I may be a little behind in Batman news

Here's a link to Meredith Viera riding the new Batpod (stupid name. It's a Bat-Cycle. Ok, that's a stupid name too. Stupid naming convention)

http://video.msn.com/v/us/fv/fv.htm??g=13f4067e-e33c-4d98-96b1-51bafdd4f35e&t=m17&f=06/64&p=source_today%20show&fg=&gt1=100

Trying to catch up to real time on the blog

Ok, so I finished four massive posts about my cousin's wedding last weekend. I'm now moving on to this past weekend (Father's Day weekend) and then I'll be all caught up! Whee~!

So, this weekend wasn't nearly as eventful as last weekend, which is really good because I would've passed out if I had to spend so much time traveling again. So uneventful that I can't even remember what happened Friday or Saturday. Thursday was trivia night at T's Pub, which was fun. We never win but it's always fun. Plus, I get to pull random facts outta my ass, which is really the whole point of going to trivia nights.

Friday was a nothing day, I think. I went to work and came back home. My boss decided that I needed to go watch the Sox this weekend because they were playing a three game series against the Giants. So, he kind of went looking for tickets without my being aware of it. He did ask if I wanted to go to the game but I told him "Sure, but I dunno how expensive it would be." which he apparently interpreted as meaning "Find tickets and pay for part of them for me and I'll go." because that's kind of what he did. On Thursday, he told me that his friend (he has a ton of friends all over the place who hook him up with tickets. In fact, he used to work for TicketStub here in Massachusetts back when it first got started) had Sox tickets for Sunday and that he put them in the mail and mailed it to the store. Unfortunately, they weren't here yet by Thursday and we don't have weekend delivery so there was a slight chance they wouldn't get here at all. On top of it, he got me 2 tickets and he said that they probably wouldn't be next to each other. It sounded... shady, to say the least.

Anyway, on Friday, lo and behold, they came. He gave 'em to me (true enough, they weren't next to each other) and I was like "cool." The original intention was for me to go with my roommate but Mike had a friend coming this weekend and he's trying to study for his qualifying exams on Wednesday. So I asked Jana if she wanted to go. Jana's my roommate's classmate's roommate's classmate. I actually met her like... my second week in Boston a year ago. She was already friends with Mike. Anyway, we've hung out fairly regularly since then. In fact, she's probably one of only like four people from Boston who's in my cell phone. Sad... I need more friends. Anyway, she was happy to go, even tho it was sketchy-ness with the tickets.

So, Sunday was the game. (Oh! I remember what happened Saturday. Actually, I'm going to try and get the stupid shit that started on Saturday settled today. I'll blog about it later.) It seemed kind of ironic that I went to a baseball game on Father's Day when I was 3000 miles away from my dad. Oh well. Fenway was PACKED, which isn't that surprising because since Boston's been leading the division, their home games are always PACKED. Me and Jana (she's from Oregon so she understands the West Coast vs. East Coast mentality from the same perspective as me) were surprised to see a very strong and vocal minority that were fiercely rooting for the Giants. Ultimately, however, it proved futile as the Giants kind of suck this year.

Since the seats we actually had weren't actually next to each other, we spent most of the game wandering around Fenway. We started at one of the food stands on the third floor during the first 2 innings. The game started at 2:05 and neither one of us had lunch prior so I got to have one of my favorite foods: baseball junk food! It's just like theater junk food except tastes slightly better and costs slightly more. In fact, it's very much like circus food or pub food. Except I'd venture to say that baseball food's much tastier. Anyway, during the course of the entire game, I managed to have an Italian sausage, fries, beer, Coke, and ice cream. Which isn't very much now that I think about it because the last time I was at Fenway I managed to have an Italian sausage, fries, beer, Coke, ice cream, pretzels, and more beer. That was too much food.

Anyway, the game itself was really fun to watch. The first inning was pretty crazy with the Sox scoring two runs early and the entire park going nuts. It was a fun way to start the game. I even called Gordon during the game to brag about being in Fenway. He was about to board a plane so he couldn't talk long but his quick text response was "Die in a fire." I don't think he wanted to spend his Father's Day on a plane.

So, at one point in the middle of the game, around the fifth inning, we managed to find seats that had been abandoned by another group of people. We sat down in those seats and discovered that they were really really close (like... next to) the Giants supporters. They were really really loud. It was pretty fun though watching the game with people that chanted "Let's Go Barry" while every other person in the park was booing. It was also while we were next to these people when, in the sixth inning, Barry hit a home run. They went BANANAS! Like cuckoo-for-Cocoa-Puffs-bananas. It was quite a sight to see.

So, the Sox won, which was cool (I'm kind of a fan of the Sox. You can't really help it when you're in Boston. The fandom's infectious) but I got to see a Barry Bonds homerun during his Aaron chase. So, best of both worlds. =)

Anyway, after the game, we went to Border's and ran into Floren, a classmate and friend of Jana's who's Romanian. We all went to Super 88 after that to get groceries, which was kind of fun because I didn't know where the Super 88 nearest to my place was and now I do. Now I can get Chinese groceries, which probably won't really happen all that much but I have access to shrimp chips now, which is always a good thing.

That was Sunday: a fun game. and Monday meant back to work. Aside from the shit on Saturday, I think I'm fairly caught up now. I'll update soon after I find out about the shit from Saturday. Sorry, it'll make sense soon. Oh, I bought Mandy Moore's new album. It's pretty good. and I bought the Traveling Wilburys' anthology pack on iTunes. I've never even heard of the Traveling Wilburys before. It's a supergroup with Jeff Lynne, Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Roy Orbison, and Tom Petty, so... no surprise they're really good, I suppose. So, good music recently. That's always fun. Especially considering the CD I'd been listening to prior to these two was "A Collection of Roxette Hits!" Not that Roxette's not good music also! I love Roxette. It's just... these are better. I think I have weird music tastes...

Anyway, that's enough of how weird I am. Hopefully today turns out to be a good Tuesday. We'll see.

Danny's Wedding Weekend part 4 -- Afterward

Ok, this series of posts is starting to go... long... so I'll try my best to finish up last weekend with this post and get to this weekend in the next post and then I'll be caught up! =)

SO! Part 4. Well, let's start with the day after the wedding from last week (this would be... Sunday). My dad wanted to stay for lunch before we went back to San Jose from South Pas. I think this was probably because Chantel was there. So, since we weren't going to leave South Pas until... like 2 in the afternoon, we wouldn't get back to San Jose until 8 or 9 at night. I wanted to go to Kinko's and print up my resume for Monday so in the morning when they took Chantel to Grandma's grave on Rose Hill, I stayed behind to get some work done.

I looked up Kinko's and Staples and took my aunt's car to print up some resume stuffs and to buy a portfolio, both of which were successful ventures. So, when all was said and done, we ended up meeting for lunch. We ate and then drove 6 hours and ended up in San Jose at 8-ish, whereby we ate McDonald's for dinner and that was Sunday. Uneventful but very productive.

Monday, I donned my suit again that I wore on Saturday (albeit without a tie) and drove out to Santa Cruz. Winding highway 17 was fun but I drove slowly. I think I was still paranoid because it's been so long before I drove 17 (and I had an accident 2 years ago during my last year of school) but it's been three months before I drove I was happy to spend my weekend driving all over the place.

Ok, quick UCSC note: UCSC is a big university that's divided into 10 residential colleges. It's been touted (mostly by UCSC itself) as having a big university's resources but a small college experience. What that amounts to mostly is the idea that you get a small college feel so you're mostly interacting with 400 on-campus students in your college (much easier getting to know 400 students instead of, say, 10,000 students) but you have all the resources that a UC would have (large library, lotsa funding, etc.). Each college has their own offices, their own staff, their own way of dealing with housing and programming and such. Intra-college programming exists but those are big deals and take a lot of effort. For the most part, colleges treat themselves as individuals. The 10 residential colleges are a large part of your UCSC identity, to the point where each college has their own graduation ceremony instead of UCSC having it's own gigantic ceremony. My interview was with Kresge.

I got to Kresge a good half hour ahead of time (better early than late). One parking pass later and I was out and about in Kresge. I had my interview with Pam and the whole Kresge crew. To be honest, I think the interview could've gone better. I had to do a lot of thinking because they did the "Name two instances where..." and I couldn't actually think of examples of these situations. I've since forgotten what the questions actually were. I do remember that I completely made one of the answers up. Just pure fiction. Well, not PURE fiction but I took two different things that happened in real life and threw them together as if they happened concurrently and squished it into the context of the question. Yep. I lied. Oh well.

Other than the lying and the not knowing how to answer questions, the interview went well. In the end, I think I was able to talk without stumbling over my own words and I think I was able to project at least a modicum of quiet confidence. Sigh. I need more practice in interviewing.

Anyway, afterward, Pam took me on a quick tour of Kresge. It hasn't changed too much. Offices got moved around and Humanities moved out of the college (which actually is a big deal because if it wasn't for the fact that Kresge housed the Lit department, I probably would never have gone there) but other than those things, the college is pretty much the same.

On my way out, I stopped by the Barn at the East entrance and found Alex Delgadillo. We had a good conversation. He's doing well and it's fun to see Alex. He was doing his thing in the Barn with parents and pre-frosh, despite not being in the Orientation department anymore. Afterward, I went home. I was probably in Santa Cruz for an hour and a half. It was a fun experience, especially since I hadn't been there for... a year? a year and a half? Something like that.

Back home, I packed, had dinner with my parents, and was dropped off at San Jose airport. (We live like a 10 min. drive away from SJ Mineta airport without using the highway so it was very convenient.) I took the red-eye back out to Boston. I had a quick scare moment when, sitting on the airplane, the Captain came on the PA system and said that there was a short circuit in the air circulation system and they needed to restart the whole electrical system and had a technician look at the plane before we could leave. In my head, I was thinking "NO! NO WAY! I cannot be on another plane from hell again. I WILL NOT ALLOW THIS!!" Of course, the thing only took 10 min. to fix and we were in the air 10 min. later so I was freaking out for nothing.

On the plane back, I had the "fortune" of sitting behind the rudest person I've ever seen on a plane. First off, this fucker was the last one on the plane. I think he was flying standby. They did a couple of announcements asking is so-and-so was on the plane, which is usually what they do when they make sure that somebody no-showed their flight. Then, they invited this fucker onto the plane to take the empty seat in front of me. He was on his cell phone, probably telling somebody in Boston that he as on the plane (he was speaking in one of the numerous languages from India so I have no idea what he was actually saying). The flight attendants were trying to get his ass into the seat so that we could take off while this fucker was content on taking his time. He slowly put his bag away while 2 flight attendants surrounded him and were saying repeatedly "Sir, please turn off your phone. TURN OFF YOUR PHONE." He still refused to turn off his show. This is when I would've hit him and taking him into custody but I was not the air marshal. Instead, they just kept telling him to turn off the phone and he just kept ignoring them.

This fucker was sitting next to an empty seat (he sat in the aisle seat, the middle seat to his right was unoccupied and there was somebody with their puppy dog on the window seat) and he decided that when he was going to sleep, he'd try to lie down. Since his head was in the middle seat and his ass was in the aisle seat, there was nowhere to put his legs. He draped them over the armrest and his feet were in the middle of the aisle. THE MIDDLE OF THE AISLE! And when he actually lost consciousness, he put his legs UP! He was resting his bear feet on the arm rest of the woman across the aisle from him!! She looked helpless and disgusted. I wanted to hit this guy with my fist but that probably wouldn't have gone over very well. I wasn't even sure what the real story was because I had my headphones on the whole flight. This might have been some weird medical thing because the flight attendants looked helpless. So, either it was medical or they were just incompetent. The one attendant physically moved the guy's legs several times to no avail and she finally just woke him the fuck up and sat in the empty seat next to him to keep him from falling asleep again. I dunno what the fuck's up with this guy but he was a fucker. It's a good thing they won't let us bring weapons on the plane!

Anyway, I got in at 5 am in Boston and took a cab back to the apartment. I slept a bit and woke up for work in the afternoon. I went to work and the first person I had to ring up was a WACKO! She was probably the craziest person I've had to deal with by myself!! CRAZY WOMAN!!

So, this wacko came into the store, which was empty except for me. She went to the Poland Springs (bottled water) and stared at them. I was like "Hi! How's it going?" which is my equivalent to "Welcome to Walmart." She looked at me and said "Is your water poisoned?"

Now, she spoke with a heavy Eastern Europe accent and was fairly old-ish so she had to repeat everything she said like 3 times before I understood it. Frankly, even if she was speaking in English without an accent, I still would've asked her to repeat this particular question. I was like "WHAT?!?!?" Poisoned water?? ...the fuck? So, of course, I was like "... no." and she was very unconvinced.

She went on this rant about how she had gone to Shaw's and bought a bottle of Poland Springs and it had poisoned her and how she just got back from the Red Cross (the Red Cross is like 2 blocks away from our store) and she held up her arm. There were like hives and bumps on her arms which she proceeded to tell me came from the poisoned Poland Springs water. (Bear in mind, Poland Springs is a really big company. Its head is Nestle [you know, the chocolate] and they serve water all over the country. Poland Springs is their New England brand. Their California brands are Arrowhead and Calistoga.) So, I was like "uh... ok." So she said "So, now I am very thirsty because I've had to walk and so it's either die of dehydration or drink poison. So tell me, is your water poisoned?"

In my head, I was thinking "...... WHAT?!?!?!?" but what I actually said was "WE don't poison the water ourselves, if that's what you're asking." She waved her hand at me and was like "not what I ask." and I was like ".... ok....?" She was like "Is there poison in your water?" and I tried my best to be reasonable after not getting sleep the night before.

"It's a sealed bottle of water. We don't inject poison into the water. We just sell the water." She was very unsatisfied by my response. Her solution for me was to drink the water. "If you drink the water, I will buy water." My head nearly exploded. "... WHAT?!?!"

"It's a sealed bottle of water!! I won't OPEN the water!!" She was unrelenting. "How much water cost? 1.15? If you drink half of the water, I pay 1.15 for the rest of the bottle." I couldn't get over how crazy she was and how crazy this moment was.

Since I was tired and I was losing my mind, I finally agreed to this crazy wacko. I grabbed a coffee cup and showed her it was empty. I opened a bottle, poured some out into the cup, showed her, and drank the water. I showed her the empty cup again and handed her the bottle. She seemed momentarily satisfied and I rung her up. Of course, my mind was going nuts, like firecrackers going off at the Esplanade on July 4th. So, like a fool, I kept talking.

"You realize that we don't bottle our own water. No store does. So, if you buy a Poland Springs in Shaw's and then a Poland Springs here, it'll be the same water in the two bottles because it doesn't make a difference WHERE you buy it. It only matters WHO'S water you buy." She waved her hand at me like I was a fly and was annoying her. "I know I know. Company's fault, not YOUR fault. But YOU should know if you sell poisoned water." I was like "... there hasn't been a recall or anything." She just kept talking about how the country was crazy and that she wanted to move back to her country where people didn't get poisoned by the water.

So, I made change and was in the process of giving her back 4 cents (after tax, the price is 1.21 and she gave me a dollar and a quarter so the change was 4 cents) and since I usually say something when I give back change ("Have a great day") and the last thing out of her mouth was "I'm going to go back to my country." so I said the only thing that came to my head: "Good luck." This is when she gave the punchline: "Luck?!? I don't need 'good luck!!' I need country that isn't trying to poison me!! You keep 4 cents and you give it to person who needs luck!!" And she turned around and walked out of the store, leaving me holding 4 pennies and looked utterly dumb-founded.

So, that was my weekend last weekend. Next up: this weekend!

Danny's Wedding Weekend part 3 -- Wedding Details

Part 3 (go back and read parts 1 and 2 to get the whole story) is just an embellishment of the wedding. It's more like an addendum, although I don't want to go back and type that into the title so it'll just be "Part 3." So, Judy mentioned that the lack on description for the wedding itself in the last update was slightly disproportionate to the amount of description for everything else so I'll try to embellish the wedding a little for this post.

So, the wedding color was copper (brown-ish. I'm guessing copper. I dunno tho cuz I didn't ask them) so the flowers were light pink (almost a salmon color), Danny's tux had a copper tie and vest, and Jessica's dress was white with a light copper (almost pale gold) trim and designs (little swirly graphics, nothing elaborate or overpowering). She had a train that was white lace with gold designs. It was beautiful.

Upon arriving at the church, we immediately found a place to sit down. We sat with my uncle's side of the family (his mom and sister and brother) while I went in search of somebody I recognized (I think I had a pertinent question although now I can't quite remember what it was). I found Julie (Johnny's wife and the wedding coordinator for Danny's wedding. She had one of those nifty Bluetooth headsets that I always intended to buy but couldn't reasonably justify getting). The first thing out of her mouth was "3 in the morning?" I rolled my eyes and told her how much flying sucked. She was very sympathetic. Eventually, we were ushered to the groom's side. We sat in very uncomfortable pews (well, they're wooden benches. What do you expect?).

The wedding started with Pastor Allan asking us to pray. We did. It was a'ight. There were 2 worship songs sung. I can't remember which songs but there were worship people playing instruments and two girls singing into mics over to the right (left from the perspective of the stage) of the pulpit. One of the girls was really hot, but that seems inappropriate to concentrate on IN A CHURCH during a WORSHIP SONG so I just concentrated on the fact that I didn't know the words, almost nobody from my family knew the words, and almost everybody else did. It was a little disconcerting.

They did the usual vows ("Do you take this man... Do you take this woman...") during the ceremony. Jess's voice sounded kind of wooden but that's mostly because she was trying not to cry (she failed). Johnny gave Danny the rings. Danny's cost 25 dollars (a fact that he was very proud of. I was a little disconcerted but he gave a good reason. Something about it not being important how much it cost and it's not necessary for the guy's ring to be precious metal or whatever... Actually, upon hindsight, I'm still disconcerted. At least he spent a couple hundred dollars on Jessica's ring) and looked like it cost more. At least 50. (*rolls eyes*) Anyway, they did the ring exchange.

Then it was time for the unity candle (maybe the candle happened before the ring exchange. It's all a blur to me now). Unity Candle, if you don't know, is a fairly recent addition to Christian weddings (like... 30 or 40 years ago). It's a large pillar candle flanked by two thin taper candles. The mothers of the bridge and groom light their respective thin candles (this symbolizes the life that they each had before the ceremony, passed down to them from their family). During the ceremony, the bride and groom use the taper candles to light the pillar candle (this symbolizes them starting a new life together and joining each other as the two fires cannot be separated once they've joined together). Anyway, the candles were higher up (behind the pastor and the pulpit) in this church/wedding. So, Danny and Jessica walked up to the top of the stairs and stood together lighting the candles. This is when Danny pulled out a note card from his jacket pocket and read it to Jessica (I'm guessing these were their real vows and were meant to be secret). They cried. It was nice.

Symbolically giving something back to their families, D+J (I'm getting tired of typing it out every time) gave both sets of parents an orchid. Then they continued the ceremony (more praying. Seriously, I'm not going to type out every time we prayed. I think it was like 3 or 4 or something). It ended with the leaving of the bridge and groom hand in hand and the bridesmaids and groomsmen all left hand in hand too. The ring boy and flower girl left together (although the ring boy tripped at the very end and fell over. It was kinda cute but must've sucked for him. The flower girl was crying later because she let her "little brother" fall. That was kind of touching).

Then the wedding party came back into the church and a slide went up on the projector (using a laptop) with an ordered list of guest groups ("Danny's family," "Jessica's family," "Fellowship," "Harvest Berkeley friends," etc.). They wanted to get wedding photos with everybody and it was broken down into these groups for organizational purposes. We went up during our turn ("Danny's family") and took photos with the bride and groom. They looked a little overwhelmed.

Since we were first or second on the photo list and there were hundreds of guests, we were kind of wandering aimlessly for a little bit. My aunt was getting kind of tired and my dad was getting kind of restless so we decided to drive home (6 miles!) and rest for a little bit before the reception (it was a 2 hour break between the end of the ceremony and the beginning of the reception). I drove one car, my mom drove the other and we headed back. Upon arriving home, Chantel and Ariel immediately petitioned me to drive us to Starbucks for coffee. I immediately agreed and we headed out to get frappuccinos.

Of course, since we left after staying in the church for an hour and we drove kind of slowly, plus there was travel time to the restaurant to consider, we only had like 10 min. to get coffee. We were late. It was alright though because we got back just as my aunt and uncle and my parents were heading out the door. We piled into the minivan and I drove us to the restaurant (using the maps my mom downloaded from both Yahoo and Google. She was prepared). I looked for parking but couldn't find any. I finally found a dirt lot down an alley across the street from the restaurant and rushed to join my family.

We went into the restaurant and went up the stairs (except my aunt and my dad who took the elevator because of the wheelchair) to the reception hall. We were half an hour late but they had budgeted an hour of leadtime into the reception so people were still walking around and looking for their seats and there were plenty of people just arriving too. I found Julie and asked her if the dirt lot was an appropriate place to park. She looked at me like I had two heads. "Um... the restaurant has valet service. The wedding party's paying for it." I looked at her like she just explained gravity to me. "D'uh!! Valet!!" I turned around and went back down the stairs 2 by 2. I ran to the car and pulled it up to the restaurant door. The guy gave me a ticket and I ran back up the stairs.

Sitting down next to Ariel, we were placed in the table of Danny's cousins. Me and Ariel from my aunt's side and four other ppl from my uncle's side. They ranged in age from 16 to 25 (ish? I dunno. I frankly didn't ask). They were interesting people. The most interesting was the 16 year old girl who said that for her wedding she wanted a combination of half hiphop and half medieval jousts. I'm pleased there are such weird (in a good way) people in my family tree. =)

So, Danny's 100% Chinese and Jessica's 100% Chinese (I think). Naturally, they served Armenian appetizers. Many a Chinese relative was confused by the hummus. I was very amused by it. It was really good tho. There was hummus, baba ganoush (although with tomatoes I think because it was red and baba ganoush usually isn't red), pita bread, and an herb salad with mint and parsley. There was also a meat platter (sliced meats) and a shrimp platter. It was very tasty (in a Middle Eastern way). Main courses were steak, chicken, or salmon. It was very good, although the restaurant didn't give us steak knives so everybody had to struggle with cutting filets with butter knives. Stupid restaurant.

There were some interesting presentations during the reception as well. The wedding party were all introduced as they came to the wedding party table two by two (one bridesmaid and one groomsman at a time) with introductions that were clearly written by Danny and Jessica. Danny's were all funny (and most included the phrase "And he's single, in case you ladies are interested...") and Jessica's were mostly sweet. There were several toasts throughout the night, including the best man speech and maid of honor speech. Johnny's speech was really touching at the end but really really funny in the middle. See, for Danny's best man speech at Johnny's reception, he had found some of Johnny's old diaries and put some of the entries into his speech. Well, 2 years later, it's payback time. Johnny did the same for Danny and Danny's were equally as funny as Johnny's. Since Jess did her undergrad at Berkeley and Danny did his at UCLA, the presenters did a Cal vs. UCLA competition among some of the wedding party. They did a dance-off, a sing-off, and a kiss-off. It was amusing, especially Johnny's and Jerome's joint rendition of Celine's "My Heart Will Go On." There was also a good slideshow that I missed a part of because I had to take my uncle to the bathroom. Finally, Danny broke out his guitar and sat in front of Jess playing Elton John's "My Song" to her. That was really moving.

The reception ended with cake and dancing. I decided not to participate in the dancing but my uncle really got into it as did Jess's dad, both of whom were out on the dance floor with mid-twenty-year-old ppl dancing to hip hop. It was an amusing sight to say the least. We headed out relatively early because my family's mean age was around 50. Before we left though, I finally managed to talk to Jess as we were leaving. Her first words to me were "3 am?" Oh, jeez. Well, I managed to say the "You look great" and the "It was beautiful" and "Congratulations" without taking too much time up. We left after a fun day and got back in time to hash out how tomorrow would go. Then we all fell asleep.

It was a fun ceremony. I just called Sara today and RSVP'd for her wedding. She told me her mom was freaking out because nobody's RSVP'd yet. So, if you're reading this and you're invited to Sara's wedding: RSVP NOW! Save them some stress. I'm looking forward to the July wedding too because I think no matter what, no matter what goes wrong, weddings are always nice. They're fun and celebrations of joy and love and togetherness. Plus, good food. =) Part 4 to come shortly. Perhaps tomorrow. It's late and I'm tired.

Danny's Wedding Weekend part 2 -- A Lovely Ceremony

Part 2 (read Part 1 below. I know, I know. Blog postings are arranged reverse chronologically. Blame the genre) of Danny's Wedding Weekend.

So, I get to my aunt's house at almost 4 am Saturday morning. Bear in mind, Danny's wedding starts at 3 pm Saturday afternoon. At least I made it, right? I immediately crash on the mattress set-up (thankfully it's set-up downstairs. I don't think I would've been able to make it up stairs).

Of course, the mattress was in the living room so at around 7 in the morning, I wake up to the sounds of my aunt talking to my uncle (he has Alzheimer's so excuse his constant questions). I listen for about 10 min. as my aunt explains to him how he can't go into the living room because I'm still sleeping and he needs to accompany her, the bride's mom, and our family friend from Taiwan to the hair dresser in the morning so that he can stay out the way of everybody trying to prepare for the wedding. I fall immediately back to sleep...

...for another forty-five minutes before the doorbell rings. It's the housekeeper/cook (my aunt works and is recovering from cancer and my uncle suffers from Alzheimer's. So, they have a housekeeper/cook). I let him in (because my dad CAN'T HEAR THE DOORBELL from the KITCHEN!! PUT IN YOUR HEARING AID!!!) and go back to the bed to put it away (shrug, might as well get up. There's a wedding today!). I sit down to watch TV. Finding nothing of interest on, I switch on the satellite cable (my aunt gets satellite cable with Taiwan programming. 12 channels of Taiwan TV with absolutely no other satellite channels. Thankfully, I'm not picky). I watch a variety show for about 20 min. before my cousin comes downstairs. "Good morning, Danny. Congratulations on the wedding!" "Good morning, Chris. Congratulations on making it into California." He tells me the florist is here. I put on my shoes and go outside with him as we help Moe, the florist, and his assistant unload the carloads of flowers he has and put them all in the garage outside. (Their garage is in their backyard. LA Suburban architecture.) Danny goes back to keep preparing for the wedding while I stay outside and help Moe as best I can for a little bit. My contribution includes filling three large buckets with water. Moe doesn't seem to trust me with anything else. Just as well because I wouldn't either.

I go back inside and sit down again to keep watching the variety show. They're blowing ping pong balls out of a giant glass vase full of flour with their mouths. I'm intrigued... Doorbell again. It's the other guy who's here to help Moe. I lead him to the backyard. Danny tells me that Moe's doing the flowers for free. What a great guy. I smell my shirt and realize that I'm in desperate need of a shower.

Shower done with, I come back downstairs for more TV. My aunt and uncle are back from the hairdresser's. My aunt looks good but she's using a walker. Oh yeah. Danny told me that she fell and had an accident. She'll be in a wheelchair for today's ceremony. That sucks. She's happy to see me tho as am I happy to see her. Aside from the walker, she looks healthy. Our family friend greets me too. Her English name's Chantal. She's a cool person. (She's Grandpa Wong's youngest daughter, for those keeping track.) My mom wakes up too. She changes and is off to pick up my other cousin, Ariel, so she can attend the wedding.

My aunt offers me Chinese breads to eat for breakfast. It's then that I realize that the last time I ate food was Thursday night for dinner (not counting chocolate chip cookies on the plane). Friday lunch was busy and I left at noon. Dinner was non-existent because of the line-waiting and JetBlue doesn't serve meals, just snacks. Wow. Starving and I didn't even realize it. I devour a bread and take a multi-vitamin (I've started taking One-A-Day). I feel much better. Back to watching TV.

I go outside for a little bit too to see how Moe's doing. The flowers are looking really good. It's surprising to see how much effort it takes to make that many bouquets (bouquets for all the bridesmaids and the bride as well as bouquets for all the pews and two gigantic bouquets for the pulpit). I'm absolutely no help. I go back to the TV. The variety show ppl just ate deep-fried shaved ice. I'm intrigued again.

My other cousin, Johnny (Danny's older brother) comes from his apartment (where he lives with his wife, Julie. They got married 2 years apart. They're also 2 years apart in age. I'm 2 years younger than Danny. Uh-oh. I think I'm expected to get married in 2 years) to pick up Danny and bring him to take photos. He jokes with me about getting in at 3 in the morning. Uh oh. I sense this will be the topic of conversation for me all day. Danny and Johnny are both dressed in their tuxes. Nice. On their way out, they give some last minute instructions. "Chris, look after my mom and make sure my dad puts on his tux correctly. It's sitting right here." They're off in Johnny's SUV which is decorated with lace and ribbons and has soap paintings on the windows that say "Just Married" and "J + D!" (Danny's bride's name is Jessica.) Cool.

Hm... probably time to get dressed. I put on my nice new shirt (it's Brandy colored) [This shirt but this color] and my tie (which is a different brand that I picked out all by myself to match the shirt [I bought both in Boston because I've worn the same suit 4 times and I thought I needed a new shirt and tie]. Very proud of myself. I got complimented on the shirt and tie. Yay!) and pants and jacket of course. I'm now dressed. Back to the TV.

Ok, helped my uncle and watched in curious intrigue as Chantel and Ariel made up my mom. Wow. They put WAY more work into her appearance than I did in mine. We live in a sexist society. Oh well. I'm dressed so why should I care? =P

3 o'clock and no problems. Time to go! We load up Moe's flowers, as well as helping Moe load up his car with the rest of the flowers. I ask my mom for the map to the church. It's only 6 miles away! Yay! I drive one car and my mom drives the other car. We arrive at the church with no problems. I wheel my aunt in and we all sit around to look at the chaos. My mom joins the chaos by running around with her camera and video camera. She takes many pictures and takes many minutes of video as well. I'm too tired to care either way about her. The church looks good tho. I say hi to Danny's dad's side of the family (who I've met probably twice?) and Pastor Allan (who also married Johnny and I've met probably a dozen times). Like a good pastor, he remembers me and jokes with me about getting in at 3 in the morning. Apparently information was being disseminated at the rehearsal dinner. I feel bad about taking at least some of the attention away from Danny and Jessica at last night's dinner.

I sit in the front with family. My mom gets the aisle seat and has her video camera aimed at the doorway, adjusting until she got a good shot framed. (We saw the video later and the lighting was all fucked up anyway so you couldn't see anything. Good try tho.) Me and Ariel chat and look at the program. "Worship songs?" Uh oh. This will be a long ceremony...

Oh! The music starts up and it's wedding time! Two bridesmaids make their way down and light the candles that'll be used in the unity candle part. The parents of the groom and bride next. My aunt and uncle have special instructions because of my aunt's wheelchair. Basically, Johnny wheels his mom down the aisle and my uncle's walked down with his sister, who will surrogate for my aunt for the unity candle part. Bridesmaids. The groomsmen and Danny come out together from behind the pulpit. It was a SURPRISE ENTRANCE! The ring boy (who's ... 2, it looks like and is wearing a little tuxedo. Cute) and the flower girl come out together. The ring boy looks really scared. Pastor Allan steps down to lead him up by the hand. The ring boy turns and tries to run away. Wow. That was funny. Now it's Jessica's turn. It's the first time I've seen her in the last couple of months. Wow, she looks really pretty. Looking good is definitely a good thing on your wedding day.

The ceremony's what you expect. Couple of memorable moments include singing 2 worship songs, Pastor Allan accidentally calling Danny "Johnny" and then correcting himself with the whole church laughing uproariously including the wedding party, Danny and Jessica saying vows in private when they were lighting the candle (I assume they were vows. It was private so nobody could hear what they were saying), both Danny and Jessica crying, and several "let us pray" moments. It was a very lovely ceremony.

Part three to be posted later. It's kinda late right now.

Danny's Wedding Weekend part 1 -- the FLIGHT FROM HELL

So, this weekend was kind of long. It was ultimately fun and meaningful. Just... long. (Ok, I'm going to break this post up in several parts because it's longer than I thought.)

My weekend started on Friday. So, my cousin, Danny, was getting married on Saturday. Since... you know..., it was Saturday, I had a ticket on Friday; at 2:50 pm, specifically. However, since my bosses were both going on vacation on Friday, there was some work that needed to get done on Friday as well. So I went into work at about 9:30 in the morning with my duffel bag. I did some set-up for the Google lunch on Friday. In the process, however, I managed to put my finger under the steam wand on the espresso machine. So, I managed to give myself second-degree burns (ok, seriously, I'm not sure if it's actually 2nd degree burns. My cousin, who's had first-aid training, says it is but it doesn't hurt or anything. It looks like it's going to scar but I'm fine). I put on some burn cream (thank God Google has a very complete first aid kit) and a couple of bandages so I actually kept working after that.

Anyway, at noon, I left and went to Logan Airport via taxi. I got to Logan at like 12:15 and checked in for my 2:50 flight. So, I was uber-early. Sitting in the terminal, I returned some phone calls, including the Kresge (UCSC) CPC (College Program Coordinator) who I've been playing phone tag with for the last 2 weeks. I managed to get to her and she told me that I was in their top 5 picks for the job of ACPC (Assistant CPC) but they didn't have a travel budget to fly me out for an interview. Since my flight back to Boston was Monday night out of San Jose, I told her that I was actually going to be in town on Monday. So we arranged an interview for Monday at noon.

At 2:30, we started boarding JetBlue flight 1101 from Boston to New York (lay over). Getting on the plane at about... I dunno, 2:40?, I sat down and waited for the flight while watching JetBlue's signature complimentary DirecTV (TV!! Whee~!) At... 3:00? we had a PA announcement about delays in New York's JFK airport. We sat on the tarmac for another 2 hours waiting for "our turn" to take off. Yep. TWO HOURS on the tarmac because apparently we're not allowed to get off the plane once we've boarded the plane. It was everything you could hope it would be. Asses started cramping, people started getting restless, incessant updates from the captain that consisted of basically the words "Still no update from JFK..."

So, at maybe... 5-ish, we finally took off (travel time so far? 3.5 hours). I was a little worried about missing my connecting flight but for some reason I thought "well, the captain said that the delays were at JFK so it's not like the connecting flight took off or anything." 2 errors of thought here: 1. WE had taken off so obviously some traffic was leaving or coming into JFK and 2. if the connecting flight's truly delayed, there's no guarantee it'd be leaving anytime soon anyway, with or without us.

Anyway, an hour later, we arrived at JFK (that sounds wrong but a flight from Boston to NYC actually does 1 hour. I have no earthly idea why it takes an hour but it does). So, we arrive in JFK and the captain gets on the PA and announces "We have 6 passengers transferring to Burbank [including me. My cousin's wedding was in Pasadena] and 11 passengers transferring to San Diego. Please stay seated until they deboard so that they can catch their connections." Of course, once the plane stops, EVERYBODY starts deboarding, including one guy who literally shoved me out of the way. HEY~!!! I WAS ONE OF THOSE THAT NEEDED TO GET ON MY CONNECTING FLIGHT, FUCKER~!!! Regardless, I got off the plane only to discover that the connecting flights weren't being held for us. They had taken off AN HOUR AGO!! We needed to stand IN LINE to try and get tickets for the next available flight. Fantastic.

So, back into an unmoving line. Literally, it took an hour and a half just to get through the line (travel time so far? 6 hours). I met a nice woman who was on the Boston flight and was trying to get to Burbank and another not-as-nice woman who was in the same predicament (she wasn't mean. Just not as nice). We waited in this ridiculous line while I got to experience standing in line in a NEW YORK airport wearing a RED SOX t-shirt. I got some pretty nasty stares from people. FUCK-OFF!! I'm IN AN AIRPORT!!! It's not like I'm AT YANKEE STADIUM!! Anyway, managed to get through the line to get exactly the answer I expected.

-- "We only have stand-by room left on the flight."
-- "But..."
-- "No, there's no other flights for today going to Burbank. If you miss the 7:50 flight, the next flight is tomorrow morning at 6:30 am."
-- "What time will--"
-- "9:30 in the morning, Pacific Time."

So, I get to stand at Gate 12 with my stand-by ticket, like a dork with my new friend next to me, also with a stand-by ticket and also looking like a dork. In front of us, the not-as-nice woman was trying to plead with the ticket counter lady for a seat number because her 12 year old daughter's birthday was on Saturday and she needed to get home because her daughter was freaking out and they had a party all planned with invites and she needed to get home and prepare so the morning ticket wouldn't be in time and she... Anyway, she was crying her eyes out while me and the nice lady were standing about 5 feet behind her, whispering "If she gets on this plane, we should too."

Anyway, we get to about 10 min. before boarding time before nice lady tells me "that's it, I'm asking not-as-nice lady what the counter person told her." So she walks up to the other woman and the other woman basically said that she was told "you probably won't get on this plane." So, nice lady tells me that she's going to go wait in the hour and a half line again (because we need to switch our stand-by tickets to 6:30 am tickets if we miss this flight). She asks me if I would be kind enough to wait by the gate and signal her if we get to board in exchange for letting me cut in line with her if we don't get on the plane. Deal! So, I wait at Gate 12 while she makes her way to the JetBlue Customer Service desk.

So, it's boarding time on JetBlue flight 359 from JFK to Burbank (travel time so far? 7 hours). We wait until all the passengers board, anxiously clutching stand-by tickets. Finally, the counter person gets on the PA and announces 3 names for stand-by boarding. MY NAME's called!! YES! The not-as-nice lady respond extremely positively as well so I assume that her name was called too. Nobody else responds positively, however, so I figure that nice lady's name was the third name (Yes, it was stupid not to get her name before letting her go. Sue me, it was a hellish travel experience). I waved my arms frantically toward the direction of the JetBlue Customer Service desk. Counter Person takes my ID for verification and asks me if I know the other person. I say "Yes, she's waiting at the Customer Service desk. Let me go get her." Counter person says "Don't worry about it" and she repeats the announcement on the airport PA system so that the entire airport can hear it. She asks me if I'm traveling with the woman and I say "Sure" so counter person figures I wasn't just kidding around and she waits around. Sure enough, nice lady comes running from the distance at full-speed. "There she is!!" I tell counter person excitedly. Nice lady thanks us profusely and we get on the plane.

Of course, disaster strikes. We end up... wait for it.... SITTING ON THE TARMAC again. YES! Same rules applied. Once you board the plane, you can't de-board the plane. Seriously exhausting. Seriously. The guys who sat to my left and right (yeah, stand-by seating put me in the center seat. EVEN BETTER!) were friends and they were kinda stereotypical talkative middle-aged white men. It's alright tho because they were entertaining for the most part. They did have a strange obsession with Genesis (the music group) and were way jazzed when two (yes, TWO) Genesis concerts played on the plane on VH1 Classic (yay DirecTV!). Anyway, we were sitting on the tarmac for probably another 3 hours. Yes, it went from DAYLIGHT (well, dusk) to NIGHTTIME while I was sitting in an airplane seat looking at a RUNWAY.

More of the same followed. Cramping asses. Restless passengers. Complaining. Unruly pacing. Plus, constant phone call updates with my parents ("No, we haven't taken off yet. The captain said another 30 min. at least"). They were lucky enough to have made the drive from San Jose to Pasadena ok and were, as I was sitting in an airplane seat ("With more leg room than any other airline!* *Comparisons made based on coach tickets"), at Danny's rehearsal dinner. I really wished I could've been there. Seriously would've paid money to be there. I like my family and I like the bride and have never met her family. Would've given anything to be sitting there in a Chinese restaurant with family eating a big dinner. Instead? Watching stupid History Channel documentaries (because ESPN had the same news from 4 hours ago when I was sitting on Boston's tarmac and CNN was playing the Paris Hilton watch 24/7 on Friday).

Finally, at midnight (give or take), we finally take off (travel time so far? 10.5 hours). Everybody lets out a collective sigh of relief as we see NYC get really small out the window. I sit through another several hours of TV (including a Genesis concert on VH1 Classic and Godfather 2 on Bravo) as well as a free movie (JetBlue charges for movies because... well, they already offer free DirecTV. What are you? Greedy?). I watched The Namesake which was really really good (starring Kal Penn. You know, the Harold and Kumar dude. Go watch the movie. Really good). The other movies were free too but I had no interest in them. We arrive in Burbank airport at 3:08 am Pacific time (total travel time? 15.5 hours from boarding time!! Could've made it to Taiwan in that time).

This is the only story I could find with reference to the Friday delays so far.
*UPDATE: ok, Judy says that the link doesn't work so I'll just copy-paste the first two paragraphs here:


"Flight Snags Are Arriving on Schedule
By Joe Sharkey

Published: June 12, 2007

The nation’s air-travel system fell apart again last Friday night, when the space shuttle Atlantis was just about the only flight that was on time on the East Coast.

It is a bit of an exaggeration, but consider the actual numbers of flight delays that began choking the system on the East Coast Friday morning after an air traffic control computer failed in Atlanta. By early afternoon, delays began piling up, especially in the New York area, where flights were arriving two to three hours late by early evening at Kennedy, La Guardia and Newark, and at Boston and Philadelphia."

Part two in next post.

Another month down

So it looks like I let another month lapse on this blog thingamajigie. Oops.

Quick updates:

Let's see... last weekend, I went to Virginia with my roommate to visit our friend Alex (Kurianowicz [I think that's how it's spelled]) which was cool. It was Memorial Day Weekend so we had an extra day to putz around down there. Alex works in D.C. but lives in Centreville, Virginia: some 10 or 15 minutes away from D.C. We went to the nation's capitol and checked out the Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Memorial, and Mt. Vernon. We also just hung with Alex on a general basis: going bowling and to a barbeque. Overall it was a fun trip except it sucked for my roommate because I can't drive stick so he had to drive the seven hours down and seven hours up by himself. Yeah, I suck on roadtrips. We also got lost in Jersey for about half an hour on the way up looking for a bathroom. Jersey is a hole; don't go there. I'm not kidding.

Work's good. Busy as usual but not as busy last week. It'll get busier this coming up week because we have some projects we're gonna be working on.

Cousin's getting married next weekend so I'll be in Pasadena... in a suit... the same suit I always wear to everything because I only own 1 suit. Still, it'll be fun.

This past weekend was alright. I didn't do anything yesterday (pretty much literally. I stayed in and enjoyed the air conditioning). Today I went up to the Davis Square to visit Pushpinder, our Indian food supplier in Zigo. He just opened up a takeout counter for his kitchen so I went up to wish him good luck. I ended up hanging out there for like 5 hours, cooking with him and talking about random things (mostly about how Chinese and Indian ppl raise their kids and how in 1 generation, we'll take over the world. He's very Indo-centric in his thinking, which isn't that bad and makes for generally funny conversations). I also made Roti bread and helped out with some Aloo Matar and Mango Lassi. Next time I get a chance to go up there, I'm going to try and get there hellza early so I can learn how to make Tikka Masala and hopefully Chicken Saagwala. Pushp's food is the best I've ever had.

Speaking of food: on Friday, we (as in Zigo) went out together to get dinner at Oasis, a Brazilian place. We went Brazilian to celebrate one of our new employees (Raquel) getting her student Visa. [She's Brazilian and so's Saulo, one of our kitchen peeps.] Man, this place was crazy good. The food amounts were gigantic. We all had this one drink that tasted like tequila with sugar and mint. It was hella good. I think I went to two or three glasses of that. I had a 22 oz. steak, which was, as it sounds, gigantic. Mike and Eduardo split a meal that was (supposedly) meant for one person which was 2 cuts of steak, 3 chicken breasts, and a sausage skewered on a giant sword. Ok, the sword was GIANT for a sword. It was probably about four foot tall. It was still amazing and delicious. We ended our meal with a bunch of Mousse de Maracuja (Passionfruit Mousse). Delish. Y'all should go get some Brazilian food RIGHT NOW.

I spent the rest of today watching TV. We had, for about an hour concurrently, the Democratic Candidate debate from New Hampshire and the third game in a series between the Yankees and the Sox so I was channel-hopping between those two. For awhile, the debate was way more interesting because the candidates weren't holding back. Dennis Kucinich (who I didn't even know was in the race until tonight... [actually, now that I really think about it, I think Amanda mentioned something several months ago but it was in passing and I didn't know anything]) came off as a radical left-wing candidate and I lost respect for Chris Dodd for looking like kind of a crazy person. Hilary, the front-runner, looked comfortable but slightly out-of-place. Perhaps it's because I think I'm biased against her. She looked like she was having fun tho and I can see how she'd be the front-runner.

The real winner of the debate, in my opinion, is Barack Obama. Obama showed leadership and confidence as well as an ease and wit that's required for the public office. I don't know how smart he really is or what his position really is but as a candidate, he seems tailor-made for the Presidential Election. My favorite, however, was Mike Gravel. He's old and kind of ramble-y but at one point toward the end of the election, he flat-out said something along the lines of "We have a deficit and all the candidates are talking about creating this program or that program, none of which will happen." So he basically said that everybody was a liar and it made me laugh for a good 30 seconds. I like it when a candidate accuses everybody else in his party of being full of shit.

The game was pretty good too, at least halfway through. Yeah, the Yankees won, but it was a hard-fought victory and I can't say they didn't earn it. It was an edge-of-your-seat game for the last 5 innings and even down to the last pitch, nobody left early and everybody was on their feet at Fenway. Win or lose, those are the best games.

I bought the Maroon 5 cd on iTunes. Can't stop listening to it. So good. Love it. Get it now.

I think that's it for me for now. I'll try to post more regularly in the future, which is something I always intend to try for real but never succeed in. We'll see what happens on this go-around.