Dear Al Gore, the internet is was quite an invention.

Guys, our New York number is up and running via our internet connection, so don’t be lame and not call because you can’t figure out how to call Singapore. Go ahead and call 845-790-5321, of course, we are 12 hours off EST, so don’t call in the middle of the day or anything. Apologies to Donald for calling at 6 am today, I forgot that it wasn’t 9 am in california.

Vince is so excited about school tomorrow, he’s having a hard time sleeping tonight. The meals are provided at school, get this, tomorrow he’s having honey cereal with milk for breakfast, chicken casserole and veggies for lunch and seasonal fruit and for afternoon tea, he’s having cream puffs!

We still have to get crap for the apartment, the landlord furnished the whole thing in white upholstery (including the dining room chairs!) and with two kids covered in peanut butter and chocolate, it isn’t going to stay white for long. So we went to IKEA to buy new slipcovers and all this other crap. I have to say that I love the idea of public transport, but moving with 2 kids without a car is really kind of a bummer. It’s like, all of a sudden you need to buy a toaster, rice cooker, rugs, laundry baskets, trash cans and how are you going to hold all that crap plus the 2 kids who hate shopping.

We live about 1 minute away from an MRT (subway) stop and at the MRT is this huge mall called Lot 1 and it has everything in it, a McDonalds, a grocery store, a nursery school (which Vince didn’t like because you couldn’t ride a school bus there, it’s that close), a post office, a library, for the kids: chinese lessons, english lessons, dance lessons, math lessons, music lessons, a movie theatre, a bookstore. One wonders why anyone has to go anywhere else. It’s pretty weird to think that everything one needs is within a one block radius, it’s still hard to carry the bag of rice home though.

Move to Denver

Well, we are moving to Denver today. But, first have to move the windstar and some stuff to Washougal. We will leave for Denver from Washougal directly. Rena finally got a layoff notice after bargaining with her ex-employer HR. This way, there are a lot of benefits came along with it. She can ship two cars back or 40c a mile plus 20c for the second one, can be packed & stored by mover and all stuff can be shippped back to Washington DC. be reimbursed with $90 a day while travel for 9 days, etc. We also have the moving expense from our new employer. I don’t know how to straight it out and get the max. The ticket I used to fly in yesterday is part of my ex-employer package too. Well, the bad thing is only 3-6 months, the good thing is we both have our per diem. So essentially, we can save one per diem. I will definitely go to Nebrask and Iowa from Denver to cover all 50 States on the ground.

Mom is very happy about the move and be together. Last night, she laughed loudly while sleeping and woke me up. Of course, a big smile on my face. I am happy too.

BTW, there are a lot of fruit trees with fruits in our Washington DC home.

Sign off for a while and talk to you later.

What’s with the “la” at the end of the sentences?

Well I’m back, finally. I’ve been without a computer for many, many hours now and now that Jeremy’s back, I’m not only complete emotionally, but electronically as well. This week that Jeremy was in Germany was a little trying for me, I haven’t had Vince and Edda around the clock with me for a long time and we didn’t really have any food and when Jeremy left, the gas for the stove wasn’t even really turned on… But Jeremy has a bunch of work friends who looked kindly on me and dropped by and had dinner with me and found a school for Vince.

Poker Tournament 3

Well, I hosted another poker tournament tonight again. the good thing is that I canme in second. The bad thing is that I came in second. sigh. It seems like heads up play is the weakest part of my game. I was okay in the beginning. I was great in the mid game, but my heads up play at the end really realyl suffered. I think I played better than I did the last tournament. I wasn’t as short stacked against Josh as I was against Dung. Tho I think I think I did make a couple mistakes. One was paying off Josh 2k on a questionable call….

sigh. well you learn, and you keep on playing.

To ME65

All:

Both Rena & I are resigning from our current positions and taking on jobs in Denver, CO. As temporary contractors for 3-6 months, working for the same consulting firm, we will start our new assignments there in early August. Therefore, eight years + of our physical separation is becoming history. We look forward to enjoying our re-union and, in the meantime, we would still have time and can check out Denver and see what its exceptions with unique flavors are. One of my colleagues joked that after these 8 long years, one may not be able to get used to each other soon, or at least not so soon. I don’t think so and hope Rena feels the same way.

The bad thing about moving at this moment is that we just miss the upcoming wonderful Chinese musical performance by Judy and Allen in Tacoma and Bellevue, WA. She is very good as a soloist singer and, Rena & I are very anxious to hear her voice again.

One of the good parts of moving to Denver, besides sightseeing is that we will be able to meet SL’s younger son there. Yesterday, he called & offered his help to find us apartments. How about that? Younger generation takes care of the old; very thankful indeed. Oh, about two months ago, I had a chance to meet CK Kang’s younger son in Washington DC. He is such a promising young man, just graduating from college, with a lot of future ahead of him. To have eyewitness these personally was indeed a very gratifying experience.

The major good thing about our moves is, of course, if I face joyful moments or encounter problems, I can always turn to Rena in person. She is right there in front of me “Every Day Live” :), not just “Saturday Live” or in our situations right now, even worse.

After this pit stop, the chances of finding something together probably are pretty remote and nil, may be outside of our allocated future time for working. But, within a year or half, I still would like to find something in Alaska in the summer or somewhere that we like to stay for a while and visit, may be somewhere in the Canadian Rockies, northern States in the middle or southeastern States along the coast. No matter what, of course we are going to be together and carrying out our retirement plan in earnest.

rena & noel

Joined the Mac Cult…

I finally got my powerbook from work today. It’s a nice machine, and it must have cost work a pretty penny. They gave me the one with the DVD burner in it… not to mention a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to go along wtih it. I’m pysched, except for the fact that one piece of software that I thought would run on it won’t. That’ll affect my work stuff just a little bit. ah well…

Downieville Pain and Suffering…

Today (sunday), I raced in the Downieville Classic in Downieville, CA which is about an hour east of Sacramento.

Me and Todd (dude from the shop) drove up there Saturday night after work to meet Jason and Don (more dudes from work) at some campsite that they reserved. Of course, like all great plans, this one was foiled as we couldn’t find the campsite. We ended up driving another hour and a half to a place close to the start line and slept in the car by the side of the road.

6 hours of sleep is always good for a bike race.

The race was about 25 miles long. the first 9 miles are straight up in the open. The last 14 are straight down thru some really really technical terrain.

My Quads cramped on mile 4. I walked until mile 5. I managed to pedal thru most of the pain, as the top section was pretty flat. But then on the decent, you have to pay attention to everything. Your arms burn from riding the brakes all the way, and taking the shock from the impacts.

At about mile 8 I realized that I was in pretty bad shape. My calves had started to cramp too. I thought about turning around, but decided to press on. Again I managed to ride thru my cramps on the descent.

I was doing rather well at the top. A place where I had crashed before. so My confidence was high. But I ended up crashing and almost falling into a ravine. After than I became pretty tentative. I didn’t help me that my hanmstrings and inner thigh muscles were cramping too, tho somehow it all went away if I was just pedaling.

I finished the race in about 3:43 (guess) I was hoping for about 2:45, but oh well. I’m out of shape.

My legs are so stiff right now..

Parenting on the subway.

Today we are still struggling with jetlag. Vince got up at 2am and pretty much refused to go back to sleep. As a result, we were the first ones in line at the 6am opening of the breakfast buffet. He loves the buffet, he loves choosing what to eat and piling it on his plate. After we finished breakfast at 6:30am, we headed to the pool on the 8th floor. I was planning that swimming was going to be our morning activity and we were done with it by 8:15.

This afternoon, we got the keys to our apartment, I saw it for the first time. The pool complex is amazing, with 3 different pools, one lap, one an adult swim and one toddler pool, all huge. Vince wanted to strip down to his underwear and jump on in.