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June 07, 2009 10:53 PM -
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YEAR 2002
This was a fun-filled year! Not so much traveling, but lots of events
with friends and family. Since we moved in the early part of this year, we
missed out on much of the snow season, but we more than made up for it with all
the summer activities. There's a lot more photos this year than the past
years because we have so many more picture-happy photographers in the
group. A lot more gambling this year and a lot of activities at our
place. A bunch of 'Firsts' like Christmas exchange, BBQ, whitewater
rafting. Overall, a stable year, lots of fun, and hopefully, more fun next
year!
Click here for this year's 'Shawn Speaks!'.
|
Year 2002 Photos |
| Dec 25, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
 | Christmas Day 2002 - A day of
relaxation, eating and just chilling at home. Mags
started the day looking for her gifts which I hid around the
house. Each gift had a clue leading to the next gift, some
more difficult than others. =) Afterwards,
Maggie's relatives came by for a Christmas lunch and it was quite a
crowd. Lots of food, playing with gifts and just lounging. |
|
| Dec 15, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Friendskit Gift Exchange 2002
- Following along the lines of a true holiday tradition, Friendskit
had a White Elephant Gift Exchange which included a potluck
feast. Despite Siam's meaning of a white elephant, all the
gifts were thoughtful and fun! Happy Holidays! |
|
| Dec 14, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Shawn and Brian's 26th B-Day
- A night of seemingly endless drinking, eating, and
top-of-your-lungs singing at Pyramid Brewery and then at Q's.
Unlike rough & tough Brian, I couldn't keep my stuff
together....and after much pain (thanks to Brian & Henry), I
managed to waste both good booze and food. =( BUT, I
felt much better afterwards. |
|
| Nov 30, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Mom-cooked Dinner & Poker
Nite - Mom was visiting for the holidays and cooked some
authentic Taiwanese cuisine as well as some "family
specials" for everyone who came in time for dinner. She
cooked most of the time she was here! Our new kitchen was
seriously put to test during her visit. =)
As for the poker, the BIG winner was Henry, who had a huge smirk on
his face the entire night, since he started winning early-on when he
played 'house' for blackjack. Congrats....and you're
definitely coming back next time! =) |
|
| Nov 29, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Scenic Drive through Carmel -
Maggie and Henry decided to go take some pictures of the beautiful
California coast on a sunny November day. |
|
| Nov 23, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Friendskit
Thanksgiving at Brian's - A little Thanksgiving potluck at
Brian's place. For once, Brian didn't cook and everyone else
did! Amazingly, we're all still alive and even,
well-fed! =)
Nah...super-moist, juicy turkey by Alex/Sophia, awesome pies by
Tony, interesting pasta by Amelia, tasty salad by Ted, good soup by
Jean, nicely mashed potatoes & gravy by Maggie, and basically, a
scrumptious meal by all! YUM!! |
|
| Nov 16, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Henry, Mike, Jim House Party
- The roomies 2nd annual house party with music, jello shots, DDR,
punching bag, and of course, LOTS and LOTS of alcohol and
beer! Record turn-out of people...place was so packed, there
was no place to even stand! (All pics from Hank) |
|
| Nov 14, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Marge's 24th Birthday - A
wonderful dinner at the Cheesecake Factory in San Jose. Lots
of random pics while we got Marge drunk, so she can have 'fun' with
her presents later. =) |
|
| Oct 31, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Halloween at Drink Club and
Castro - The final round for our team who was competing for a
week's stay in Vegas, but came in 2nd place. Our team tried
the Moulin Rouge thing with Brian and Henry acting as
puppeteers. Afterwards, we went to Castro. Lots of great
costumes, plenty of new people to meet. |
|
| Oct 27, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| 2nd Annual Pumpkin Carving
Contest - 13 crazy entries were judged this year and man, the
competition was stiff! The two losers (Shawn, Henry) received
a dousing in their undies outside by the two winners (Maggie,
Amelia). It was humiliating, but not as bad as Jim last
year! =) Much thanks to Mike, Jim and Henry for
hosting this year's contest! |
|
| Oct 26, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Amelia's Halloween Party - A night of scary fun at
Amelia's place! Amazing decorations, tasty snacks, and a breadth
of alcoholic beverages. Lots of spirited people, lots of squeezing
and twisting, some 'whores', a killer couple, and some cheerleaders! |
|
| Oct 26, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Vindhya & Sunil's Wedding
- One of Mags' high school friend got married! A traditional
Indian wedding with lots of drinks, snacks and an open bar.
Only my 2nd wedding, but it was fun. The 10X optical zoom came
quite handy. |
|
| Oct 25, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Brian's Fish Taco Nite - Another
display of Brian's great cooking ability! Deep-fried fish
wrapped in cabbage and corn tortilla and more fish wrapped in
burrito-style with guacamole and salsa. On a side-note,
Ginger was back from Taiwan for a few days to FOB-ize us! |
|
| Oct 19, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Mag's New Desk - Mags bought a
brand-new L-shaped desk from OfficeMax. Made of really heavy
compressed wood with a nice polished top. Comes filing
cabinet, dual monitor stand and a 5-Hour installation manual! |
|
| Sept 29, 2002 (zipped
copy)
|
| Brian's BBQ Party - Another
round of awesome food, courtesy of Brian! Lots of drinks,
tasty sides, and an outrageous amount of Babyback ribs, beef, and
sausages! A bunch of familiar faces and some new ones too! |
|
| Sept 19-22, 2002
|
| Austin Trip - A long weekend for
four folks who decided to visit the Southwest for a Creed concert
and lots of eating! |
|
| Sept 15, 2002
|
| NSX/S2000 Drive - 6 NSX, 2
S2000 and a Subaru WRX STi cruised through Oakland Hills from Orinda
to Castro Valley on a beautiful Sunday morning! A spirited
drive that left the passengers feeling sick and the drivers wanting
more! =) (Album moved to new site) |
|
| Sept 7, 2002 |
| Big
Sur Hike - 7 hard core hikers decided to visit Big Sur to enjoy
the scenery and test out their hiking skills! Pics courtesy of
Henry. |
|
| Aug 31-Sept 2, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| 2nd Annual Labor Day Trip to San Diego
- Eight crazy people decided to fight Labor Day traffic to drive 10
hours to San Diego for some fun in the sun, by the pool, on the
beach, and of course, at BOBABLISS!
Congratulations, Cindy!! Thanks to Brian for letting us
crash at your place and to Henry/Jim for contributing to pics. |
|
| Aug 30, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Jeff's 26th Birthday - A full-on
Italian family dining at Bucca Di Beppo with a bunch of hungry
eaters! Since it's right before our San Diego trip, only a few
crazy people (Mags!) continue to party after dinner by making sure
Jeff gets his birthday shots! |
|
| Aug 23, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Chris's new car: Blue RSX TypeS -
After a couple of months of decision-making and two hours of
haggling, Mags & I helped my cousin shop for the right car for
him! Only $375 over invoice! Oh, crazy thing, I saw Chao
buying her new 3.2CL TypeS when we arrived to pick up the RSX! |
|
| Aug 16, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Frank's 28th Birthday - A
cake-smashing, water-throwing, ice-cream basking party at Chevy's in
Union City. And things were so civilized until the Duong
sisters decided to spice it up! Oh, and the food was good
too. =) |
|
| Aug 11, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Ted S's Housewarming Party
- Ted moved in w/his new roommate this month to a 2bd/2ba apt.
Pretty spiffy place w/new appliances, fresh paint, and clean
carpet! Good snacks & fruits (Mangos were awesome!) and
tasty food from Tainan Restaurant! Also, lots of fun in the swimmig
pool. |
|
| Aug 10, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Shawn & Mags BBQ - Got my
first BBQ grill (a Weber) and burned my first chicken. Lots of
food (way too much!), played GT3, plenty of drinks, high-stakes
Poker, and pinata bashing in our tiki-lit backyard. (Some pics
courtesy of Henry, Ginger and Brian) |
|
| Jan-Mar 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
|
| Aug 2, 2002 (Zipped Copy) |
| Mike/Henry Bday BBQ at Brian's place
and Ibiza - A mad alcohol session with
some scrumptious Korean BBQ by Brian. Some stripping, a gaggle
of gag gifts and a late night of dancing at Ibiza in Oakland until
6am. (Pix courtesy of Ginger) |
|
| July 20-21, 2002 (Zipped Copy)
|
|
July 4, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
 |
| Our July 4th
Picnic - (Unprotected album) A whole afternoon at Vasona Lake
Park, eating picnic food potluck-style, playing MJ, volleyball,
badminton, football & frisbee toss, and just chilling in the
shade. Afterwards, we went to Santa Cruz to watch fireworks.
(Pictures & web space courtesy of Ginger!) |
|
| June 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Mag's New Kittens (circa 6-9wks old)
- These little brats (Bitch & Fucker) invaded the house in June
and has been slowly given more liberty in the house as they grow
older, all negotiated on their behalf by Mags. Here's the
final draft of their Contract to
Live. =) |
|
| June 23, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Anthony's Charity BBQ - I
attended my first charity event! Lots of food, meeting new
people, and just hanging out in the park on a lazy Sunday afternoon. |
|
| June 17, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| SD Wild Animal Park - A
sprawling 1800 acres of land divided into 4 major sections.
Most of the animals roam freely in these huge enclosures with other
animals. Of course, the birds like condors are caged and so
are the meat-eaters types. A nice variation from your regular
zoo, more like Jurassic Park. |
|
| June 16, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| David's UCSD Graduation - My
bro graduated from UCSD with a double major in Political Science and
Chinese Studies! Awesome weather, couldn't have asked for a
faster graduation either, at least not with over 1000
graduates. Everything was done in 3 hrs. We had lunch at
Cindy's restaurant, Jasmine. |
|
| June 9, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Point Lobos Hike - A
state-protected coast-side area near Carmel. Absolutely gorgeous
coastline and forests! Great place to just relax, watch the
birdies, the waves, and the scenery (with 10X Zoom camera!).
=) |
|
| June 9, 2002 (Story) |
| Jeff's Motorcycle Accident -
Crazy, freak accident that pretty much destroyed his bike and only
his gear (Before & After pics here) prevented massive
injuries. Notice the melted plastics and shredded liners. |
|
| June 1, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Paintball in Santa Cruz - A
3-hr session of shooting and hunting friends in trees, tall grass,
gullies, swamp, and artificial fortifications! Everyone looks
like Darth Vadar with a red paint-saber....hehe! Word of
advice: wear long-sleeve & pants and wear DARK/Camouflage
colors! =) |
|
| May 25, 2002 (Zipped
copy)
|
| Memorial Day BBQ - BBQ and
volleyball at Vasona Park in Los Gatos, plenty of food, drinks,
exercise, and maybe a little too much sun! Interesting halo
around the sun though. Ginger took some interesting shots of
volleyball and the kids. |
|
| May 9-11, 2002 (Zipped
copy) |
| LA Trip - A trip to tour around
LA and its hot spots. Universal Studios, Citywalk, Mann
Chinese Theatre (crazy people waiting in line for Episode II, 8 days
in advance!), went to TV taping of Late Late Show and saw Playmate
June 2002, and finally, got some free shirts from a Brewery we're
eating at. |
|
| May 7, 2002 (Zipped
copy) |
| Ted Su's 25th Birthday Dinner
- Surprise dinner at Hot Pot City for Ted on short notice!
Amazingly, we had quite a turn-out, I guess Ted is a popular
guy! =) Also, pics of Jeff's new BMW motorcycle! |
|
| April 27, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Shawn & Mag's
Housewarming Party - Poker Tournament (Tony - 1st, Thuy -
2nd, Brian - 3rd), movies, Mafia, drinks of all sorts, and of
course, personalized tours of our humble abode!
Oh, and of course, the transformation of the kitchen from plain
& ordinary to dynamic green & chrome! (Some pics courtesy of
Henry) |
|
| April 5, 2002 (Zipped
Copy) |
| Monterey Bay Day - Just a
quick tour around the bay, visiting the aquarium, shopping, and
chowing down fresh seafood. We're there because our race car
training was postponed until mid-May. |
|
| March 30-31, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Family Snow Trip to Tahoe - 3
days of fun in the sun at Sierra-at-Tahoe. Great slush, tank
top sunny weather with my family (&Mike) from Texas! |
|
Mar 9, 2002
(Zipped Copy) |
| Moving Home to Fremont
(Part 2) - More stuff to move from LA, courtesy of my parents.
Also, Mags went shopping for random stuff on Craigslist.org and we had a
massive drainage problem that we thought it was the washing machine at
first. |
|
Feb-Mar, 2002
(Zipped Copy) |
| Moving Home to Fremont
(Part 1) - Here you will see us scrubbing, caulking, cleaning,
painting, packing, moving all of our stuff from the old place to the new
place. Much THANKS to Brian, Chris, Sean &
Carla, and my bro, David & Lily for helping us move,
clean, and pack!! |
|
| Jan 26-27, 2002 (Zipped
Copy)
|
| Snow Trip to South Tahoe - A
weekend snow trip to Sierra-at-Tahoe. Awesome snow fight in
front our motel....the girls were vicious! Rented a Subaru and had
great fun doing doughnuts in the snowy parking lot! |
|
| Nov, 2001 (Zipped
copy) |
| My 25th Birthday dinner - A
gathering of friends to celebrate my birthday in Palo Alto.
Mags tried really hard to surprise me and I was until we got to the
restaurant and I saw my friends' cars. Thank you! |
|
| Jan 1, 2002 (zipped
copy) |
| Maggie's Glamour Shots - These
are shots taken by a professional studio in Taiwan before
touch-ups. These shots took over 9 hours to take, over 100
pics, but I only put up a sampling. |
|
| Jan 11, 2002 - (Zipped
copy) |
|
Shawn Speaks! 2002
| 12/11/02 |
Exactly another month has passed and it seems like a long
time! Many things has happened. A couple potlucks, a couple
Thanksgiving dinners, birthdays, and my mom visited for a week.
Man, I feel really bad about not having brought my camera to Nhieu's
birthday party. Everyone forgot to bring one! Unbelievable!
I guess I'll have to wait for Mai to develop the film for me to post
it. Christmas is coming up and I'm not sure what I'm doing this
year for it. Kind of an odd feeling.
Anyways, things are going well, although I feel pretty tired
lately. Work on my websites continue in earnest, but I'm finding
that building a GOOD website is not easy. Lots of things I've
never thought about needs to be decided and it's taking a lot of
time. However, despite everything, I think I'll be able to have
fully functional websites by the end of this year.
Speaking of which....this will be my last blab for this year!
Hopefully, next year I'll have more to show for than this year. Man, I'm
getting old........... |
| 11/11/02 |
Another month has passed, but not without some
changes! New server has been re-located and website speeds are
much faster now! Having dual sites means added administration, but
increased redundancy for disaster recovery. It was a BIG effort
for me to move this far, but I'm really doing this! Unbelievable!!
Anyways, Halloween was fun, lots of clubbing, costume shows, and of
course, lots of pictures! Mags and her team lost the Drink Club
contest, but it was fun, all the same. Well, snow season is coming
up, another round of snowboarding...yeah!!! Maybe this year, we'll
go some place new besides the Tahoe area. That's it for my monthly
blab...next month will be the last one of the year....can't believe,
another year is almost gone! |
| 10/8/02 |
Another month has passed, but man, it seems like a year
has passed since I've blabbed!
Bunch of traveling in the last month has left me a little tired.
Things are starting to wind down for our summer fun. There's
actually been a couple weekends where there was nothing to do but shop!
Other than that, we've been getting into doing some canyon
carving with driving clubs in the bay area, been to 3 outings in the
last month already. I've been working on getting my business up
and running. I think, in about a month or two, I'll have things
all working right with the help of a couple great volunteers.
Can't wait to get this going! More next month..... |
| 9/4/02 |
Well, it's a month later, so it's time for my monthly
journal of Shawn Speaks!
Aug has been a crazy month for me. I got my first grill (a
charcoal Weber) and threw my first BBQ party, complete with Tiki
torches. A bunch of birthdays in Aug and more coming up. A
couple friends decided to throw up their own websites as well, one of
which resides on my server - www.gingervitis.net,
the other is www.ricefarm.net,
which is hosted on a Mac server. It seems that the only reason why
people have websites is to publish pics to everyone. Also, not
much has been done to my site, but everyone seems to be content with my
website's organization and contents, so I'll just let it be for
now. Oh, by helping my cousin haggle for his new RSX, I thought of
a new service to include in my business as well. That's it...more
next month. =) |
| 8/3/02 |
Ok, this is a little early, but I just had to say that I
finally got Outlook Web Access to be able to change password remotely,
thanks for Windows Service Pack 3! YEAH!!! I've been waiting
for this capability for the last 6 months!
Also, You'll be seeing some scanned pix in my Photo Album which is not
in chronological order, but I felt that if I did put it in order, then
people won't see it. I'll re-arrange it later, I guess. |
| 7/24/02 |
Wow, exactly a month have passed! That's the first
time I did that right!
Anyways, not much has changed, I just added an Upcoming Events sections
to the Home page, so that it'll get more visibility and to keep people
informed. Just went whitewater rafting in Cache Creek...awesome
fun! This past month has been pretty chill, not much to note
except that the cats have took up permanent residence here and it
stinks! Oh, I finally got a new cell # after 5 yrs and I'm hoping
to launch my Networksetup.net business by Sept. Hopefully,
it'll be good supplemental income and good tax deduction. |
| 6/24/02 |
After consulting some 'experts', I have finished revising
my Photo Album organization and added a few
enhancements. Since I usually put pics in protected folders, I've
decided to move my older photos into a Photo
Archives page by itself. I also re-arranged by chronological
order and so, the un-protected pics are towards the bottom of the
page. The protected albums are grouped by year and contains
highlights of the year. New to the Photo Album are little picture
thumbnails to set the tone of the album and all 'BIG' pics have been
shrunk down to 800x600 resolution in order to compensate for slow
internet connections. (Faster downloads while not losing too much
quality)
In other news, Mags and I purchased our first car together earlier
this month! Check out My Car section for
story and details. We just finished detailing the car and put two
layers of Zaino Z-2 polish on the car. Took us over 3 hours!
Hopefully it was worth the effort and time! More pics to
come. On a side note, in order to accommodate the car, I had to
move the cats into the house. It stinks! |
| 6/3/02 |
Whew! This past weekend was busy!! New kittens
in our household, dinner party, paintball, pool/potluck/game day at
Nhieu/Mai's place. I'm tired, need more sleep! Can't believe
Mags brought home kittens from the Oakland Animal Shelter! Now,
they're in the kitchen stinking up the house and smearing crap all over
the corner of the kitchen that we put them in.
Anyways, I've re-arranged some of the upper-level links and moved the
Photo Archives to a more prominent location. I've also updated a
bunch of info on various pages - computers
and home page. Of course, new pics have
been added to the Photo section and I'm just waiting for Win2K SP3 to
come out, so that I can roll out my online address book for people on my
Friendskit list. So far, I think people think it's a liability,
but it's actually safer than emailing your personal info to unsecured
email accounts. Anyways, the way I figure it, if I build it,
people will use it.
Summer is about to begin and with that, of course, the requisite summer
activities - jet-skiing, camping, mountain biking?, road trips (Vegas?),
BBQs, white-water rafting, and anything else we can think of. So,
stay tuned! There's much more to come! |
| 5/8/02 |
This year seems to be passing by pretty quickly and yet,
pretty slowly at the same time. Kinda weird, huh? We're
almost halfway through the year and I'm almost wrote down 2001 as the
date on a check the other day.
Anyways, after a few weekends of fixing up the house, it's finally
'homey' and we've had a couple of gatherings at our place. It's
interesting how everyone has differing opinions on how we can fix up the
place. Some say that we should get a hot tub, others say we should
get a pool table, others say that we should paint more rooms, and some
even said that we should do add-ons to upstairs and make it a HUGE
room! We're taking everything everyone said under consideration,
thanks for the suggestions! =)
Some upgrades - VPN is operational, Email server is stable and new
mailing lists created, new websites under construction. www.networksetup.net
will be operational soon. |
| 3/27/02 |
Ok, it's been while since I've blabbed.....way busy with
moving and settling into the new place. We cleaned, scrubbed,
caulked, sealed, mopped, washed, painted, and put down new cabinet paper
in our new home. We shopped, bought and installed a dryer, stove,
refrigerator, dishwasher, and new carpet. I will be posting pix of
before/after shots and also of my move. Amazingly, since we moved
into the new place, we haven't spent one weekend there yet and due to
that, we're still working on putting the place together.
Hopefully, we'll get it done, so that we can invite people over to
chill.
In other news, my PooMail server is still not doing too well. Two
known issues/bugs with the server software is causing problems, which
I'll have to wait until they release fixes for it. Well, that's
it. Until next time....... |
| 2/6/02 |
As usual, I'm making modifications to my Photo
Album. I've created a new page dedicated to storing of older
photos, so that my actual Photo page won't be too big. I will
continue to create zipped copies of each album since it's easy and good
archiving anyways. I'll probably try to make it easier for people
to use my Photo page in the future, but I'm kinda swamped right
now. I'm still having issues with PooMail at this time, so I still
can't roll it out to you guys. My FTP server has been revised now
that I have more regular users. Now, based on your login, it'll
take you to your folder directly without any further navigation. I
also recently upgraded by center channel speaker for my home theatre
because Mags was complaining that she can't hear the actors
talk.
Oh we'll be moving soon, so we went shopping for appliances and they are
expensive! Oh well. Anyways, check out the new photos and
chat you in another month or so. |
| 1/11/02 |
I added a new feature in my Photo Album. By popular
demand, I added a zipped copy of each album, so that users could choose
to download the entire album to their local computer and then view it at
their leisure. This way, they don't have to do a "save
as" for each picture in the album. I will also be
adding a random joke link for people who just want to read a bunch of
jokes.
I am also trying to find "clients" to register for my web
services, so that I defray the cost of my future broadband connection
($180/mon). Anyone who needs anything, just contact
me. |
| 1/7/02 |
Well, I just got back from a long vacation and it's crazy
trying to do catch-up on things! We took almost 800 pictures in
China and it's taking longer than I expected to sort through everything
to put them on the website in some organized manner. Anyways,
it'll be there soon. Nothing much else to add except that I think
vacationing can be quite tiring as well. |
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