Posts Tagged ‘California’
This is version two of the blog, which currently contains 136 published posts. To some extent, this blog represents the creative excesses of a design enthusiast who is somewhere in the process of applying to grad school, working at a law firm and resides in the Financial District of New York City.
|
|
|
That last post was kind of a downer, so to change up the tone a bit, here’s what’s going on. Vienna was amazing, and I came home and immediately started planning my post-bar trip in 2013. I’m thinking of doing Spain and Italy, since I haven’t been to either.
I’m also looking for an apartment in Palo Alto, California right now. I can’t believe summer will be here in just six weeks! I’ve started making tentative plans with the other UChicago Bay Area kids so hopefully I’ll have stuff to do, and I want to spend a decent chunk of time in San Francisco since I’ve never been there before. Also, at the end of my gig, I’ll be going to Lake Tahoe in late July for the Wheel reunion. We’re renting a huge lake house so that should be a blast.
Afterwards, it’s to Texas for a week or so, and on the way back I’ll drive up my car so that I can embark on the Ultimate Midwest Roadtrip that I’m planning with a friend from school. Two weeks, close to 4,000 miles of road to cover. The main points of interest are camping out in Yellowstone for a few nights and seeing Mt. Rushmore. But we also want to go horseback riding, do the whole B&B thing, see Amish country, visit ghost towns, go fishing or ziplining, hiking, etc. I’m excited. We’ll be traversing Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. I’ve never been to any of those states, so it should be an adventure.
That’ll bring me to late August, and school doesn’t start until late September. I’m definitely going to visit my sister and Dan in Houston at some point, and depending on the money situation I’m thinking a trip to New York or Boston (or both) is in order.
So, yeah. Lots of traveling ahead. Last quarter was fun with musical and Vis Moot activities, but I’m a little exhausted with it all, so I’m just going to focus on knocking out these last few weeks, and then it’ll be all travel, travel, travel.
EDIT: I wrote this post last week, remembered that I had thought I’d left something out, and I realized I didn’t even mention that I’m going to China in September! So, yeah. I’ve never been to China, so yay for new experiences.
No Comments »
|
|
|
As always, I’m not able to discuss my internship. Surprisingly, the place I’m at now has even stricter rules about this sort of thing than the law firm I was working at before. Go figure. But it’s good, the work is good, the people are good. And we’ll leave it at that.
Instead, I’ll talk about Los Angeles in general. The weather is so perfect it almost makes me wish I’d chosen another law school. Almost. Also, I had a celebrity sighting the first weekend I was here — it was Paul Dano at Katsuya in Studio City. It was actually Harry and his friend who recognized him; I had no clue but whatever. Oh, and I live a street away from a Jamba Juice, which is one of my favorite things. Yay.
Mostly, I’ve been reading a lot now that all law school stuff is completely done. I first read some fluffy stuff such as Mini-Shopaholic and some mysteries, but now that my brain feels rested again I’m reading Robert Graves’ I, Claudius, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and I’m almost done with The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I was recommended Thirteenth by a roommate of mine four years ago and haven’t had a chance to get to it until now. So far I like it a lot. It’s definitely a book for book lovers.
Oh, one of the head honchos in my office mentioned to everyone that he really excited to go see Neil Gaiman talk — the co-author of Good Omens, which is in my top 5 of books and is the book I recommend to people the most — and I really wanted to commiserate with him about how awesome the book is since it’s not often I find people who have read it, but couldn’t without sounding like a total suck-up to everyone else. That crushed my spirit a little.
Still, all in all, things are good. The biggest gripe I have about my life here thus far is that I don’t have internet at my place since it’s still getting fixed and it sucks and is making my life difficult.
No Comments »
|
|
|
So, Hawaii was wonderful, basically. We actually ended up stopping in Los Angeles on Thanksgiving to see our familia in California, resulting in a Dim Sum Thanksgiving Feast, haha. They have great fruit there. Mmmm.
Anyway, post-Hawaii, I am now three different skin colors. My upper body is now the normal color that humans should be — enough color to look healthily sunkissed, but not so much that my skin color fails to correctly reflect my ethnicity. My legs, meanwhile, have been burnt to a crisp and are too dark or a bright red. Hot, I know. My torso has remained its usual pale-ish, albino-y white. Ahhh.
Luckily, most of the color differentiation can be attributed to a day-long kayaking trip that we took which was wonderful (kayaking to a nearby island, lunch on the beach, mini-geography lesson, some snorkeling, and kayaking home), so it was worth it.
Anyway, I won’t recite the details of the trip here — my sister took plenty of pictures so I’m sure I can look back on it that way. Aloha!
No Comments »
|
|
|
The eye of the storm. Life has ground (grinded? I don’t think that’s a word) to a brief and much needed halt as I wait to move northward. Graduation was hectic, as one would imagine, but honestly I’m surprised how quickly it ended. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to a lot of people, but I did get some pretty solid goodbyes in and that was good. I actually think the last person I talked to (other than my roommates) was this random guy named Jimmy, and we talked about how one becomes a man (him, not me — otherwise it would require talking about awkward surgical procedures. <– bad joke). Not how I imagined my time at Emory to end, but somehow appropriate.
Anyway, the wedding was really nice and the whole thing took place at a really romantic beach-side resort in San Diego, CA. They are a pretty chill couple so the wedding took out a lot of the unnecessary pomp and circumstance that tends to make them really tedious; the whole ceremony took all of — 15 minutes? Yeah, shortest wedding ever, or so I’m told. Just walking up the aisle, short sand ceremony, him: I do, her: I do, kiss kiss, the end. It was fun to see all the family again though it was a bit unbalanced (her side: 42 people, his side: 7, haha). Overall, it was a really well-planned wedding, I think.
Well, I’m back at home now catching up on some reading. I’ve been trying to get through Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, but I’m finding that it’s just a little bit much with all the spirituality and stuff. I mean, the parts when she is on her bathroom floor writing and telling herself it is the voice of God pouring forth from her hand (and this happens multiple times) — yeah, color me skeptical. Sorry.
I’ve had better luck with a collection of short stories by David Sedaris – I guess they’re technically essays, which is useful to know if you’re ever looking for his stuff in a bookstore – which I switch to each time the Gilbert book starts to get on my nerves. I’m still determined to finish it, but it’s definitely testing my willpower.
Finally, los videojuegos. I beat Fable yesterday. I actually really liked it. My sister’s friend Marc says it’s too short, but I thought it was a good length if you do all the optional sidequests (which I am wont to do) and take the time to find everything and try out different options. Lessee, I’ve also played The Movies (gets very boring around after 5 hours or so), the Sims Castaway Stories (waste of time, non-fun, WAY TOO LINEAR, gets boring after the first hour and a half), and I’m about three-quarters of the way through Neverwinter Nights. Neverwinter Nights is very long. I don’t know how long I’ve been playing but I’ve been trying to get through this game since prior to finals. Looong. But quite good. I think more hardcore gam3rz would appreciate the length/depth more than I do.
No Comments »
|
|
|
I just got back from California where my cousin Steve sort of got married (he was married a couple months back but this was the official celebration). Anyway, it was a lot of fun seeing family again. We actually have another wedding planned for next year as well because Vivian, another cousin, is getting married to this other guy, Dave, this time next year.
We’ll see if that actually happens though because she’ll have to fight off my dad for his attentions — Dave’s an electrical engineers like my dad so I guess my dad seems to think its kismet. ANYWAY.
I’d like to be able to say I went surfing, but more correctly, my sister and her friends went surfing whereas I was hugging a surfboard for an extended amount of time and drinking copious amounts of water. Very salty, that oceanwater. But it was fun and I enjoyed looking all goofy and hardcore in my wetsuit, haha. We also went to her friend’s uncle’s house to eat and had these banana fritter things – I think it’s a Filipino dish – that were so (so, so) good. Oh man.
After my sister left, I went to visit some temples with my parents which was somewhat less exciting, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be. (I’ll upload pictures later.) It was about as fun as hanging out with aunts and uncles over the age of 55 or so ever gets. We also saw a lot of pictures of my parents and aunts and uncles and grandparents when they were younger so that was cool.
Anyway, that pretty much sums up the bulk of my trip. I spent a lot of time playing on my sister’s new Dell MX1210, which made me want a new laptop. Mmm. Oh, and speaking of nerdy things, I played a PS2 game with my cousin Dennis and I can’t seem to figure out what game it was. He said it was called Time-somethingorother and it was an arcade-styled first-person shooter and you used a plastic gun to shoot at the screen. The plotline was something about some villain planting missiles on an island so you have to go stop him. Does this sound familiar to anyone?
3 Comments »
|
|
