looking for the copenhagen updates? here they are:
day 1 recap (may 1)
day 2 recap (may 2)
day 3 recap (may 3)
day 4 recap (may 4)
wow, 4 months have already passed in 2003... a whole third of a year, gone like that. where does the time go?
man, it's like time speeds up when you get older... shame.
anyways, copenhagen was great, weather aside... the city was pretty nice, lotsa castles and old architecture and
such, but also a lot of new modernistic stuff as well... you know the simplistic scandinavian look, right? ikea
stylez? yeah, it's pretty pervasive... nice, if you like that kinda thing...
of course, the bottom line remains that danish women are HOT. well, all scandinavian women are hot, but i really
only saw those in copenhagen, so... seriously though, if they measured beauty on a scale like iq, say like a
beauty quotient, then the per capita bq of denmark is like, 212... hahaha... deadly high.
at first i thought it wasn't that there were more good-looking women, just that the good-looking ones were
better-looking... but i was wrong. spend more than a day walking around there and you'll see. even the asian
girls were better-looking... it's gotta be the water! hahaha...
a danish guy i met on the train back had a great explanation... all the ugly vikings were sent to rape and
pillage other countries, while the good-looking vikings stayed home. hahaha... so jokes.
anyways, more pics of barcelona and copenhagen to come...
5.12.2003 slight change o'plans
redid the layout a bit... moved the counter to the top of the left column, so lazy surfers (ahem, andrew) can
check if they've scored a wongoz.com exclusive interview easier than scrolling to the bottom of the page... also
de-linked the nav links until i get those pages up. which may take a while...
anyways, looks like mark and minh were able to resched the wedding to a month later, june 15... how they managed
to find a place now is beyond me, but hey, i ain't complaining... so that means i'll still be coming home, albeit
a little later than i first expected... i might even have time to play some softball! woohoo!
i was gonna do a new barcelona update today, but i felt it necessary to say what's been going on in the last
week... so new pics tomorrow or wed...
mark confirmed the date change for his wedding... it's all set for mid-june,
woohoo! i'm glad i'm still able to attend, and better yet this time around, my folks will be home so i can see
them too...
work was pretty darn boring last week... for 3 days, i basically had nothing to do. no support calls, no issues
with the acceptance tests... so i went to markus, my boss, and talked to him about it... i've been given a new
task for analyzing tools requirements for the packet-switching testing projects for the next big iteration of the
core network. yay, some real stuff to do! plus some research that i need to do for protocols and message flows
means that i should be fairly occupied for the next little while...
saw 3 movies on the weekend, which was, btw, not a long weekend for me...
johnny english, that bond spoof with
rowan "mr. bean" atkinson... it was entirely predictable and
the jokes could be seen from a mile away at times, but amusing nonetheless... and who knew
natalie imbruglia looked so good? it's the long hair, i tell
ya... then i also saw anger
management, with jack nicholson and
adam sandler... i never really thought of jack nicholson as
being a comedic actor, but the movie was pretty funny and entertaining... but i have to say, that if my gf ever
pulled something like that on me, she had better look like marisa
tomei or else i'd go ballistic... and of course, the matrix
reloaded... was the keymaker cool or what? and that whole highway scene was sweet. just don't expect
to be blown away like the first one and you'll be fine.
well, anyways, i've decided to go to hamburg in a couple weekends, when i have yet another long weekend... it's
actually fairly cheap to get and stay there, and i hear it's really nice, so we'll see... i wonder why i haven't
gone before... oh wellz, whatever.
oh yeah, started a new period of fasting last night... thought my previous record of 50 hours was good, but i got
blown away by a couple ppl from my church here. ok, it's mind over matter on this one... dunno what i'm really
aiming for, but we'll see if i can make it to wednesday...
5.20.2003 just juice and water
so both lyds and matt had some
questions regarding the motives for my fasting, which, incidentally, is at 50 hours and counting...
matt says that fasting isn't an end unto itself, cuz that just constitutes self-denial... which i don't doubt.
i see it also as a matter of controlling one's impulses, sorta like a test of willpower. but i know matt is
really talking about fasting as a means to an end, say, spiritual clarity. i've done that before, but that's not
the main point of this exercise, though i wouldn't say that i won't do it at some point now... but that would be
a bonus...
lyds says that it's not a good way to lose weight, though i could stand to lose a few pounds, cuz your body will
start conserving energy as fat when it senses that it's not getting anymore food. on the other hand, if you keep
exerting yourself (which of course i'm not really doing), then your body needs to find the energy somewhere, and
so it'll burn away fat there.
well, whatever. i'm really just doing it this time as a test of my own willpower. eventually, the desire to eat
will overcome the desire to keep fasting, but i just wanna see how far i can take it. so far i've noticed that
i need more sleep. so i won't be staying up too late tonight... heh, yeah right.
correction: i think what i attributed to lyds saying
about my fasting wasn't exactly correct... i think the first part, about the body conserving energy, is hers, but
the "on the other hand" part was my opinion. i didn't make that clear enough.
well, my fast didn't last as long as i thought it would, but i could've gone longer... conceivably, i could've
lasted to the weekend, but everyone was telling me to eat, so i caved today, after 87 hours... eh, almost 3
straight 30-hour famines... hahaha, deadly.
oh hey, guess what? as part of my first day back eating, i made my first real chinese meal
in, like, forever... i made jook! that's right! my very own congee! hahahah... ok, it's
obviously not as good as my mom's or congee wong's, but it's good anyways... with a big wad of
yook soong, how can you go wrong?
vladimir and me
i remembered that there were a few things i wanted to say before my last post... but i kinda forgot in all the
hubbub... but before i get to that, there were a few pics i wanted to put up, but i didn't have any other place
to put them... so call this the random pic post, but i know how you all love the pics, so... anyways, this one is
of my one and only macedonian friend, vladimir, and me, chillin' at guinness house...
chris getting it good from georgie... :P
this is that same night at guinness house, and chris is getting a nice juicy one (lucky bum!) from our friend
georgie, who's from england... ok, it's really georgina, but no one calls her that... we met her in 2001, when
she was visiting aachen with another friend of ours, vera... they were studying together in amsterdam... they're
both super cool and super fun to hang out with, hopefully we'll get to see each other again.
jason and nina
and this, of course, is jason and nina... did i ever write about how they met? to put it simply, it was
karneval, and they were both drunk... hahaha... seriously, i ain't kidding you. but they're turned out quite
nice, in spite of the less-than-auspicious beginnings... nina is one of those adopted-as-a-baby kids, as she's
plainly asian (korean, to be precise), but her parents are german, in the most german way you can think of.
coolz, eh? i thought so.
maren and me
a couple saturdays ago, there was a small jazz festival here in aachen, with bands coming in, playing free
concerts on makeshift stages all over the city... it was pretty coolz... i met up jason and nina at starbucks,
and met nina's friend maren... i think they were like school buddies, way back in the day... she seemed cool, but
i didn't get to talk to her for too long...
meeting up for some jazz
anyways, later that day, i met up with hanne to check out some of the jazz... we met up with halimi, the girl
from argentina who used to be in our german class, and some of her friends... from left to right, there's chris
from new zealand, and then adrianna from mexico, and then another girl whose name i can't remember... then halimi
and then manuel, who's half-dutch and half-greek... and finally, patricia and hanne...
ok, enough pics for today... so anyhoo, the day before this lust auf jazz festival, i went out to dinner with
heidi, the half-german, half-canadian girl i met a couple months back... we went for sushi! it was her first
time... hahaha... a sushi virgin. well, admittedly, anywhere here isn't the best place, but then, why start off
with the best? you'd just get disappointed any other time after that... we went to crazy sushi, had a maki-set
plus an extra roll... then we chilled a bit more at starbucks before calling it more or less a night... well, at
least with each other...
after that, i met up with jason and some other ppl to go to a party, a birthday party of some canadian guy,
marty... he seemed like a cool enough guy, but i think i said 3 sentences to him all night long... it was at this
mining engineers' frat house or something like that, and the music was loud, the beer was flowing, but the ppl
were sparse... just close friends i guess. dunno why i was there... hahaha... i did meet another canadian guy,
actually, an indian-canadian (not native) by the name of hari... well, something like that...
anyways, last sunday was the 13th anniversary of my church here, international
baptist church of cologne... it was coolz, we had a big program that went on for 3 hours... lots of singing and
worshipping, some dance performances and such... it was long, but nice. i played guitar for an abbreviated
worship session, as well as for claudia's song, and one of the dance performances... for some reason, i get this
nervous, shaky kinda voice when i'm the only one singing... and even if i try to stop, i can't... eh, oh wellz,
i'm not singing to please anyone anyways, only the Man Upstairs...
aight, more to come later...
5.29.2003 countdown to TO: t-minus 10 days
argh, i keep wanting to post more stuff about barcelona and copenhagen, but i've posted so infrequently lately, i
feel i have to do an update first...
anyways, so first, last sunday was a baptismal sunday at ibc. five ppl got baptized! coolz! claudia, volker
(richard's dad), sigrun, rené and elizabeth all publicly confessed their faith to Jesus Christ. awesome. it was
an interesting service, since their were a few non-believers (or at least, non-ibc attendees) there who were
guests of the... baptizees? baptees? whatever... well, pastor david spoke about the meaning of baptism, so his
message was really geared towards them... it was pretty good.
so i watched the matrix reloaded again tonight... went
with heidi this time, to heerlen... had to watch it again, mostly to catch the
revolutions trailer at the end, but also to better
understand just what exactly is going on... and now? well, i'm still a bit confused as to the whole process, but
more importantly, i paid to watch this movie again to watch THAT trailer? heh, i coulda
waited...
the week after i made my own congee, i went ahead and made my own soup! heh, big deal, right? no man, i did it
from scratch! first, mansoor gave jason and i a whole bunch of frozen lamb bones, cuz he needed the freezer
space in his restaurant, so we divvied up the bones, and i immediately went home and made a vat of lamb broth...
cooked it a good 2 hours. then, i skimmed the fat off, and threw in a whole bunch of root veggies, like celery,
onions, potatoes and carrots... threw in some tomatoes too, plus a lot of rosemary, oregano and provence herbs...
couple hours and some salt and pepper later... voila! tastes pretty good actually... well, at
least fritzi and i think so.
anyways, so plans to hamburg got squashed, mainly cuz i'm now going with mark and patricia and david (a guy from
their german class and who works at philips with mark) down to freiburg and heidelberg... should be a great time!
weather may not be so nice, but at least the temp will be good... 26-28 degrees! sweet. ok, time to
pack!
5.29-6.1.2003 black forest recaps
looking for the black forest updates? here they are:
day 1 recap (may 29)
day 2 recap (may 30)
day 3 recap (may 31)
day 4 recap (june 1)