American Dreamz, and my dumb AIM

once again, all my buddies on my aim list managed to disappear AGAIN!! ahh!!! it's like the 3rd or 4th time this has happened in the last few months....sigh... I'm not really sure why it keeps happening. my only guess is that either i'm using an older version of aim (which i like) or i just dont know what i'm doing. either way, i'm screwed because i have to remember everyone's screen name and manually input it one by one again...argh. anyway, if you are reading this, drop me a message on AIM so that i can add you back onto my list!

today was another relaxing day... rolled out of bed, had lunch at Plum Tree with Della, than went shopping together at the pyramid mall. i decided to skip my sailing class today because i just didn't feel like dragging myself to the lake and hoping onto a sailboat and possibly get sea sick again. instead, i came home and spent few hours cranking out my ppt presentation for my international finance class.

at night, i went to see "American Dreamz" with Della, Gorton, and Bea. the movie was pretty entertaining but i think i would have enjoyed it more if i was an american idols... i have never seen american idols before.

here's my empty aim list :/



anyways, gonna go to bed now... i have to wake up early to have brunch with the crew! g'nite people!

1 more week of classes

Last night I got together with all of my friends and had dinner at John Thomas Steakhouse. This place is probably the nicest and most expensive restaurant in town. We wanted to have a nice group dinner since school is almost over. I had the ribeye 24oz steak and it was pretty good. But the side dishes were not as good as last time though. I think the steak here is pretty comparable to Ruth Chris or Morton's in terms of the price and quality.

Afterwards, we head over to Madeline's for desserts and cappucino. I really like their desserts and each of us ended up ordering one so we had 7 different desserts to share! The funny thing is that we go out and eat like this all the time so tonight wasn't that unusual for us. Since all of us are into good food, we usually spend a good fortune every week eating out at different restaurants. We're quite a decadent group....if you see the way we've each been spending money the last 2 years we were here, nobody would ever believe us that we are poor graduate students! we've been spending money as if we're making 6 figures! but i'm definitely going to miss hanging out with my crew that i've really gotten to known the last two years. i'm thankful to have met them and hopefully we'll keep in touch after school ends. most of them will be in NYC and i'll be the only one out of the country. it's funny how when Bea first met me last year, she thought I was an international student! hahaha... we still talk about it.... I guess I'm fobblicious!

I was going to sleep in this morning, but I was woken up by a phone call. My friend, Winnie called me from HK! Apparently, she just got back from her vacation in Italy and wanted to catch up. Although it was 8am, it was nice talking to her and hearing about her trip. Next week, she's going to Amsterdam and London for work -- lucky girl!

In the afternoon, I played tennis with Sundar. I haven't played in about 6 years or so!! Man, I was so rusty on the court, but luckily we were about the same. We tied at 5-5 and we stopped. Good game.

Now, I'm off to the new Starbucks (again) with Sundar and Bea for some cappucino and dessert... I swear! I don't just sit around drinking cappucino all day long!

Have a great weekend peeps!

weekend

g'morning world! happy monday to you all.

so a couple of rants. gasoline is over $3 again! it cost me over 60 bucks to fill my SUV. WTF's going on?! time for me to ditch the SUV and go with something more fuel efficient...that's if i still need a car after cornell. luckily for me, i won't be driving in HK so i don't have that to worry about.

most of my friends were out of town this weekend for apartment hunting in NYC. i was planning to go and hang out with them but i had to stay behind because of the admissions interviews i had to conduct. other than the interviews, i had a lot of time to myself which was awesome. one morning, i went jogging around the lake again which was nice and relaxing. i'm trying to do my outdoorsy stuff these days before i leave Ithaca since I probably won't be able to jog outside when i move to HK...unless I want to jog in the heavily polluted air and have my white workout t-shirt turn grey when i come home...ugh, no thanks. than majority of the day was spent lounging around at cafes, catching up with my magazines, and studying. i love spending my afternoons in a cafe with my favorite cup of cappucino and reading magazines! aww...the joy of being a student. i've really grown accustom to this carefree lifestyle of mine and i'll definitely look back in few months and miss it for sure. actually, i probably won't even have the time to look back since i'll be busy on the trading floor, constantly bombarded with endless phonecalls.

btw, starbucks has just finally opened its first store in Ithaca this weekend! i know we're so behind but the local small coffee shops are just as good =)

Senioritis
this week will be a busy one for me with a paper, test, and a homework assignment due. with all this work, i'm not even remotely sweating over it. weird huh? my usual self would get stressed and lock myself up in the library all weekend long studying for the test. but these don't seem to impact me anymore..in fact, i'm very nonchalent about it. i blame it on the possible case of senioritis...hahaha... anyway, gonna go do some research on my bahamas trip now! i'll catch ya'll later!

happy 1st birthday

happy birthday to my blog. this month marks my 1 year anniversay since i started blogging. yes, very exciting stuff.

2 more weeks till end of classes!

I finally had time this week to catch up with some of the new TV shows that I've been TiVo-ing the last few weeks. So I have a favorite new TV show called "What about Brian" that I'm starting to get hooked watching. This show is about a guy named Brian in his early 30's. Basically one day he realizes that he's the only one out of all his friends who is still single. All his friends are either already married, married with kids, or engaged. He's probably worried whether or not he will ever find someone to settle down with. I guess the reason why I enjoy watching this show is probably because it closely hits home. I sympathize how he's feeling and I can relate to a certain extent. Although I still have many single friends, I'm starting to notice that every year, more and more of my friends are getting married. Anyways, check it ou if you get bored at home.

On a different note, I've been feeling really antsy and quite happy these days. My guess is that it's because school is ending in 2 more weeks! There are so many things that I need to take care of or happening in the next month:
(1) Take my final exams (hopefully the last final that I will ever take)
(2) Bahamas Trip!
(3) Grad-week events
(4) Parents, bro, relatives and cousin coming to Ithaca for the graduation
(5) The 2 graduation ceremonies
(6) Trip down to NYC with parents and bro
(7) Packing all my stuff and moving back to LA
(8) Shipping my car back to LA

I've been totally enjoying and seeing more of Ithaca lately. When the weather is good, Ithaca really is a beautiful city, plus the weather has been fantastic the last couple of weeks. Yesterday it was such a beautiful day so I went around campus taking pictures. There's this row of cherry blossom trees that I walk by every morning on the way to class. These trees have been fully blooming and it absolutely reminds me of the cherry blossom seasons in Japan. Here are few pics I snapped:

The clock tower on campus.... looks very similar to the one at Berkeley...except the one at Berkeley had metal bars on the top to prevent people from jumping off. I remember it was a huge ordeal at Berkeley because people would jump off from the tower especially during final exam season. Seems like most Universities have this kind of clock tower on campus...

Yesterday, I went to get a haircut and the lady asked me if I was finishing up my Junior or Senior at Cornell. That's like 21 or 22 years old?! I don't think I look THAT young...in fact, I know I don't look THAT young. Instead of correcting her, I just went along and told her that I was a Senior =)

Tonight, I saw the movie, Lucky Number Slevin with Lucy Liu and Josh Hartnett. They both are great actors. I liked the movie and the semi-surprise ending.

what a weekend

Friday:
Jogged 4 miles around BeBe Lake in the morning. The weather was terrific! Than went shopping at Syracuse mall and bought few shirts for the Bahamas trip in few weeks!

Saturday:
Studied at the library in the morning, than went sailing at Cayuga Lake in the afternoon. It was the perfect day to be at the lake -- the weather was nice and warm. Our sailboat came close to flipping over in the middle of the lake. The instructor freaked out and screamed "WTF!" which in turn freaked all of us students out on the boat. That's when you know you're in deep trouble. But luckily it was just a close call and our boat didn't flip.

At night, Bea invited all of us over for some home-cooked meal. She's a fantastic cook. We first had crab and aspragus soup, than Vietnamese fried fish with tomatic garlic sauce, and Sundar made some Indian curry and cashew rice -- which was equally delicious. For dessert, Bea made Vietnamese coconut rice pudding with black eyed peas. It was REALLY good (in fact, I'm salivating right now). Bea's really sweet, she always invite us over for dinner. I feel bad because I know everytime we go over, she must spend at least few hours cooking. After dinner, we all sat around and had fruits and wine and just chatted the night away. It was a very good night.

Sunday:
Had Dim Sum with my roommate and 2 other classmates at Hai Hong. The dim sum wasn't bad for Ithaca. Than just spent the day at Sage studying and team meetings.

Done with Taxes!

I finally finished my taxes after procrastinating for so long. The good news is that I don't owe any money. The bad news is that I don't get any money back either. It was a wash.

So I decided to reward myself for finishing my taxes on time by getting the new iPod video! My current iPod (2nd generation) has served me well the last 3.5 years and has travelled with me all over the world. But it was time for me to get a new one since my current one is slowly dying on me. Can't wait till my new toy arrives in the mail!

To Bermuda, Bahama Come on Pretty Mama

after months of talking about where to go for our graduation trip, we've finally decided --- the Bahamas! we'll be spending 5 nights there towards the end of May, right after finals and before graduation. Can't wait!

Interestingly weird face recognition site

A friend of mine told me to check out this new site called MyHeritage.com This site lets you upload a picture of yourself and it searches through thousands of celebrity faces and spits out pictures of celebrities that looks like you based on your facial feature. So the narcissistic side of me had to try it and this is who I got:


























Weird...apparently I look like Julia Roberts? Oliver Stone? Sharon Stone?

Trip to Montreal, Canada!

So I just got back from Montreal last night. I went with 4 of my MBA friends for three nights. It was definitely a good trip. We've been talking about making this trip up to Canada for the longest time....so we finally did it since school is almost coming to an end in few weeks.

The weather in Montreal was pretty wonky. First day it mostly rained but the next two days was sunny and great. We did some sightseeing and did A LOT of eating. The food was pretty good. I realized that it's good to go on trips with friends who also loves to eat. The opposite would probably drive me nuts. In the spirit of being in Montreal, we also had our own "Wine and Cheese" party in our very own hotel room during our last night. Overall, I had fun hanging out with my friends and getting to know them even more. They are great people and I'll definitely miss our time together once we all go our separate ways after graduation.

Pictures from Montreal:
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Movie, Flu, Sailing, Montreal

Saw V for Vendetta tonight and loved it. It was entertaining and the story is pretty creative.

Oh, I'm feeling slightly better from my flu. Thanks for all those who called/emailed/texted me to ask how I'm doing :)

My sailing class started today and it was awesome! Since the wind was too strong, we weren't allowed to take the boat out into the water. Hopefully we'll get to do that next class. But at least it was really nice and relaxing to be able to go out to the lake.

This coming Thursday, I'm planning to take a weekend road trip with my school friends to Montreal, Canada. It should be fun as we've all talked about visiting Montreal for a long time.

Only 5 more weeks left until the end of classes!