I’ve been playing Softball with bunch of people - our last games were on last Sunday. We lost all the games we played but I still had a blast, including an actual blast into the left field!
Without further ado, here are the pictures (as usual).
Here’s some pictures of the new rented house from the outside. One of the neat things you can do now that we have a proper garage is things like this! 
The new house is quite nice - I’m almost fully settled in now. There’s more than enough space and the highway behind the house isn’t as load as I had expected. And now that I have a backyard, I can dog sit my coworker’s adorable 6 month old Golden Retriever!
I finally got my desktop up and running on my new house, which means I can finally take the pictures off my camera!
Here’s a very small set of pictures taken the morning after the birthday camping / bonfire, followed by pictures of my very first Softball game. Pictures of new house that I moved in to last weekend is here, and last but not least, pictures taken while I was in Penang!
For those planning out into the future, I’ll be in Korea with my brother during the American Thanksgiving. I think the exact dates are November 17th to 25th. It’ll be my first time in over 10 years, should be quite exciting!
My parents were here in the Bay Area - there’s bunch of pictures taken in San Francisco and Monterey. The weather was gorgeous the entire weekend and I think they liked seeing the mountains, hills, and greens which can be hard to spot in Texas.
While they were here, my dad was showing me all the Korean websites - Korean equivalent of Yahoo, Facebook, and the like. While clicking around, though, we stumbled upon a club for the 6th grade, 4th class of the Dong Sin Elementary School graduates of 1995… which I left halfway through to move to Canada. Although the club was originally formed in 2001 and last post was made in 2005, I managed to get in touch with a friend (over the archaic device known as the phone, no less). It’s a life left so long ago and it’s more than a little surprising to run into threads of connections like this. And from my friend’s point of view, I wonder what thought went into her mind when her cellphone rang with an unknown international number just to hear a name dusted off from the deepest depths of her memory.
In any case, it truly is a small world.
Just got back from Vancouver where I participated in the Alcan Dragonboat Festival and caught up with bunch of friends. Vancouver has changed so much in the last decade or so that I don’t even recognize the skyline anymore! The Harbour centre, mainstay of must Vancouver postcards from my era, is completely obscured by the new soaring condos dotting the grounds around the Science World. As I walked around, I was in a constant sense of deja-vu as familiar things were mixed in with new, unfamiliar buildings and structures. In any case, it was good to go back and reconnect with some of my roots again.
Here are some pictures from the dragonboat festival, some from around Vancouver, and while we’re at it, some pictures of Santa Cruz All Sports Kickball session and Livermore Rodeo from a while back.
Here are some pictures from the Bay to Breakers, wrapping of Silvio’s cube, and from Sarah’s stay - I have my share of weird and fun experiences but the Bay to Breakers race is just something else. I managed to make it to the Golden Gate Park but maybe I’ll have better luck next year. 
Here are some more pictures from around Santa Cruz - I was originally hoping for a nice sunset… but it got a little too chilly for me to bike around with just shorts and a t-shirt. Santa Cruz is already jumping into summer weather where it’s foggy and chilly in the morning / nights and sunny and gorgeous during the day. A friend asked me what are the downsides of living in the San Francisco Bay area and besides the high cost of living, I really couldn’t think of anything. Yes, I live in an earthquake zone… but it’s hard to imagine a nicer set of nature, people, atmosphere, jobs, and opportunities. Another thing to be thankful, I suppose.
I guess it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything - things are going well, though the work keeps me (as always) fairly busy. Last weekend, bunch of us went out Kayaking at the Elkhorn Slough - if you are ever in the area, or if you love wildlife (Sea Otters, anyone?), I would highly recommend doing this. The pictures are pretty bad (hey, it came from a single use waterproof camera!) and don’t really do justice to what it is like to be peddling out there.
Hmm, I got a piano so I’ve been playing a fair amount lately - I’m still nowhere near the level I was when I stopped playing 7 years ago, but it feels like I have a better ear for listening to myself play then I ever had. My fingers still don’t quite move the way they used to, but the muscle memories are coming back. I’m also starting to tackle couple of new pieces - maybe it’s a little ambitious given the 7 year gap but so far, I’m having fun going through Chopin’s Etudes and just messing around. It seems like it’ll either be Op. 10 No. 3, No. 5, or Op. 25 No. 4 though I highly doubt that I’d ever be able to play any of them competently and at the correct tempo.
And here’s a picture of my brother’s awesome art.
Oh yeah, I’ll be in Vancouver around the middle of June for the Alcan Dragonboat Festival - hope to see some old friends while I’m there.
Couple of days ago, I received an email from Waterloo stating that my engage/engmail account will be suspended as of February 18th. Over the last 6 odd years, ssh’ing into engage and using pine to access email has been my preferred way of reading and writing email. Well, so much for that.
From now on, my gmail account will be the mail email account - most of my email addresses end up in the same place anyway, but try not to use the @uwaterloo.ca and @engmail.uwaterloo.ca since email sent to those places may end up in a leaky bit-bucker somewhere.
Here are some pictures from the DieselFish Holiday Party and volunteering at the SF Food Bank. Things to be thankful about - we didn’t get stranded in San Francisco even though the car we drove there was left behind a locked gate. It was a (tiny) adventure, though, and I guess it’s always fun to do something different and out of the way.
