9 Ends and Beginnings

My summer is just about to end, while others of you might've already ended yours or never really had one. I'm glad I had some time this week to reflect. There's been so much going on lately that it's hard to find the time to do so.

Last Friday, we had a Mini-golf Tournament for charity at work. It was so fun. The interns worked together to create one of the holes and here is what we got.

We had a Mario theme and it turned out pretty cool. We had a little Yoshi windmill. We made its tail swag over the tunnel. The trap flower in front also opens and closes. Oh the things you can make with cardboard and Lego. We were a bit smug and thought that we were already going all out with our 2-foot moving Yoshi, but our hole didn't compare with the holes that other employees made! They all pulled it off in such a short amount of time and they went all out with their decorations! I was amazed! Everyone had so much fun playing too. They were all so excited! Here is one of the holes that I thought was cool. It has a Racing theme.
This Monday, I finally bought a bike! I was so excited but sad at the same time because I couldn't ride it yet. I didn't know how! Yesterday (Wednesday), my friend Ashley came over and helped me learn. It was so fun! I went pretty far. I'm still not really good, but I just have to practice. At least I know that I can kind of start by myself and just keep going haha. :D It was so great though. I reached my summer goal! Totally cutting it close, but I still made it! Here's a picture of me with my pink bike and matching helmet. I won't post up a video of me falling. :P

So my internship at AT&T is about to end. My last day is next Monday. I can't believe that it's over! A bunch of people are leaving tomorrow and I really won't know if and when I'll see these people again. I had a lot of fun this summer. Just having those people at work made it much more enjoyable. Tomorrow is going to be fun though. I don't have any real work to do anymore. My partner and I did what we could with our project and they just need to integrate it. Our department is putting on a talent show that we've been making decorations for all week long. Again, it's for charity. It should be really fun. :]

I'm also off to go to a staff retreat this weekend. I'm so excited! I get to see everyone again! It'll be so much fun. I'm so excited for the new year. New people to meet, new experiences along with familiar places and faces. Check out our club website that I've been working so much on! It's only supposed to be a temporary layout, but it looks pretty nice. I might just keep it the way it is and just keep adding new and old content to it.

Off to sleep! Big things ahead of me. :]

8 Blush on a Tuesday night

I usually try and have a picture to go along with every post, but I don't have one today, at least not from my personal collection.

Tonight, I invited my friends Dereck and Ritchie to come along for band practice. I used to be a member of the local community band here and thought that it'd be fun for all of us to play a little music together. Only Dereck got to come down though, but I'm glad that he still ended up coming through. It's rare that I get to spend one-on-one time with my college friends. So he came down and we played a little bit. Ah, sight-reading music... It was fun. Very short time to play and we didn't really get to play our main percussion instruments but still enjoyable.

Afterwards, I wanted to go and get some frozen yogurt. I got Dereck to look up some places on Yelp and we found Blush in Dublin. The place was great! Nicely decorated and very friendly staff! I initially thought that it was pricey but they served a good amount of yogurt. Neither one of us really wanted a lot so we ended up getting a Blush Parfait for around $5. "Blush" is their featured flavored yogurt made of Pomegranate and Dragonfruit. The parfait was perfect for the two of us and had tasty granolas on top of it all. We got mochi balls and Fruity Pebbles for our toppings to make quite a colorful combination. So delicious!!

Just wanted to share my lovely Tuesday night and a reminder to myself to try out new places every time that I go out. Also, if you haven't been using it, Yelp is an awesome resource when trying to find places for eating or shopping, etc. Hope you all had a lovely Tuesday also! :]

7 In between celebrations

On Saturday, my good friend Ryan came up all the way from Moorpark (from a little bit north of LA) to visit me. I knew that he was going to be staying over at my place for quite a while beforehand. What I didn't know was that my other friend Edward from Sacramento was going to come down and stay also. He called me up at around 2 PM saying that he had a chance to go down to the Bay for the weekend. I thought that it'd be nice to take them to San Francisco and walk around but it would be pretty late by the time we get there. So we decided to go to the evening mass and save our trip to SF for the next day. We just ended up hanging around. Ryan had come prepared and we were about to build a rocket! Instead, we spent the last hours of the day eating In & Out and watching a few episodes of The Office.

The next day was jam-packed! We headed on over to San Francisco around noon. It was Ryan's first time being on BART, haha. How exciting. We just ended up hanging around Powell and Market, not even really going into that many stores. I was shopping around for presents and took a long time doing so. But we met up with another one of our friends, Jeffrey, who is a San Francisco native. I was so tempted to spend, spend, spend! but I've been trying to keep track of what I'm buying and how much money I've been spending lately.

We went back at around 5:30 PM and got ready for dinner. I had to hastily wrap my presents and I didn't even get a chance to write a card. We were celebrating my friend Nora's and Ritchie's birthdays. (Nora's was on Saturday, the 30th and Ritchie's was on Monday, the 1st.) It was great, perfect weekend to celebrate. We went to Alameda and ate at Sushi House. The food was so good! I hadn't expected the sushi rolls to be so big. Ah, it was so great being with all of them again. Everything just felt right. I'm excited to spend another year with everyone!

Around the table...

After dinner and after about half an hour debating on what to do, we ended up hanging out at Ritchie's house. I unfortunately don't have any pictures from after dinner, but it was fun! We just relaxed. The guys played Madden and Geometry Wars. I played around on the piano and played with Ritchie's dog, Fortune. He is the most mellow dog ever. He is so lovable! I want a dog like him. :] The other most prominent thing I remember from that night was the wonderful smell from their front garden of Lady of the Night flowers. They smelled a lot like Sampagitas, these white flowers that people would sell after church in the Philippines. Ahh, so good. I think I would have to have these flowers in my garden when I get my own house.


Second years!

6 Heartbeat Radio

Last night, I went to a long-awaited concert with my cool friend Janina! I met her last quarter at Cal Poly. Unfortunately, she also graduated that quarter, so I'm glad to have spent some more time with her.

So I got picked up at around 5:30 PM and we headed out to the great city of San Francisco! We hit some traffic but still got to the city at a good time. We had Thai food for dinner at Thai House Express (wow, their website is cool...). I was about to order the usual Pad Thai until my friend told me to be adventurous and that I should try something new every time I go somewhere. So I ended up ordering "#41 Rad Na Yen Ta Fo." (I had to look that up.) It was pretty good! Good mix of seafood.

After dinner, we headed on over to the Great American Music Hall to watch Sondre Lerche. Wow. The venue was amazing. I really liked it. It's one of the smaller venues that I've been to for a show. It just means it's very intimate haha. I hope you get to go there! The show started at around 8:00 PM and we first saw Sylvie Lewis. I hadn't been able to listen to her before the show, but I was pleasantly surprised. She reminded me of Julie Delpy, when she sang in Before Sunset (another recommended movie, btw). Sylvie is very mellow and has really cute lyrics. Give her a listen also!

Sondre Lerche was then up next. His set was so awesome. It was just him and a guitar, just very pure. He debuted a couple of new songs, which hopefully he'll record in a full-length or a better quality EP. They sold a very rare and limited edition of an EP. appropriately named "Polaroid Pool Party EP" at the show. It came with a polaroid that they took during the day of the concert. The poster behind him is for a movie called Mister Lonely. Midway through his set, Sylvie Lewis came out and played a trio of duets, very lovely. =) I don't know what else to say. He is very charming. I wish I had gotten to meet him after the show! Really. I won't know when he'll come back to the States again, you know.. haha. But alas, my friend Janina had to drive all the way back to San Jose, and I was already out of the way for her. So I decided not to push it. But if I had, I would have a story behind this polaroid picture and a signature to go along with it!! haha.
To end the night, Janina took me to Bob's Donuts on Polk Street. She lived in San Francisco during her internship and this was one of the places they went to for late night donut runs. So good!! It's open 24 hours haha and it was really fun watching Bob make the donuts. They had quite an assortment! I should've taken pictures of it. I had a twisty chocolate-covered donut. It was SO light. It was amazing. haha. I wish I could just walk down there whenever. It'd be nice.

Here we are at Bob's Donuts, taking a picture because we hadn't taken one of us throughout the night. -_-

All in all, I had a very pleasant Tuesday evening experiencing the city in another different way. The concert was also something unlike any of the other shows that I've been to, from the crowd to the set to the venue. It's always fun to hang out with Janina! She always takes me to cool places to do different things. Who knew you could have fun during the middle of the week in between school/workdays?

5 Greetings from: South Lake Tahoe

Hi, everyone! It's been a while since I wrote, so I decided that I should update. I've been meaning to over the past week, but I've had much trouble trying to get out what I wanted to say without it being too personal. Let's just say I had quite a rollercoaster weekend. Everything is fine though.

A much needed vacation...
So my family and I are here in South Lake Tahoe at Heavenly. Wow, our room is sooo nice! It's a two-room condo-suite with a kitchen, a dining area, and a living room. I'll make sure to post up pictures later! It's so nice. I think my parents are thinking of coming back here for our Christmas vacation.

Well, we haven't done much yet. We only arrived yesterday night. I don't know how, but it took us forever to find the place. My parents insisted on following the faulty GPS system rather than simple directions, but that's alright. Today, we're planning on going to the Markleeville Hot Springs. I'm quite excited! I'm sure it'll be nice. I'm not sure what else is going on today.. Maybe bike riding? Maybe I'll learn how to ride a bike today! More to come later!

4 Donating blood

Today, I donated blood to the American Red Cross at work. This is the second time that I've donated and I don't know why I keep doing it. The first time was last year when they had a blood drive at my high school. This time around, my experience was better, but still about the same.

Going into the blood drive, I felt confident. I had eaten breakfast beforehand, but unfortunately failed to drink tons of water. Went downstairs with my coworker who asked me to donate with her. She was so nervous! but of course, I knew she was going to be fine. Everything was standard procedure... You're given some reading materials, asked a bunch of questions and then wait to get your blood drawn.

Getting my blood drawn was faster than I thought it was. Mine took 10 minutes and 11 seconds. I'm not sure how long it took me last time but this time felt faster. They had me squeezing a stress ball, which started to take a little bit more energy for me to do towards the end. My left hand was starting to feel cold haha. I got so anxious towards the end. One of the Red Cross guys, his name's Jim!, kept telling me I was almost done. I just wanted to get it over with. It was bad though, because I started focusing on the needle and it started to hurt. I didn't see the needle or my blood this time around, though, which is good. Afterwards, I got all dizzy again and needed to have cold towels on me. They felt so good! But it kind of took me a while to recover.

The nurses and staff were all so nice though! They were all kind of rotating around, so I got to meet a bunch of them... or at least know all of their names. It was so cool. I'm so proud of myself! I took myself a little bit out of my shell and started talking to Jim while I was sitting up. It was kind of awkward to just be sitting there all quiet while he was just standing, waiting for me to feel better. Haha. Of course, that was the only time I could really talk. I felt sick to my stomach the other times. I just started asking questions and got to know a little bit about him. I'm just excited! I never really talk to people, especially if I know I probably won't see them again, but it was a nice blip in time.

My battle wounds...

3 Once Again

He kind of reminds me of Hugh Laurie, minus the piercings. A few parts are not safe for children!! but very few.