...:::: Daily Braindump ::::..: January 2006

Happy Chinese New Year!
Year of the Dog

My AIM ate my buddy list -- again!

As usual, one of the very first thing I do when I come home is to log onto my AIM. Well, I tried to do that tonight... but when I logged on, I discovered that every single person on my AIM buddy list was gone!! WTF! If you remember from my previous blog entry, the same thing happened to me back in December. This is my 2nd time having to remember and manually reconstruct my buddy list all over again. I have no idea what's causing this to happen but all I know is that I'm getting super annoyed with AIM! argh. If you're reading this and I'm on your buddy list, please send me AIM message so I can add you back onto my buddy list. bleh...

Brokeback Mountain

Saw Brokeback Mountain tonight. The movie wasn't bad but it definitely wasn't as good as I expected. That's probably because I've heard and read so many good reviews about the movie that I was totally expecting the movie to take my breath away. All of the outdoor scenes in the movie was beautiful, and the story was pretty good. But I didn't like the sad ending. The ending was just too sad and it's one of those movies where you wish you can somehow directly communicate to the charcter through out the movie on what action he should take. Anyhoo, I still enjoyed it, and maybe I'll get it on dvd when it comes out.

Bad memory

I can't believe I did it again!! I do this everytime I get back from a long break... argh. So today, I bought a lot of books I need for my classes from the school book store. Instead of lugging them around, I wanted to put all of them in my locker, when I realized that I completely forgot my locker combination... again!!! This exact same thing happened last year and the maintenance guy had to basically use a BIG saw to cut off my lock. I must be getting old or something because I just don't remember it at all! All I remember is that there was a number 8 somewhere in the combination. I'm going to try really hard to remember the locker combo in the next few days. If not, then I guess I'll have to ask for the maintenance guy's help again which I don't really want to because I'll have to spend money buying a brand new lock again. Tisk Tisk.

Back from Europe!

Man, what a trip! I just got back from spending 2 weeks in Europe and had a really awesome time. My friend, Della, and I first spent a week in Paris and then we flew to Rome and spent another week there. Although this was my second time going to these two cities, it felt as if it was my first since its been so long. Paris and Rome was a lot of fun but we both liked Paris a lot more.

So the whole trip was fine until the very last day in Rome. We were checking our emails at the internet cafe and all of a sudden Della noticed that her wallet was missing -- she was pickpocketed by the guy who sat next to her in the internet cafe!! We couldn't believe it! The guy who sat next to her apparently stole her wallet out of her zipped up fleece jacket as she was checking her email. When we realized, she tried to chase after him but he walked out the door and started running! Unfortunately, we didn't catch him and he took off with her wallet. Can you believe it? It's like straight out of a movie. I felt so bad that her wallet was stolen... especially since it was the very last day and she has been so careful with her wallet the entire trip! The whole thing happened so quickly that we were both shocked. So we had to go to an Italian police station and file a police report. So in case you don't know...the Police station in

Italy is so ghetto! The policeman didn't speak a lick of English and he was on his computer playing solitaire almost the whole time we were there!!! WTF right? What's worse is that the next day when I was packing to go home, I noticed these small knife slash marks right on the side of my brand new Tumi bag that I've been using through out the trip!!! So I guess somebody was desperately trying to cut open my bag with a knife to steal my wallet when I wasn't looking! Dude, that is so messed up. I've always heard stories of how dangerous Italy was, but now I totally believe it....

Anyway, the flight from LA to Paris literally took me about 20+ hours door to door. The flight there was such a nightmare. I first flew from LA to JFK and met up with Della there. I then had to wait for about 6 hours at JFK for my layover flight and on top of that, my flight was delayed for another 2 hours. Our flight finally took off and we flew 8 hours to Paris. Once there, it took us some time to figure out how to get to our hotel. So I basically left LA on 1/6 at 7AM and arrived in Paris on 1/7 around 3pm!

Paris Highlights
- The Louvre Museum and seeing Mona Lisa behind a thick layer of bullet proof glass!!
- hiking up to the top of the L'Arc de Triomphe and seeing the great view of Paris
- visiting the palace in Versailles
- walking along Champs Elysees
- Sacred Heart and the Artist/Painter square
- shopping at LV, Hermes, and few other stores... which was fun but not so great for my credit card
- buying (and eating) loads of chocolates from Le Maison du Chocolat
- ordering a huge bowl of steamed mussels for dinner at Restaurant Leon
- french pastries we had every morning
- getting lost and wandering around the streets of Paris
- our hotel and its location couldn't have been better. I highly recommend this hotel if you're looking for a reasonably priced hotel in a prime location in Paris.

Paris negatives:
- French food. I realized that I'm not much of a fan of French cuisine. Just like what I remembered 6 years ago when I first visited Paris, the food is too salty for my liking. I'm also not much of a fois gras type of guy.. although Della seemed to savored it.
- realized the night before our flight to Rome that our luggage restriction was only 15kg (abt 32 lbs) on Ryanair. My luggage to Paris from NY was already way over 50 lbs. So we had to repack everything and store everything we didn't need at the hotel in Paris. .
- Della getting unexpected itches and rashes on her face the first 2 nights..probably an allergic reaction to something in the room. so we swiched room after the 2nd night and everything was fine again.
- I was asked by mom's friend to buy her this specific bag from Hermes which supposedly cost $8000! She wanted me to get her two of these since it was sold out everywhere in the US. Apparently you have to be put on the waiting list to buy one...WTF right?!?! I tried to buy it for her, but apparently this bag was all sold out in Paris and Rome as well. Damn, because I was curious to see what an $8000 bag looks like. Thank god we didn't find it tho because other wise, we would had to guard it with our life from getting it stolen in Rome.

Rome highlights
- The Vatican Museum and seeing the paintings on the ceilings of the Sistine Chapel
- St. Peter's Basilica...where the Pope works.
- seeing the Colloseum and the Roman ruins and architecture (or what's left of it)
- Italian food!! We had talian pastas, risottos, and pizzas for lunch and dinner almost every single day...but that also means that I practically had carbs every single meal in Italy...ick.
- shopping around the Spanish Steps and buying stuff from the typical Italian stores... gucci, prada, and Frette which makes the best bed sheets and pillow cases. It's all about the threadcount...

Rome negatives:
- Della getting pickpocked on the very last day in an internet cafe
- our flight to Rome from Paris was bad (mental note: never fly Ryanair). I was also charged for having overweight luggage. ugh...
- the first hotel we stayed at was SUPER far from Rome. To get there, We lugged our luggages onto the ghetto local metro then we had to take another ghetto local bus for a good 40 minutes before arriving at our hotel. The hotel itself was great but it was bloody too far in the middle of nowhere. So we switched our hotel to this hotel right in the city for the last 4 nights. The hotel turned out to be somewhat close but it was barely a 3 star hotel and the location was in this super Italian ghetto area. I felt like I was in downtown LA.

Overall, this trip to Europe was quite memorable. We have so many little stories from the trip that its funny looking back now. Although I was getting tired of being a tourist towards the end of our trip, all the sightseeings that we did were pretty cool. I'm looking forward to more trips in the future... I probably won't spend 1 whole week in any city since that's a bit too long in my opinion.