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June 07, 2009 10:53 PM -
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| | YEAR
2006
This year, 2006, has been a year of ups and downs. The year started off
with a lot of traveling, but quieted down as the months went by. Aside
from major events and a couple poker games here and there, not much happened for
the first half of the year. We did some home improvements and pretty much
hung around home. It's probably because our little firm picked up a new
employee. Summer time, we started traveling again, camping trips,
festivals, and of course, weddings! Weddings seems to be topic of
conversation this year for our group of friends. Went to a bunch of
weddings and I'm sure we'll be going to many more over the next couple years.
Good thing about weddings is that you get to hook up with some friends that you
haven't seen for a while and it's good to catch up. The latter half of the
year went by pretty fast and due to work and other things, we missed out this
year's Pumpkin/Halloween get-together, but we did do a Christmas Holiday thing
with Gingerbread houses, so it balanced out. Oh, I joined the big 3-0 club
this year...yay! =)
Click here for this year's 'Shawn Speaks!'.
Year
2006
(Click on the pictures or the links to view each
album)
|
| Dec 31, 2006
 |
 | New
Year's Eve and Maggie Day - Yup, it's a Maggie Day! So,
what is a Maggie Day? A Maggie Day is when Maggie gets
pampered! This year, it's the Claremont Spa for a massage and
mud wrap, then off to a meal at one of the top 20 restaurants in the
USA - Chez Panisse. Afterwards, we joined everyone else to
celebrate the New Year at Brian's! |
|
| Dec 24, 2006
 |
|
Christmas at Maggie's - We headed to her home town to partake in
our annual Christmas dinner and fun! Maggie baked a huge 14"
cake for the event. It was a fun chill evening, just spending
time with my future in-laws! =) |
|
| Dec 22, 2006
 |
| Holiday
Party with Maggie's friends - We headed to Dublin for night of
chocolate fun as we deployed for the first time, our new chocolate
fountain! We had a ton of sweets to dip into the fountain,
which is pretty much all I did....eat, eat, drink, eat, and eat some
more. I think I had way too much sugar that night. |
|
| Dec 17, 2006
 |
| "Piggy"
Dan's Birthday dinner - From what is starting to look like a
yearly tradition, we celebrated Dan's early birthday at the same
Koryo table as last year! Maggie baked a chocolate cake dedicated to
Dan in the shape of a lazy pink piggy wallowing (and eating) the
brown frosting! |
|
| Dec 16, 2006
 |
| Maggie's
Birthday Celebration & Gingerbread-making - We decided to throw
a pseudo-holiday party/Gingerbread house-making/Surprise Maggie
Birthday celebration/Champagne Party all in one day! But the
main reason that started this was because I wanted to eat some
candy! =) And we got a ton of candy!
Since people didn't want to take their houses home, here's what I
tried doing with them the next day -
Mini-Gingerbread-Part1. That didn't work out too well, so,
I charged the batteries and ..... -
Mini-Gingerbread-Part2. =) |
|
| Dec 9, 2006
 |
| Cindy &
Charlotte's Joint Birthday - Cindy and Charlotte decided to
celebrate their birthdays together this year and Jeff graciously
hosted. Although the day was rainy and cloudy, we had a great
time playing Street Fighter II, foosball, and celebrating their
birthday with Maggie's custom-made birthday cake! |
|
| Dec 2, 2006
 |
| Brian's
30th Birthday - To celebrate this momentous moment, we headed to
SF from Happy Hour fun and a 3-course prix menu! Afterwards,
we hit a couple lounges to chill and mingle and of course, start
wasting Brian! |
|
| Dec 1, 2006
 |
| Viet's
Birthday 2006 - Viet turned a big 2-8 this week and a party in a
swanky Palo Alto condo was thrown in his honor! Chocolate
fountain, ice-cream cake, and lots of mojitos!
Oh, I accidentally uploaded some of Maggie's delicious cooking pix
as well. Oh well! |
|
| Nov 24, 2006
 |
|
Thanksgiving 2006 - Part II - The day after Thanksgiving, we
spent the evening with Maggie's family. This was after Maggie
and her sis went on a shopping spree on Black Friday, starting at
3:30am! Lots of stuff was bought, including some great deals,
and they didn't get back until nearly noon! For a change of
pace, we asian-ified the turkey with sticky rice stuffing, stir-fry
veggies and no mashed potatoes! |
|
| Nov 23, 2006
 |
|
Friendskit Thanksgiving 2006 - Alex & Sophia once again
graciously hosted this year's Thanksgiving at their place. I
baked a red bean swirl almond pound cake and Maggie made gravy and
some other stuff. =) This year, there was a ton of
desserts like pies, cakes, and other sweets, but low on the
appetizers, which left more room for desserts! YAY! We
tested out the Nintendo Wii and played Burn-out on Xbox 360 to the
wee hours of Black Friday! |
|
| Nov 17-19, 2006
 |
| My early
30th Birthday in Las Vegas - Yup, Part II of my 30th Birthday
celebration, this time in Sin City itself! An old family
friend asked me to join her in Vegas to celebrate our birthdays
together, so how can I turn that down? Landed in LAX and my
buddy Ted picked us in another rental (Avalon is nice!) for the
drive to Vegas. 2 days later, several hundred dollars in
booze, food, strippers and of course, gambling losses....these pix
are all I have to show for it. Hahaha! |
|
| Nov 11-12, 2006
 |
|
| Nov 4, 2006
 |
| Jim
and Rita's Wedding - Our friends' big day/night finally arrived!
After much hard work by many of their family and friends (including
my little babes!), the wedding was ready! As with every
wedding, each wedding is unique in some way. For us, this was
the first wedding we went to that held the ceremony and reception in
the same location and we were seated on a different floor than the
rest of the people. We had a blast up there on the balcony!
Great wedding! |
|
| Oct 27, 2006
 |
| Jeff's
Halloween House Party - For this Halloween, I decided to relax
and take it easy and do want all lazy guys do.....bum around! HAHAHA!
Yup, I dressed as a bum that had a pretty holey shirt, sweats and
socks, but the best part is the duct tape! Maggie had fun
cutting up one of my old favorite T-shirts....oddly enough, some
people recognized which shirt it is!! |
|
| Oct 24-25, 2006
 |
| Dinner
with friends - A back-to-back dinner with friends shows that
with people's culinary skills ramping up, it's not necessary to go
out to eat to find good food. In addition to making her cakes
tastes good, Maggie is starting to learn how to make her cakes look
great as well! |
|
| Oct 14, 2006
 |
| Nancy
and Henry's Wedding - I flew down to LA to attend the wedding of
an old chinese school friend. During this wedding, I hung out
with my old friend, Elaine and her friend, David. We met a
bunch of mutual family friends that we haven't seen in a long time
including the groom himself! |
|
| Oct 8, 2006
 |
| Cupcakes
and Grilling - After a somewhat lazy month of doing pretty much
nothing, Dan and Maggie decided to bake some cupcakes to demonstrate
some of their cake decorating skills that they've learned over the
last couple of weeks. Since you can't really eat sweets on an
empty stomach, we decided to do some grilling - pork ribs and
chicken drumsticks and invited people to drop by! =) |
|
| Sept 3, 2006
 |
| Peter &
Tina's Wedding - My long-time college friend actually decided to
settle down and 'tie the knot' (or sign the papers) with his
beautiful bride, Tina. It was a beautiful mid-day wedding at
the Ritz in Dana Point. Awesome view, great ceremony, and a
strip-tease by the groom that I'm sure no one will soon forget! |
|
| Sept 2-5, 2006
 |
| Labor
Day weekend in LA! - Maggie and I flew to LA for this holiday
weekend to attend a college friend's wedding and to visit friends
and family. We drove all over the LA region from as south as
Dana Point to as north as Ventura! Luckily, we rented a fun
little Miata with paddle-shifters, which worked quite well,
surprisingly and it got good gas mileage. Oh, I learned that
on these busy weekends, being a member of Hertz Gold Club really
comes in handy! We walked up and picked up our car, while most
people waited 30 min or more in line to pick up their rental! |
|
| Aug 26, 2006
 |
| Henry &
Diana's Wedding - DISCLAIMER: this is not their official
wedding pictures! My pictures are not worthy!! =)
Most people know what a wedding is like by attending one, but what
is it really like behind the scenes before the big event?
Here's the picture proof from the point of view of a groomsman for
Henry & Diana's wedding! |
|
| Aug 12-13, 2006
 |
| Cache
Creek Whitewater Rafting - Maggie seems to really like this
river and this is like the 4th or 5th time we went! About 10
of us went fating in two-man self-bailing boats on this nice easy
Class II-III river, where we spent the majority of our time shooting
each other with water guns and not paying attention to the rapids!
We had an impromptu vote and the winner of the worst injuries
sustained goes to Tony and Amelia when they went into the tree
branches and lost their boat for like a quarter mile! =)
(Pictures started on Sunday morning, then goes to Sat.) |
|
| Aug 4, 2006
 |
| Henry's
Birthday Poker Tourney - To celebrate Henry's birthday this
year, we held a poker tourney at our place. So many people
showed up that we had 2 full tables going! Diana bought a very
nice Cold Stone Creamery ice-cream cake to celebrate with and James
baked up a batch of chocolate chip cookies for the players!
Unfortunately, without shot chips, Henry managed to get away without
so much as a burp.....but we figured, we'll get him back later this
month. =) |
|
| July 29, 2006
 |
| Gilroy
Garlic Festival - After a 3-yr hiatus, I decided to check out
the Garlic Festival in Gilroy again. Unfortunately, what I
remembered from before was way different from what it is now.
The fair this past weekend was commercialized and pretty much your
average festival with a garlic theme. A lot of the exotics
foods weren't available anymore. Kinda bummed. |
|
| July 22, 2006
 |
| Santa
Cruz and Pizza-Making - On this extremely record-breaking hot
day of the year, we decided to drive to Santa Cruz to play some
v-ball with Jean & friends. The drive there took 2.5 hrs and
we even took the back-roads! (must admit, it was fun driving on the
curvy roads!) We had lunch, played a couple games and took off
to go crash a wedding, then off to SF to make pizza at Linda's
place! Drove over 200 miles in one day! Also, in case
you're wondering, yes...we dunked the camera into a cup of water.
=) |
|
| July 15, 2006
 |
|
Rock-Climbing - No, not the hard-core real rock stuff! We
went City Beach, an indoor rock climbing center. Since our
group was mostly newbies, we took a lesson and climbed for like 3
hours! In the middle, Tony and I exercised our bet and I
barely managed to eek out 8 pull-ups to Tony's 4, thus winning our
bet! |
|
| July 7-9, 2006
 |
| Visiting
LA - We went down to LA to check out our friend's new place and
see our other friends' twin boys! Man, babies do grow quick!
They liked tripled in size since we saw them in Jan! We also
went offshore fishing, but caught nothing...=(. |
|
| July 3-4, 2006
 |
| July 4th
weekend - More like holiday week-days! Monday, we had a
BBQ at our place and Tuesday, we had a BBQ at Maggie's friend's
place. Lots of good food, probably too much......need to work
out more. hehe! |
|
| June 24, 2006
 |
| Jenny &
Shaun's Wedding - Jenny and Shaun finally ties the knot after 1
year engagement! A beautiful wedding at the Silver Creek
Country Club in South San Jose area. As Jenny put it, it was her
'dream wedding'! |
|
| June 9-11, 2006
 |
| Big Sur
Camping Trip - Our little group took off for a weekend at Big
Sur to take in the wonderful view, some peace & quiet, and eat a ton
of meat! Besides downing over 20lbs of ribeye, 15lbs of kalbi,
and several pounds of chicken, we had a ton of other assorted foods,
while basically sitting on our butts and just chilling. Oh,
some people hiked too and we went snorkeling in WET SUITS!
- Click here for
Ginger's Pictures,
Henry's Pictures,
Dan's Pictures.
- Click here for comments
from this year's trip. |
|
| May 20-21, 2006
 |
| David's
Graduation Weekend - David finally got his JD! Now he just
needs to pass the bar and find a job......hahaha! Family and
family friends came from afar to congratulate him. yay! |
|
| May 10-11, 2006
 |
| House
work - Yeah, during a lull in our daily work, we decided to
paint a couple rooms in our place. I don't mind the painting,
but it's the prep work that really gets me....all the cleaning,
sanding, taping, laying down tarp,....just way too time-consuming. |
|
| April 8, 2006
 |
| Jim &
Rita's Engagement - After months of careful planning and a
little bit of luck, Jim managed to perfectly execute his surprise
proposal, dinner, and engagement party for Rita! |
|
| April 7, 2006
 |
| Linda's
Surprise Birthday - The theme for this year's birthday is
SURPRISES! And Ludon did a great job surprising Linda and even used
a fake Evite to throw her off! |
|
| March 12, 2006
 |
| Jean's
Surprise Birthday Potluck - In honor of Jean's birthday, the
girls put together a surprise potluck dinner at our place and
(almost) totally surprised Jean! |
|
| Feb 17, 2006
 |
| 3rd
Annual Wine Tasting Party - Tony planned another wine tasting
party for the 3rd year in a row! We had a wonderful turn-out,
lots of good food, and of course, a ton of wine! |
|
| Feb 14, 2006
 |
|
Valentine's Day - Spent the evening at home, making a somewhat
gourmet home-cooked meal, complete with fresh lobster and ribeye
steak. |
|
| Feb 9-12, 2006
 |
|
Washington DC Trip - Dan, Jenny, Maggie and I flew to our
nation's capitol to check out all the various monuments and to see
how the legislative branch of our government works. Sean &
Melissa met us up there with their new baby girl to spend the
weekend with us. We were 'lucky' enough to be there during a
major snowstorm, which was kind of a treat for us. Everything looks
way cool in white! |
|
| Feb 3-5, 2006
 |
|
Friendskit Ski Trip 2006 - This year, we had a huge turn-out for
the ski trip! About 29 people came in 7 cars, which we were just
able to squeeze into the driveway of the luxury home that we rented
in North Tahoe. Once again we snowboarded at Squaw Valley,
which was stormy in the morning, but in the afternoon, it was bright
and snowy. 6 die-hard people went to Northstar to board the
2nd day. |
|
| Jan 22, 2006
 |
| Phil &
Susie's Twin Boys! - Right on schedule, Phil & Susie's first
babies are twin boys! Since we were already 2/3 of the way
down to LA, we decided to visit them and as luck would have it,
Susie just came home from the hospital the night before with Clark
and Brendan. The twin boys are soo small! See the
comparison to a coffee cup and our hands! |
|
| Jan 21, 2006
 |
| Jeff &
Jina's Wedding reception - We traveled to Nipomo a week after
arriving back from Asia to visit Jeff and his new wife, Jina, who
just traveled back from Korea after a tour of duty in the Army.
Luckily for Jeff, Jina knows English pretty well, so they can
communicate! =) |
|
| Jan 11-15, 2006
 |
|
Taiwan-Cambodia Trip (Cambodia Tour) - We flew out of Taiwan on
a tour to Siam Riep, Cambodia to visit Angkor Wat and its
surrounding areas. Beautiful ruins, cheap massages, and 5-star
service & accommodations! Also, I learned NEVER ingest any
milk products from street vendors in a very poor, hot country!
This album only contains my pix.
|
| Rose's
pictures (Cambodia Tour) - Rose joined up with us at the end of
the Taiwan Trip to go on the Cambodia tour. What a trooper!
She had to brave a foreign country (Taiwan) to find a little hotel
in Taipei, then rendezvous with us at a busy plaza without a cell
phone and unable to read street signs! Anyways, here's her
pics of Cambodia from her point of view! |
|
| Jan 5-11, 2005
 |
|
Taiwan-Cambodia Trip (Taiwan portion) - This picture gallery
only contains pictures of our Taiwan portion of the trip. It
was a rather quick trip in Taiwan, doing engagement pictures,
visiting relatives and doing a little sight-seeing like visiting
Taipei 101. We went with Linda and Tony, who split up to go to
Linda's friend's wedding. |
|
| Jan 7, 2006
 |
|
Engagement Pictures - During our trip to Taiwan this year, my
mom decided to purchase an engagement picture package at a studio
for us. Out of 6 outfits and 137 pictures, we chose 27 to be
printed & edited. In this album, you can see the difference
between the un-edited pictures and the finished product. |
|
| Dec 29 - Jan 1, 2006
 |
| New
Years in Tahoe City - We took off to go for a weekend getaway to
Tahoe to try to do some snowboarding, gambling and have some fun in
the snow. Grace rented a pretty nice cabin in Tahoe City, but
unfortunately, the weather failed to cooperate with us. Rained
the first day, then as it got colder, it started snowing, then it
snowed so hard, that we lost power by Saturday morning.
Without power, we found that it is rather difficult to cook food,
use the hot tub or watch TV! |
|
| |
| Here are some pics that I failed to post last year. |
|
| Dec 28, 2005
 |
| Maggie's
Birthday 2005 - We celebrated Maggie's birthday a little early
this year because of the New Year's Tahoe trip. We had a
little gathering of friends at Blue Mango in SJ where a lot of
people came by to celebrate with Maggie. I bought a cake
sight-unseen from a bakery and when they said 10", I thought it
meant 10" wide, not as tall too! |
|
| Nov 26, 2005
 |
| My Birthday
2005 - Maggie organized a sake-bomb session at Miyake's with
everyone during Thanksgiving weekend in honor of my birthday! Some
highlights include trying to get $1 bills w/my mouth and me with a
really red face! Afterwards, Ginger graciously (bravely)
volunteered her place for more drinking and a poker tournament!
|
|
| Nov 24, 2005
 |
| Thanksgiving
2005 in Dublin - This year's Thanksgiving was hosted by Alex &
Sophia in Dublin! Huge turkey, lots of crab and a variety of sweet
treats! The day consisted of working out in the afternoon, then
eating and more eating throughout the night! Intermixed (Page 5) are
pictures of Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt's place on Friday. |
|
Shawn Speaks!! - 2006
| 12/5/06 |
Hmmm...I recently turned the big 3-0 and you know
what.....I don't feel that much different! Ok, I had a lot of fun
due to all celebratory events leading up to my birthday, but things just
don't feel any different after you cross over that threshold. I
guess that's a good thing! =) I learned that gambling while
intoxicated really doesn't help your game that much. I also
learned that gambling sober can also be very frustrating....so you know
what?.....might as well drink up....it's FREE! (or at least you
paid for it with your losses!) Yeah, didn't do too hot this
month....it'll be tough to make it up, but who knows, anything is
possible! I also learned that poker requires patience, lots of it!
You can't rush it. You got to put in your time and the cards will
come, at which point, it's best to be at a no-limit or spread-limit
table to maximize your returns. I'm no good at limit games.....and
I suck at sports betting! Oh well, maybe I'll learn my lesson?
HAHAHA! Who am I kidding! |
| 10/16/06 |
Yeah, almost three months later, I'm finally typing stuff
again! Actually, I find that I type/blog/speak a lot in my
pictures descriptions, which is probably why I don't say very much in
this area. There's the blurp on my webpage, then there's usually a
deeper description in the Smugmug album as well. So, I guess I'm
saying, it's not my fault I don't type here much, because I already feel
like I type a ton every time I post pics! =) This past weekend,
I went to an old chinese school friend's wedding who I have not seen in
like a decade. Saw a bunch of people that I haven't seen since
high school and wow.......it was kind of interesting. Some of
these people I have known since I was in elementary school and
surprisingly, although people have changed a bit, they haven't changed
that much either. Just a little surprised by that, since after so
many years, you'd think that people would have changed a lot, but I
guess that's not the norm. Everyone kind of just 'evolved'....you
kind of already knew how they were going to turn out based on the
original mold.
Other than that, I realized that this was the second wedding that I
did not know the bride and only knew the groom. I think it's kind
of weird, but I guess that can't be avoided. I bet when I get married,
there are going to be some people who don't know the bride and vice
versa. I guess that's what weddings are for....to get to know the
bride or groom, whichever one you haven't seen before. But man,
how are the bride/groom supposed to remember everyone? What a
challenge! Hope I'm up to it! =) |
| 7/18/06 |
Hey, only 2 months since I lasted typed, not bad!
Guess I have some more free time now as our business operations starts
to become more streamlined. Over the last couple of months, we've
doing some active activities, but nothing too crazy. We just went
on a weekend getaway to Tahoe and some whitewater rafting on July 4th
weekend, which was fun, but I lost some $$$$. I think I need to
start keep track of how much I win or lose when gambling. Other than
that, I've been watching a lot of DVD movies, but recently one theme
stuck out in my head. "Sometimes you have to do a little evil to
accomplish a greater good." In two movies, I saw the same theme
played out but one where the 'good' person stayed good which resulted in
a lot of un-necessary deaths and the other one where the 'bad' person
got his way, thus avoiding much bloodshed. Based on these movies,
I think Hollywood is sanctioning the 'evil' part if it does good to
more. Well, that's all for now. =) |
| 5/22/06 |
Hmmm....it's a work day and a Monday at that, but yet I
have some free time to do some writing. I'm starting to find that
you can't really do everything yourself and that sometimes, it's better
to pay a little money and let the 'experts' handle it for you.
Also, to complete my thoughts from my last post, I did end up purchasing
a new phone, although it's not a Motorola phone as they are way too
slow, but it is a Windows Mobile 2005 phone. So far, it's working
great and I managed to get a pretty good discount on my monthly fees, so
it was a win-win for me! Come to think of it, I probably should
have done it earlier. Oh well. As usual, I find that spring
time, there's rarely anything going on aside from birthdays and normal
get-togethers, which I have pretty much stopped pictures of. It
was pouring rain this past March & April, so we didn't do much. So
far, we don't have too much planned for the summer, but hopefully that
changes in the near future. Well, that's it for now, hopefully,
I'll post more regularly. =) |
| 1/28/06 |
Another month has passed since my last posting, but this
is due to necessity since I really had to maintain my website.
Created new Archive 2005 page to archive all of last year's pics with
the exception of the Italy trip. Also, starting this year, I'll be
using Smugmug to host the actual pictures for people to view.
Reasoning is as follows: it's only $30/yr, their bandwidth is much
higher than mine - allowing for faster web browsing, they have many
options on their website including password-protection, picture
purchasing, slideshow, and download of pics in various sizes. This
will save me from having to upgrade my internet connection which would
cost a lot more than $30 per MONTH! So, while my picture page
won't look much different, the links to look at the albums will be
re-directed to Smugmug. If you're interested in
signing up for
a Smugmug account (it's FREE to try), use this coupon code to save
$5 off your first year - 1n8dQoWYDWmRE -.
That's probably going to be the biggest change this year for this
website. I'm going to definitely try to find some time to
periodically update my website this year. I realize it has gotten
kinda stale, but seriously speaking.....not much has changed. I'm
just a little older, playing with the same old toys (home theater
system) because I can't really justify spending more money for something
that will probably perform the same. But what I really want is a
new cell phone operating on Windows Smartphone 2005, hopefully, the
next-gen Motorola MPx-xxx phone. Can't wait for wireless synch of
emails, calendars and contacts, all WITHOUT the fees or extra software
costs of Palm-based phones or Blackberry phones. It's all built-in
to Exchange 2003 SP2, so all I need is a new phone running the new OS.
Well, hopefully, that comes out soon.
Anyways, Happy New Year (Chinese New Year - Year of the Dog) and may
this year be as good or even better than the last!!! |
|
