Recently in journal Category

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.

USELESS HEADER
it's been a fairly quiet couple of weeks, january and february.  my first attempt to see my new niece josie was thwarted by a massive snow poop.  then my niece may's bday celebrations were snowed out too by passing snowstorms (whups), which in turn pushed our backlogged plans into my dad's 60th birthday vicinity.  eventually we just met up this past weekend to consolidate my seeing my new niece for the first time, may's birthday (well...really just giving her her gift), and a lunch for my dad.  silly weather...stop fucking up my plans.

I WENT OUT
prior to that tho was the usual smattering of dinners and drinkage, amongst them ippudo with sara (wow...finally.  fuck you ippudo), le singe vert with margie, and harefield road drinkage for fonz and erin's post-wedding celebrations (even tho they married over a month ago).

THIRD PLACE
as a random aside too, while we were hanging out at my parents house this past weekend, i went digging thru my room for some things i'd left behind when i moved to my new apartment.  and by chance i came across a bronze track medal i won my freshman year (the only medal i won during my short but illustrious career).  so of course i snatched it up to bring home.  my brother-in-law dave mentioned how they don't really give out medals anymore.  instead they give trophies to the school.  i'm thinking to myself, wow...that sucks. so much for individual achievements.  not to mention the medals pretty boss.  anyhoo, it's going on display somehow in my apartment.  maybe i'll frame it.  woot.

work's killer right now, and i spend my free time playing online or drinking alcohol, both of which let me "get away".  like calgon, except alcoholic.

in the meantime, here's my desktop wallpaper at work.  that is all.  (and yes, i'm sporting dual monitors)

crap, the journal has yet again fallen to the wayside.  i'm going to blame....*spins the wheel-o-blame"...my job this time.  for inundating me with short deadlines and then making me tired once i get home.  ya.  for real.

i had on the agenda a massive post ala anna's year-end photo recollection, but that's turning out to be taking muuuuuch longer than anticipated.  so fuck it.  i'll post it when i post it.  in the meantime tho, a recollection of the year thus far.  it's already halfway thru january...time just continues to fly right by.



JOSIE ELLA
first and foremost...welcome josie ella to the world!  my new niece. ella was my suggestion too.  she rocks.  niece's rock, because i get to be a proud uncle without having to deal with the actual parenting.  it's a win-win situation.  a concern we're having at the moment however is, given her older sister's astonishingly advanced developmental state (i know parents/uncles/whatever always say this...but seriously, this is not hyperbole), we've postulated that she may in fact turn out to be functionally retarded.  or something.  too many awesome genes were invested in may.  we don't know what was left for josie.  i know...feel the love emanating from her uncle.  just kidding, we <3 josie.

REWIND
two weekends ago was hot pot at my place with jen di, sarah, and crew.  i'm very much liking a semi-regular hot pot to be honest.  it's a social activity that involves everything i love...eating, drinking liquor, and watching movies.  we followed this up with thursday noodling at the excellent pork chop house with di and em.  they'd never been, so i felt like it was my obligation to wise them to the goodness that is taiwanese cuisine.  we headed next door after dinner to apotheke, which was hilarious considering two drinks cost more than the entirety of our dinner a few feet away.  they however did send us free rounds of their mulled wine, called gluwein.  very soothing.  after apotheke, we migrated to the whiskey tavern to meet up with more people and continue our drinking (with the addition of tater tots).  i felt like shit the next morning...it was super.

and hmm...yea, i didn't do shit this past weekend.  doh!

2010 sounds so futuristic...oooh.  spacepacks and robotic servants.  well, i still haven't gotten my spacepack in the mail, but i did get a roomba.  that thing is all kinds of awesome.

i meant to post a bit earlier, but it was a relatively dull and uninteresting holiday.  avatar in 3d imax on christmas eve with max and patsy, then minca ramen with fonz the following tuesday, and then up in the air with sally and nicky on saturday.  all days in-between were spent either 1. staring at my ceiling, 2. watching anime, 3. playing wow online, or 4. staring at my roomba trying to get out of my living room.  awesomeness.

and as a secondary excuse, i meant to post earlier, but i was also waiting to get pictures of my new niece, who was born yesterday.  bro-in-law is seriously slacking on the facebook front. post, damnit!  god knows my sis is in no shape to post.  i know...she told me herself that they don't have wifi in the hospital (the horror!).  anyhoo, so this is a post to tide myself over until i can post real pics of my new niece...who's name isn't even 100% set in stone yet.  hmph...

these spam comments i've been getting lately have been making me wonder just what is a real comment and what isn't.  they're usually vague comments that have somewhat of a connection to the topic, but they're otherwise nonsensical and may reference things that don't even relate to the entry.  at this point i'm also pretty glad i upgraded mt...otherwise i would've had alot of spam scrubbing to do.

i'm wondering at this point whether that cowboy bebop commenter is even real.  if you're reading this btw, feel free to comment again.  otherwise i'm deep-sixing that comment and link at the end of the week.

i really do wish there were a way to stretch the period of time between thanksgiving and christmas.  it flies by way too fast.  maybe we should move thanksgiving to sometime in...august.  yes, august...then we can pop out the christmas decorations at the end of summer and ride the holiday season all through fall and winter.  word.

END OF NOVEMBER
hmm, i guess i haven't posted a "journal" entry in a while.  bullet-point time...or at the least a summation of various things i did, but without the specific times or days.  the end of november saw fonz's berfday drinkies at 2a in e.vil, luis' berfday drinks the following day at the whiskey tavern in chinatown, brunch with pho at nyonya (hey they moved across the street!), and thanksgiving with my sis and her extended family in joisey.

DECEMBER PROPER
decembers events are a bit better catalogued, and it started with a mini-hot pot gathering at my place last weekend with i4, max, patsy, mai, and john.  we loaded up enough food from chinatown for probably a small village and fired up dual hot pots.  we got stuffed.  it was good.  i spent the rest of the week in a food coma, then met up with melissa friday nite at robata-ya for plates and plates of robata goodness.  i think (it's a bit fuzzy) we also tore thru a round of shochu, followed by 3 rounds of sake.  this was then expounded upon with 2 more rounds of sake at decibel, and another 2 rounds of...stuff...at angels share.  i'm surprised that i shook it off as easily as i did the next day.

di and i went to check out the samurai exhibit at the met the next day.  the exhibit was ending january 10th (it's a relatively short exhibit), and this was one exhibit that i would stab someone with a shank if i missed.  the sizable collection of robes, samurai armor, and seriously gorgeous katanas made me giddy, though i sort of regretted that i took this long to see it (they change out the exhibit every week or so since their collection for the exhibit was larger than the amount displayed).  god i hope they bring back a similar exhibit in the future. 

afterwards, we decided on a ramen dinner in midtown.  this was actually a stupid idea...i don't know what i was thinking.  we got out of the 6 train and had to fight our way west towards sapporo on 49th and broadway.  and for those unfamiliar with midtown geography, rockefeller center is between the 6 train and the aforementioned ramen joint.  *sigh* well, i will admit it was nice walking past the rockefeller christmas tree.  i hadn't actually seen it in person in years.  so purty.  after our ramen dinner, we decided to get the fuck out of midtown and back to more familiar locales (e.vil, duh).  we actually had decided on cha-an for a post-dinner tea retreat, but that was overruled after seeing the long line winding down the stairs.  fuck that...we're going to go get liquored.  i'm not usually one to double-dip bars on the same weekend, but yea...i found myself back at angels share. this was however ok, as we tried out their seasonal fair this time around.  di had their "hot cocoa" drink (earl gray infused godiva chocolate liqueur) and i had their "hot apple cider" (calvados, hot apple cider, caramel syrup, and roasted apple slices)...holy shit good.  we also chatted up our neighbors to our left who were curious about the drinks and about eats around the area (you asked the right dude!). 

you know what today is?  it's the 5th anniversary of me having sold my soul to the dark overlord of world of warcraft.  ya, it's been 5 years since i started this cocaine of mmo's.  i'm not sure who could've guessed back then how big it would get.  people anticipated the game to be a massive success...but, yea...i'm not sure they knew just how massive.  prior to wow coming out, everquest was considered a success at a "whopping" 400,000+ subscribers.  wow currently sits at over 11 million subscribers and counting.  and given that it's shown no signs of letting up, i thought it'd be fun to celebrate this 5th anniversary by giving a thorough historical recap of my time with the game, for all two of you out there who give a fucking shit.

VANILLA WOW
so the year was 2004, and the world was different.  the "horseless carriage" had just been introduced, and there were talks of "flying contraptions"....just kidding.  it was a different world tho.  the economy didn't suck, but we did have a halfwit for president. as a result, the world was pretty bleh, so it was the perfect time to introduce an mmo where people could escape to.  fonz, mike, and i jumped on board on launch day, along with a few bajillion people around the country.  we were tossed onto the realm "khadgar", where i rolled a perky human mage and went about toasting hapless sheep with fireballs.  then the server (along with a couple others) promptly shit itself under the strain of a thousand nerds.  damnit.  we got a message saying that the server would most likely be "shit" for a while, so we headed to another server, "llane".  this was a brand new "second day" east coast server, one of a couple they brought online to handle the crush of people apparently trying to escape the real world.  i rolled a night elf hunter this time, slapped on the name "moya" (my last character in morrowind was moya, hence i reused it as legacy), and off i went.

i'm taking full advantage of my relax-iness.  i was sifting thru older posts and came across one that listed my past places of residence.  i think it's time to update the list.  not that there's not much to add, given that i lived at my last apartment for the better part of 5 years.  but heh, i threw amsterdam in there.  4 or so months of living off albert heijn has to count for something...

TW	- kaohsiung, taiwan (born)
TW	- kuang fu, taiwan (pre-school)
TX	- point comfort > guest house
TX	- point comfort > 223 wood st. > 3 years
TX	- port lavaca > 137 seascape dr. > 1 year
NJ	- lake hiawatha > knoll gardens > 3 years
NJ	- montville > 5 crane dr. > home
NY	- cornell u. > class of '22 dorms, 2nd flr > 1 year
NY	- cornell u. > eddygate (2nd flr) > 1 year
NY	- cornell u. > eddygate (4th flr?) > 1 year
JP	- kyoto, japan > new miyako hotel > 1 month (does this count?)
IT	- roma, italia > sant'anna 6 > 1 semester
NY	- cornell u. > college ave. > 1 semester
NY	- cornell u. > eddy st. > 1 year
NY	- manhattan > 137 e.13th st. > 5 months
NY	- manhattan > 342 e.8th st. > 5 years
NL	- amsterdam > 357 keizersgracht > 4 months
NY	- manhattan > e.110th st. > current