Since I've been wasting way too much time on myspace, I thought it was necessary to post this link. There's also a movie on youtube. Enjoy wasting 15 minutes of your productivity =)

Last Monday I had plans of going to Las Vegas for Memorial Day. By
Friday, me and my friends all realized how broke we were and how going
to Vegas wouldn't help our financial situation. Instead, we watched UFC
60 at Hooter's Oceanside on Saturday after a day of video gaming, movie
watching, spinning, and reading. Sunday was spent almost entirely with
Geoff and Cheryl. It's so great to have Geoff back on the west coast to
abuse and hang out with. We ate at Oscar's and I introduced them to
some more games on my DS. We also did the prep work for my online comic
and online cooking show. You'll have to wait a couple of days to see
the fruits of our labors. Monday was spent conducing a meat symphony. I
first went to Randy's barbecue where we ate flank steak, hamburgers,
bratwursts, quesadillas, chips and guacamole. Add in some beer, cigars
and soda, and mix it all together with 3 cats and a dog. Two hours
later, I show up at Chris' barbecue where we ate ribs, hamburgers,
chedderbrats, chicken. This was topped off by rocking out to Guitar
Hero. Let the good times roll.

I was supposed to fix all my typos in my previous post at some time. But so much happened since my last post that not noteworthy, and the fact that I've been drinking tonight, results in a new posting instead of fixing a previous posting. My weekends have been busy, mostly working on my pet projects. My work at my job has been increasingly challenging and enjoyable, so everything seems to be on an upturn. I guess the only thing left to resolve is my marital status. Not that I'm eager to get hitched anytime soon, but the idea of having someone so special to you is hard to relinquish. Then again, seeing Chris and his son, Nicholas, makes me remember how much of a responsibility a son is. Then again, I do forget to feed Frankie every once in a while.

The exhaustion of E3
Woke up early Thursday morning to drive up to E3. Get there around noon and begins the insanity of E3. I hung out mostly with Nick, Miller, and Webb. We checked out a trailer for Metal Gear Solid 4, and immediately played the demo for Guitar Hero II. The PSP showings were really starting to look up, with Loco Roco and Ultimate Ghost n' Goblins leading the way. Great design and good artistic direction. God of War II also looked very good, though it's definitely pushing the PS2 to it's limits. After Sony, we went to Nintendo to check it out. The Wii was generating a huge amount of buzz and the to demo it was out of control. We checked out some DS games, and were very happy to see that they were bringing the Japanese rythm game, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan!, to the states with an American theme. Though it seems just as hard as it's Japanese counterpart. Nick also took note that it's interesting that Point Blank is being ported to DS. After Nintendo, we left the West Hall and proceeded to the South Hall were we pretty much went straight to the THQ booth. Of course we had to pass through EA and check out their 360 display booth built on a bass thumping platform. It's a great way to show off title while nearly causing seizures in the attendees. THQ's booth had some of the best looking booth babes in the entire convention, and almost all the games were generating good buzz. We ran into Sam and Monica and then wandered around the booths for a while with them.
Dinner was at Ciudad, a Latin restaurant near the convention center. We had a prefix meal that had delicious calimari, and I had the chili relleno, which was quite delicious. After dinner, we headed over to Hollywood and started drinking at the Saddle Ranch. It was Me, Nick, Jason, Chris, and Dylan, with Will coming in tow. After riding the mechanic bull, we headed over to Miyaki's where there was a sorority there for the evening. Good times ensued and we got home at around 2:30.
Me, Miller, and Nick woke up Friday around 8:30, mostly rested and without a hangover. We had brunch at The Original Pantry, an old fashion diner. Full of food and caffine, we proceeded straight to the Nintendo booth to get our hands on the Wii. After a cool intro with two guys playing the drunks using Wiimotes, we watched three other people conducing an orchestra, playing Metroid Prime 3, and tennis. When it was time for our own hands on, we played Warioware! Smooth Moves, which was a ton of fun. It was really cool because it showed off a lot of different ways to use the controller in a short amount of time. Nick got in line for Super Mario Galaxy, and 30 minutes later, the line had advanced by one person. Me and Miller played some tennis (which has support for top and back spin), as well as Super Monkey Ball. I think the title for the Wii will be great. Finally, Nick got to play Super Mario Galaxy, and by that time, he had already memorized the demo and breezed through it. After Nintendo, me and Miller played some more Guitar Hero II, visited the THQ booth again, and checked out the Kentia Hall, where lots of independent developers live. Red Octane was down there, so we got to play a couple more songs that weren't available on the upstairs Guitar Herro II demo. And Nick and I played Unreal Tournament 2004 via the Trimersion VR prototype. We looked quite silly spinning around trying to shoot a bot. We returned to the South Hall and watched a live halfpipe show put on by Activision for the Tony Hawk series of games. It was pretty cool being that close to the halfpipe and seeing how high these people get. They are crazy!
Exhausted and fullfilled, we hopped into the car and sat in traffic for an hour before hitting smooth roads and making it down to San Diego.
Pictures to come soon!

Here's the pictures from Coachella that I promised.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30354124@N00/sets/72057594124795733/
I still have to upload the videos to a server such as google or youtube. We'll see how that works out. I did a 14.6 mile run today, and it worked out pretty good. I also did the filming for our cooking show. I'm going to be doing the editing and voiceover on Tuesday, as I have a dinner appt Monday. Gotta keep busy.

Coachella was... amazing. Well, it was also exhausting and sickening. Here's a list of the artists I saw and my ranking out of 10.

Saturday
The Duke Spirit: 7
Common: 7.5
Kanye West: 8
Sigur Ros: 7.5
Franz Ferdinand: 8.5
Depeche Mode: 9.5
Groups I wish I saw on Saturday: Atmosphere, She Wants Revenge, My Morning Jacket, Daft Punk, Audio Bullys, Cat Power, Ladytron, Nine Black Alps, Lyrics Born, Lady Sovereign.

Sunday
The Octopus Project: 6.5
Giant Drag: 4.5
Mates of State: 7.5
James Blunt: 8.5
Sleater-Kinney: 8
Paul Oakenfold: 8.5
Madonna: 8.5 (minus 0.5 b/c it was too crowded)
Massive Attack: 7.5 (minus 0.5 b/c I was slept through parts of it)
Tool: 9
Groups I wish I saw on Sunday: Bloc Party, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, more of Paul Oakenfold, Coheed & Cambria, stellastarr*, Seu Jorge.

Pictures to be posted soon. But as promised, pictures from China.

I thought it'd be appropriate to post at least once a week. Over the past week I've been busy catching up with work. Aside from that, I've been keeping busy with a renewed workout schedule for the marathon. It's going to be rough, but I'm sure I'll be able to make it.

Instead of editing my last entry, which I ran out of time before finishing, I think it'd be better to start a new entry and finish what I was saying.
After leaving the temple of Buddhism, we got on another overnight train that took us from Bejing to Shanghai. I didn't sleep well as usual, but at least the train was a non-smoking train (a rarity in China), so we didn't have to inhale smoke while we slept.
In Shanghai, we visited a lot of shops and restaurants. There aren't too many landmarks, and most of the city is either business, shopping, or eating. Which I really don't mind at all. My brother described it as a Chinese New York. It was a huge city, and walking and cabbing all day only covered a fraction of it. Though I must say that we ate some delicious food while we were there. YSP.
On our final morning in China, we woke up at 6 AM to make a 9 AM flight. It was exhausting just getting out of bed. We hopped on a plane to Macao, where we said goodbye to our dad, and the got on another plane to Taipai. Sat in the business lobby for a couple of hours (where I wrote my previous blog) and took a hot shower. Then I was on a plane for 14 hours (I think), before landing in LAX. That flight was actually really nice, since we got bumped up into business class. It made the trip much more comfortable. But it was a bit disheartening to see that the majority of people in business class were either American, or English speakers. The families are usually stuck in economy, packed in like cows for 14 hours. Watched the Chronicles of Narnia on the plane (great!), and played tons of Burnout Legends. From LAX we drove a rental car to San Diego in minimal traffic. The end result is that I'm sitting in my chair at home while it rains outside.
I did manage to get a lot of chores done today though. And watched "Thank You for Smoking" with my brother, which I very much enjoyed. I look forward to going back to work on Monday, as I hear great things have been happening!

How I got from Bejing to Shanghai to the Taipai:

The third day in Bejing was spent first the Summer Palace. Thatis a place I'd like to retreast to during the Summers! If you remember the beginning of the Godfather II when their at Lake Tahoe and there in this nice house next to the lake. Now imagine someting similar scaled up 10x and then you might get it. YSP.

The afternoon was spent looking at the best universities of China, Bejing University and (fill in english later) University. Bejing was Eastern in architecture and still had faculty housing that looked hundres of years old. The other university look like any other Ivy league school except there were a couple more Asians and they all spoke Chinese fluently.

We then went to the Temple of Heaven. It was a but of a juxtaposition to the other sites we had been to though. Apparantly, the admittance is free to locals. So part of the park was similar a community center where locals were playing cards, singing and dancing. The other part was historical. It had an echo room, which was really cool. You could yell into the wall and the sound would travel around clearly. There was also a stone of prayers where you could pray to the Gods, and it also had some cool geometric properties associated with it. YSP. There were also a bunch of sacrificial areas. Sacrifical rooms. And sacrificial storage areas. And sacrificial inspection areas. There
was finally the Music Arena where sacrifical music was performed in.

The fourth day started by visiting the electronics district. 6 floors of electronics. And pirahnas of people trying to sell you stuff. If you thought the people trying to pawn off cellphones at malls was bad. You ain't seen nothing.

We then went to the Temple of the Dali Lama. It was amazing the Buddha figurines and sculptures there. I saw sculptures that were in the Ginuess Book of World Records. It was that big. And carved out of a single piece of sandwood. It was interesting to see many Westerners that had converted to buddhism come and pay respects. All colors held together by a single belief. It was refreshing to see.

Best night in China, Period.
Went to my first ever bath house, for 100 Yuan ($12!!!). After arriving, our host prompty stripped in front of us. So, we followed in suit. Hot springs. Dry and wet saunas. Cold waterfalls. Waterfall springs. Fresh fruit. Great showers with rich shampoos and conditioners. High powered streams to massage the back. An underwater massage chair. A marble slab where you lay down and water massages your entire back. It was great! As great as the Great Wall. And then, it was a buffet of food with a noodle bar where they made noodles fresh for you. Plenty of beer to drink. I left relaxed, full, and content. I wish we can go back tomorrow!