Partying...

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Cheesecake Factory

Ok I haven't written in ages, and its 1:17a.m. in the morning, but this one I must write. Once again, the Cheesecake Factory food has managed to astound me, tingling all the tastebuds and sense.. amazing stuff.. will write more about this again soon... =)
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Birthday Party at Langkawi Restaurant, San Mateo

Having a really busy week... So I'm just gonna leave the photos here first and perhaps come back to write some more about it over the weekend...

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Evolving Company Culture....

"Company Culture"
Definition: Company Culture is the term given to the shared values and practices of the employees. Note that the actual culture may not match the published culture.
Examples: Many start up companies have a company culture that promotes working very long hours and then crashing under your desk.

Well at where I work at, I've kinda created a new company culture by the simple introduction of a new item that we got for a cheap price when a company that a classmate works at closed down. This item, though simple, and not all that interesting, has began to create a culture where the employees (though not many) at my company can come together after lunch, during breaks, etc. to have a platform to discuss issues or simply just talk while engaging in cohesion activities.

This miraculous item is none other than..... *drum roll*.....

Yes, the Foosballl table. It is amazing how something as simple as a Foosball table put right at the centre of the office has started to have the company talking more to each other and having a place to relax....

*entry uncompleted... gonna finish this after a mentorship session*

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Breakfast Today

I couldn't help it be be inspired to post what I had for breakfast on the blog today. Smells too nice for me not to put it online... anyway the menu is:
1) Fried Portobello Mushroom
2) Omelette with Ham and Cheese
3) Very Fresh Milk

Simple... but it smell super nice... ok can't resist this anymore... gonna gobble it up....

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Ye He Hua Zhu Fu Man Man…

Posted an entry on http://bkccy.blogspot.com. Do go and read it!
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Photos Long Overdue... From Arrival to San Pablo Housewarming

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2000 Chrysler Sebring JXi Limited Edition

After looking at my past blogs, I just realised that I have written anything on my beloved car. So, this is it... a photo of me in my car pretty much the day I bought it (7 August 2007). Historical day since its the first day that I am a car owner. It has definitely served me very well over the past month of so, having gone up to San Francisco numerous times, down to Cupertino and Santa Clara a billion times.. Before buying the car, I was thinking that I would never drive a convertible in Singapore, but after driving this for a month plus... I AM a convert!!! The feeling of wind blowing against your hair, racing down the sunny streets of California is simply amazing...


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95 W. 5th Avenue #343, San Mateo, CA94402, USA

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iPhone Official Opening

The Official "Opening" of the iPhone... its not just a phone, it is a beautiful piece of art =)

Will put in more photos and review of the phone soon. Even my parents know of the 1million set in 74 days thing, so the marketing for the product has been done pretty well huh.

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Soccer in the Bay

Well... it is pretty much the only form of exercise that I take part in (ok other than the mountain climbing part.. and the occasional jogs around the area)... I really enjoy my weekly Thursday sessions (at least until before school starts) of soccer with my colleagues and people from bball.

Last Saturday, soccer was even more exciting as ed and myself joined up with some locals (well local enough) to play soccer. It was really a good exercise as it was full field soccer, so there was a lot of running, requiring tons of stamina - something which I sorely lack. The experience has inspired me to go play soccer again coming saturday. =)

Anyway this post seems to be very random, so I shall end off on a random note. My new soccer boots bought last Wednesday:

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Posted from my iPhone

Testing to see how easy it may be to post an entry on the blog from my iPhone... I am in love with my new iPhone!!! Will write more about it in a short while...
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Char Kuey Teow

Who says there isn't Char Kuey Teow in California... and its authentic Penang Char Kuey Teow... nice... =)
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Yosemite - Half Dome Intro

Short Video that was taken on top of Half Dome

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Yosemite - Half Dome

I shall skip all the previous entries that I am supposed to have written in order to bring this entry to everyone reading Live!... well... it is definitely better than if I were to do this a few weeks later at least.

For people who don't already know Yosemite (pronounced as Yo-SEM-it-ee... not YOse-MIte) is a national park in California http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite, and a designated world heritage site. Really beautiful place, with fond memories of it from the days when I was a kiddo, when the squirrels came to visit us in our log cabin to get food. Hence, it is only natural that when we saw the long weekend (due to Labour Day by the way), I joined in the bunch of people (from San Pablo household) that wanted to go Yosemite... In exact, I joined in the bunch that wanted to scale half dome, 6 of us guys..

Saturday - 1st Sep 07
Saturday was kind of an uneventful day in general (very eventful in another aspect... but that's left for another blog.. =P). As one of the 6 of us went to fix his car, even though I managed to reach San Pablo on time at 9:30am, we didn't leave Sunnyvale until after lunch, which was around 1pm.
Tip 1 - Never leave in the afternoon: The sun was glaring straight into the car while we drove over. Although we're all in California, it really didn't help that our left and right felt more like Mid-West USA, with farmland after farmland and no shelter to help shade us from the sun.
Tip 2 - Leave early to avoid jam: As expected, with everyone going for roadtrips over the weekend (and by everyone I mean whole of america), it was only natural that a long stretch of road was jammed, causing us to melt in the sun for an additional hour to the predicted 3hrs of travel. A bonus, however, was that the scenary was fantastic, but when we tried to fit a movie to go with the scenary, we could only come up with "Brokeback Mountain"... doesn't help that all 6 of us are guys huh... =)

Anyway, after finally reaching our lodging place at 5pm or so, we unloaded our stuff and decided to try to catch the sunset in Yosemite itself. Tip 3 - Stay in Yosemite (even if it means stay in the car): Although our lodging claimed to be just an hour's drive from Yosemite, it was entirely misrepresented as we took about 30mins to get to the gate of Yosemite, and another hour to reach Glacier Point to watch the sunset. Yosemite itself is just too damn big to stay near, and the drive up and down was similar to an easier version of the La Honda Rd (Initial D & FF:Tokyo Drift type mountain).

On Glacier Point itself, the scenary was FANTASTIC!! (Photos below... more photos soon) However, one big question mark that hovered over my head was... we're gonna climb that beautiful mountain across that is like... a million ft tall?!?!?! ... and the answer is .. yes...

Half Doom... I meant Dome - 2nd Sept 07
Tip 3 - Stay in Yosemite this is SO important... we had to wake up at 5am in order to start our journey so that we can reach the base by 6:30am to begin our ascend. Tip 4 - Stay with people that can wake up. We had to drag 2 of them who couldn't wake up out of their beds else we would have lost much time. Tip 5 - Coffee Coffee Coffee... I didn't drive, but if I were to have driven, I would need like 10 cups of caffeine to keep me awake... Nice scenary, Nice weather... Sleepy...

Tip 6 - Do research before going: While I had an idea that we were going to climb a mountain and that a lot of people said it was very difficult, I was thinking, "It can't be as difficult as Mt Biang can it?" Well, let's just say I was both right and wrong. No it is not as difficult as Mt Biang because we don't have to carry like 40kg of things with us, but yes it requires more stamina as it is way way higher... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half_dome

Tip 7 - Sleep and Eat: Basically, due to insufficient sleep (we slept at about 11pm the night before) and insufficient salt (we ate fruit bars for all meals), all of us had cramps during the climb after a while. Worst of all, Patrick cramped up on the cable climb up as well, so he was stuck there for a while.

Tip 8 - Bring extra Memory Card: I found out on my way there that I didn't bring the spare... brilliant right... hence the photos here are the ones that I managed to take with my own. Will get the rest from my friends soon and upload accordingly...

Again, Half Dome was a fantastic place, and you feel a great sense of achievement having accomplished the climb, but it is really hard for me to describe it... so more photos some time soon yeah? =)

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San Francisco - 19Aug07

Decided to first upload some photos from the trip to San Francisco... will have some commentary or captions to the photos in time...

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Everything so far.... The journey over plus plus

Well the trip over was pretty straightforward and really nothing much to talk about. I mean, how interesting can almost 20hrs on board a Northwest Airlines plane be? Granted that NWA had VOD instead of Channels for view, which meant that I had the luxury of watching movie after movie after movie for the whole journey (including Cars, Prince of Thieves, Wild Wild West, etc.), but how interesting can that be?

What was interesting though, was the Narita airport, Tokyo. While the usual amenities and services were available (read McDonalds, Starbucks, Bvlgari, Chanel, etc.), it was kinda interesting that they had a public shower and bed place for which you can sleep, charged by minutes. Imagine if Osim Vivo were in the airport... I'd like stay there forever. =)

Some photos from the airport:

After arrival, the arrangement was kind of screwed up because nobody knew who was coming (supposedly my buddy but apparently his car was spoilt, etc.) and of course it didn't help that nobody picked up their mobile. However, it didn't really matter, as the moment I stepped out of indoors to breathe California air, i *KNEW* at that instance, that I'm back in America. The beautiful smell of clean american air... and the nice 22degrees temperature... appreciating this a lot more than when I was frozen the moment I landed in Indiana exactly 10 years ago.

Anyways, finally, Vid came to pick us up. Really nice guy working at L2. Didn't know that there was an entire consortium of people working at L2 (I only knew Ahmed came back... there're like 5 NOC alums who came back). Rest of the day was rather uneventful, other than the beautiful 5 hour sleep at Americana... and of course, the irritating matters dealing with the bank. *urgh* that's left for another post...
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Everything so far.... Pre-departure

Well I had meant to do this much earlier, but since of the many things going around, this is finally the first entry in my blog recording lessons learnt and places that I've gone to in the Land of the Free. For simplicity of reading... and for simplicity of me doing up this whole entry broken into small bits to write, here goes part one...

Pre-Trip
Well... Let's start from before the trip I guess. Felt kinda bad that I had to feel sick just hours before I left Singapore, with WS over to spend time with me but me having to spend time on the bed just so that I could rest. Oh well, luckily there was Ugly Betty for her to watch. In the end it was a nice family affair, dinner and all, but it still didn't hit me that I was leaving. Oh well. Then we printed a lot of photos for both of us to put together... unfortunately we didn't have time to decorate the board, but I'm sure WS will do an excellent job with it. =)

Some photos at the airport...

ilu ilu

Last Wong to go overseas for studies

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