Will in Seattle - Glass Museum Day

A visitor drops by, and off we go on another adventure. To recap (taking parts out of an email).. hahahaha I can't blog any lazily than this:

- Lucid: Live Jazz and good times overall!
- Went to Imo, great place and lost an imaginary $100 bet! Ahh.. dadadada girl...
- Glass Museum: Saw cute kids designs - which I thought was pretty cool. Also saw some works by this guy called Chihuly (supposedly the same guy who designed the glass ceiling thing at Bellagio). Also saw some $60 mushrooms, and $2000+ waves.
- Someone walks into a pole... hahaha

Ending the night, we chill at a hotel bar... experiencing the life of a consultant.

The Boot!

Most noteworthy event of the night:
MIT intern alumni decides to spray the world with his dinner. Pretty nice bartenders - guess they see this scene quite often.

Ah and the boot. The bubble... the bubble!

My first course - complete!

My first course in grad school - complete.

Onwards I march... ... ...

Mad Dash Home

Taking a stroll by the private beach, we took a few pictures and admired the scenery, then proceeded to head back. Started driving at 12:40pm, had lunch at In and Out, and got stuck in traffic at various places.

BJ ended up having to drive like a madman to get me to the airport on time. Tailgating SUVs, cutting back and forth, I arrive With 32 minutes before take off. Was rushing at this point, so couldn't really say goodbye properly, and instead, made a mad dash to the counter to get my boarding pass, to the security checkpoint. Luckily, there were no lines in either of these places, so I was able to get to the gate in 5 minutes - just in time to board. I have to say, this was too close for comfort though - I was rushing so much.

With that, another fun filled weekend in sunny Cali and the end of my first business trip. Thx guys!

Tahoe Ski Day

~5.30am the alarm goes off. 6 people in the room, 1 person responds to it. HHH takes on the task of driving us there, while the rest of us passed out for the most part in the car. I have to say, having only had about 6 hours of sleep in the past 2 nights, these 3 hours of sleep was great. Arriving bright and early at 9.30am, we geared up by the car and then hit the slopes!

The condition at North Star was awesome. Every run we went on was all powder - wasn't icy at all. The view at the top of the mountain was also really breathtaking. The other thing I realized was that turns out that the black diamonds at this resort are equivalent to the blues at Whistler - which meant I actually was able to go on any run at this resort. Towards the end of the day, went on two groomed long black diamond runs. It was really nice to just carve down the hill and feeling the air rushing onto my face. What a great feeling! Great ski day overall. The other cool thing I did this time was try out a few jumps at the terrain park. Never was really into them because I always preferred just the feeling and sound of skiing down a slope, but nevertheless, decided to try it out. To my surprise, it was pretty fun. At the end of the day, I pushed myself a little bit and got quite a bit of air on the jump, but then the landing was far from perfect... lol. My first and last fall of the day.

The Hotel. We get upgraded with HHH's Diamond status to these cottage like rooms that faced Lake Tahoe. This is one perk that is pretty cool I think w/ HHH's job, though I do see how it can be pretty tough to be living at a hotel for 150+ days a year. Everyone was sooo tired, so we ended up having a few hours downtime before we went for dinner. The place we went to was a restaurant doing an American + Japanese fusion. We tried quite a bit from their menu (5 appetizers + 1 main course for each person). The lobster dogs was what sold me to want to try this place (turns out it was bread crusted lobster on a stick with this custom amazing sauce the place made). For main course, I had the duck which was made really well. Overall very nice place - though HHH never did get his steak cooked the right way, and the service was a bit slow.

Returning home, we juggled with a few ideas - Reno, gambling, drinking, chilling. But as we started up our fireplace, all of us ended up passing in and out of consciousness watching the TV. And from the lack of exercise, HHH, BJ and I were sore from the day of skiing - so we just grabbed a beer and chilled at the nice room we got. About the 3rd time I returned from consciousness on the Ottoman, we grabbed a beer and decided to go outside to the bonfire. Nobody else was here except us, so we pulled the chairs in and talked about random stuff. It felt just like old times - what a great feeling!

Then we headed to the casino at the hotel to play some blackjack. Tis was a horrible night where I lost 8 straight hands to start. It goes without saying that the drink I had at the table turned our really really expensive.

After that, played a little friendly poker, only to lose at that too. Originally thinking that I'd have another beer, I hear that the Chivas BJ and HHH brought was going to be tossed away if it wasn't finished - so I made the executive decision of drinking it all :).

I think we finally called it a night a 4am - after HHH and his friend played a see-saw battle of poker games.

Pictures are here

First Business Trip + Return to Sunny Cali

Woke up at 4.30am today to catch a flight. Normally it'd be nothing to blog about, but the purpose of today's trip though was that I am flying because of work! Yes, my first ever 'business' trip - though not really in the sense of meeting clients, it was a trip that was sponsored!

Arriving back in sunny Cali at 8:40am, I then taxi-ed to SVC. Pretty nice campus with pretty cool people. Weather was pretty nice, and seeing parts of the 101 on the way to the campus was pretty nostalgic. At work, I got to meet most of the people that I have been interacting with phone calls / emails - it was pretty neat to see the people in real life! lol. Had planned to do alot of stuff, but I didn't really get to do everything that I wanted to get done this trip - guess I planned too aggressively. Overall, I think it was a successful trip though, and also got to hear some interesting feedback - I guess I will know if this day trip was successful in the next few weeks.

With work aside, then we begin the start of the weekend.

Plan - dinner, club and then next day, ski and casino...

To start and dinner...
With slight delays, we end up not making the original dinner plans, and instead the 4 of us went for food at a Thai restaurant. Before that though, we went to a sports store to rent equipment. Being tired from the lack of sleep, I started off the evening by dinging a car as I opened the door... with the owners of the vehicle right next to us. Ooops... :(. Felt really bad, but all I could really say I was sorry. Thinking back, I wonder what a person should do in those situations... hrm...

Anyway, returning to see our car still in one piece and tires not slashed, onwards to dinner we headed. Bring my bag in with me, one of the waiter spots it and asks what camera is in there. I tell him it's the Rebel and then we talk a little. Turns out he is really into photography, and right now he's playing with 360 degree pictures. He pulls out his iphone and shows me his work, and they were pretty nice. He had taken a picture of the church at the Univ of Standford, and also of the restaurant - in 360 degree! I really hope that one day I can snap pictures that when I show people, it will make people go 'wow'. The food here was pretty good as well - the plating was done really well, like the pineapple fried rice that I ordered for example.

By 10:30ish, we started to head into San Fran. Close to midnight, we arrived at the club and met up with some friends of HHH and BJ. Had to piggyback off some random people to get in. $20 cover, ~$8 drinks, and I have reaffirmed once again that I am getting too old for clubbing. All the pushing and maneuvering, just too much work and effort.

But, one key event was found by looking at the liquor shelf of the lounge. Tonight I was finally able to try the 'champion' tequila again. The tequila that I have reserved a place for in my liquor rack buildout, it has been 5 years since I had last tasted it. To date, I have only seen this bottle when I first bought it in Mexico, and thereafter, no liquor store I've been to (at duty frees, big and small liquor stores) had it. So I was very happy to see it just sitting there, on the shelf. To those not familiar, people here say that Petron is really good - this tequila blows it away. The price is also steeper than Petron, weighing in at the bar at $27 a shot (which I ordered 3 - not all for myself)... Expensive, but worth it :). At the end of the night, I talked with the bartender, and he tells me that it is actually buyable in California, he writes down the name of the store and also the name of the tequila (Clase Azul) - there is now hope I can get it without having to go to Mexico!

Had a nice walk back to the hotel (got lost at one point - turns out we overshot the hotel by 2 blocks).
Got back to the hotel at 3.30 am-ish... to wake up in 2 hours to get ready for skiing the next day up at Tahoe.