Recently in journal Category

man the summer seems to fly right by.  i wonder if there's ever going to be a way to combine the shit i toss on facebook with this journal.  that would be swell...and convenient!  well anyway...for this particular catch-up post, i won't bother with catch-ups. it's just been too long since the last real entry.  i ate, drank, went out...etc etc.  i was going to write about my travails with women too, but i'll save that for it's own post.  it's categorically comical anyway.

what i will post on though is that beauty up above...woot figureprints!  it's been nearly six years since i started playing world of warcraft, and i no longer feel the need to justify nor explain why i play and why i've played for this long.  my life is dandy, i'm not a proverbial basement dweller, and my social life is more than adequately healthy.  that being said, it's always been hard to quantify the near six years spent playing the game in a physical form i could hold, until figureprints came around.  for a nominal fee, they'll take any of your characters and print out a 3d statue of it.  so i thought for a brief second, then went...fuck yea, i want one.  it was meant as a birthday present to myself...but i got another present for myself anyway (i'll get to that later).  and this was the first cycle/expansion where i'd been part of a group that has cleared through all the content (still currently working on hard modes), so i thought it fitting to commemorate that in statue form. anyway...whatever.  it rocks.  tho i will admit...damn sonatine looks scrawny.  anorexic blood elfs don't look so intimidating in statue form...*shrug*.  my armory pose still looks infinitely more heroic. 

oh right...and in addition to this, i also got myself a big 50" plasma.  there's that too...woot.

el journal es muerto!  just kidding...it's not.  well, not technically.  laziness (and starcraft 2!) abound.  but i'll make a post once i get the awesomeness in the mail sometime next week.  awesomeness i say!

man a month past oh fuck nearly two months lol...and i finally get around to posting about my trip to scotland. better late than never eh.  and i even decided to give the flickr slideshow a whirl.  i don't know why i never used it for my past trips.  has it always been there?  mysteries...

the thoroughness of this recollection of the trip is suspect at best, given it's based purely on the photos taken.  i didn't bother jotting notes of my trip, since most days were taken up with drinking.  lots of drinking.  fuck, so much drinking.  i have a newfound fear of drinking with glaswegians now.

GLASGOW
i arrived wednesday morning.  max came by the airport to pick me up...him and patsy had been in scotland for a while already sorting out wedding details and concurrently having their work visas get fucked.  that's another story tho...and not even mine to tell.  so moving on...i dropped my luggage off at the hotel before we roamed glasgow.  this was my fourth time in the uk, but my first time in scotland.  the other three times were based solely in london (and a side trip to the english countryside).  we grabbed lunch with one of max's friend who works for the company both max and i used to work for (it was a scottish firm). after lunch, we went for my kilt fitting.  yea...kilt fitting.  word.  i'm in scotland for a wedding, fuck yea i'm wearing a kilt.  a nice one at that.  made of alot of wool...in the mild/warm scottish spring weather.  i would regret this later.  but for now, i just wanted a kilt.  we roamed some more afterwards, and most likely drank beer.  it's sorta fuzzy.  i was most likely groggy and jetlagged and inhaling coffee later in the evening.  anyhoo...moving onto the next day.

EDINBURGH
max and patsy had wedding details to sort out, so i took a daytrip out to edinburgh.  there was something weird about glasgow as we were walking around the day before, and i figured it out when i got to edinburgh...no asian tourists!  actually, hardly any tourists at all in glasgow.  in edinburgh tho...yea, everywhere.  definite tourist city...and rightly so.  it's very picturesque and touristy, with it's royal mile, closes, and of course, edinburgh castle.  pretty place.  tho one aspect let me down.  i was hoping they'd play up more of the haunted aspects of the castle...which they didn't.  at all.  sad.  i also decided to climb up arthur's seat, this massive hill in holyrood park.  i don't know what i was thinking...that was a bad idea.  i have enough things in my life to remind me that i'm out of shape...i didn't need a vacation to remind me too.

i got back to glasgow in the evening and we went to a house party. more drinking ensued.  

MAX AND PATSY'S WEDDING
we had lunch with max and patsy's family before the wedding in the afternoon.  from there on out it was a brief wedding reception, then nonstop drinking til i don't know what time.  3am?  4am?  i don't remember.  and that wool kilt and ensemble?  yea, that was painful.  i stripped off the wool jacket shortly after the reception, but still had on the wool kilt and wool vest.  blargh.  on the flipside tho, the sporran was totally rockin'.  i kept my wallet and iphone in there.  handy.  it's like a purse...but manlier.

POST-WEDDING
we had lunch with max's family the day after, and then roamed glasgow.  we drank more at night.  yea.

AMSTERDAM
i planned a nice one day layover in amsterdam before heading back to nyc.  it'd been years since i saw lysha and alice, and i thought it'd be a nice place to (ironically) detox after scotland.  lysha lived out in ijburg, and we just laid on the beach in front of her apartment for most of the day.  we grabbed dinner in amsterdam, then roamed the canals for a bit.  <3 amsterdam.  i also really wanted to see the old neighborhood...the amsterdam branch of the company i worked for was shuttered months prior, and the old animation space was turned into an underwear shop.  how sad.

REMAINDERS
oh, i got my niece a mini-kilt and a clan pin from edinburgh, and my brother-in-law a bottle of bowmore whisky.  you're welcome dave!
 

new york city's an infinitely changing city.  it always has been and always will continue to change...that much is stating the obvious.  but aside from seeing old photos or hearing about the city of the past, it's not always as easy to relate to or personally see until you get to a point in your life where you can slow down, look around, and go "what the...where the fuck am i?" 

case in point...we're moving into a new office sometime in september.  our space is still being renovated, so every so often we get an email showing the progress, with subject lines reading "new photos of the tunnel" and "tearing down walls at the tunnel".  and i kept going "the tunnel, the tunnel...what the fuck is the tunnel?"  whereby the reply was "that's the name of the building".  a light bulb goes off.  i put two and two together.  i knew we were moving to the far west side of chelsea, but it took me an embarassingly long period of time to realize that the building we were moving to was in fact the old site of the club "the tunnel".  fuck...am i now old enough to be working in an office housed in a space where i used to club when i was in high school and college?  admittedly i wasn't a massive clubber...more of a wannabe raver that clubbed occasionally when i wasn't raving.  but i'd been to numerous new york staples in my youth (tho the majority one or two times at most).  and even then, i only have slight recollections where most of them were even located.  most are gone now...nyc clubbings mildly comatose these days.  not that i would even know if it wasn't.  so it got me wondering what happened to the other places i used to go to when i was younger...

the tunnel | welp, now i know what happened to the tunnel...it turned into my new office!  i don't have many memories of this place.  in fact, i don't have many memories of most of the clubs i went to, save a few.  the thing was, back then, i didn't really pay much attention to the area.  i just remember dark side streets, lights all around the entrance, and late night food vendors lining the sidewalks.  it's probably easy for me to say that the area probably didn't look anything like it does today...


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palladium | see...this one i already knew about.  the palladium was (one of?) the largest clubs back in the day.  it's now the nyu dorm called the palladium on union square south (hint...trader joe's resides in the ground floor).  i recall union square being pretty shitty back then.  it's cleaned up nicely.


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limelight | it's a mall now.  if you told me ten years ago one of the best known clubs in nyc was going to be turned into a shopping mall inside a church, i'd laugh hysterically, then maybe go "for serious?  are you a time traveler?"


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twilo | i have a higher than average amount of memories of twilo...but still not much.  i remember the bouncy ball chairs upstairs tho.  i was trashed this one time and bouncing around on them for an indeterminate amount of time.  i stopped going long before it became spirit, tho i don't know if its still around.  it still says spirit on the awning on google street views...


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wetlands preserve and vinyl | these two i lump together because i have the most memories from both these places.  partially because we went so many times, and partially because i was sober every time.  in high school, i ran with the 'white hat' crew...the majority of which liked to see jam bands and whatnot.  a small fraction of us frequented clubs however.  so when we headed out, these two places filled our needs quite well.  wetlands was a jam band venue for the likes of dave matthews, from good homes, moe, etc...while vinyl featured the likes of françois kevorkian and was literally down the block.  so we'd head in on a weekend, split up between the two venues, then meet up again at three in the morning.  both are long gone now, replaced by fancy pants luxury apartments.  i googled the addresses yesterday and barely even recognized the area...


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still not an actual post...summer's been surprisingly lively this year.  huh.  but i thought i'd drop a brief post for shigs and niggles.  my new computer arrived yesterday...my first non-shuttle in a long while.  its hot-ness...woot.  and in an unrelated note, new harry potter trailer is out for the final two movies.  argh!  come out faster!  that is all...

on hiatus until i can find some free time again.  there aren't enough hours in the day!  and i still need to write up on my scotland trip (which rocked)...

it may not be readily apparent, but this is the second iteration of this entry.  the first one was lost when internet explorer crashed...again...and apparently my entries that are normally auto-saved were in fact, NOT auto-saved.  so let me preface this entry by saying...fuck you internet explorer.  i hate you so much...so much in fact that im downloading portable firefox as we speak.

anyhoo...onto trying to recollect what i had written.  and auto-saving frequently while doing so.  oh who am i kidding?  i'm totally going to abbreviate this entry now that i'd already written it once before.  i did stuff, and i went out.  woot.  highlights include getting a new job back in may (bai bai chelsea, hello tribeca!), i ate and drank and shit with friends at places that had been mentioned before...more likely than not numerous times before.  etc.  and hey, i'm flying out to scotchland tomorrow for max and patsy's wedding.  its my first time in scotland...we contemplated going back when fish and i went to london over the new years in...i don't know what year.  but the edinburgh trip would've been more than a day trip, so we actually decided to go to straford-upon-avon instead and see shakespeare's dead self.  this will be a glasgow trip however, tho edinburgh is on the agenda.  and as an added bonus, i'm taking a one day layover in amsterdam...so i'm squeezing in a visit with alice and lysha as well.

sadly, i already know that the entirety of this entry is still shorter than the partial entry i had written before ie crashed and burned.  ah well...fuck you internet explorer.  it's your fault for destroying my motivation to write lengthy posts.

oh shit, nearing mid-may and i haven't posted since mid april.  whups.  well...it's pushing close to 1am, so meh, i don't think i'll be posting a legit journal entry.  maybe during the week.  for now...i'm just admiring my pretty new wallpaper(s).  plural, actually...since there are a couple on rotation.  but for now, this is my favorite...

...and so are my allergies.  motherfuck i hate allergies.  i guess there are worse things to have than allergies...like missing body parts, or body odor.  but the congestion is still fairly irritating.

EARLY MARCH
it's been quite a busy month.  my social life came roaring back to life, which was expected given a myriad of things...like good weather, and a sunnier socio-economic climate.  or something.  gabor made his way to nyc from amsterdam (via hungary) and is so far lovin' it in that mcdonald's jingle kinda way.  he was one of the animators at my last job when i worked in their amsterdam office.  the office has since shut down (a casualty of the shitty economy) so he migrated to their nyc office.  so far he's taken a shining to the city...woot.  the first week he arrived, he came out to join the crew (pho, troche, dano, ivor, etc...) for some excellent pork chops, followed by some whiskey taverning.  max was craving burgers the following friday, so we met up at corner bistro after work and gabor joined us in the noshing.  fridays have been proven to be approximately 80% better when you combine burgers with mcsorley's.

MID MARCH
the following wednesday found me at boka for korean fried chicken with di and emily.  i had been planning to meet another friend that week for the aforementioned chicken of korean origin, but she had to reschedule...and my cravings remained.  so hey...this worked out.  we migrated to the second floor bar in the astor hotel to meet up with ngozi and boyer, who was in town from slovakia (?) i think...yea, slovakia.  she's usually found romping around europe these days, so the trips to the stateside are a rare treat.

we headed to the black door for after-work drinking the subsequent friday.  it was somebody's last day...or something, which usually means drinking.  max joined in later in the evening, and the remaining five of us migrated to hill country for bbq lovin' since we were starving at that point.  m3ntal note tho...never drink with these people ever again.  i understand that office gossip makes for fascinating times, but there was some shit i never cared to know or wanted to know.  dear god i can't unhear these things...

i tried to drown away the memories of the prior nite with beer and sliders at...some new place on st. marks i don't know the name of...with sean and anna, followed by heavy drinking at hallo berlin with max and crew.  apparently max had found the nite before amusing, while i found it to be detrimental to my brain functions.  i still have nightmares.

LATE MARCH
thursday was an after-work meetup with lena, a former coworker and the person mentioned above in the same sentence as korean fried chicken.  instead of the impossibly addictive bonchon variant, we headed to baden baden for the crispy type.  <3 baden baden.  the next day was bday drinks with dano at do hwa near my old office.  i found it immensely entertaining seeing old coworkers walk in, give that "hey" nod in my direction, then proceed to avoid me the rest of the night.  i must've made a pretty good impression during my time there...teehee.  well to be fair, christa did chat me up during the food-eating portion of the nite.  i thought that was nice and civil and friendly-like.  thumbs up.

oh, and the first scrimmage of our soccer league was the following sunday.  yes, i joined a soccer league.  no, i am not in shape.  but yes, it is ultra-casual.  or it was suppose to be anyway.  we got the impression the first team we played was anything but casual.  when you're calling out "flag" and "cross" and snipering the goals from 10 yards, you're anything but casual.  on the bright side however we outnumbered them greatly, and were subbing pretty much every 2 minutes.  they still won by 2, but we did score 10 of our 11 goals the second half.  worth mentioning in this paragraph too is that we decided on our team name during the post-game happy hour (icanhazgoalz?)  lulz...and that our charity of choice will be doctors without borders.

APRIL
whew this is tiring.  thank god i keep my plans on my iphone calendar.  this past wednesday was foodage and drinks with max and patsy at half king to hash our their wedding plans and my upcoming vacation (yes, they are related).  i'm off to scotland in may!  word!  doo didilee didilee....*dances a céilidh*

they were married last year, but had yet to hold a proper ceremony back in scotland for their family (they're both from glasgow)...so that's coming up in may.  i plan on wearing a full-on kilt and outfit, complete with the jacket, socks, pouch (sporran)...the whole nine yards.  as a bonus too, i'll be taking a one-day layover in amsterdam...woot.

HOUSING WORKS
i did some last minute photog'ing for rebecca and housing works on thursday.  i can't say i was properly prepared for it (i got the call at 4pm)...so i had to cab it home just to grab my camera, and as a result didn't notice til it was too late that my battery sign was blinking (that's not a good thing), AND as a result of me fearing the battery would die any second, didn't check that the ISO was set to some ridiculously high number (huh...so that's why i could set it to f22 in the low light).  all in all though, i did get off 50 or so shots, and they don't look bad (just don't zoom in). the event itself was pretty fun...it was tied with men's health magazine and was a promotional sale too.  alot of painfully beautiful people roaming about, along with television personalities that i had no clue about.  whups.

TOO MUCH CHICKEN
i wonder how many times 'korean fried chicken' is mentioned in this one entry.  probably not enough...so here's another mention.  friday nite we decided to head oot and aboot...because that's what people do on friday nites.  we (as in mai, jon, max, patsy, and later on ivor) hunkered down at mad about chicken (formerly bonchon k-town) for plates and plates of chicken, alongside liter after liter of beer.  by the end of the night, we had finished off four plates and 9 liters worth of beer.  my liver would hate me for the rest of the weekend.  and i was actually content to stay in the rest of the weekend to rest if plans didn't suddenly appear on saturday...

WHITE STAR BERFDAY
...which was what jess did for last minute bday drinks at white star.  the drinks were good however, albeit on the fancy and expensive side.  this was alleviated however by the fact that we didn't pay.  yea...we skipped out.  or more precisely their tab-keeping system failed them when they insisted our tab was paid for.  i didn't know this, but i did notice everybody making their way outside very fast.  and i didn't want to be the last one of the crew to not know what the shit is going on and get stuck with the bill when (and if) they wised up.  anyhoo, i spent my surprise refund on a really good kebab on houston.  that was yum.

long post done...yay!  what, no picture?  bleh...whatever...

it's probably moot to point out the decline (in my eyes) of modern blogs, given the difference in the number of posts between when i started this blog (2004...2003??), and now (seven years later).  no, this isn't an entry saying "fuck it...i'm shutting it down", but i do find it interesting that the conversations been brought up more often lately with some of my friends who do still have their own journals.  tho many of them have evolved into either photo journals or topic specific sites...the personal online journal doesn't seem to be as prevalent amongst my friends as they once were.  between facebook, twitter, etc...the actual online journal itself seems to be an inefficient relic, given the (intentional) immediacy of facebook and twitter and all the other on-the-second sites out there, not to mention the network aspects of a journal.  networking is the intention of those sites, whereas a journal (to begin with anyway) is an island in a vast sea that has to be discovered.  but then again, who knows the permanence of those other sites...whereas i get to determine the permanence of this one.  so that in and of itself will always give it an advantage, even if i'm too lazy to post regularly.  anyway...

i went out and did stuff...yea.  seven years down and the day-to-days get reeeal boring when written out.  a better writer could make my daily rhetoric fascinating.  but i've found in my years writing this journal that i in fact suck pretty bad as a writer.  i thought i was a super writer in high school...but then again, i probably thought my emo poetry also had depth and convoluted meanings too.  lulz. 

amongst the fun had in the past weeks tho included a big crew dinner at excellent pork chop house, binge drinking at john and amy's, scratcher's for sean's big 3-0, morning coffee with steph, and candela candela for di's berfday...and subsequent e.vil roaming with the left over crew.  as an aside too...since it's always fun to point out how small this city is.  alyson had brought her friend lily to di's berfday dinner, and it was pointed out how she was from cornell too (this is not uncommon, given the size of cornell).  what was funny however tho was after the usual name exchange, lily goes "i remember you...", and i'm thinking..."from....?".  "freshman year.  you were on my floor."  yea...what the shit.  full disclosure however...alyson's husband also happened to be my freshman year roommate...and the connection there between him and lily is probably easily made.  still fascinating, this network we live in however.  we then proceeded to try and recollect other names and faces from our freshman dorm...with limited success  after all these years, i've only ever kept in touch with greg.  everybody else eventually fell away, and by my second year, 99% of my friends were cornell architects.  damn that dungeon.

fun things on the horizon...one of the animator's i became friends with during my time in amsterdam (he's actually hungarian) has made the jump across the ocean, and is now a giddy new yorker.  so i get to play tour guide again.  woot.  it's always good to start fresh new yorkers off on the right foot.  we don't want them going down the path of shitty and retarded.  like hanging out in meat packing...or thinking murray hill is a viable area to have fun in.