamin C when I got home, but I guess it was to no avail. The back of my throat has that raw and painful feeling whenever I breathe, swallow, or talk. Not fun, especially since I couldn’t go to the gym today, ugh! Hopefully I’ll start feeling better tomorrow and will be able to go into the office. No worries, I’ll wear my SARS mask as a safeguard.

My plants are starting to bloom. Paul got me an amaryllis red lion for Valentine’s Day and it’s already starting to blossom, and it’s only been a month. My orchids are doing well as well. There’s new growth with my oncidium, so I’m totally excited!  I’ll try to post pics of the flowers when I get back into the office tomorrow…

Okie, time for some rest. Hopefully I’ll be better by tomorrow. I hate being sick…

Wow! I think Spring has finally arrived! It’s currently 64°F here in Mountain View, and it’s still getting warmer. Weather.com says that it’ll reach 78°F by 4pm today, yay! It’s days like these that make me appreciate living in California!

For some reason or other, I was feeling really tired last week. I only worked out once last week, but I just felt physically drained. Not sure why that is, but I decided to get my body back on track and stayed in most of the weekend to get the R&R that my body seems to desperately need. On Friday night, Yo Yo and I helped my new roomie, Bubba Crab, move in. Afterwards, Jason joined us, and we all went to dinner at Outback Steakhouse. Mmmm, steak! It’s what’s for dinner!

On Saturday, I slept in, worked out at home, ran some errands, read a little, then went clubbing at Jet with some friends. Jet was alright, but I discovered that the volume of music makes a huge difference on the whole clubbing experience. The music was good, but the volume was tragically low and no one was really feeling the music, well, not enough to dance to it. Eventually, more people showed up, but that was around the same time that we had to leave. Brian had an 8am taiko class, so one of the stipulations for him coming out was that we’d have to leave by midnight, so we did. The night was ok, but it certainly wasn’t a stellar clubbing experience.

On Sunday, I slept in again, but only until 9am this time. Went to the gym, then just came home. My body was uber sore, but in a good way. My abs were totally hurting, so I just passed out until Brian got home. He was shuffling about with the groceries. Did some major cleaning while helping Brian prepare for dinner. Enjoyed some karaoke revolution and 4 episodes of All American Girl, had a nifty conversation with the roomie, then it was off to bed. I tossed and turned a lot and didn’t get much sleep because the nap earlier in the day had thrown off my sleep cycle, but oh well. I feel refreshed! I think this week will be a good week! Happy Monday everyone!

Yay! It’s Friday, so I thought I’d help you all start your weekends off on a hilarious note. For your viewing pleasure, I give you…Ross the Intern!

more pineapple…

HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYONE!

Happy Valentine’s Day and Happy 16 month anniversary hon! I Love you!

So one of my new year resolutions is to go to the gym as close to every day as possible. While I’ve been relatively good and averaging at least 3-4 times a week, I’m not seeing too many gains in terms of muscle growth. I’m currently at 121 lbs., but I want to add on at least another 10 lbs., preferably all muscle. I’ve been avoiding using any supplements or drinking any protein shakes, but many have told me that if I want to gain weight, I need to increase my caloric intake. One of my friends said that I need to up it to 3000 calories a day in order to gain the weight/muscle that I need. Just to give you an idea of how much I have to eat. One Big Mac is 704 calories, so I’d basically have to eat a little more than 4 of these suckers to get to my target. Ugh!

So far today, I’m up to about 1500 calories. For breakfast, I had 3 strawberry waffles and some scrambled eggs. Then I had a Protein Naked Juice drink.

This sucker has 500 calories in each bottle, but as Brian puts it, tastes like a chalky pina-colada, and I’m inclined to agree, haha. Then for lunch, I had a carne asada pseudo-burrito, veal, some fish, and an It’s It for dessert, which gave me 304 calories all by itself.

For dinner, I must gorge myself. Who knew gaining weight was supposed to be this difficult?! Ugh!

So I was doing a bit of early Spring cleaning the other day and I realized that I still had to cancel some of the credit cards that I had foolishly signed up for back in my college days. When I went to gather them all up to shred, I was more than pleasantly surprised.

Apparently, I had left $200 in my wallet from like several years ago and never bothered to deposit it or spend it. I can honestly say this beats finding a $5 or $20 in your pocket after you’ve washed your clothes, but still doesn’t eclipse Paul’s surprise visit a couple of months back!   Anyhow, yay for surprises!

Today, at work, we were treated to a coffee break performance with…

…3-time Grammy Award-winning R&B artist…

John Legend!

Other photos will follow later…

courtesy of Johny.

A well known speaker started off his seminar by holding up a $20 bill. In the room of 200 he asked who would like this $20. Hands started going up. He said I am going to give this to one of you, but first let me do this. He proceeded to crumple the bill. He then asked who still wants it, still hands stayed up in the air. Well what if I did this. He dropped it on the ground and started to grind it with his shoe. He picked it up now crumpled and dirty. Now who wants it. Still hands stayed up. My friends we have all learned a valuable lesson. No matter what I did to the money you still wanted it because it didn’t decrease in value. It was still worth $20. Many times in our lives we are dropped, crumpled and ground into dirt by the decisions that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless but no matter what happened or what will happen, you will never decrease in value. Dirty or clean, you will never lose your value. The worth of our lives comes not in what we do or who we know but by who we are.

Count your blessing and not your problems.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Last week went as follows…

Thursday
Fred and I went to see the JT concert. It was ok, but it certainly could have been better. We were on the floor of the concert, so we had to stand the whole time. I wouldn’t have minded this much if it weren’t for the obnoxious people stupid little teeny-boppers, their rude mothers, and the hoochie-mama-girls-dressed-up-in-nothing-but-a-piece-of-dental-floss that were around us. As expected at all concerts, there was drama. Pink opened for JT and when she came on, there were a group of four Asian girls who were in the front of the crowd next to the barricade, but two of them left to get some food. Three little White girls, all in middle school, and their mother subsequently get there and stand behind the two remaining Asian girls. When the two who went to get food come back, the mother and the White girls refuse to let them through citing that they hadn’t been there before. The two Asian girls who stayed behind then explain that their friends merely went to get food for them, but the White girls are not budging. So what happens next? The two Asian girls in the front hold off that space where their friends would have been by leaning forward and sticking their butts out. The mother of the White girls then proceeds to advise the girls on how to get back at the Asian girls. She has all three of the girls screaming in the ear of the Asian girls, but the Asian girls don’t budge. Then the mother tells the girls to jump up and down and bump into the Asian girls. Again, the Asian girls don’t budge. There’s a tall white girl that is standing in front of me and next to the Asian girls, and she leans over and apologizes to the Asian girls for these obnoxious teeny boppers bumping into them. The mother of the girls sees this and pulls the tall White girl back and accuses her of trying to block the view of her girls. Tall girl explains that she is doing no such thing and was merely apologizing to the Asian girls because she was being forced into them because the three teeny-boppers were bumping into her. An argument ensues, and it is eventually ended. Pink is done with her show, the Asian girls step aside and tell the White girls that if they want that spot so badly, they can have it. The mother smirks.

I wanted to smack those obnoxious little teeny-boppers and their mother. What kind of fuckin’ concert etiquette is that?! I swear, when hormones are involved, all hell just breaks loose! Next time, I’m bringing a cold bottle of water so I can douse these heffers-in-training. Despite all that, JT was and is still hott, and here are the pics to prove it…

Friday, Saturday and Sunday

Ritchie and Travis drove up for the extended weekend and for Herb’s 25th. They hadn’t been back up here for quite some time, but it was like old times all over again. We went clubbing on Friday and Saturday, karaoking, and just hung out. It was great seeing them and being able to reflect on all the memories we’ve had together. We’ve all been friends since freshman year of college, and it really is amazing how much time has passed and how we’ve all grown. I’m incredibly grateful for their friendship and definitely look forward to staying in touch…

this is how we roll

hawaiian and fob

potato and rice

Sindy and Herb, don’t let their loving smiles fool you, she’s straight and he’s gay, haha

Herb and I, look, we’re the same height!

Herb and Geo: their better side

Josh breakin’ it down

Ritchie gettin’ down

the road warriors Travis and Ritchie

Ritchie thinks he’s a bird

Fred trying to look cosmopolitan

me being a fob, haha

orange is the new black!

a toast to good friends!

Memories

Over the weekend, there was a lot of reminiscing about our college days, so I decided to go back into my photo vault and look at some of the old pictures I had. In honor of Herb turning a quarter of a century, I thought it’d be nice to turn back the clock back 4 years to his 21st birthday. Happy Birthday Herbie!

when we all finally turned 21, we went to Vegas!

Jennifer Hudson, eat your heart out!

aww, look at the peach fuzz!

Happy Birthday Herbie!

My friend Yvonne sent me the following article on Asians and Asian Americans in higher education and their prevalence and soaring rates of enrollment in the elite universities in the country. The article also touches on the heightening racial tensions that have been sparked by this growing “trend”…

I’m not quite sure what this “trend” is though. Is it really a trend or is it just America and its bumbling institutions not acknowledging the fact that they can’t aggregate everyone into a simple racial box again? Clearly, I’m a proponent of the latter. Here’s the common mistake…

Within the Asian race, there’s a multitude of differing ethnicities, more than most care to name or count. Why, then, are these groups all categorized together when they have distinct linguistic, cultural, and religious traits that clearly separate them from one another?! The simple fact that I may share the same amount of melanin as my Korean or Japanese counterparts does not mean that one can negate the fact that my roots extend to separate and sovereign countries, and should thus be treated separately. It’s not an Asian or Black or Latino issue ladies and gentlemen, the various ethnicities within the Asian race are merely progressing towards true representations of their own respective communities. Aggregated data presents a very skewed perspective of the true nature of university demographics without providing the full socio-economic profile of each ethnic group. The fact of the matter is that in as much difference that exists between Blacks and Asians socio-economically, you can also find that difference between East and Southeast Asian. It’s time to stop looking at issues in a purely racialized fashion
where we pit one race against another to see who will win the
oppression olympics. We are at a pivotal point in our society now where communities of color have achieved a fair amount of progress and parity such that we must now move beyond race and address the specific issues pertinent to each ethnicity; only then can we begin to make real progress…

In other news, Fortune has just rated Google as the No. 1 best company to work for above Genentech and Wegmans Food Markets. Yay!