Snowy Diswonderland

I just got back from my week in San Francisco and Lake Tahoe. It's amazing how sometimes months may go by where nothing significant happens. My one week vacation was packed with many ups and downs, as well as lefts and rights.

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Sunday - December 25, 2005
Landed at San Jose International Airport at 6pm - it wasnt until 7pm when Dave greeted me at the terminals. We had a quick dinner and decided to hit up an Asian party up in the city (aka: San Francisco). Being from California for so long, it was rather strange to be in a place where Asian Americans pretty much dominate the night scenes. Back home in Dallas, I would be lucky if I saw another Asian girl, be it Chinese, korean, or even Indians, at any of the evening shindigs.

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Tuesday - December 27, 2005
Went to dinner at Peter and Tina's, where we had traditional chinese hot pot - damn that stuff was good. After dinner, we settled for drinking games and board games. Playing board games with your boys - how much more queer can it get? It just goes to show you that life cant always be suspended in the college era where binge drinking and clubbing became more important than attending that lecture given by some famous Nobel Laureate. I had fun doing whatever with the boys. It didnt matter what we did - we could have been in a book club discussing Stephen Hawkin's theories for all i care, the point was that I got a chance to hang with my friends, and it was all that mattered.






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Thursday - December 29, 2005
Benny, Dave, and I arrived at Lake Tahoe after eventually sobering up from previous night of more alcohol intoxication. We didnt arrive at the slopes till 1pm-ish. Benny and I are decent snowboarders; we both have our own equipments and feel relatively at-ease with carving powder. Dave wasnt a true beginner, he had been on the board a couple of times, but really never let go his fear of toe-side manuevers. On our very first run on the slopes, and just after two falls, Dave managed to catch snow and pretty much fell face first.

"Hey guys..........I cant move my arm......." said Dave.

$850 and 2 hours later, Dave's right shoulder was placed back into its socket.



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Friday - December 20, 2005
The day started horrible. Benny and I tried to go snowboarding in spite of the unrelenting rain. Two hours later, my "Waterproof" clothes became completely soaked. Good thing my 3 layers of clothes underneath stayed somewhat dry - we wouldnt want any of my appendages to fall off now do we? =P

We ended the day with a blast..........blasts (aka:shots) of Rum! Groups of us hopped into the hot tub. Nothing beats the feeling of warm bubbles at your feet (and other places) while freezing rain water and gusts of wind hits you from the top. Benny, Dave, and I started off with some Cup-O-Noodles. Cup-O-Noodles miraculously turned into beer cans. Beer cans miraculously turned into shots of shots of Rum. After what seemed like 5 hours, the three of us managed to chug a few beers each and polish away half of those Costco-sized Barcadi Rum. The three of us were all OWN3D!



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Saturday - December 31, 2005
The Northern California rain continued the entire night. Floods and high winds threatened the entire Lake Tahoe area. What normally took us 3-4 hours of driving home lasted for 8 hours. We left Tahoe at 11AM and didnt not return to SF until 7pm. Thanks a lot, freaking Cumulous Nimbus!!!!!

After arriving home, we had to prepare for dinner and a Black Tie New Years Eve party in the city. We went to this pretty fancy chinese restaurant near where Benny lived, somewhere in South SF. It turned out the restaurant was holding a wedding reception for the Chen/Lee families. The kid in me wanted to re-enact "Wedding Crashers," but the mature adult inside me (hahaha....I dont know how there was ever one) stayed at bay. It turned out that the restaurant's upstairs was still open to the public.

We finally arrived at the New Year's Eve party around 10pm. By that time, the place was pretty much half capacity (this is the optimistic side of me talking now). It's nice to see parties with well dressed asians. Even if all of them dressed in FUBU's by day, they sure had me fooled at the event. Being away from the bay area for so long, I really didnt know anyone there besides my core friends - I almost felt like a stranger in a place where I spent 6 years of my life. The combination of whiskies, vodkas, loud music, swirly lights, meeting 50+ of my friends's friends, I was beginning to swirl myself. Throughout the entire night, all the girls I have met have been friends' friends. I got sick of meeting new people (and drinking), and began to wander aimlessly by myself. During my wander, I saw this girl that I thought I had met back in college. I went to talk to her. Turned out I had never met Anna before. Perhaps it was my drunkeness playing tricks on me. Perhaps it her pheromone that lured me in. Perhaps it was serendipity.......except in the movie "Serendipity," the two cities involved were New York and San Francisco. Anna invited me and go eat some post-drinking food with her and her friends. I countered her invite by inviting her to go eat with my friends. We ended up picking up some pizza from some drive by place and after-partied at Benny's house (yes......house, this 28 year old mofo actually owns 4 houses. And dont even get me started on how many houses Peter owns.) We karaoked away to Benny playing Jay Chow's tunes on his piano.