Fun in the Sun

This weekend started with a BBQ on the Friday night to say good-bye to two German Co-ops (my fellow IBM program peers) who had finished their time and were leaving. As it just so happened one of the original NZers to take this program over here, was also visiting so this BBQ was a good time to catch up and realise that the time spent here in the States on this program is relatively short.

Afterwards it was group excursion to Mountain Charlie's bar. Fortunately this time MCs produced some good entertainment, i.e.some had a bit to drink hehe, which resulted in a certain person not being able to take a photo and only managing to embarrass himself haha.. but he tells me it was all part of his plan to get a conversation starter with the attractive young lady in question, and not for himself, but for me.. which, as it turns out, worked a treat ;)

Saturday was a scorcher! The temperature easily hit at least 30C. So needless to say I was outside enjoying the sun with a light jog, some soccer and lounging around the pool. With a rather late planned BBQ to take on the evening, things were some what quieter than the night before, since some people were rather tired hehe. The Wii came into good use with tennis producing some masterful rallies - without any casualties..

Sunday was not quite as hot, but it was still nice to be outside. Reading my lonely planet guide and hanging with the other Kiwi guys was all that really happened..

Santa Cruz Swim Meet

So this weekend I decided to enter a swim meet to see what times I was doing. The meet was being held in Santa Cruz, a seaside town west of me (I visited Santa Cruz already, so look in my archives for more about it), in an outdoor 50m pool at the University there, which sits atop a hill. This would have been all good and well had it been a warm sunny weekend, but this really wasn't the case. It was overcast, breezy and about 13-17 C with passing moments of sun making it warmer, with some added rain on the Sunday.

The meet itself was nothing like the ones in New Zealand. First off I got told off for jumping into the pool during warm-up (in NZ you can't dive, but you can jump), as you have to do a 'three point entry', i.e. sit on your ass and slide in.. Then they have no marshalling area, you have to go see a board which posts your lane and heat number and then turn up for it yourself. The whole time that swimming was taking place, they had a warm-up/down lane going. Most of the swimmers would do a couple minutes of warm-up before their race there and only jump out about ten seconds before they were called to the blocks and hence do a 'wet start'. As this was my first such meet, I decided to go with my NZ method of 'dry starts', which meant that I probably wasn't able to loosen up before a race as I would usually like to, as the outside temperature wasn't that warm...

My results were very, very average, about the same as when I swum at Wellington Champs back in January :( The meet itself was like an everyone meet, so starting at 9am it didn't finish till about 4-5pm. This was with starting races from each end! Let me explain, they started odd and even heats from opposite ends, so when the heat currently swimming was on it's last lap, they would start the next heat. I don't think anybody ever caught the previous heat up, but it certainly was an interesting way of cutting about thirty seconds off waiting for each race..

I Got a Wii :D

So I have a Nintendo Wii now :D They are really scarce here in the States. Demand still out strips supply by quite a bit, so every time they get shipments of the console in, they sell out within a couple hours. The only way to get one was either ring round and turn up at a store (that's right no internet orders, or putting money down on one), or by spending a bit on a bundle. Now being a lazy person, I decided to order the bundle rather than ring every store that sold the Wii every day to see if they had them in.. Needless to say it has already been played thoroughly by anyone who comes to my flat and thus looks like a good purchase. However with this new found popularity, I haven't quite been able to enjoy the console for myself..

Shopping & Home Improvement Week

So this weekend was about getting some clothes shopping done and fixing/improving things round my flat. So the shopping part was generally done to check out the outlet store place. This outlet place is situated in Gilroy, about thirty minutes south of where I am. It has many label stores like Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Levis, Calvin Klein, etc. However it was a farce to think that most of the stores would be actual discount outlet stores :( Places like Converse was disappointing, it had nothing for under $20! and the rest of the stuff was near regular store price. The handful of shops that did have nicely discounted products seemed to have some bargains, however I was only after a couple of items, namely socks and shorts (:P), so I didn't buy much - yet.. Oh yea the other purchase I made this weekend was a pair of Crocs :D They are very comfortable, I highly recommend them!

Later on me and my flatmate went to the Home Depot store to purchase some blinds, as the curtains in my room weren't really doing it for me. So after that I had to install them -ugh DIY installations.. Well for starters we didn't have a drill, so we had to source one, and then we couldn't use it to screw in all the brackets because of the angles, so I had to screw them in by hand - argh! So while that was completed in record time, I decided to rearrange my room since I had already moved furniture to install the blinds. Now I'm rather chuffed as I've given myself more space :D My room is now more practical, in tune with Feng Shui, and has even more aesthetically pleasing qualities than ever!

Well infact it was a wet weekend, so that's why nothing really interesting happened..

More Snowboarding Photos

Here are some other photos & a video from my snowboard trip :]

Easter

Well so this weekend I decided to stay put here in San Jose. This was enjoyed simply because I had been going away every weekend for the past three weeks, and it was nice to sleep well in the weekend for a change. However I was still going to be a semi-busy individual, since I had to find Polish foodstuffs for the Easter Sunday lunch, do house things like clean my room, go swimming, etc.

The Russian Cafe & Deli is now going to be my stop of choice for Polish goods. It sells most of everything that I wanted, albeit with a slight ruski flavour on some items. They had pierogi, Polish beer, halva, Polish sweets, Polish meat, cheese, European bread.. mmmMMMMmmm!

So with nothing of note happening on the Friday (it's not a holiday here) and Saturday (well except for getting hammered in the three hour swimming session, I did about ~7.5km, and getting my food stuffs blessed), I'll skip to Sunday. On Sunday I went to the Polish mass (it was packed out), and then afterwards to a lunch. The lunch was with a group of Polish folk who were over here being an au pair, working with children or studying. Needless to say, as we were all Poles, we were overwhelmed with food for the lunch :D So I probably took back as much as I brought.

Since I was the only one not from Poland, quizzes ensued on what slang I did and didn't know, hehe ;). It was good since I really got to exercise my Polish, as for the past two months the only use it regularly got was with the cat and dog that live at my flat. All in all it was a nice day to meet some new people and just chill.

Boarding @ Kirkwood :D

So ever since I arrived here, I've been itching to get up to the mountains for some snow action. As it is spring here, I was running out of time to go up before the snow all melted. Things weren't looking great, but last week it just so happened that there was a dump of about 30-50cm of new snow! So with the snow pretty much guaranteed to be enough for the weekend, I next had to find a way up there.

Luckily this was a lot easier than expected, as after asking lots of IBMers, I was finally pointed to some people who were interested in travelling up to the mountain! Funnily enough, there was another Stefan, so this time I was known as 'Stefan 2' for the weekend. We hired a red ford explorer SUV, which actually was really nice to drive for a big vehicle, and stayed in some modest 'Motel 6' accommodation (for four people the room was nice and cosy).

Kirkwood was the resort we chose to go to. It's nicely nestled in the mountains, with pretty much all the lifts starting from the base area. There are trees separating the various runs, which made for some more scenic riding. The freaky thing about the resort is that most of the chair lifts don't have the safety bar feature, even if they do the locals don't use them. This was a little unsettling at times! :S

I chose to snowboard this time, as everyone else was on boards and I thought that I would work on my boarding skills a bit. The snow was great for most of the day until it turned to slush. There were these rather flat bits in places, so once the slush slowed you down, the traverse on a snowboard became rather arduous :/ I will have to return next season on skis though, as there were some very challenging looking runs you could take/make ;)