Another month, another post
A bunch of stuff happened in the last month, and only now have I gotten the urge to clean up the text and post it. All of this is under helpfully labeled LJ cuts, so you can ignore my random ramblings at will. First off is of course, the New Years trip to Boston and New York
Boston - Thursday Downtown/Freedom Trail
My trip to Boston and New York was awesome. Thanks to wavilyem and rkane/Mike for letting me stay over. I was in Boston for 2 1/2 days - Thursday, I bummed around the downtown area, and along the river. I caught up with Jenny, who is at Harvard now for lunch, and then afterwards, walked along the Freedom Trail in the afternoon until it got dark (since this was winter, I only had about 2 hours or so, so it was a brisk walk), and then walked around the Fanueil Hall and Quincy Market area. In the evening, I caught up with Emily and a friend of hers and watched Curse of the Golden Flower, which was certainly a great epic, but the pacing and character development wasn't particularly great.
Boston - Friday Science Museum/Cannoli
Friday, Emily took the day off, and we went to a Mexican place near Harvard for lunch - afterwards we went to the Science museum (she had two leftover tickets for it), and bummed around there for a while. Afterwards, we went to a supposedly really good dessert place in the North End for some cannoli - it was both crowded and good and then settled back in at home and played some Wii Sports and Zelda, and watched Spaceballs on DVD (as I had only watched parts of it beforehand).
Boston - Saturday high school friend reunion
On Saturday, we arranged to meet up with Leah (who I've seen only once or twice since high school) and her new husband Ken, and had a little high school reunion at a Thai restaurant near MIT, which is where Leah and Ken went for school. It was snowing by the time we finished eating (of course, not a big deal by Boston standards), and Emily dropped me off at the bus station and I took the 4.5 hour bus trip down to New York.
New York - Saturday evening/Casino Royale
I ended up in Chinatown at around 6:30pm, and got to Mark and Mike's place pretty quickly. Getting my suitcase up 5 flights of stairs though was a different story. The five of us (Me, Mark, Mike, Phil, Jen Li) went to dinner afterwards at a nearby Italian place, and then all of us went to the Apple store in SoHo to get Mark's (a gift for his brother to be exact) Ipod replaced. The cool thing about older cities is seeing 'new' stores being inside old buildings, something that you don't see much in many US or Asian cities. As I remember it being told, the store used to be the old post office building, and is rather spacious. We then got to the theater and watched Casino Royale, which surprisingly, none of us have watched yet. Afterwards, we hung around in a bar for a while, and then went back to the apartment and played a bit of Wii Sports.
New York - Sunday Meeting up with an old friend from Elementary school/Ice skating/New Years party
Sunday morning New Years Eve, I got up relatively early and got myself up to the Upper East Side to meet up with Loren, which I hadn't seen in more than 12 years. He was one of my best friends in elementary school, but his family moved to England in 6th grade. His family later came back to the US, and he went to Ithaca College, which is conveniently close to Cornell which is where Adam (another one of my best friends from elementary/middle/high school) went, and we somehow all got connected again. We ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant near his place, and then I went up to his apartment afterwards for a while. I then met up with Mark/Mike/Phil, along with Lacey/Jayen/Krisp/Matt and other friends of theirs back near East Village, and we all eventually decided to go ice skating in Central Park. It was very fun, although very crowded and very expensive. Afterwards, Lacey, Jayen and I went with Matt to his place all the way uptown, and we celebrated New Years with his friends, pizza, champagne, a bunch of party games, and watching the Times Square ball drop on TV (the response to this from all of my Seattle friends is "huh??").
New York - Monday meeting up with Microsoft Intern friends/Pan's Labyrinth
Monday on New Years Day, Mark and Phil went to a Magic The Gathering gathering (surprise!), and I met up with Kevin who works in Jersey now and Zi, both former Microsoft summer interns, and had a late lunch with them at a Korean place. We were pretty good friends during the internship, so it was fun to dig up some old inside jokes. We later hung out at Zi's "closet" (a really small studio apartment) in Chelsea, and Krisp and Kerry came and met up with us. The original plan was to go ice skating at a different park, but that didn't work out since it was raining. Instead, we went to a theater near Times Square and watched Pan's Labyrinth, a horror/fairy-tale sort of movie. Parts of it were gruesome, but I really liked the story and the concept. After the movie, we went to a Mexican place for dinner, and Lacey and Tim met up with us there.
New York - Tuesday meeting up with Adam from high school/Google Office/Guggenheim/Wandering across Central Park/Carmines
Tuesday, I met up with Adam (the previously said elementary/middle/high school friend), who took the train down from Connecticut to Grand Central, and found out that Loren had time to take a lunch break (he now works at a company designing ads for national TV), so we walked the few blocks to his office, and met up with Lacey at Carnegie Deli where Lacey finally got to meet the "other" Derek's Quotes page denizen. After Loren left, we met up with Zi again (who had the day off since the stock market was closed) and went to visit Kerry at the Google office in New York. The Google office was pretty cool - they have a few floors of a block-wide office building. There are a mix of offices and cubes, and a large game room with table tennis, foosball, massage chairs, and guitar hero. We didn't get a chance to try out the food, but the cafeteria also looks very awesome (much better than MS cafeteria fare, unfortunately).
When Kerry was finally able to get us out of the massage chairs so that she could go back to work, we went to the Guggenheim and loitered around for a while. Phil met up with us there, and then we crossed Central Park to the west end while Adam spent a few minutes to visit his grandma, and then it was a short walk to Carmines where Mark and Mike met up with us for dinner. After dinner, I went around, said my goodbyes, and then went back to the apartment to pack up to leave tomorrow early morning.
February Pittsburgh Trip
On to other news, the MS recruiter for CMU for some reason asked me to go to CMU for the job fair on February 8th. It'll only be my second trip to a job fair, but that'll be a good thing since I won't have to organize or worry about anything except for just showing up there on Thursday. Let me know if you're going to be in Pittsburgh then as well. I'll be visiting Jessica/Frankie/JuYeon/possibly Sunya who Jessica said might be coming for the job fair as well, and meeting up with Ulas and Thomas (who will not be in Seattle for the days I'm in Pittsburgh this time.) I'll be in town from Wednesday night to Friday late afternoon.
Last Sunday, Wii!!!!!!!
Last Sunday morning, I also managed to pick up a Wii from the store. I was going to volunteer at the Food Bank warehouse in Seattle at 9am anyway, and I figured that I could get my hands on a Wii if I woke up 2 hours earlier anyway. I got to the Redmond Target at 6:35 (store was opening at 8am), and got in line. Turns out that there were 48 units available, and I got #16, but the games and accessories were also done by number as well. Unfortunately Zelda already ran out by the time I got there, but I picked up the last Nunchuk (no Wiimotes though!), and picked up Splinter Cell and Monkey Ball. After doing my bit at the food bank, I went to another store and picked up Zelda and Trauma Center - but I wasn't able to find a second Wiimote at the other Target, Fry's, Best Buy or Fred Meyer, so I can't do any multiplayer yet.
Boston - Thursday Downtown/Freedom Trail
My trip to Boston and New York was awesome. Thanks to wavilyem and rkane/Mike for letting me stay over. I was in Boston for 2 1/2 days - Thursday, I bummed around the downtown area, and along the river. I caught up with Jenny, who is at Harvard now for lunch, and then afterwards, walked along the Freedom Trail in the afternoon until it got dark (since this was winter, I only had about 2 hours or so, so it was a brisk walk), and then walked around the Fanueil Hall and Quincy Market area. In the evening, I caught up with Emily and a friend of hers and watched Curse of the Golden Flower, which was certainly a great epic, but the pacing and character development wasn't particularly great.
Boston - Friday Science Museum/Cannoli
Friday, Emily took the day off, and we went to a Mexican place near Harvard for lunch - afterwards we went to the Science museum (she had two leftover tickets for it), and bummed around there for a while. Afterwards, we went to a supposedly really good dessert place in the North End for some cannoli - it was both crowded and good and then settled back in at home and played some Wii Sports and Zelda, and watched Spaceballs on DVD (as I had only watched parts of it beforehand).
Boston - Saturday high school friend reunion
On Saturday, we arranged to meet up with Leah (who I've seen only once or twice since high school) and her new husband Ken, and had a little high school reunion at a Thai restaurant near MIT, which is where Leah and Ken went for school. It was snowing by the time we finished eating (of course, not a big deal by Boston standards), and Emily dropped me off at the bus station and I took the 4.5 hour bus trip down to New York.
New York - Saturday evening/Casino Royale
I ended up in Chinatown at around 6:30pm, and got to Mark and Mike's place pretty quickly. Getting my suitcase up 5 flights of stairs though was a different story. The five of us (Me, Mark, Mike, Phil, Jen Li) went to dinner afterwards at a nearby Italian place, and then all of us went to the Apple store in SoHo to get Mark's (a gift for his brother to be exact) Ipod replaced. The cool thing about older cities is seeing 'new' stores being inside old buildings, something that you don't see much in many US or Asian cities. As I remember it being told, the store used to be the old post office building, and is rather spacious. We then got to the theater and watched Casino Royale, which surprisingly, none of us have watched yet. Afterwards, we hung around in a bar for a while, and then went back to the apartment and played a bit of Wii Sports.
New York - Sunday Meeting up with an old friend from Elementary school/Ice skating/New Years party
Sunday morning New Years Eve, I got up relatively early and got myself up to the Upper East Side to meet up with Loren, which I hadn't seen in more than 12 years. He was one of my best friends in elementary school, but his family moved to England in 6th grade. His family later came back to the US, and he went to Ithaca College, which is conveniently close to Cornell which is where Adam (another one of my best friends from elementary/middle/high school) went, and we somehow all got connected again. We ate lunch at a Chinese restaurant near his place, and then I went up to his apartment afterwards for a while. I then met up with Mark/Mike/Phil, along with Lacey/Jayen/Krisp/Matt and other friends of theirs back near East Village, and we all eventually decided to go ice skating in Central Park. It was very fun, although very crowded and very expensive. Afterwards, Lacey, Jayen and I went with Matt to his place all the way uptown, and we celebrated New Years with his friends, pizza, champagne, a bunch of party games, and watching the Times Square ball drop on TV (the response to this from all of my Seattle friends is "huh??").
New York - Monday meeting up with Microsoft Intern friends/Pan's Labyrinth
Monday on New Years Day, Mark and Phil went to a Magic The Gathering gathering (surprise!), and I met up with Kevin who works in Jersey now and Zi, both former Microsoft summer interns, and had a late lunch with them at a Korean place. We were pretty good friends during the internship, so it was fun to dig up some old inside jokes. We later hung out at Zi's "closet" (a really small studio apartment) in Chelsea, and Krisp and Kerry came and met up with us. The original plan was to go ice skating at a different park, but that didn't work out since it was raining. Instead, we went to a theater near Times Square and watched Pan's Labyrinth, a horror/fairy-tale sort of movie. Parts of it were gruesome, but I really liked the story and the concept. After the movie, we went to a Mexican place for dinner, and Lacey and Tim met up with us there.
New York - Tuesday meeting up with Adam from high school/Google Office/Guggenheim/Wandering across Central Park/Carmines
Tuesday, I met up with Adam (the previously said elementary/middle/high school friend), who took the train down from Connecticut to Grand Central, and found out that Loren had time to take a lunch break (he now works at a company designing ads for national TV), so we walked the few blocks to his office, and met up with Lacey at Carnegie Deli where Lacey finally got to meet the "other" Derek's Quotes page denizen. After Loren left, we met up with Zi again (who had the day off since the stock market was closed) and went to visit Kerry at the Google office in New York. The Google office was pretty cool - they have a few floors of a block-wide office building. There are a mix of offices and cubes, and a large game room with table tennis, foosball, massage chairs, and guitar hero. We didn't get a chance to try out the food, but the cafeteria also looks very awesome (much better than MS cafeteria fare, unfortunately).
When Kerry was finally able to get us out of the massage chairs so that she could go back to work, we went to the Guggenheim and loitered around for a while. Phil met up with us there, and then we crossed Central Park to the west end while Adam spent a few minutes to visit his grandma, and then it was a short walk to Carmines where Mark and Mike met up with us for dinner. After dinner, I went around, said my goodbyes, and then went back to the apartment to pack up to leave tomorrow early morning.
February Pittsburgh Trip
On to other news, the MS recruiter for CMU for some reason asked me to go to CMU for the job fair on February 8th. It'll only be my second trip to a job fair, but that'll be a good thing since I won't have to organize or worry about anything except for just showing up there on Thursday. Let me know if you're going to be in Pittsburgh then as well. I'll be visiting Jessica/Frankie/JuYeon/possibly Sunya who Jessica said might be coming for the job fair as well, and meeting up with Ulas and Thomas (who will not be in Seattle for the days I'm in Pittsburgh this time.) I'll be in town from Wednesday night to Friday late afternoon.
Last Sunday, Wii!!!!!!!
Last Sunday morning, I also managed to pick up a Wii from the store. I was going to volunteer at the Food Bank warehouse in Seattle at 9am anyway, and I figured that I could get my hands on a Wii if I woke up 2 hours earlier anyway. I got to the Redmond Target at 6:35 (store was opening at 8am), and got in line. Turns out that there were 48 units available, and I got #16, but the games and accessories were also done by number as well. Unfortunately Zelda already ran out by the time I got there, but I picked up the last Nunchuk (no Wiimotes though!), and picked up Splinter Cell and Monkey Ball. After doing my bit at the food bank, I went to another store and picked up Zelda and Trauma Center - but I wasn't able to find a second Wiimote at the other Target, Fry's, Best Buy or Fred Meyer, so I can't do any multiplayer yet.