twenty.two

Hello from Deschambault, Quebec, Canada! For those of you who don’t know where that is, the tip of the brim is just north of where I am. See below:

Anyhow, moving on. Man I wish I had a point and shoot camera. (My S3 IS is so big I decided to not take it with me =[ ). Canada is super nice and movie-like. It’s completely green (even greener than Seattle!), with long dirt driveways, huge trees lining those driveways, etc. I’m staying in a 200 year old house-turned-bed and breakfast. To put that into some perspective, United States is barely that old. So that’s a pretty old house. Today, my day looked like:

630am | wake up call

7am | breakfast

9am | meeting

545pm | end of meeting =[

Now I am about to wash up and eat dinner. It feels like I am a kid again, partly because I’m showering in the middle of the day and partly because I’m not making my own dinner or buying it. (Technically, I am buying the dinner, but it doesn’t feel like it since it’s at a house..actually wait, the company pays for it.) I will be flying back to Oakland tomorrow morning. Speaking of which,

things I miss: Bay Area O_O, church apt, Kat!(happy 1yr5month!!), Joey and Lance(roommates. gosh, i don’t like staying by myself =[), Gordo’s carne asada, sports, musical worship even though I just went on music missions in Seattle, Monday Night prayer meetings, my parents!, a non-roaming cellphone (canada=roaming for me), nice cool evenings in Socal. What do you miss??

I am now in Seattle with Living Water Band. We had pizza from a place called “Chunky’s”. Weather is kinda bleh. I saw the Space Needle from the airplane.

Oh! We did ride Virgin Airlines. That was pretty cool. Hooray short sentences!

Dear Readers,

I have made it back to the Bay Area safely. The trip turned out to be a lotta fun (a lot of good eats!), but a lack of time made for poor blogging. Better luck next time.. Hopefully, I’ll upload a few pictures or somethin’. It’s 1am Pacific, which equates to 4am Eastern, so I’m going to sleep. Something I realized — two nights ago, the Phoenix-Sac(?) game started at 730pm pacific (1030pm Eastern!!) Who’s gonna watch a basketball game starting at 1030?? West Coast bias is not only true, but hard to avoid. I wanted to see how Amare did in the game, only to find that the game didn’t start yet..

Yours truly.

Again, blogging before dinner so it’ll be a short one. Today was the work day. We installed of our new technology (ooh) and it seemed to go pretty well (read: a lot of duct tape). My camera has no batteries and I’m being lazy about posting pictures, but it’s really nice out here. Quaint little town. I would like to come back.

a few notables and quotables
-Our hotel reminds me of ‘Tower of Terror’ at Disneyland =(
-Eating at Dixie Lee’s Fried Chicken place and the Lobster House. MMmm I should review those places later. Speaking of which, I have leftovers in the fridge that I want to eat…
-seeing a ‘Stewart’s Shop.’ You know, the same Stewart’s that makes those old-fashioned sodas.
-seeing a “Booters” which looked mysteriously similar to “Hooters”
-Massena reminds me of Everwood.
-In Massena, you can be elected to be the sheriff. I wanna run for sheriff!
-Matt gave me some Korean movies before I left. I look forward to watching one. I’d be so embarrassed if airport security dug ‘em out though..

Food time! More to come.

Wow, what a long day. It began on Tuesday night — a red-eye to JFK and then a three hour transfer to Syracuse. We got into Syracuse at around 10am or so, and began driving to the little town of Massena. It was a nice drive .. crap I left my camera on the car, so that means no pictures tonight. But, it was a definitely nice drive through the countryside. Like last time, we watched another safety video. Seems like this place is slightly more dangerous! Anyhoo, more updates to come. I should get to sleep! Good night, world.

10:30 pm Friday night

Ah, finally back in Socal. The final installment of this Arizona/New Mexico/Crazy trip.

Let’s do it backwards — i think my brain works better that way anyway. I just grabbed dinner with my pop (at gwun-guo, no less that’s how we do it. yum). Anyways, I had one of my coolest conversations on the plane trip back from Arizona. I sat next to this musician. His name’s Wendell and he’s done music for Desperate Housewives and Fox Sports or whatever. He told me about jazz and what he knew it to be. Really interesting. He wasn’t like a ‘oh-smooth-jazz-sucks-i’m-cool’ but he actually took the time (maybe cause he had nowhere else to go. Now that I think about it he went to the bathroom twice. hm) to explain what jazz was to him. Something to do with not just playing cool licks but reaching and experimenting with variations off of a base (motif?) that everyone created together. He used the word ‘organic’ a lot — like Albert Cheng. Anyways, I told him to be a jazz teacher. I’d take his class. I think I learned more about music in that one hour than I have in many years..

question: Do you (all 1 million of you readers) listen to the flight stewardess when she/he goes through the safety talk? I realized that on all the flights that I’ve been to (lots), I’ve always listened. This past flight was the first one where I read something else… I had to purposely not listen, it felt weird. I’m such a rebel =X

Hm, before that Dan and I drove 120 miles and rushed to the airport. We made it by a hair. I guess that’s how we do it? =[ Hopefully not too often.

Before that, ah, Half-Life 2.

another thumbs up picture.

Visited another plant/mine, watched more safety videos and installed more of our wireless technology. Another day’s work. Meh, not too much to write about.

Meh, hope Cal wins big tomorrow. and Red Sox! Hoo ray. Thus ends my Arizona/New Mexico Trip. I’ll be back in the BayArea(‘Yayarea’ to some, ‘No-cal’ to others, harhar) on Monday.

10:25pm Thursday night

Woohoo back from dinner. Longgg day that began at 7-ish. I haven’t seen 7-ish(AM, of course) since I worked at MCR. Back in the day. Anyways, I experienced some pretty harsh conditions that I’m probably not supposed to talk about, but it was pretty exciting. Here are some pictures — they speak a thousand words right?

My co-workers and contacts.

The assignment right before lunch time.

Me using tools!

Ok, ok… these are just screenshots from Half-life courtesy of some German website (thanks!). But, it was pretty similar to what I got to experience today.. I had to watch a video to learn safety rules, I wore some crazy gear (see pic below), got kinda sprayed by acidic mist, etc. All in all, I survived a pretty brutal environment.

During lunchtime, a couple of us had pretty good Mexican food, but the real highlight is this picture:

Probably needs a little explanation. The speech bubble says “Injoy or we keeel you!” Back on the senior trip to Mexico, Eric wanted me to barter with the taxi guy or something, and I joked that we would get shot if we asked for half-price. Anyways, this picture reminded of that situation. Needless to say, the food was delicious. Whether I thought so or not.

A few more pictures of the outside of the plant (I didn’t wanna take my camera inside, hence the HL pics above):

One more day!

1:48am Thursday early morning

Well we arrived just moments ago in Silver City, New Mexico. Man, I haven’t been this sleepy in a while. So we flew into Tucson and drove 200 miles east (and a sprinkle or so north). Most of it was on the 10 (the same 10 that passes near my house and into downtown LA) except for the final leg — about 60 miles on some crazy 1-lane highway. Man, probably one of the freakiest roads in America. Yes, both the North and South Americas, not that I’ve been… alas it is late.

anyways, a few highlights (or low-lights):
- I took a grand total of three pictures. Why? The batteries that I thought I charged weren’t charged. eesh.
- I realized one of my great fears in life– taking off your shoes on the airplane and having them roll all the way to the front or back of the plane. That would suck if I couldn’t find it afterwards. Or, if when people were leaving, the kicked it off the plane, etc etc. Too many possible sucky situations to think about.
- good conversations on the airplane/car trip
- Dan and I rented a Stratus. It’s pretty weak-sauce =(
- I wish I had pictures of the crazy one-lane highway.. freaky I tell you.
- getting up at 7:30am tomorrow! It’s actually kinda exciting. I haven’t been up at that hour in a while.
- Kat wants a rock from Arizona and a rock from New Mexico. Anyone want anything else??

Well it’s 3:01p on Wednesday and I’m frantically trying to set up this crazy blog before Dan comes to pick me up at 3:15 so we don’t miss our flight. I’m in AZ/NM from Wednesday to Friday and will stay the weekend in sunny Socal. hoo ray Socal! It’s been too long.. Anyways, it should be an exciting trip — stay tuned for updates!