Rite of Passage

Open Letter to US Banks: I want easy inter-bank electronic transfers

2010-06-21T10:55:00.000-07:00

Dear US Banks,

Please adopt something that makes bank transfers easy to do between people. E.g. please allow easy inter-bank electronic transfers. I'm not talking about wiring money between countries, just allowing people to easily pay their friends back, pay their rent, etc., all without the need to cut down trees to make checks (a.k.a cheques), and spending money on postage. The tiny nation of New Zealand does it, why can't you?

Sincerely,

S

I'm going to miss the bubble

2010-06-14T10:59:00.001-07:00

Dear Real Life,

I know the sharp edges you bring are going to come and pop my Stanford bubble very soon. Two years has been enough to give me stress followed by elation, becoming something like an addictive drug. The roller-coaster ride it has brought has not been dull - I have wrestled and conquered it.

Real Life, you have some expectations to live up to.

Cheers,

S

P.S. Stanford you were a wonderful experience - I salute you.

Is this a Team or an Army?

2009-09-25T19:44:00.000-07:00

I still find it ridiculous the amount of people on an American Footbal team - no wonder no body plays passed high school/university as there is just way too much involved to organise things...

Survival

2009-06-12T18:45:00.000-07:00

I have survived.

I have survived a challenging nine months, full of stress, education, fun and excitement. I have learnt a lot, and can say I am better for it - yay for graduate school in the US...

At the moment I am just trying to relax and do a little project before my summer internship starts.

Spring

2009-04-23T11:14:00.000-07:00

With the weather warming and the last of the rain gone, wildflowers have sprung up all over campus. Here's a patch I thought looked good - interestingly I found out that poppies are the flower of California, and that they grow all over the place...

Easter Greetings

2009-04-11T18:35:00.001-07:00

A Happy Easter to all. Sorry for neglecting my blog, it's been a tough year in terms of finding interesting enough things to write about that the average lay person would want to read, and finding the time to write it... ;)

So here I write quickly now
while it's buzzing in the background
writing a quick Easter word
that's short and not absurd
oh wait I have to go
busy me, I know...

Google April Fools Joke

2009-04-01T08:15:00.001-07:00

Ha! Google is promoting a service to auto-reply to messages. It's actually quite funny because I studied that stuff, so to me I know that there is no way they could have technically achieved such a great auto-reply message maker. Take a look at the sales pitch yourself - http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/landing/cadie/

busy busy busy

2009-02-24T13:24:00.000-08:00

So I have some interesting projects I'm working on here at Stanford.
1) trying to count and track stem cells that are dividing so that the biology researchers can quickly get the results of their experiments.
2) implementing a speech recognition system for the Stanford STAIR robot.
3) implementing a visual classifier for five objects, e.g. implementing something for finding all the mugs in a photo.

This has been a really busy quarter and at the moment I'm studying for my midterm test, or exam rather. It's three hours, so I class that in the exam category...

But anyway a happy Fat Tuesday to all, bring on Lent...

Two years away from home

2009-02-04T16:38:00.000-08:00

The other day was my two year anniversary of being away from home. It seems awfully long ago now. I hope that all will go to plan and I will be able to travel back for a visit this year.

Otherwise I have been rather busy, and the time has just been flying by. Don't worry, I haven't forgotten about where I'm from completely. Every now and then I do get nostalgic, e.g. about what I would be doing at this certain time of the year, etc...

OpenCV MS Studio 2008

2009-01-22T22:31:00.000-08:00

+++++++++++++Geek time+++++++++++++++++++++
===========================================
Ok I have managed to get opencv1.1pre1a working with MS Studio 2008.

Here are the steps I followed:
Go to this link and follow the instructions - BUT only:
- add the folders that actually exist
- additionally add to the source and includes sections, the other folders in the 'otherlibs' directory.

Unrelated but possibly relevant, I tried to follow the instructions here but they didn't work as I had to get GLUT, but after installing glut I still couldn't compile it... but then I double checked my project options and found that the steps I took in this link were outdated.

++++++++++End Geek time++++++++++++++++++++
===========================================

Winter Summer?

2009-01-13T21:24:00.000-08:00

This past week, the weather has been sunny blue skies, with the temperature hitting about 18-20 degrees Celsius! Very pleasant winter weather :) heh, it could even pass for a cool Summer day for me ;) But the end of the week sees temperatures dropping slightly but it still looks all nice and not very wintry.

Natural Bridges Monarch Butterflies - Attempt II

2009-01-05T19:53:00.000-08:00

My second attempt at seeing the monarch butterflies at their winter roost in Santa Cruz was a success! It took about ten minutes of looking for the supposed 1000 that was still around to find them. They were clumped together, and from a distance you would just think that they were leaves, but infact they were a clump of several hundred butterflies.

I was lucky enough to witness a micro burst - when all the butterflies in a clump spontaneously take to the sky. Thus they burst and it looked pretty neat with them all flying about :)

Then with some time and good winter weather, I went to the state park just up the coast. There I saw an animal only beach (closed for human access), two seals (which oddly enough seemed to be looking at me the whole time...), and a sea otter!! The sea otter was pretty cool. It was submerging itself and coming up with some food and lying on it's back munching away on it :] There were two seagulls following it to see if they could scavenge any leftovers.

San Diegan Christmas

2008-12-29T23:00:00.000-08:00

For Christmas I went down to San Diego. I was promised warm weather, however it was rather chilly for the most of the time I was down there. But on the last day San Diego turned on its shine :)

St. Nick came and gave me useful presents I thought. Chocolate, memory game, socks, shirts, gift cards... Before that I did slave over the hot stove cooking pierogi :) but thankfully they were already made and I just had to boil and fry them.

As I had been to the Zoo (situated at Balboa Park) before, I went to the San Diego wildlife park this time. It's about forty minutes from San Diego and is nestled in a large valley. It has a big African Savannah part and bigger enclosures for the other animals - so it's pretty cool.

It had a petting zoo enclosure where you could feed and pat deer, antelope and gazelles. Interestingly the smaller antelopes and gazelles definitely had softer fur...

I also revisited Mt Soledad, Cabrillo Point and La Jolla. On Mt Soledad we could see very far. Even seeing the plateau past Tijuana and snow on the mountains to the north west of San Diego.

There were some interesting tidbits - La Jolla had seal pups and seals move funny, I saw a ridiculous car, had a giant meal..

Season's Greetings

2008-12-22T09:58:00.000-08:00

How do I cope with the cold again?

2008-12-18T15:38:00.000-08:00

After it being so mild and so warm for so long, the cold weather at the moment is a bit of a shock. I have to remember to wear more layers as the temperature of late has been in the low single digit range. Sure, this is not really that cold, however after having the vast majority of the year basking in temperatures above 15C, it's easy to forget the best options for keeping warm...

End of the quarter

2008-12-15T14:46:00.000-08:00

As of this week, I have finished my first quarter of study and now have three weeks break before the new quarter starts in the new year. Studying for 10 weeks straight, and going over all the material you would usually find in a semester system was a bit of a change. You definitely felt that material went by quicker, however to compensate this meant that you had to put more effort into study and readings. While not a bad thing, it just could cause a little frustration when there were no examples given in lectures to help reinforce the material...

Merry Christmas :)

Raccoons!

2008-12-07T19:45:00.001-08:00

Last night on campus I saw a trio of raccoons scampering around. This was my first sighting of raccoons. They look a bit like large bushy cats.. But the trio of them were wrestling each other and they looked like there were having a good old time...

Google Streetview Car Falls Off Cliff

2008-12-03T09:02:00.000-08:00

Click the arrow facing toward you, i.e. as if you want to go backwards. You shall find that you end up at the bottom of a small drop... Hopefully the google streetview car didn't suffer too much damage... :P

View Larger Map

Zeppelin sighted!

2008-11-20T23:04:00.000-08:00

There is a company that offers Zeppelin tours of the bay area now. The other day it took a flight over campus and I managed to get some pretty poor snap shots of it, but it did fly right over me...

Big game buzz

2008-11-20T22:52:00.000-08:00

So last weekend was a 'big game' here on campus. I went for the free food, but as I was going to get the food, I couldn't help but notice the buzz around campus.

It was a beautifully warm autumn day, about 27 degrees Celsius, and there were lots of people out and about on campus. The stadium which holds 50,000 was sold out apparently, which accounts for the amount of people around campus I guess. What was cool was that the rival team had a whole lot of supporters up to watch the game as well.

Anyway I went for the free food, and stuffed myself with some sausages, and burger patties. The beer on tap from the keg was a great way to wash things down. Unfortunately I couldn't revel in the atmosphere for very long, as I had a test to study for.

Fortunately, or unfortunately I could hear all the roars from the game. So starting off I knew the game had started when I heard fireworks and a set of fighter jets boomed overhead. The roars were very loud for half the game and then they slowly subsided and were overtaken in frequency by the quieter roars, which I attributed to the opposing team. So as I found out, we lost...

Halloween, etc

2008-11-03T10:52:00.001-08:00

Yes, well study is keeping me quite busy, but I still managed to find some time to enjoy the American tradition of Halloween.

A design Professor gets his students to carve pumpkins as a graded assignment. He then displays them on his lawn. So the pumpkins photos are of them.

Then there was a big graduate Halloween party, which was pretty fun. It rained slightly, but nothing enough to dampen spirits. My great toga costume was getting it's third run in about as many weeks [there was a toga party and an earlier Halloween party]. I did get a question whether I was Jesus, but after a brief history lesson, their opinion was rightly corrected.There were many crazy characters and costumes, however I did run into a person that was dressed pretty much exactly the same as me...

Yahoo Hack Day

2008-10-17T16:04:00.001-07:00

So a couple of weeks ago I participated in the Yahoo sponsored hack day. No it's not a day that we try to hack into other people's computers, it's a day (rather a week in fact) where the objective is to code some web oriented things together. It's called a hack because the code created might not be pretty and you might be joining things together that weren't purposefully created to be with each other...

Anyway Yahoo came out with a web monkey search plugin, so people could make extra stuff to help in certain search queries, i.e. if I search for a term, which corresponds to a term found in wikipedia, there could be a wikipedia plugin that will allow you to see a bigger snippet of the corresponding page, rather than having to click through to see if this was the thing that you were after...

Anyway my idea was to help search for the local bus schedule. So I wrote a plugin called VTA Bus Quick View. It allows you to see the route map, and the links the schedules from within the search results... With this I came second and won an iPod touch :D Sure there wasn't much competition, but hey I'm not complaining...

Just bear with me..

2008-10-10T10:11:00.000-07:00

Yea I will try to update this blog when I have some more time. I have some interesting stories to blog. Hopefully I will get round to finishing them before the memory completely fades..

Polish Festival

2008-09-21T22:43:00.003-07:00

So Sunday was the Polish Festival in San Jose. I had no other reason to go, apart from going to eat! I had kielbasa, some pierogi, and an assortment of cakes. Too bad I am a poor student, otherwise I would have feasted and bought more stuff to take home.

This festival did seem pretty complete. They had food, arts & crafts, games, Polish Folk dancing, and the Polish-American engineers club. At the latter I found out there is in fact a Polish club on campus and I also signed up to the engineer's mailing list...

Stanford Game

2008-09-21T22:43:00.001-07:00

My first american football, a.k.a. grid-iron game was Saturday night. It was Stanford v San Jose State, at Stanford, at their massive stadium (see video).

The game itself was probably more interesting than I thought, probably because it wasn't televised so there wasn't any waiting around for TV commercial breaks. I did get a free supporters t-shirt - yay.

Stanford had a poor first half, but came back strongly in the second to win. The half time show was interesting. I got to see a marching band with some creative license (Stanford's) and a traditional one. Both were interesting, but they did give the insight to what all the marching band business was about, as I actually got to see one doing what it's made to do.

Anyway I think I might return next time to a game of sufficient caliber, like Stanford v UC Berkeley, otherwise I think I might skip a couple of games...

Busy Busy Busy

2008-09-19T13:42:00.001-07:00

I have been quite busy this week; orientation activities, meeting people, eating food, buying food, looking at courses, rememebering people's names, sleep, swimming, etc. Basically this has been a pretty fast week!

This weekend is quite heavily booked also. There is some time to relax, however I will most likely be spending that time researching what courses to take next week, as that's when they start. So most likely I will be sitting in on about six courses of which I will choose three. Well this quarter the choices will probably be easy, given that I have to statisfy some breadth requirements, so it would be good to get them out of the way. Hopefully everything will pan out... :)

I have forgotten to take my camera around to the events that have been happening, but I will hopefully remember to take it from now on, so that I can pictorially represent what I've been up to.

Moving onto Campus

2008-09-08T21:21:00.000-07:00

So in the weekend I also managed to move onto Campus. Thankfully I don't own any furniture, so it was easy enough to fit all my stuff into two car loads.

This was technically my first time onto campus, which some found hard to believe, even though I have lived relatively closely for the past year and a half. My impressions, are just like everybody else's in that the campus is huge, and is very pleasing on the eye. Well at the moment there is a bit of construction going on, however once that is finished, things will look really nice.

The interesting part of my move, was that the apartment I moved into, was a one bedroom apartment shared by two people. One person sleeps in the living room, the other in the bedroom. Of course I got given the apartment with someone living in it already. The story gets more interesting, as the person already living there was away for the Summer and had subleased it to a friend.

So here I am, unlocking the door and walking in. Gag.. Oh dear, the place stinks - a cross between stale curry and body odour - yuck! The kitchen is a mess, the stove looks untouchable, the blue carpet has lots of white dots all over it (which turn out to be rice...) and yea I'm pretty disgusted. Thankfully the bathroom was in a usable state.

Anyway the guy comes out, is apologetic about the mess and explains he thought I was coming tomorrow... So he goes about cleaning up, which he attempts, but doesn't really do well. I.e. he doesn't use the right setting on the vacuum cleaner so nothing gets sucked up, and he just tidies the kitchen a little bit so it's a bit better, but by no means clean.

So being proactive I went about thoroughly vacuuming so I could at least unpack a little. This took me about an hour of going back and forth with the vacuum. Luckily I didn't really clean anymore as the housing front desk lady called me and apologised and said that they would send someone to clean the place. Thankfully I handed the move-in evaluation form promptly, as otherwise I would have expended all this time and energy cleaning when I didn't have to.

Skydiving II

2008-09-08T21:11:00.001-07:00

Well last Sunday we decided to try to go skydiving again. We had the vouchers from our last attempt, and we were a little bit wiser, in that we got there punctually at 9am so that we would be the first to jump.

So we were the first in line to jump - hooray! So we were thinking that we would jump. We even got into the harnesses, had the training, and were waiting for the GO word from the pilot to jump on the plane. The early morning fog did lift, however unfortunately for us, the low cloud persisted throughout the day enough to make the three mile clear sky radius never eventuate, so we were left watching the clouds... :( Oh well, we are just going to have to try for another weekend..

Nvision

2008-09-01T20:32:00.000-07:00

So last week I attended the Nvidia driven Nvision graphics conference in downtown San Jose. It was an interesting conference and it definitely has got me thinking whether computer graphics (and related) would be a cool career path...

Anyway I got to see Buzz Aldrin at the premier of an animated movie specifically made for 3D viewing. In case there are people who don't know who Buzz Aldrin is, he was the second man on the moon. The movie was called "Fly me to the moon" and featured some flies that hitched a ride on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. The 3Dness was cool, however I did leave the theatre with a headache. The movie itself is for five year olds, so needless to say I was a little bored. However the 3D glasses technology was interesting, as they were like spherically polarised lenses or something...

Some of the other things that I saw were at the exhibit hall. There were many stalls and some of them were by companies that were selling/doing lots of cool stuff. For instance I got to see what the latest developments with facial recognition technology were and play around with them; there were stereoscopic 3D LCDs, ones with glasses, the others without; graphics card manufacturers galore; unreleased games that you could play; etc.

There were also workshops and presentations that I could attend. So I went to one about how NASA is using graphics recognition for unmanned space station docking prototypes; SPORE (it's a game) and how they did some graphics stuff; some sessions on how to do cool stuff with photoshop; and a meet and greet with the guys from myth busters.

The conference I think was cool and well worth the $10 price of admission. Especially since I won a graphics card. It just so happened that the guy doing the photoshop presentations was from New Zealand, and he had free stuff to give away, and one of the questions was whether people were from out of the country. So I got given a graphics card since I was from New Zealand as he thought that was cool... :D

Status Update

2008-08-22T15:55:00.001-07:00

Well it's been three weeks since I finished work. I have made some progress in brushing up on C++, otherwise nothing else from the list of todos has been done or started. My progress is a bit disappointing, but I put this down to 1) the Olympics, and 2) biking everywhere. I'm not overly complaining or stressed out as I have enjoyed the Olympics and biking everywhere means that I save money :) But what is surprising to me, is that it's the end of my third week of leisure!

Odd Stuff: at swimming today there was a mouse just going for a casual swim in the pool. Just swimming between the lane ropes, getting some exercise...

So I'm now in my second week of 'Leisure'

2008-08-14T15:00:00.000-07:00

This is my second week already? wow, the time really does fly by when you aren't doing much at all... So what have I been up to? Well my dad came to visit, he was on his way home so he was just stopping by for a couple of days. It was nice to catch up with a person from the family :)

Other than that, I have been stuck inside escaping the heat - Thirty+ degrees Celsius... Thankfully the Olympics have been on, and I have been able to watch them late at night, so when I finally get to bed, it's a bearable temperature to sleep.

You could say I haven't exactly been following my initial plan of things to do, however I have another couple of weeks to go, so hopefully I will be able to get through them all and feel productive with the time that I have had off.

Linux World

2008-08-07T00:24:00.000-07:00

So today I went to Linux World in San Francisco. I simply went because I had nothing else better to do. Well it just so happened that I decided to install the openSUSE linux distribution and they were having a community day at Linux World. Oh right, it was free too! So yea I learnt more about how to operate and use my openSUSE distro :) It has some nice desktop effects reminiscent of what vista and OS X have...

For the geeks out there, I have openSUSE 11.0 with KDE 4.1, and I am quite happy with it. No problems thus far, well I haven't managed to setup up dual display to work properly yet... and I had some trouble with wireless - I would probably say that I hate knetworkmanager it doesn't give you nearly enough information about what it is doing. But I got my wireless working with my Atheros card after finding a decent post on figuring out what steps to take [to find out what's wrong]- which you can find here.

Note: I forgot to take my camera, so the only photo I took was with my phone... hence the lone penguin...

Cisco Aironet 350 and WPA

2008-08-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

This is purely a blog post to let anybody who was in the same situation that I was, that no body has successfully managed to get WPA encryption working with the Cisco Aironet 350 with Linux. Wireless works, but the Linux driver only supports WEP encryption, and using the 'ndiswrapper' with the Windows Driver that supports WPA did not lead to any success as something didn't work. So save yourself some trouble and just buy a supported network device for $20-30...

Finito

2008-08-02T12:47:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the last day of my internship. Meh. I guess it will hit me on Monday, as everyone will leave for work... It was a nice internship and what I learnt easily surpassed my expectations of what I wanted to get out of it.

I now have about six weeks to relax... well I don't know how much relaxing I will be able to handle, but to keep myself occupied I have some geeky projects I want to experiment with ;)

They are:
- upskilling on linux
- doing some top coder problems
- brushing up on C and C++ programming languages
- dabbling with a facebook application idea

But yay! Onto the next chapter of life...

Great America ...

2008-07-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

... the amusement park was a fun time. I have to say that I think I enjoyed this park better than the Disneyland and California Adventure which was next to it. The rides here were definitely more thrill, which resulted in some nice adrenaline surges :D It was also nice to have half price discounted tickets, all you can eat BBQ and a day when the lines for the rides weren't ridiculous.

My favourite would have to be the drop zone tower thingy. The ride takes you straight up twenty-two storeys and then it drops you for some fun free fall action :D :D

The wooden roller coaster was also interesting, and I can see why people admire the charm of riding one. So in saying that, it had the longest line, and I managed to find someone whose mother didn't teach them to dress properly, tsk, tsk... heh (well I thought he looked ridiculous anyway...)

New Laptop :D

2008-07-12T13:23:00.000-07:00

So this week I bought an R61 Thinkpad laptop. It's a bit of a brick, i.e. it's not a skinny laptop, but I'm not going to be taking it around many places, so the size isn't an issue for me. I chose the other specifications so that it is robust enough to last me a couple years. It however comes with Windows Vista. So, impressions so far - everything works and runs fine, but not that I have extensively tested it. One thing I have noticed is that logging into Windows takes a really long time.

I am planning to downgrade to XP, however the Aero interface is a nice change to the XP one. But I guess at this stage I'll stick with Vista a little longer, as the applications I'm thinking of running I don't need to use yet...

Fourth of July

2008-07-07T12:28:00.000-07:00

This last weekend
been and gone was a three day long weekend. I took the opportunity to relax a little...

The Fourth of July, or Independence Day, is ritually the day that fireworks are set off. In addition to that, people have barbeques, relax, etc. So the day was spent doing pretty much nothing, as for the evening, we drove up to spend the night in San Francisco. I was invited to a going away/4th of July party, hosted by my fellow kiwi brethren.
The party was fun, as usual, but the fireworks were a bit of a disappointment (not that I care about fireworks anyway). It seems that here in the States, you have to get a permit to light fireworks, thus they are usually left to the big displays in the cities. Unfortunately, the notorious San Francisco fog rolled in, and nothing of the fireworks display was really visible.

The following day was spent strolling around San Francisco. There was some really bizzare modern sculpture near the ferry terminal... Oh, I finally took a photo of the "Full House" houses at Alamo Square :D - the painted ladies as they are known.

Haze

2008-06-26T14:38:00.000-07:00

So with the wildfires that are occurring around the Bay Area, the sky for the past couple of days has been very hazy. Well it looks like really bad smog, however it's attributed to the wildfires, and you can see it from ground level right up to the clouds. They were actually putting out a health warning to tell people to avoid staying outside for too long... I will try to get a photo when I remember :)

Bring on the heat...

2008-06-22T16:16:00.000-07:00

Wow, these last couple of days have been hot. Nothing but sunshine and dry heat, we're talking mid to high thirties here! This is only the very beginning of a Californian summer, and hopefully it won't get too much warmer, as this heat is only just bearable in my non air conditioned automobile >_< .

Muir Beach and Surrounds

2008-06-16T16:53:00.000-07:00

The other weekend, I went up to Muir Beach and the surrounding area in Marin County, over the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco. Other than taking in the sights and eating some food it was a nice place to watch the sun go down, as you had a view of the whole bay area, as well as up and down the coast. Another cool thing I thought was that you could see the haze/fog coming in off the sea into the Bay.

Wildfires

2008-06-16T16:47:00.000-07:00

So lately there has been a wildfire somewhere in the bush happening around Northern California. On Friday there was obviously lots of ash and smoke in the atmosphere, the Sun changed to a nice red/ember colour. The clouds surrounding it were rather thunderstorm like with an ember like tinge. It looked pretty ominous, but nothing else eventuated, except to the uniformed who thought there was something major happening with the sun being red... Unfortunately I didn't capture this on camera so you'll just have to take my word for it :P

Blogging Rampage...

2008-06-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

So I have finally decided to finish blog posts. Sorry to my vast audience of readers, who I know have been waiting patiently for my posts... :P
[edit] Contrary to what people may interpret the above to mean. It does not mean that I have stopped posting to this blog, rather that I decided to finish the blog posts that were still in the draft state. For the uninitiated, blogger allows you to save a draft of the blog post. I just had a few that were in the draft stage, and so I decided to finish those posts, i.e. so I decided to finish those blog posts.[/edit]

Price of Petrol

2008-06-03T17:21:00.000-07:00

So everyone here is complaining about the price of petrol. It's gone up over a dollar since I have been here. So now instead of paying about thirty-four dollars each time I fill up, I pay about fourty-six >_< However, I then console myself by saying that in New Zealand, petrol is a lot more expensive and that it's really not that bad yet.

However I do feel for the average American. Since America generally is a massive suburban area, everyone has to commute a vast distance to work. This means that average American definitely drives a lot further than the average New Zealander. So this would mean that these price increases hurt them a lot more probably, as their consumption is much greater. The lack of decent public transport doesn't help Americans change their habits either...

Yay, I've moved!

2008-06-01T21:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I have finally moved away from drama and into a relaxed house. Gone are worries about personal possessions and about what is going to happen next! Now I can look forward to actually having meaningful conversations with people I live with, rather than getting out of the way of some thing that I will forever have in my mind. I can honestly say that I will strive to never ever allow the conditions which lead to the creation of this monster to be even remotely recreated within my kin and friends.

However, having said that, I do think that even though the environment she was brought up in wasn't the best, it's no excuse for what she's become, or what she's doing. So I guess I'm saying that as a person in her mid twenties, she is the sole person to blame for all the problems that she has and continues to have... but then again when you're crazy, you're crazy and your reality is not a true reflection of the real world. For instance she read the book "The Secret" and believed that her ex would fall in love with her by her staring at pictures of him and thinking that he loves her => CRAZY...

Big Sur

2008-05-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

So I have had my first public holiday of 2008 here in the States. So for one of the days in the three day weekend, I went to Big Sur. Big Sur is a part of the Californian coastline just over an hour drive south of where I am. It is characterised by big hills that fall abruptly into the ocean [borat]very nice[/borat] :) On the way we went to 17-mile drive and drove past Pebble beach - the famous golf course.

I didn't get to see all of Big Sur, as we only had time for about the top two-thirds, but it was some nice coastline. I was trying to place a similar vista in New Zealand, however I couldn't think of one. Well parts reminded me of the Blenheim to Kaikoura road, but nothing that I could say "oh we have that in New Zealand if you want to see that."

We had lunch at a place (Nepenthe's) with a nice vista, which supposedly is quite famous with American artists, or was a place where they hung out and possibly got inspired (something like that). It was a nice lunch, slightly expensive, but expected. The view was nice, but the weather was unfortunately a bit damp, however it was nothing that ruined the Big Sur experience.

For the rest of the time we were driving and stopping at various points to take photos, stretch and it was a nice relaxing day. There was a funny sign though - namely the one warning of pigs crossing hehe...

Tiring Weekend

2008-05-19T08:12:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately the timing of events this weekend coincided with a swim meet. It was a big international meet, full of Olympians and future world champions. Thankfully I wasn't there to make any times, and just swim because I could. However, my performances were pretty bad to be honest. I might have swum better had I not had to stress and tire over Friday's events, but oh well, unexpected things happen...

The obvious outcome of all this is that I'm rather tired and a bit sore. I have a mysterious bruise on my thigh and can't wait for the weekend again where I can sleep all I want...

Do I have everything?

2008-05-16T21:25:00.000-07:00

After the crazy aftermath of finding my stuff outside, it looks like my prayers were answered and all my important documents were found. Actually, I think I have managed to find practically everything, apart from some flash cards, socks, and Wii games (which weren't very good anyway). I'm guessing that I will probably have more possessions missing, just that I wont realise it until I need it :/

Hopefully I can gather enough energy to swim tomorrow, as my legs are definitely feeling it from walking to and through all afternoon - I'm tired!

A sad, broken Mind

2008-05-16T14:03:00.000-07:00

So I have unfortunately had first hand experience of the sad, sad effects of mental illness combined with methamphetamine and alcohol abuse :S It wasn't me of course... Anyway, I returned back from the swimming competition I was in to find all my belongings and possessions out by the garage and in the dumpster.

Thankfully the culprit has voluntarily admitted herself to a mental hospital. Maybe after some livid words by yours truely, but who knows, she was delusional and not all there, but I have the strongest feeling she knew exactly what she was doing...

At the moment I am praying that all my important documents and financial stuff is all in the rubbish bags I found...

Will update later...

Just crusing along..

2008-05-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

I haven't done all the much lately. Well anything new to blog about really. I did spend time at the beach on Saturday in Santa Cruz, while I played soccer on Sunday and scored my first goal of the season.

Well I guess I can elaborate on the goal. The ball went down the right wing, I was playing left midfield so went up with the attack. I then decided I should move into the box put myself into a scoring position. The cross came in, it bounced before me and then I swept it round with a right foot volley, into the far post, out of the keepers reach :D **Does crowd cheering sounds** [in fact, our only fan was probably just doing a golf clap...] But yea, we then went on to score another goal, and went into half time 2-2. Unfortunately we did not take our scoring opportunities in the second half, and lost 4-2 :(

That's all from me for the moment :D

Trip to Tijuana

2008-04-22T09:13:00.001-07:00

So last Friday and Saturday I was in Tijuana, Mexico. I was there visiting a friend who is a Jesuit Novice, and as part of his training was there on experiment working for the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of Peace at the "Casa de Los Pobres", or house of the poor.

This place has a medical clinic, a chapel, a food kitchen, and some other rooms that change depending on what is being offered, e.g. clothes, education, etc.

So on the Friday I helped out in the kitchen preparing the several hundred meals for that day. The kitchen is run by some volunteers, who are old ladies, some of whom have given over twenty years volunteering to help out there. Needless to say they spoke only Spanish, and my Spanish is not at a level to converse with. Luckily there were also two other Jesuit Novices there helping out, so I had someone to translate the Spanish and speak English with :)

We (the Jesuit Novices and me), cut probably about 1000 zucchinis for the soup that was being made. At around twelve o'clock, the men, women and children started arriving and we began serving meals. I was placed on tortilla and spoon duty. My task was to hand out tortillas and plastic spoons, as well as give them extra tortillas. I spoke enough Spanish to handle this with ease. Was cute having little kids come up saying "Una tortilla por favor" and being able to understand them..

After serving probably about 600 meals, we went for a walk around Tijuana. Saturday was also spent walking about and getting some culture in (both metaphorically and literally). It really is a stark contrast to what lies north of the border. It's dirty, ill kept, and pretty much a rough looking place. However there are pockets of culture and nice looking areas. For instance there is a cultural centre where I learnt about the history of Baja California, and saw a photo exhibition on the trials of getting into the United States illegally. There were some very powerful photos I thought.

In Tijuana, there is definitely some bad stuff happening. Masked federali police in flak jackets, with M-16s and humvees driving round with mounted machine guns, obviously says that there is something lurking just beneath the surface. However I did not see anything indicating that. We didn't stay out past eight in the evening, as the nuns were clear that they want us in the compound then. There were lots of sirens going night and day, so I'm glad I didn't encounter anything bad.

Apart from learning about the hardships of living in Tijuana, I also learnt about the Jesuit order. These men who consecrate their lives are all very learned men. Most of them go on to hold teaching positions at Universities and High Schools. It's common for them to hold Masters if not PhDs in Philosophy and a degree in another subject. It takes something like ten years for their formation and they get a lot of world experience during this time. They get posted on experiments, e.g. placed at a mental hospital, a food kitchen, an old person's home, a high school, hitch hiking on $35, etc., where they get to experience first hand the disadvantaged of this world. This helps them to grow, figure out if this is for them, and show them what these people need. I commend these guys for what they're doing and wish them all the best.

Hot Weekend

2008-04-14T11:42:00.000-07:00

This last weekend was like a summer's day. Twenty-nine degrees Celsius, sun, and more sun. I had my usual sporting activity of swimming, which meant I am once again changing skin tone, even though I put on sunscreen.

On Sundays I have started playing soccer for a team, which is pretty much similar in skill level to the team I played on back home. The only difference is that I play on turf fields, a.k.a artificial grass. This is quite a nice surface, it has a rubbery base which is nice on the feet and the smooth field means that you can concentrate on playing soccer better. However this surface is a heat magnet. In the sun, the artifical materials absorb some of the heat. So not only does the heat radiate from the sun, but also from the field. Needless to say I was so sweaty at one point, that my eyebrows weren't doing their job...

Prestigious University Acceptance

2008-04-04T12:49:00.000-07:00

The other week I was accepted by a prestigious Californian University to continue my postgraduate education. Yesterday I formally accepted the offer and made it official, I will be going there in September! I'm quite excited really, and am thrilled with the prospect of living up to the standards expected (well that I expect anyway) of being one of its resident graduate students.

Of course there is the slight issue of balancing finances, however hopefully I will be able to secure some funding by working for some of the faculty (so a prayer or two would be nice), which would greatly reduce any stresses I might have. But, with or without this funding, I most probably will not be going home anytime soon :/ - boo

April Fools Success

2008-04-02T08:37:00.000-07:00

So yesterday was April fools :) I managed to execute a cunning yet simple plan, which lead to [borat]GREAT SUCCESS![/borat] I executed my plan on my flatmate's computer. When she went to bed the night before, I took the time to take a screenshot of her computer desktop. So the image consisted of the task bar, shortcuts on the desktop, and the instant messenger she uses ready to login.

Next I made that the wallpaper, right clicked on the desktop and selected not to display shortcuts, and hid her task bar. So the end result was a picture of what looked to be the objects she's used to. So this would result in at least a few minutes of "huh?" with her clicking and trying to click the wallpaper..

Unfortunately I didn't exactly get to witness it first hand, but I heard of her frustrations and the fact that she still hadn't figured out what was wrong when I got home (she was complaining), is enough for me to declare it a [borat]GREAT SUCCESS![/borat]-hehe.. :D

Grasshoppers!

2008-03-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this being California, which is right next to Mexico, there are some decent Mexican restaurants to be found. One of them is El Tule - which is named after a town in Oaxaca (pronounced wahaka), Mexico. It comes as no surprise that this restaurant also serves up Oaxacan style Mexican dishes. One of these interesting dishes is grasshoppers! Well it's more of an appetizer you have with chips, but still - grasshoppers!

Earlier I had talked the talked about eating them, so I was keen on giving them a try. So how did they taste? Well they were a bit smaller than I anticipated, and the taste was something that I didn't expect either. I guess I was expecting a bit of a peanut buttery type taste.. Anyway, it was an interesting tangy and bitter flavour. Which went well with the chips and a bit of salsa :) Mmmmm!

Photos from San Francisco

2008-03-12T09:50:00.001-07:00

In the weekend I also was up in San Francisco to redo some touristy stuff.

I was planning on going to see Alcatraz, however the only company that goes to the island was booked! :( So we took a cruise that went round the bay and paid particular interest to Alcatraz. We sailed under the Golden Gate bridge and the Bay bridge as well as circling round Alcatraz a couple of times. I was enlightened by bits and pieces of information as to how Alcatraz functioned and what life was like there, as well as what it was like building both bridges...

Banana Slugs!

2008-03-12T09:26:00.000-07:00

Yes slugs that are yellow and remind people of bananas exist! I was fortunate enough to see and touch a couple yesterday when we went for a walk to see the coastal redwoods in the Santa Cruz mountains. Now I can cross seeing these creatures off my list :)

Grand Canyon Panoramas

2008-03-12T08:58:00.001-07:00

I took lots of photos of the Grand Canyon and lots of them were so that I could make panoramas. I discovered a program called autostitch which stitches panorama pictures very well. You simply input the pictures you want stitched, and it will go away and stitch them all together without asking you for any further input! It works great in my opinion...

Grand Canyon

2008-03-10T16:33:00.000-07:00

So with the arrival of my sibling, we headed off to the grand canyon! Simply put, the Grand Canyon really is a giant gaping hole in the ground, that is millions of years old, and to appreciate its size, you really need to experience it yourself.

We spent the full day at the south rim, going to pretty much every vista point, starting out in the west in the morning for sunrise, and finishing up on the east side for the sunset. Although we missed our bus to get to the intended point in the morning for the sunrise, the view was still quite spectacular -pronounced spec-taculARRrr.

We hiked down and into the grand canyon taking the hermit trail for about thirty minutes, had a yarn to a hiker, and walked back up. This was so that we could still get to see the rest of the canyon. They say it takes twice as long to walk up, as it is to walk down, but somehow in our case, we managed to walk up in the same time or less than we did going down. Maybe that recommendation was for when it's hot or something..

After a few hours thinking I had lost my keys (they turned up in my bed) during the morning's walk, we were over in the east side of the south rim for the sunset. The colour of the grand canyon does change with the sunlight which was cool. Anyway we finished driving back to our lodge, and apparently there were animals like deer, and coyotes, which I didn't see.. However when we were walking I think I found some mountain lion tracks..

Ah Swimming

2008-02-28T10:50:00.000-08:00

So a couple of weekends ago was spent swimming at a Senior meet in Santa Cruz. My performances weren't bad I thought on the amount of training I've been doing, and weren't that far off my best times. The weather was nice, and I think I've almost gotten used to doing 'wet' starts, where I jump out of the warm-up lanes about a minute before my actual race.
I managed to have my own personal photographer, which snapped some cool pictures of me swimming..

Also I went to see the Monarch Butterfly spot there, but unfortunately there was only like one left (I saw one monarch), while thousands were promised. I took this up with my tour guide and apparently it has to do with my being there that does it... :(

SAP Open

2008-02-19T10:57:00.000-08:00

So this week's event in San Jose is the SAP Open, held at the HP Pavilion. I got free tickets to go see the first session, which was showing Pete Sampras play an exhibition match plus the matches afterwards. Sampras was initially supposed to play the angry Russian, Marat Safin, but something happened and he ended up playing Tommy Haas.

It was an entertaining game, with both players making some nice shots. Pete showed he still had some class with some deft touches and screaming forehands (along with looking older and balder :P). However I think Tommy was just there for a hit around, as I'm scheduled to go see him play on Wednesday in his first round single's match. So I think he didn't really care that Sampras got the better of him and bet him in two sets.

I'm also looking forward to seeing Andy Roddick play on Wednesday, in his first round single's match, which is before Tommy Haas' match. Supposedly the seats I got for that session are close to the action, so hopefully I will be able to take some good photos.

Over a year now

2008-02-12T08:22:00.000-08:00

So it's been over 365 days overseas. I have spent a while writing this blog, as I honestly don't really know what to write to cap off a year away...

I do know that I can say I have distinctly enjoyed my time here in the States. I can't say I've seen everything, but I think I have seen a good snippet of California at least. I can say I have not seen any guns (true, maybe I'm in the wrong state), nor have I been mugged or intimidated (true, maybe Im in the wrong city). I have seen massive walking whales, and I have also seen normal healthy athletic figures. I have seen the homeless to the masses of people driving ridiculously rich and oversized cars. I can attest to the fact that you can get your license here in two days - with some determination and without appointments hehe. Now I also get Simpson's jokes about the DMV - the department of motor vehicles. I have also learnt how big traditional software firms operate, and how the university school system here can be quite competitive. In any case, I'm glad I've had this opportunity to live here for a year.

As for me and my persona during this past year, I can't say that I have changed much, as for me I don't think the environment here is quite that different. I can still function for the most part the way I was in NZ without any problems :)

For the next half year I'm expecting some different challenges and thought involving decisions - like moving to a new flat, what I want to do when my time is up, when to come home, etc. And in the words of Thomas K, which he signed into Percy's 21st book - "Keep on Trucking.." I think I will do that..

Tahoe Ski Trip

2008-02-04T15:27:00.000-08:00

So I went to Tahoe for the weekend to have some fast times in the snow. I went with a bunch of Germans from work. So in total we had 8 people hitting the slopes. We hired some pretty new 4x4 cars from Hertz. Interestingly, car that we got, the Saturn Outlook , did not handle like a cow, and was actually quite agile, and dear I say, had better than expected fuel economy.

The place we were staying at was a cabin/bach/holiday home in South Lake Tahoe. It was a very nice place with space for twelve people. On the Saturday we ventured out to Kirkwood, and spent a full day skiing. It was snowing most of the time, so snow conditions were very fresh. Cookie monster made an appearance, as it turned out to make a pretty good ski mask/hat thing..

Amusingly, I got "COOKIE" shouts from chair lifts, and surprisingly the question "Where did you get that from?" Which I'm sure was once asked with a bit of sarcasm, the other times they seemed honestly genuine. Also one guy told me "You have inspired me and my mates... " So if you see a Sesame Street ski hat craze, you will know who started it ;)

The Sunday found ourselves snowed in. The roads were covered in snow, and Kirkwood was closed :( due to avalanche clearing on the roads leading to it. So instead we had some fun in the snow, and then took off to Sierra for a half day. To be honest I didn't really enjoy Sierra that much, as the snow was really cut up, and I was looking for some speed, but I was sore and it was too much effort navigating all carved up powder.. However when I moved to going in between trees, and less skied areas, things were fine :)

100th Post

2008-01-15T14:52:00.000-08:00

So this is my 100th post, YAY! :D I am on track to have posted on average twice a week since I left. It's a bit hard to believe that I've almost spent an entire year overseas. I don't know what to think really, just that this year will be an interesting and defining year..

Let me know what summer time activities you have been up to, so I can know what I'm missing out on...

In other events I had an interview with Google, which I'm not too confident about. My solution to a problem was wrong, well it was correct but that I dictated it wrong.. It was all over the phone and I had forgotten to explain about the case where the input could be zero. Which I did think about, and wrote down but forgot.. I was supposed to use some Writely program, that would allow her to see what I was doing, but she didn't like using it, so I'm wondering - what if? Meh, I got the next thing right though, but there were no more questions. You could say I feel a little mislead as to what the interview would involve (e.g. more how do you do this in Java, Python, etc..), but maybe because I got the first problem wrong, I didn't progress to anymore questions.

There is supposed to be a follow up phone call from the recruiter, but yea I'm not expecting much, as I assume they only hire people who get things 100% correct...

Updates

2008-01-09T08:12:00.001-08:00

So San Jose and the Bay Area have all been experiencing a bit of wind and rain lately. We've had a couple of storm systems move through with one having Wellington like winds. Sure some trees fell over, and there was some flooding, but to me it was how winter was supposed to be... :) This also brought massive dumps of snow to the mountain ranges, with about three metres falling over the course of a couple of days. Hopefully it will still be all there and nice and fluffy when I head up to the slopes in February.

With all the rain, this part of California will return to green, as for most of the year, it's a parched brown colour. So it will once again remind me of green hillside pasture...

Christmas and New Years

2008-01-02T11:24:00.000-08:00

Christmas was spent in Poland, being constantly fed by my family. Of course I did not complain, as Polish cuisine is positively salivating stuff. Pierogi, kapusta, the different smoked hams, and meats, sausages, marinated herring, salads - MMmmmm!

New Years was spent in San Francisco at an apartment, where we watched the fireworks (slightly obscured) from the roof top. In general it was a relaxed affair, with a late night walk down at fisherman's wharf, as the weather was still and calm, with a starry sky - a nice winter's night.

Photos from Poland

2008-01-02T11:00:00.000-08:00

Photos from my Trip in Poland :) Namely in the hills near Bielsko-Biala, Krakow, the Wieliczka Salt mine, more of Krakow and one from Wadowice.

Happy New Year

2008-01-02T10:55:00.001-08:00

I would just like to say a Happy New Year! 2008 looks likely to be a year of forks - where big decisions or events will change the course of things: elections, visas expiring, university administration looking at applications, etc... (i.e. like a fork in the road)

Also sorry for not posting in the last couple of weeks.

Poland

2007-12-17T07:28:00.000-08:00

So here I am, last time I was here was at least twelve years ago. A lot has changed! Modernisation has come, big shopping centres, malls, new subways, sky scrapers, etc. Of course there are places that mix the old with the new, where crumbling, old, neglected communist era building are just down the road from new giant sky scrapers, and shops..

Fashion has come a long way too, people dress here pretty well, reminding me of Japan. I don't think I have seen an obese person at all! Hopefully with all the new modern things, people won't change their diets and become Americanised.

Still some people find it hard, but others find themselves well. You can clearly see the contrasts, and that's interesting. Those that aren't progressing stagnate quite clearly, while others cash in.

I'm here for a of couple weeks, so will update with photos, and any other interesting facts I find :)

Plane Ride

2007-12-14T11:00:00.000-08:00

I flew United on an old 747, no individual screens, old movies, no free alcohol. What can I say? I am a bit disappointed :( However the pasta meal was great. It was some cheese filled pasta shells in a really nice tomato purée. Also I didn't realise we travelled at over 1000km/h, somehow I didn't quite think that old massive 747s travelled with that speed... Anyway, after this trip I will have accrued enough mileage points to get a free return flight anywhere in the US & Canada, so I'm not really complaining too loudly ;)

The plane was completely full, so it was kinda busy the whole flight. I tried sleeping, however didn't have much success. Thankfully I had an aisle seat, so didn't quite have the cramped feeling of being stuck. But I did get the feeling that I have massive shoulders, or that the aisle was too small, or that people are fat. That's because I would get bumped almost constantly, and I was sitting as close as I could next to the person sitting next to me.. So maybe it's a combination of the above?

Meh, now to throw in some photos of some snow capped mountain/ranges when we had only just left San Francisco :)

Up, up, and away..

2007-12-12T20:15:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I head off on a two week trip of Poland, visiting family and friends. It should be a good time, hopefully I have the right clothes, and wont have to experience really cold temperatures :)

I wish anyone else on Christmas trips safe travel, and a happy, stress free period :D

Did I just find that in my oatmeal??

2007-12-09T17:30:00.000-08:00

So the other day I was making some porridge. I used the rest of the container of oats up, added some milk, some cream (yes I added cream :P) and proceeded to heat it in the microwave. A couple of minutes later I was munching away after adding some half spoon fulls of brown sugar. Then in the course of eating, I took a spoon full and proceeded to feel something hard. Luckily I didn't harm my teeth, but I spat out the object and found that it was a screw!

Now finding a screw in your porridge is definitely perplexing, especially when it is 7am in the morning and you are still getting over that weird dream, only to again think you are having a dream.. >.< The only logical explanation I can come up with, is that it came from the oatmeal container. Naturally denser, heavier things, move to the bottom, so when I emptied the container everything that was at the bottom was moved to my bowl. It could not have been in the milk, as it doesn't float, nor could it have been in the cream for that same reason (I didn't finish either). So then you might say it was in the mircowave or the brown sugar. I checked the microwave for missing screws, and found no holes for them, which makes sense, as you don't put metallic objects in the microwave. The amounts of brown sugar that I put on my porridge could not have hid the screw, so thus leaving the conclusion that it came from the oatmeal container! (Oh and I had a clean bowl, so it wasn't there before I poured the oatmeal in, ruling that out as well)

I am going to send it away to the manufacturer, so I will keep you posted if I hear anything back.

Ten Months +

2007-12-07T07:54:00.000-08:00

So, California has officially taken second place in the "where I have lived the longest for" category. But honestly, this last month or two especially, has flown by really quickly. I have been quite busy with work, planning my Christmas trip, and swimming. I am also amazed that I am only two months short of completing a year overseas, away from everything that was 'home'. When will I be back? Who knows? I guess I should know by April, but yea...

At the moment it's winter here, and well it really isn't that much of a winter. For instance it might get a bit cool (down to 0-4C) on a clear night, otherwise with cloud cover it's a bit warmer. There is some rain, but it isn't anything to want to get away from, and the wind, is just a breeze. There is nothing like a biting cold southerly wind from Antarctica, with a wind chill factor below freezing here - which I strangely miss. As I guess it's just not that challenging...

Thanksgiving, San Francisco, Ice Skating, Karaoke

2007-11-25T16:50:00.000-08:00

For Thanksgiving I went up to San Francisco to Ms H.'s 'uncle's' place. There we ate a huge 10kg turkey, and gorged ourselves on pumpkin pie, cheese cake and ice cream chocolate mudd cake :D Then I joined in the traditional Trivial Pursuit game, which was published in the 1970s, however I still managed to score 4/6 pieces that you are required to get - yay for being smart ;)

Fortunately the days that I was up there, the San Francisco weather was like Wellington on a nice Autumn day - still, sun shining, a bit cool but nice. So we took a stroll in the Golden Gate Park which was needed after all that eating.

The Friday night I was there we learned that there was an ice skating rink setup in downtown San Francisco. I had been ice skating twice before I think, so was a little hesitant of what skill I would produce. Fortunately I am coordinated and managed to glide round without much problem.. Well the only problem I had was stopping, where I managed to do some theatrical spins, stop and continue, all without falling over :D

Later on it was some karaoke! Sure of course it wasn't my choice, but I enjoyed it :D They did have a Crowded House song, which along with the fellow kiwis who met up with us, was sung proudly :]

Las Vegas

2007-11-20T10:17:00.000-08:00

Vegas, bright lights, kitsch, money, alcohol, clubs, guys pushing girls to your room - that is Vegas. Well Vegas really is a weird place. You have a full spectrum of people: you have the very rich (pompous even) people who fly in on their own jets, to the hard working individual out to have a good time, to the guy who is struggling to feed himself because he has a gambling addiction.

One side of the 'strip' is very new and well kept, while another side definitely does not look or feel as sharp, or as safe. However wherever you go, you hear the jingle of slot machines, which sums up Nevada in my opinion, i.e. Nevada is a gambling state bent on enticing anyone to 'gamble'. What I found funny was that right when you get off the plane, you can go and play on some machines hehe..

Anyway my visit to Vegas was with a group of misfits. People from work, friends of friends etc., and we all packed into two rooms at the Excalibur. Needless to say my sweet accent helped to get free room upgrades :D

On the Friday night we tried to go to a club called LAX. When we got there a bouncer approached me and said for my group to cut the line I would have to slip $150 under my ID and still each pay the $25 cover D: "What?"- I thought! Needless to say I declined and then a person from the club approached and said we could get in right away, only if we got a table and everyone spent like $100! Of course we realised that for that kind of money we could be having a much better time somewhere else. It kind of soured the night, and made the next place we went to feel not as good as it could have been.

On Saturday we went to look at the different Hotels and ate a very tasty buffet Dinner at Treasure Island. It was really quite good I though, especially with the selection of what they offered. I'm sure that I got my $26 worth from it! ;)

After that it was off to Stratosphere, a sky tower look alike, but it has thrill rides at its top. E.g. we went on Insanity, which was ride in which you were seated at the end of a crane type arm, which went out over the edge and proceeded to spin you round and you ended up looking straight down at the ground, which was about 300m below.

For dancing we went to Rum Jungle, which I highly rated. It had lots of dance floor space, the music was good, they had 'dancing girls' and acrobats which actually did entertaining feats.

The Sunday was spent gambling and playing roulette. I started with $20 and ended with $50, with my last bet being silly and costing me $10, but I thought that was a good result from playing about thirty minutes worth of roulette for the first time :)

Hoover Dam

2007-11-20T08:56:00.000-08:00

So on the Friday, I went out to the world famous Hoover Dam, near Las Vegas. It really is a very large concrete block, and I can understand how it was a marvel of construction when it was built.

For those that don't know, the bridge resides in two times zones. Pacific standard time, and Mountain standard time, as it is cut in half by Nevada and Arizona (the Colorado river is the state line). Because I walked across it, I now can say I have walked across a time zone :D

I took the discovery tour which took you underground to one of the tunnels they built to channel the Colorado river around the site, when they were building it. We also got to see the massive generators that they use.

Interestingly due to heavy traffic and security concerns over the bridge, they are building a rather large bridge across the canyon. It will have a massive arch and I think will complement the dam, as it itself doesn't seem like an easy feat of construction..

Sharks Game!

2007-11-13T08:49:00.001-08:00

Last night I went to an NHL ice hockey game between the San Jose Sharks and Phoenix Coyotes at the HP Pavilion in San Jose. I must say I wasn't sure what to really expect and went with no expectations what so ever. The amount of flashy stuff they had was cool, lots of light and sound, in addition to a good game.

The opening couple of minutes was exciting as there was a big hit - a Sharks player slammed a Coyotes guy into the glass and the Coyotes guy didn't take too kindly too it. A fight ensued with them swinging a couple of punches.. a helmet flew off there, a glove there.. all the while the referees were standing around. Once the fight hit the ice, the referees jumped into stop the fight. The Coyotes guy was ejected from the game and at this point I thought things were really exciting :D

Well for the first period the Coyotes dominated territory and shots on goal, however the Sharks looked dangerous on each attack they had. After some sort of penalty, the Sharks were defending a power play late in the first period. They managed a counter attack and scored a short handed goal - the crowd erupted - i.e. watch the video.

The only thing that surprised me was how many actual stoppages there were in the game. Each break between periods was twenty minutes, plus the time stopped when there was an infringement, so an hour game took two and a half hours to play..

Anyway the sharks scored another goal in the second period to lead 2-0. In the third they scored again, another fight broke out and yet again another Coyotes player was ejected. From that point the Sharks completely dominated and scored two more goals, finishing the game 5-0, with me thrilled to have watched an exciting game :D

Jumpy Jumpy..

2007-11-12T11:41:00.000-08:00

On Friday I went to Sky High, a trampoline activity place. Here they have a whole floor full of trampolines and even on the walls in which you jump about on! What fun, why doesn't New Zealand have any place like it??

Of course while attempting flips, I managed to arse up and land on the padded metal bar (yellow things in photo) - making my side nice and tender in the process. I just had too much forward momentum when I completed my flip. Instead of jumping up after it, I jumped forward and yea well managed to land awkwardly..

The place also had a foam pit, which was nice, however it was a bit shallow :/ and I kind of jarred myself at one point, as there was a lack of foam to pad my fall..

But anyway, I rate the place a 4.5/5 in terms of entertainment, because you pay by the hour ($9) and you get a really good sweat on in the process, with a half star off for the safety features for the uncoordinated being under my preferred standard.. :D

Images from the previous week...

2007-11-06T10:51:00.001-08:00

Halloween Partay

2007-10-31T09:23:00.000-07:00

So in the weekend there was a Halloween party. Costume was the only thing that was mandatory to bring :D Being the creative genius that I am, I decided to make a very distinctive Cookie Monster costume. Well I was going to be a kiwi (the bird not the fruit!), but the requirements to pull that off were are lot harder, hence the saviour that was the Cookie Monster find at Walmart.

Walmart was the place of purchase for this kids costume which I modified. Needless to say with the facepaint and costume on, people at the party did not recognise me at first.
The place of partay was well decorated with Halloween themed objects, like spider webs, spooky stuff, and pumpkins. The other participants at the party were well dressed, and the hosts were very generous with the refreshments available. All in all I give this party a five star rating. If you did not manage to make it, well then that's just too bad.

Tarantula!

2007-10-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

So this morning, in the carpark at work I happened to almost run over a tarantula! It just happened to be crossing and luckily I had enough skill to avoid killing it.

The tarantula was probably the size of my palm and was leisurely crossing the road. I thought it was quite ironic that it was strolling down the same walkway that people take when they go for walks around the site hehe.

Had someone been there that knew about them, I would have been tempted to pick it up and give it a stroke :)

Giant Pumpkin

2007-10-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I went to Half Moon Bay for the annual pumpkin festival. Half Moon Bay is situated on the west coast, and the in between San Francisco and Santa Cruz. For about 10km it was bumper to bumper traffic to get into it. So it wasn't such a good idea to go in the afternoon..

Anyway my goal for this excursion was to get a photo with a giant pumpkin. Every year they hold a pumpkin weigh off, for the right to the title of largest pumpkin. This year's pumpkin was like 1500lbs, so about 680kgs. Unfortunately due to the traffic caused late arrival I didn't get see anything else pumpkiny, like pumpkin carving, or a pie eating contest. Also the amount of arts and crafts reminded me of the Martinborough wine festival. So there was some interesting photography, sculptures, etc.

Building in the Sand

2007-10-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

So on Saturday I went up to Ocean beach in San Francisco to build some art in the sand. Well Ms H.'s sister asked if we could help out for an event with construction, architectural, etc companies in helping make a creation in the sand with a local school.
So after thinking the San Franciscan weather might be pretty bad, I was pleasantly relieved to find that it turned out to be a beautiful day. The sun was shining, hardly any wind above a slight breeze. So it was an excellent autumn day to be spending time at the beach building.

I didn't realise that the process of making sand creations involved sooo much water and stomping. Basically, to make a structure that wouldn't crumble easily, you had to pile on sand, dowse it with water, and stomp on it to make it compact. The providing enough water was a hard task, however my group was big enough to form a chain down to the water where we just passed buckets up and down for at least half an hour..
I was getting a bit bored until I was able to take on a piece of the project and make a keyboard, as before there wasn't much room to do any creative work.

On the horizon through for the duration of the day, a whole American navy fleet was coming into San Francsico. So I got to see destroyers, transports and the like, but I missed the aircraft carrier (if there was one). Overhead the Blue Angels were spinning and diving and roaring past. Apparently they put on a good show, however most of their flight was obscured by a large hill, as they were doing it over the city, rather than Ocean beach, so I can't comment.
In the end I was pleased enough with my work and enjoyed the day, even though my neck maybe took in a bit too much sun. Just completely randomly, I had a conversation with one guy who said he had a good time in Rotorua in a local pub with all the locals, who were trying to hook him up with some Maori women.. hehe..

Carter's Commercial

2007-10-05T08:58:00.000-07:00

So to the people from NZ, if you manage to see a Carter's Building advertisement with a guy playing a tune with his hands, then I can tell you I have met that guy. He just happens to work with me. He was saying "Yea, they saw a video of what I can do posted on google video. So they emailed me to see if I wanted to do a commercial for them... They paid me in NZ dollars too.."

Hehe, funny how small the world can be at times.. Oh he was also interested in knowing how the ad was going, whether people liked it or not. So email me/comment here if you have anything to say about it :)

Davet Matthew's Band Concert

2007-09-30T14:23:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I went to the Dave Matthew's band concert at the Shoreline amphitheatre in Mountain View. It is one of Ms H.'s favourite bands. They play a mixture of jazzy, bluesy, rocky stuff which I would class as relatively easy listening. I would have photos, however they said no cameras allowed, so I left mine in the car, only to find out there were hundreds of people who didn't get caught/listen and were clicking away, much to my envy. However the photos probably wouldn't have been that great, as we were positioned quite far up the grassy bank (I did take cellphone photos, but they weren't posting quality)..

The amphitheatre itself is massive. A giant quarter circle like slice, positioned at the base of a hill. The bottom half was seating, while the top half was a grassy bank. The amount of people there was probably at least 15000 I think, so car parking was a massive undertaking. Thankfully, they had lots of free parking for the event, even though it ended up being a slight walk..

The concert itself was good. I enjoyed it, even though I didn't really know the songs. It was relaxing to just sit and take it in..

San Francisco Again

2007-09-17T16:03:00.000-07:00

So this last weekend involved a trip to San Francisco. Went out on the Saturday, only visited two places. Went by the City Hall which looks pretty cool at night. Needless to say the photo with the flash unfortunately turned out the best as my low light arm shaking skills were quite obvious in the other photos. The night itself was pretty low key. We tried to do some karaoke, however it was being dominated by drunken people and thus the wait was excessive. So we went to another place, which had an interesting décor. The ceiling had lots and lots of disco balls, while the walls had lots of mirrors cut into odd shapes, etc.
The next day was crossing off one of the things that I haven't done in San Francisco yet - riding the cable car. After waiting like 30 minutes with all the tourists, we managed to secure some outside rails. This is pretty cool because you just hang on to the rail as the cable car whizzes up and down the street. The cable that the cable car uses to propel itself isnt visible like the one in Wellington, rather sensibly it is found in the road.
It can be a little nerve-racking when you're going past another cable car, as they pass quite close to each other, particularly if it looks like the other person in the car hasn't pulled themselves in enough. But yea the day was very nice, a warm Autumn day, and the whole ride was very pleasant :) I recommend it!

Sacramento

2007-09-11T14:42:00.000-07:00

So last weekend I went to the Californian equivalent of parliament. It wasn't a specific trip to see it, it was just a "Oh because I'm in the area" type thing. Which I am glad I did, because it's a pretty nice building, and I got to see/learn of California's history. As seen in my photos the building is very nice. The Governator does really have a prominent office entrance, with his name above the door making no mistake about it.
There are two debating chambers in the building, one for the assembly (green) and the other for the senate (red). It was a surprise for me to learn that the political model of Washington was pretty much replicated here in California. The dome itself had nothing in it, apart from a balcony type level and having a flash interior décor.

The reason for my being in Sacramento was actually to attend a wedding reception. Yes not the actual wedding but the reception... One of Ms H.'s friends was getting married, and she was Mormon. They got married in a Mormon temple, which doesn't allow non-Mormons to enter. Needless to say the reception was a sober affair, which I didn't mind. The food was good, however the highlight was definitely the chocolate fountain :] Mmmm chocolate covered cream puffs and strawberries..

San Diego Part Dos

2007-09-06T17:02:00.000-07:00

So continuing my San Diego visit I went to Coronado & Old Town San Diego. Coronado is a very resort like place with beach white sand and a very large historic Victorian style hotel (the spiral structure is it's signature). Old town has some old buildings (like the Church) and could be part of a western movie.
I also went to La Jolla, and went to the cove to be specific. It's this little cove that gets packed out, and people go snorkelling just off shore as there is some fish life. Not that pretty but interesting nonetheless.
I managed to also capture a nice shot of Pacific Beach and the surrounding area from the plane when I left. In the background is Mt Soledad (I think I spelt that right), which I have pictures of below when I was at the summit.
I also went to Point Loma where they have a monument to Cabrillo, who was the first European to sail into San Diego harbour and set foot on shore. It has a nice vista, but when I was there it wasn't as clear as usual, because you could usually see Mexico and some offshore islands pretty well, which you couldn't really then. At the same place is one of the first lighthouses that was on the west coast of the United States.. Interestingly I met a guy from the Caribbean, and we got to chatting about cricket, and then we did a Brian Lara impersonation..

San Diego Part Uno

2007-09-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

Well this last weekend here in the States was their Labor weekend. So I took this long weekend opportunity to fly down to San Diego with Ms H. :) We were lodging with her family, which was good as I didn't have to worry about where to stay, and how to get myself around San Diego :]

First up we went to the world famous San Diego Zoo. This is a pretty cool Zoo. It has heaps of different animals and you could easily spend the whole day there trying to see everything. Since we didn't have time to see all of it, we went to see our favourite animals and anything else that was along the way. It was an educational trip, as I found that a bearcat is indeed an animal, and that lynxes are actually rather large animals, and having one as a domestic animal isn't quite as feasible as I imagined.

My favourite animal exhibit was probably the Hippos, they were both in the water and were gracefully moving around for such chubby animals. One then came up to the glass and I just couldn't help myself hehe..

Next up was Pacific Beach beach. Pacific Beach is the area I was staying in so I was about 20 minutes walk from the water. It has a pretty nice beach, a couple of km long and gets some nice surf. It was refreshing to finally be able to get into the water and not change gender, as the sea up round the Bay Area is quite frigid. So I spent the afternoon doing some successful body surfing - Woop Woop :D

Funny Items You Can Buy

2007-08-28T11:49:00.000-07:00

Also last weekend, I went to a store called 'Bed, bath & beyond'. It sells, as its names suggests, bedding, bath, kitchen and general household items. I was browsing the store when I just happened to find a fat finger person remote (Doug you might want one :P). This instantly brought back memories of the Simpson's quote where Homer becomes massively obese and tries to dial the phone - "The fingers you have used to dial are too fat. To obtain a special dialling wand, please mash the keypad with your palm now." hehe, so I now had a perfect remote for someone who would be accustom to mashing the buttons on their normal remote - thank goodness I don't need such a device :D

The other interesting find was a sponge/scourer holder for the kitchen.. Okay to get why I laugh I guess you just have to understand my fascination with monkeys and the question why anyone would design such a 'kitch' looking thing to put in their kitchen?..

Taking it easy

2007-08-28T08:28:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the slow blogging, I haven't felt I have done exciting/interesting enough activities worthy of a blog lately.

So last Friday there was a taco themed potluck - Mmmm tacos. So what I brought was two kinds of salsa, which I both made. So the constituents of Chef Stefan's basic salsa were a white onion, jalapeño, tomato, green capsicum all nicely chopped and diced together with a bit of habanero (a very hot chilli). This was then blended for just a second so that it had some juice to it.

The second salsa I made was from a recipe, it was for Salsa Verde. You wont find this salsa in New Zealand, no, as its main ingredient is tomatillos. Tomatillos are a green tomato looking fruit, however they are enclosed in a papery husk, which you remove obviously. You can't eat them raw (or at least I wouldn't), so you need to bake them for a bit until the flesh softens.. Anyway, once they were soft I blended them with some onion, cilantro, jalapeño, and some habanero for a bit of kick.

All I can say is that the ability to make awesome Mexican food here is very, very easy. Of course I ate way too much at the potluck, however that wasn't unexpected. Alas I didn't get any photos of the food to show how great it was :/

The Beach

2007-08-13T17:21:00.000-07:00

So for the first time over here I actually specifically spent the day at the beach. Santa Cruz, as reported earlier in my great ability as a blogger, is just over a the hills from San Jose, and so it also lies on the coast with a nice beach.

The other times Ive been at Santa Cruz, it wasn't really that pleasant, as the weather turned or it just wasn't that warm. However yesterday it was very enjoyable! Warm, a slight breeze and not too hot, but enough to make you think about jumping into to the freezing ocean that is the Pacific here..

So the beach was a little crowded, however not as packed as Oriental can get, so I managed to find some room to play frisbee :) However since I enjoy being able to feel my extremities, I did not take a dip or a swim. An interesting attraction was being talked into to do a music video - haha don't ask me where it's going to play - but it was some dance stuff that will air at some festival..

As mentioned probably many times earlier there is the board walk at Santa Cruz, so finally... well no yet again I did not manage to try any of the rides :P Although I did play at the arcade and managed to get my arse handed to by a girl in air hockey and frogger.. >_<

VIP take II

2007-08-13T10:30:00.000-07:00

As important as I am, I got called up to be a VIP at Vivid.. hehe I havent made it quite like that here. But yea I have cool hookups and he was more than happy to give me and my entourage VIP status at Vivid, a club in downtown San Jose.

Sure downtown San Jose might not be as classy as say places in San Francisco, however that night was quite fun. I had a fun group of people, we enjoyed the music and each other's company :D We were treated to some free alcohol - we were VIPs ;) after all - So it was a very inexpensive night too!

Baseball As vs Angels

2007-08-06T11:54:00.001-07:00

So as part of this weekend I went to the Oakland As vs Los Angeles Angels game. Sure I'm not the biggest baseball fan, however at this game, along with the discounted tickets, there was an all you can eat BBQ which is what sold me into going. Mmm the sausage and meat patty were very good!

Anyway this game was at the Oakland Coliseum, also home of the Oakland Raiders NFL team, which is a rather uninspiring concrete structure. The seats that we had were field level, so if there was a foul ball we had a chance to catch it, but none came our way :(

The game itself wasn't that captivating, as it was low scoring, however it became interesting in the second to last inning (there are nine in baseball) where it was tied 1-1 and then Oakland managed to score from an error and take the lead. So then it was some tense pitching to see if the Angels could hit back, which they didn't and Oakland won 2-1.

Trip to Google

2007-08-03T15:56:00.000-07:00

So yesterday I managed a trip to google for their engineering open house. :D It was cool! We got fed, chicken skewers were excellent, and we got to watch three presentations. I went with a couple other interns here at IBM. Note: they have a dinosaur skeleton on their campus!

The first one was on google gears/api, basically an overview of some of the projects people have been doing with the API. Some were rather neat, however on reflection I can't really remember what the projects were exactly, so obviously they weren't that cool. But I do remember that with the API people can make really cool stuff without having the hardware to do those sorts of applications themselves :)

The second was on google desktop and how they did it. For instance what kind of indexing challenges they faced, problems they encountered with user behaviour, etc. The project seemed like a cool thing to work on as yea you had problems to overcome, but you needed good performance as well as overall user satisfaction..

The third was on street view and how they came about producing it. This was really interesting as the presenter explained the different prototypes that they went through and the results that it produced, ultimately showing how they made the final version.

One of the outcomes of the presentations that I got was that if you want to do cool projects - you need a postgrad education at Master's level at least, and that working with or for Google sounds really fun!

Six Months Already?

2007-07-31T11:59:00.000-07:00

Hard to believe isn't it? For some of you, I bet you've already gotten used to the fact that I'm not there and have easily moved on - chumps :P Truth is I've gotten over not having some of you here too :p You know, once you're in a routine you kind of forget that other things used to happen in certain situations. But thanks to all those people that send me an email, or facebook, or bebo, or myspace comment me once in a while. It helps me to remember how things were/are continuing :D

Some of the kiwi's comment on the cultural differences between here and home. Sure there are some, but it's not like they are worlds apart. But maybe I have just gotten so used to them and forgotten how it is in NZ, that things seem pretty much all the same. Of course I still correct Americans on their English - rubbish bin, boot of a car, drink bottle, etc., but I don't think the people are that overly different.

In another two months or so, California will take the #2 spot as place I have lived in the longest for. The thing is that it doesn't seem all that long. I guess as I have gotten older time spans just seem to get shorter and shorter. Before I know it my visa will expire and it will be time for me to leave..

Swimming

2007-07-24T17:09:00.000-07:00

So last week I had a four day swimming competition out in Clovis, near Fresno. It's like in a very large valley surrounded by hills. It's incredibly obvious when you get there, that it gets very, very hot in summer. Over the course of the week it ranged over 30C-40C of dry heat during the day time!

So onto the swimming, I managed to do my best times of the year, and few life time personal bests while swimming freestyle in the 4x100m and 4x200m relays. I was a little off making the final in the 100m Breaststroke, but was quite close to my lifetime PB, which I was happy with, considering my training has been a lot different to what it was when I did that time, i.e. I think my training was a little easy compared with then. However the difference in training certainly showed in the 200m Breaststroke where I was about five seconds off my lifetime best. So I had the speed, but not the endurance..

Cool thing about the trip was that my team is sponsored by TYR. So I got some new racing shorts, cap, t-shirt and track suit all gratis! I think the TYR track suit jacket in particular is a nice piece of fashion ;)

A quiet weekend

2007-07-16T11:40:00.001-07:00

So gearing up for my swimming competition this week, I had a relatively quiet weekend. I prepared my legs, stretched, saw transformers (a good movie I thought), bought some shorts and swam (of course).

Transformers was a rekindling of long forgotten memories of when I used to watch transformers (I remember having one toy). However this version was enjoyable, not quite true to the cartoon series, but using the words of the little kid sitting next to me at the movies "Wow! That's so cool!" :D

Oh I also got to play with the iPhone. The interface is pretty cool, and it looks really nice, however it doesn't really satisfy as a phone all too well. I wasn't able to confirm the things that were said as I didn't have too long with the phone, however I spent long enough to say that I don't need a toy like this yet. It needs to be more phone functional..

It Rained!

2007-07-11T10:30:00.000-07:00

So after the most overcast day in a while, moisture finally fell from the sky last night. This would be the first time in months, well to my recollection about 2-3 months since there was anything like rain. However as with the rain here, it didn't pour down or rain rain, it was just a very light sprinkle. So my dusty car now has splotches, rather than being washed as I hoped it would be..

Disneyland

2007-07-09T20:27:00.000-07:00

So last weekend was a trip to Disneyland - The Happiest Place on Earth apparently. I went down with Ms H. (pronounced haych) and her friends from college. The drive to LA takes about five hours, however I wasn't driving so I was able to sleep for the most part. However what must be said about the main big motorways here is that they are very very straight and usually the only thing you have to watch for is for other traffic. So really Im glad I wasn't driving, it would have been pretty boring otherwise..

We were staying at O's place, as he lives down in LA. Which was great as it meant that we didn't have to fork out for accommodation :D We got there pretty late, after stopping off for dinner at the world's slowest Carl's Junior (a Burger King like place). We might as well just had sat down at a restaurant, because the food wasn't very fast at all..

Since I have the skills we got nicely discounted park hopper tickets. Park hopper you may ask? Well they built another theme park next to Disneyland - California Adventure. It's more of a thrill park with more intense rides - however they are still very tame, like the roller-coaster. It did a loop, went highish, spun round, etc., but maybe it just takes a lot more to scare/excite me these days..

We stayed at least twelve hours at the Disney site. Sure this meant that when we got hungry we gave into the exorbitant food prices and minuscule portions.. anyway the day was quite fun, getting wet, getting fooled by the optical illusions on the Indiana Jones ride, having a laugh on the rides, etc.. The only thing that bothered me was not having comfortable enough shoes. Getting one pretty soaked didn't help, but it didn't spoil my day :) I think I also had my Disneyland fill for the next couple years so hopefully by that time the finding nemo ride wont have a two+ hour wait so I can actually go on it..

Being Sick :'(

2007-07-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

So thankfully on the Monday following the swim meet, I got sick. Namely a fever like I haven't had in years, along with feeling like crap.. However it took me a while to reach the conclusion that I shouldn't be working. This was done after realising that jumping into a hot car (30C+) with trackies, tshirt, sweater and hoodie on and NOT sweating or feeling the heat at all, was probably a sign that something was wrong with me.

For those that don't know they have different medicine here in the states.. Namely paracetamol is called by another name - acetaminophen. So after I had figured that out and managed to explain what I wanted I finally found relief..

So today I have no temperature, but am still not 100%, which should hopefully come round by tomorrow..