Goodbye 2008

At the end of every year we all look back in reminiscence and always say that the year passed by quickly. 2008 is no exception, though many couldn't be happier that the year is finally coming to a close. Economy-wise, 2008 sure sucked... people were losing jobs left and right and those looking for one (including yours truly) had to literally pray for a miracle for what little job offers that were out there.

While people were losing jobs, others were also losing their homes as they defaulted on their payments and had no choice but to foreclose. Amidst the foreclosed homes we now have a new generation of squatters. This wouldn't be so bad if banks eased up on their payment agreements. Of course banks too were feeling the squeeze and received help from the government in the form of massive monetary bailouts. Most of that money now seemed to have mysteriously disappeared as no one can accurately claim how the money was spent or used. Nice job Feds.

Well 2008 wasn't totally bad. On a personal level it's my first full calendar year back in the States and it's great to be back in the swing of things and getting reacquainted with friends. I’ve been traveling more and with more destinations to come. My fiscal situation has been rough at times, but compared to others it could've been a lot worse.

Get Yer Pepsi Stuff Now!

For people who are collecting those Pepsi Stuff points... better act fast and claim your stuff because the promotion ends tomorrow! While the list of merchandise you can actually get for points is pretty weak, the mp3 selection is good. I myself have enough points for a couple of mp3s, but I have no idea what to pick. In any case I have to decide soon because I don't have much time left.

Lucked Out

While I am still recovering from a rather bad sore throat, it's nothing compared to my friends who were hit with the stomach flu this past weekend. Of all the people, it's the same friends who are from out of town!

So instead of three days touring around NYC, it shrank to two as they were stuck in bed for an entire day. This is so weird because a year ago around this time when I had guests from out another country here, they too were hit with this bug, though fortunately it wasn’t as bad.

I think I got to have people came in the summer instead.

Texting Overload

With the influx of people visiting and planning done at the last minute lately, I'm receiving and sending more text than usual this month. Usually everything would be taken care of over emails and/or phone calls, but this past two weeks it was nothing but text messages.

This wouldn't be such a big deal if I had some sort of text messaging plan, but since I’m paying on a message by message basis, this month has been brutal. However, looking at total number of messages I have sent and received in 2008, it looks like it’s still cheaper for me to do this than to have paid an additional $5 per month for 300 messages.

Jet Lagged Friends

Looking forward to entertaining some friends from out of town this weekend, two of which who are actually from another country! Looking at their tired faces from tonight however, I think it's going to be a rather taxing tour around NYC for them, especially since they're staying such a short time. Sounds a lot like last year when I had some guests over as well around this time. Seems like vacationing is not an easy thing for some folks.

One More Thing

For all the Apple (or in this case Mapple) fanboys/fangirls out there.

Christmas Time

Merry Christmas everyone! I can't believe it's here already!

Resting on the Eve

Today I finally had the chance to sleep in and slow things down a bit as it has been busy lately. What better day to do this than today where the weather isn't all that great. No important errands to run today or any appointments. For a while I was able to sleep in daily. Funny how quickly I miss that.

For those last minute Christmas shoppers out there... sorry, but you brought this upon yourself. Who told you to wait until now?

iMeal

Last night while dinning out at a restaurant in Chinatown I noticed the guy sitting next to me had his iPod earphones still in his ear as he was eating. Why? As if it wasn't bad enough that you look like such a tool, is the dinner conversation with the person you're sitting across from so uninteresting that you have to be rude and cover your ears with those cheap earphones?

If it was off and you somehow accidentally forgot that you still had the earphones on, then I guess that's okay. However, if it was intentional and you wanted to show everyone what a douche bag you are, well then sir you suck.

Cold Weather Trains

Tonight due to the cold weather, a special modified subway schedule was in effect which included changes like express trains running local and some services ending early like the B and W. They say this is done in order to keep more trains in service, but how is that possible when they are shortening or suspending service on certain lines? Maybe they meant keeping trains from freezing and in operation. This morning the train I was on had problems closing the doors and for once it wasn't because of people holding the doors since it happened at every stop.

Anyway I didn't mind the service changes, that is if they had told me earlier! I have signed up for subway alerts and throughout the day I received no notice about the upcoming changes for the night. The cold snap didn't happen suddenly so I assumed they have planned this ahead of time. So now the 40 minute ride home took over 90 minutes as I waited at Herald Square for a train that wasn’t arriving.

Selling Soup Balls

Last night I had the chance to attend a concert in Atlantic City featuring some of the cast members from the TVB drama series Moonlight Resonance. Unlike other Chinese concerts I've been to there was only one show, so the hall was pretty packed. However there were still some empty seats scattered around and my friend took advantage of that and moved up closer. As for me, I stayed right where I was because I wasn't a big fan of these actors/actresses (I don't even know who they really are!) and it wasn't worth risking getting caught and embarrassed by security.

The show had a total of four singers, but judging from the screams, or rather shrieks, of the hordes of teenage girls, many were here to see the young male actor/singer Raymond Lam (in the above picture). His songs were good, but I'm not a avid Chinese slow song listener, so "meh." The other three sang some decent cover songs, but according to my friends some of the songs were from a generation that was more appropriate for my parents. I vaguely remember hearing some of these retro music, but wasn’t 100% sure, so I considered them new anyway.

Like the others I've been to, the concert wasn't too bad overall.

Snow’s Here!

The first major snowstorm of this season finally plowed through NYC yesterday. We got the expected amount of snowfall (2 to 4 inches in the city), but things were still running somewhat smoothly. Since many heeded the warnings and took the day off or got out of work earlier, the PM rush was lighter than usual. Here are some pics I took while heading out during the middle of the storm.






Now that the first storm is over, the next one is expected to hit on Sunday. Fun times!

Shoe Attack Was Ineffective!

If you haven't seen this clip yet, where have you been this past week?


You gotta admit the man has some good reflexes, heh.

Itchy Hot

It's nice when the heat goes on and I can get all warm and toasty, but at the same time my skin dries up and I get itchy all over. I don't want to be constantly grabbing the lotion bottle, but at the same time I don't want to be freezing. It sucks to have such skin like this during winter and winter hasn’t even officially started yet!

Catching Up

Met up with some friends for some dinner earlier tonight. It's always nice to catch up with friends who you haven't seen in a while and see what they have been up to. The dinner wasn’t a massive group outing, so that made things easier in terms of talking with one another.

I don't mind listening to their stories, but sometimes when I tell people what I have been doing and then repeat them to others I feel sorta narcissistic.

Interrupting an Interruption

I think I know why I feel like I'm not getting much done these days. I would start something and halfway through someone would walk by asking for assistance in something else. Therefore I put what I was originally doing on hold and work on the new stuff only to have someone else come in and ask for something else. By the end I lost track of what I was doing for whom.

This is not really a bad thing as it keeps me busy throughout the day, but I feel bad when something I said I was going to work on a while ago remains incomplete and the person has to remind me to go back to that.

Morning Door Holding

I'm not a morning person and neither was this conductor during this morning's commute. Several times when there was someone holding the train doors she screamed "Let go of the doors!" over the speakers. I applaud her attitude because it's these people that cause all sorts of delays because once they hold the doors for their friends someone else will come running up and hold the doors as well. Wait for the next train! Not my fault you were late and couldn’t make it to this train! I'm guilty of holding the doors too (very rarely though), but I never dare do this during rush hours when people's patience are dangerously low.

In extreme cases the door may even malfunction and not close at all, causing the train to be out of service and pissing off a whole lot of people. I actually witnessed this once on an R train a couple of years ago. As the doors closed a guy came running in and was kicking and pushing them as he was caught in-between. He got in, but now the door couldn't close all the way. The entire train was taken out of service and everyone in that car gave him dirty looks as he played dumb and walked away. He didn’t need to "play" dumb in my opinion.

Rolling in Caps

More soda bottle cap news! Just went over to recycle some bottles and when I was looking around the machines for some Coca-Cola and Pepsi bottle caps with codes, a lady there gave me an entire bag of discarded caps only. Nice! The caps might be wet and smell funky from being in a bag full of soda bottles and beer cans, but a cap is a cap.

Lateness Chain Reaction

Seemed like today was nothing was running on time.

First I woke up late and was late to a baby shower, which by the way the person who the shower was for was late herself. That in turn caused me to be late in heading up to Midtown to finish some work at the office. Luckily I called that I was running late, but when I got there the person that was suppose to let me in was late too! So I sat on the floor in front of the door organizing some papers while waiting for her to show up. When she arrived we got down to work quickly. I was about to leave and meet up with a friend when I realized that a whole batch of stuff wasn't completed yet. That meant remaining at the office and calling my friend that I was going to be late. Throughout the day I was constantly calling her that I was going to be late and kept pushing back the meet-up time. 3 hours and 45 minutes behind schedule I finally met up with her. It was so late however that we didn't had the chance to hang and instead was just a train ride back into Brooklyn.

Amazingly the only thing that was timed correctly somewhat was the subway. Twice I had to take the R train and for those who take this train regularly know that the R service can be real flaky at times. That wasn’t the case however as both times the train arrived within minutes after I walked down to the platform.

Too Much Excitement

Life's just too exciting, heh.

Rolling Caps

Just the other day I was talking about entering codes from the caps of Coca-Cola bottles. Today someone discarded a Sprite bottle in the subway car I was sitting in and it rolled right to my feet. Talk about opportunity falling right onto one’s lap!

Temperature Roller Coaster

In the beginning of the week it was struggling to get out of the 20s (all that wind didn’t help), today was hovering around 60 degrees, and by the end of the week it’s suppose to drop back down to the 30s. Can watching the mercury in a thermometer rise and drop that fast be considered a form of motion sickness?

Collectin' Bottle Caps

No, I'm not collecting them as some sort of hobby, but rather for points. Whenever I see a discarded bottle cap from Coca-Cola on the ground, I pick it up and enter the code underneath the cap online. Great way to rack up those mycokereward points without having to shell out anything.

To me it's like finding money on the floor... you would pick that up, no?

Skipping U and Neck for a Year

Today the year-long rehabilitation of the southbound Avenue U and Neck Road station platforms on the Brighton Line began with makeshift fences separating the local track and Q trains skipping these two stops. Other than trains being backed up at Kings Highway, I didn't notice any signs of mass confusion or irate straphangers. It looked like the typical tired PM rush hour crowd. It was still nice that there were some MTA staff at Kings Highway and Sheepshead Bay platforms waiting to help people out.

Regular users of these two stations might be fine now, but when the southbound side is completed and they begin closing the northbound side, the Manhattan-bound side, many might not be so happy about having to make daily detours just to get on the train in the morning while rushing to work. Maybe they will be distracted by their shiny new station?

New Food: Amedei Toscano Blond

Any high end chocolate enthusiasts out there probably know about Amedei's line of chocolate, but for the rest of us that simply pick up whatever chocolate's on sale at the local supermarket, "Ame-what?" Fortunately I was offered one of their luxury chocolate bars to try out. By luxury I mean one of these 50g bars is about a mere $10.


Though the front of the bar says "extra bitter," the nice blend of dried apricot and peach mixed in negates the bitterness. In fact, there's a good fruity taste that lasts throughout a bite. It never tasted bitter the whole time! The chocolate itself is also great: milky, rich, and smooth. Overall it was really good. Whenever you feel like splurging on chocolate, I recommend trying their chocolates!

It's Not Paper Towels

Found this interesting coin-op machine inside the MEN'S RESTROOM at Macy's in Herald Square yesterday...


Kind of now makes me wonder what machine is in the women's restroom.

Hola Maraka!

The jokes will make much more sense if you have seen an episode of Dora the Explorer before. SNL has really pinpointed the ridiculousness of this cartoon series!

New Gig

Got something new to occupy my time during the weekdays. Granted it's only until Christmas, but it's better than just staying home all day in front of the PC. Now I can go somewhere else and stare at a PC screen all day there instead, heh.

Dreaded Apple Updates

Why is that every time I update Apple software on my computer the internet connection goes haywire? The past three updates involving iTunes, iPod, and/or Quicktime my wifi connection fidgets and the signal swings on and off. The latest attempt is the worst with more walks over to the router ever than before.

This is why I always push off these updates as long as possible despite the annoying Apple Software Updater constantly nagging me.

The Other Side of the Trip

While the destinations on the Tennessee tour were okay, the busload of Chinese tourists and the tour guide I was with the whole time left much to be desired.

A while back I read somewhere that Chinese tourists were named the most annoying tourists. After being stuck with them for four days on this trip I couldn't agree more. Aside from a few who were actually pretty cool, most of the fellow passengers were loud, rude, and obnoxious. You had your groups who didn’t understand the concept of inside voice, the groups who were oblivious of people around them, the groups who cut in front of everybody even though there was clearly a line forming, and the group with the little brat who was acting like a diva in public and smacking his mom in front of everyone. At certain points I was utterly embarrassed to be affiliated with these people. Now my friends and I were guilty of causing some ruckus as well, but at least we apologized for our actions. These bumpkins however acted like nothing was wrong.

The tour guide wasn't all that great either. His English was below average. This wouldn’t be a problem if the bus was entirely full of Mandarin or Cantonese speaking passengers, but there were a few Indians on board that didn't understand either. I hope these poor passengers were able to decode what he was trying to say in English. The guide was not really good in translating. Countless times the Chinese and English explanations didn't match or the English explanation was completely left out, which wasn't totally a bad thing since the English explanations he did include didn’t make sense half of the time.

Before the tour started I had low expectations and anticipated some unpleasantness. I didn't imagine it was going to be this bad.

We Got Rocks

Back from a four day tour of the Old Dominion, Volunteer, and Peach States, or otherwise known as Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia. While it felt like a bulk of the time was spent on the bus, in-between the drives we did stop at several locations: Shenandoah Caverns, Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede, Ober Gatlinburg, Ruby Falls, Incline Railway, Rock City, Lost Sea, and the Natural Bridge.


The first and last days were pretty much driving to and from NYC with only one stop. The first day after a really brief stop for lunch, which was at a place that was decided at the last minute due to many restaurants closed for the Thanksgiving holiday, was Shenandoah Caverns. A rather short cave, but the nice placement of lightning inside made the formations stand out from ordinary looking rocks.


Day two we finally made it to Tennessee and to mark the event we stopped at an oversized Elvis guitar for some photo op. By the next stop it was already lunchtime, so we headed over to Dolly Parton's Dixie Stampede Show, which was one of those food & live entertainment places. Riders ran around an indoor dirt arena with their horses and did all sorts of tricks while we ate without the use of utensils. Like that Medieval Times restaurant chain, everyone was required to use their hand to eat everything. After lunch it was off to nearby Ober Gatlinburg where we rode a cable car up to the top of mountain for a variety of activities like ice skating, mountain sliding, and riding amusement park-like contraptions. Due to the sheer number of people there and the limited time we only had enough time to do about one activity before heading back down. Even then we were still late!


Day three was more rocks. This tour would be great for geologists and general rock lovers/enthusiasts. First stop, Ruby Falls: an indoor waterfall that is taller than Niagara Falls, but not as grand and splendor. Once again colored lighting made the waterfall and rocks look interesting. Next was a ride down the mountain on the Incline Railway. If you have ridden the Peak Tram in Hong Kong, it’s pretty much the same except it's longer. It was funny to see the reaction of fellow tourists who never rode on such a car. It was supposed to be a round trip, but because of time (again), the tour guide decided to just make it a one way trip and head back to the bus. I overheard him talk to the operator asking for how to go about getting a refund since everyone paid for a round trip. Funny how he doesn’t mention this to the rest of the passengers. Hmm...


Anyway, back to the rocks. Afterwards we crossed over to Georgia (just barely) and stopped at Rock City, where we walked around a nice forest surrounded by rocks to the spot where we could see seven states (Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia). The last stop of the day was to an indoor lost sea, conveniently named the Lost Sea. It was much spacious compared to all the other caverns we been to, and the boat ride around the lake was cool. Too bad it was too dark inside to take any good pictures.


The last day was a swing down the Natural Bridge in Virginia before heading back to NYC. Pretty cool the see the enormous size of it in person and walk right under it. Thanks to the return traffic of all the holiday travelers, getting back into the city took longer than usual. All in all, I think the places we stopped at were good. It was a bit weird being stared at some places, but I guess that’s what you get when a busload of Asian tourists arrives in a mainly Caucasian area.

Additional pictures posted at flickr.