Southern California, pt. 2

oh man, procrastination hits even when i'm on vacation!  continuing on from the last post:

week 3

I honestly can't remember this far back. my apologies.  However, digital records show that I took a lot of photos at six flags that week, implying that I may have gone there for the weekend.  So let's assume I did, shall we?

That weekend was hot. REAL hot.  Around the tune of 115˚F (46˚C), sunny, 20% humidity, with no wind. You see, Six Flags Magic Mountain in Valencia, CA is about 30 minutes inland from LA.  I've been told that California used to be a desert and I thought to myself, deserts aren't so bad. No kiddos, deserts are bad. Very, very, very bad. And the further inland you go, the hotter it gets. In retrospect, it was probably one of the worst days to go to six flags, but we went anyway. Why? Because we had $20 tickets and we weren't gunna let them go to waste, that's why.

Apart from downing a liter of water every hour and getting our feet cooked on the hot asphalt, I thoroughly enjoyed our time there. We got these things called "flash passes" that you can buy for $25/4-pack. Each pass lets you cut 99% of the lines to the front and waiting time is drastically cut to ~5-10 minutes.  I used to think these were a waste of money, but since we got in for real cheap, we might as well spend the extra cash.  Definitely a good investment, especially because we didn't have to give up our passes half the time =]  By the time we used up all our passes, there were no more lines to wait for!  Perfect.

Me, Vinny and Dave on Tatsu.  You ride this in Superman-like position and it flings you around like there's no tomorrow.

There was this new ride being advertised everywhere called "X-2", which is the upgraded version of "X".  I went on X before when i visited 3 years ago and I LOOOOOVED it. I have a picture of my brother and i on it, screaming our lungs out that i carry around in my wallet =] it was THAT good.  Apparently, X-2 was supposed to be better, but for the better half of the day, it was closed.  Then all of a sudden, a few hours before closing, the ride opens up and half the park migrates over to that side.  With 2 hours of park time remaining, I jumped in line but found out that it would be at least a 3 hour wait.  I can wait, especially for good rides. but 3 hours is ridiculous.  And with that, our day came to and end and we were out of there by 10.

Southern California, pt. 1

apologies for the late post. it's already been over 3 weeks in california and i have failed to make any updates since my first post. i guess it was partly because of the really long first post that made me want to cut down on the writing or just the simple lack of effort on my part, but if you haven't caught on already, that whole daily update thing won't work out. blah blah blah insert more reasons on why this post is late. so here's what's been going on for the last few weeks:

week 1:

before i start, lemme explain a little on how this internship is set up.  there are a little over 100 undergrads and MBA students interning at toyota this summer from all over the country. the large variety of students also meant there had to be multiple waves of interns to accommodate the various summer schedules. specifically, there are 3 waves of interns: the first started mid-may, the second started early june and the third in late june.

my first day of work was pretty chill. i met a couple interns who were also starting on monday during the weekend and we headed out early on monday morning to toyota headquarters for orientation. then, our respective managers picked us up in their swanky cars (one of the interns got to ride in a Lexus IS-F) and drove us to our departments. according to shaun, my coworker who picked me up, he was supposed to pick me up in his LS460, but he forgot that he had to pick me up monday morning and left it at the carwash =/ so instead, i got a ride in a RAV4 EV (pictured below) like the ones featured in "who killed the electric car?" 

the rest of the week went by quickly. i learned a butt load of TLAs (three-lettered acronyms) and found out that there is always free food to be found. and if you know me, i am the MASTER at finding free food >=] needless to say, i've bought lunch only 3 times in the last 3 weeks. muahahahaha.

the weekend went by almost as quickly. i met up with lauren up in west hollywood and we checked out this church on UCLA campus. the people there were nice and i found out that yvonne, one of the staff members, knows my pastor eugene's wife, esther. the 'they were pretty close friends and lived in the same area" type of know. small world. haha. afterwards, i went over to my cousin's place in cypress and had dinner with his family and watch Game 1 of the Finals. Here's a clip of them trying to distract KG from making his 2nd freethrow. haha, jenny (the one who yells) LOVES basketball and she got really into it.

unfortunately, the lakers lost that game so the rest of the night wasn't so exciting =/ i watched extreme home makeovers with my nieces until bedtime, then headed home for another fun week of work.

week 2:

can't remember much from this week. haha. i met a whole bunch of people, had dinner and beer with the national managers and the VP and watched more of the lakers losing =/ there are a LOT of lakers fans where i work and i tried my hardest not to make eye contact with any of them. i was scared that just being from the east coast was reason enough to hate me, but that was silly because everyone's pretty chill out here. it was father's day weekend so i gave my dad a call on sunday then headed out to a picnic held by my cousin's church. 

the thing about korean picnics is that there a few things that are guaranteed to be there:

-Galbi or Boolgogi

-Hot Dogs

-Watermelon

-Games

-Prizes following said games

this picnic had it all. they even had soccer which i haven't played in ages and some of the girls got yo-yos as prizes and i showed them how to make it sleep (make it stay down while spinning). they spent the rest of the afternoon practicing it. afterwards, we brought all the equipment back to the church and watched Game 5 while eating Ramen with hot dogs in the cafeteria. 

next up: week 3

-birthdays, six flags, the beach and more free food. 

Los Angeles, Day 1

so, it's been almost a year since I added anything on here. hopefully, i'll be able to discipline myself to write something here regularly (ideally, every day but that's not going to happen). so without further ado (adieu? adoooooo?), day 1 of my fantastic journey to the city of angels.

i always found it interesting that despite my tendency to be late to everything, it's the complete opposite for significant things (unless, of course, it's my final exam. but that's another story). despite having only 4 hours of sleep, i wasn't the least bit groggy when my dad woke me up this morning at 5:30. in fact, we were out the door a good 30 minutes ahead of schedule. plus, with gas at $4.25 a gallon, there weren't many cars out on the highway during rush hour; it was more like "nice, comfortable pace hour", actually.

the plane ride was uneventful, unfortunately. i had this couple next to me who were very into each other, so it didn't seem like a good idea to start any small talk. "the bucket list" was the inflight show, but it got uninteresting about 10 minutes into it when the system had to be reset and i ended up seeing the same 10 minutes again. that and jack nicholson scares me. i don't know if it's because of the recent changes by every airline or if it's just united, but given that this was a 4 1/2 hour flight, there was remarkably little food provided to the passengers. i got a packet of cinnamon-flavored cookies (which i swear is just pure sugar that's given a porous texture) and a drink =/ i was, however, able to sweet talk the stewardesses into giving me a few extra packs of those cookies. i win.

after landing and taking the shuttle over to Toyota HQ, i headed over to the vehicle leasing department where i found out that the vehicle assigned to me accidentally went through the wash with the windows down. and this was after waiting 30-some minutes for lunch to be over. so my would-be blue toyota matrix then became a rav4. don't get me wrong, the rav4 is a great car, but it's too big for me. as luck would have it, 5 additional cars were turned in during the lunchbreak and one of them was a blue scion tC (my favorite out of the lot). but then they tell me that i can't take it because it's a 5-speed, which was my cue to jump up and shout, "I DRIVE STICK!" (visuals to follow later). funny thing is, i had requested a manual before coming in but they told me they didn't lease manuals to interns. apparently, they used to but no one knew how to drive them and so there was a huge fiasco with paperwork and all that fun stuff. *shakes head* see how the world would be a better place if people knew how to drive stick???

armed with a kick-ass ride, i pick up some packages i sent out ahead of time from HQ and headed over to the hotel i'm staying at for the summer. i go in to check in and after getting my room assignment, i find out that there was still someone living in the room! i go back and inform them of this and the girl behind the desk is confused. so she assigns me another room, which again is occupied. haha. so i head down again and we find out that because i was scheduled to come in on friday, the system displayed rooms that would be free on friday (strange, because i was confirmed to check in today. oh well.) anyway, i finally got an unoccupied room and started unpacking =] i love unpacking. always fun figuring out a new system based on your room setup and space and stuff like that.

so yea, i finished unpacking most of my stuff. there's still one more package on its way here and i have to do some grocery shopping. i'm just bumming around, watching episodes of scrubs and trying to get bittorrent to work so i can watch Bleach and Naruto. it seems like the wireless here is heavily monitored, so i might just watch them on youtube (unfortunately). i got a call a couple hours ago from a co-worker who's flying in tomorrow morning. she's new at driving or something so i'm helping her find her way around. haha, i remember when i first got behind the wheel. EVERYTHING looked the same. 6 years of driving definitely changes the way you view streets...

some quick, random details:
-my car has iPod integration! i plug in my iPod into it and i can control it from the dashboard =] haha, it's so awesome. it also has a pretty decent sound system (Pioneer). compared to my civic, it's a definite winner.

-transmission is a little rough. it feels too mechanical to drive. i mean, it IS a machine. but where driving my civic is an art, driving the scion has no life in it. it's not no heart. i get no joy out of making the car move, really. i have no regrets choosing the civic now.

-i went to walmart to get a few things for my room: RF modulator, krazy glue, cheerios and milk. the rf modulator allows me to plug in my gamecube to the tv which only has a coaxial input. the krazy glue was for the power adapter for my GPS device that cracked. and i left the milk at walmart. yum, dry cheerios for breakfast =x

-i wanted to drop by my cousin's place tonight to visit, but the time of day was bad because of all the traffic (i've heard horror stories of LA rush hour traffic), so it's rescheduled for saturday. that also meant that i had to make dinner with no utensils or anything. luckily, i brought a rice cooker and had some packaged jjam-ppong. but the noodles were spoiled so i just made the soup and ate rice with it. tomorrow, it will be better. i am NOT going to eat that crap again.

oh, if anyone wants anything from LA, lemme know.

heart of worship

Psalms 19 (Shane & Shane)

May the words of my mouth
And the meditations of my heart
Be pleasing to You
Pleasing to you

May the words of my mouth
And the meditations of my heart
Be pleasing to You
O, my God

You're my Rock and my Redeemer
You're the reason that I sing
I desire to be a blessing
In Your eyes

Every hour every moment
Lord I want to be Your servant
I desire to be a blessing
In Your eyes

i was recently reminded that praise should always be consistent, because God is consistent. just because you have a bad day or if you just aren't good at it doesn't mean you shouldn't give him your all. otherwise, you're just worshiping for yourself. i'm thankful that He has made me humble over the years to learn this and i pray i can really take it to heart.

that said, i really wish someone would teach me to sing..

my mom flew in to visit me last saturday.  it makes me smile even now to think of it.  sadly, i've spent only about 3 full weeks with her this year. it's funny that just 3 years ago, i wanted to get away from chicago, from everything and everyONE.  now that i've got my wish, i've never been so homesick.  granted, i'm happy where i am and i have no regrets for the decisions i've made since. but i seriously underestimated my connection to chicago and how much i'd miss it. i mean, i take pride in the littlest of things now: my Illinois (ill-E-noy) license plates, my U of I t-shirts and other paraphernalia, my driver's license (snowball's chance in hell i'm going to renew in RI).

side story: i saw a girl in an SUV with illinois plates. i nearly jumped in front of her moving ca and gave her a thumbs up with a crazy smile. i bet she's glad i didn't. 

on everything that is nothing.

I really don't know what I'm about to write about. I haven't really thought out in my mind the beginning nor the end of this post. so, here goes nothing..

[disclaimer]: i tend to state very obvious, redundant, completely unrelated, or extremely insightful remarks with no objective but to share those thoughts with others. so if you see yourself thinking to yourself, "so what does this mean?", my answer is quite simple: nothing. absolutely nothing.

I realize - rather, constantly reminded - that I am one grand old mess inside and out. i was at red robin's with my housemates the other day (great restaurant with endless fries. check it out!) and one of them pointed out that i'm quite brutally honest to the point that i come off as a sarcastic jerk. o_O

the same housemate also pointed out that i have a tendency of "flatlining" while making comments. in other words, i start a comment such as "there was a guy i thought was strange" and space out for the next minute or two, leaving those around me hanging and guessing what was on my mind. i guess this kind of goes with my "random comments" thing. the funny thing is, it has happened so often that they've proceeded to mimic the flatlining sound (the loooong beep of a heart monitor) whenever it happens. and what's even better is that i flatlined not 2 minutes after he pointed it out. good times.

Yangpa has one of the most beautiful voices i have ever heard. If i ever meet a girl with that kind of voice, I'd marry her on the spot. haha, well, not literally. that would be kind of...hasty, not to mention superficial.

One's perception of what is difficult is merely a state of mind. For instance, when i started this internship, I had a deep loathing of coding. I wasn't any good at it nor did I want to get any better. at least that's what i told myself. i mean, i'm a mechanical engineer; coding is unnecessary in my line of work. 6 weeks later, I've written my own shell scripts and RPM spec files and other gee golly good stuff that I would have otherwise thought impossible for me to do. kinda makes me wonder...what else could i have taught myself and what other opportunities have i missed from my inability to grasp new material and my unwillingness to change perspectives? though it sounds kinda depressing, i've also realized that i can decide at this moment whether i want to continue with my current path or if i want something to change. that, my friends, is the beauty of life.

i drink water like it's my business. shoot, i already downed 4 bottles since lunch.

i think my next post will have a single topic to focus on. maybe i'll write about my roommates.

Spam: It's what's for lunch

So, I left my cube (read: prison) to attend a meeting (of which i loathe) regarding a new product we're releasing soon. After about an hour presentation and demonstration of the product, I stagger back to my cube only to find about 38 _new_ emails in my inbox.

what the hell.