wongoz.com > journal archives > 12.2003

12.2.2003 don't look back

i don't think i reminisce about old times as much as i think about certain friendships i miss. the camaraderie of groups i was involved with. yeah, i miss that stuff. i guess i'm just that much further away from it all though, in time and space.

i chat online every now and then with some ex-caisa exec friends... i miss the meetings, the organizing of events, even the stress of rumours and tensions... now, we're scattered all over the planet, which is good in one way in that i could always have a place to stay whenever i visit ppl, but then the likelihood that we could all get together again for some chilloungin'... well, let's say it's slim to none.

and then i think about acf and the great times i had there, esp. the last year i was at western. now, the froshies that year are graduating. and i know so few ppl there, it's frankly quite depressing. i see such great things happening and i wanna be a part of it so desperately... and i know that i'm past that point in my life. gotta make things happen where i'm at. stop dwelling in the past.

anyways... i was helping my bro check out some flights since he's planning to come to europe next year... i went to the travel cuts website and i happened to notice the swap (student work abroad programme) link... that triggered a whole ton of memories for me...

i used to cruise by the travel cuts office at western every now and then and pick up those brochures, wondering how i would ever get to travel in europe. i wondered if i could do this swap thing. i planned the grad trip i thought i was gonna do, starting as early as second year. i dunno. i guess i've always had that kinda wanderlust... bitten by the travel bug...

and now i'm here. it seems so different from those days, when i thought i'd never get the chance to do any extended travelling. wow. i know lots of friends think i'm so lucky to be here, and i don't doubt that, but at the same time, they don't know about the desire to be back home, to be involved in those groups as i mentioned above. <sigh> can't have your cake and eat it too.

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12.8.2003 dreams are too funny

just a quick little update about the past week or so...

for a good laugh, check out the xanga of karen, particularly this entry... tons of ppl msg'd me about it... i thought it was quite funny, but out of character i think? maybe not...

nothing really happened last week of interest... well, i hosted my smd small group bible study at my place last tuesday... it was coolz. biggest turnout since the first week. still doing the book of esther, now on chapter 7...

on friday night we had a department christmas dinner... it was alright. the best part though was the gift exchange... instead of buying something, we were told to bring something that you wanted to get rid of... well, i don't think the gifts were all that bad, but one person (i dunno who) took it pretty literally, and brought this old, ratty waffle iron. i almost got stuck with it, but luckily, i was able to pawn it off on stefanie...

saturday night, i went to hannover with chris for a party... jason's gf, nina, was throwing a combined birthday, christmas and housewarming party... so a bunch of us from aachen came up to visit her and her new hannover friends... it was coolz... met a bunch of new ppl there, including antoinette and julia, fellow asian adoptees... pics to come...

i had to leave hannover early on sunday morning to catch the train to köln... 3 hours, even with the ice train! well, needless to say, i kinda zombied through service, and then i met up with chris to go to joe champs to watch some nfl... met an african-american guy named anton who djs around germany... he said he might come to check out ibc in the future...

alrighty, i'm out.

posted by wongoz @ 11.56p gmt+1 | link it! | back to top

12.13.2003 get comfy for this one...

i changed my intro blurb to a quote of the day thing... i'll post some witty or insightful things i hear and read there from time to time...

i mentioned karen's dream in my last entry... well, turns out that it's not just her who's having weird dreams... lyds said she dreamed about marrying a friend of hers... she wouldn't say who it was, but gabe thinks it's me... i dunno. i'll need confirmation on that. but to have starred in two ppl's dreams... coolz!

anyhoo, so here are some pics, like i promised last time... i mentioned a while back (in this entry) about the smd regional meeting i went to... i didn't really elaborate on it back then, so i'll take this lull in my journalling to write something about it... oh, btw, smd stands for studentenmission in deutschland, which basically means "students' mission in germany"...

well, like i said before, it was all in german, so i didn't really understand very much... my german is limited to basic conversation, and of course, when discussing biblical things, that's anything but basic. it was a bit different from all the other retreats i've been to, in the programming sense... but still good to be there...

there were a couple of large group things, a small group exercise, a bit of praise & worship, a bit of quiet time... normally it's structured so that you have a couple things that repeat over the couple days... but no, there wasn't anything repeated, except the large group things, i guess. of course, the one thing that did happen on both friday and saturday nights was the spontaneous hanging out in the dining area... lotsa chilloungin' and p&w there...

i just thought it was coolz to be back in the kind of setting where God was the focus and everyone was praying and praising and worshipping and having a good time. ok, i got sick after the weekend (it was bloody cold in the basement where the men slept), but good times nonetheless...

i think it's a bit difficult to see ppl living out lives with christian values in europe... i won't say christian lifestyle, cuz i think most ppl have some stereotypes of what that means, but in general, i think most ppl think, somewhat correctly, that europe is more secular than north america is... but it's definitely great to see and to meet ppl who take their faith seriously, no matter where they come from... awesome.

anyhoo... so that was the smd retreat. oh yeah, if you've noticed that the pics are a bit more vibrant, a bit better-looking, well, it's not cuz i've become a better photographer... i've finally discovered the auto levels function in ps7. amazing. how did i ever get by without it? i'll slowly correct my old pics...

aight, i'm on a roll, so i'll keep going with the pics... last weekend was nina's big party in hannover (which is actually spelled hanover in german)... chris and i chilled a bit in the city, having a really good italian dinner, before going to nina's place... the centre (at least, the part i saw) looks really nice, and their main train station has got to be the nicest one i've ever been to...

i wasn't really sure about going at first, but nina made a personal plea to convince me to go... hahaha... she said there were gonna be a lot of girls there. single girls. cute single girls. hahaha... so i reluctantly accepted her invitation... i mean, when your friend beseeches you, you can't very well say "no", right? ok, well, that might not be totally true, but that's my story, and i'm sticking to it. :P

so anyways, i didn't meet a whole lotta ppl there... actually, just a couple of nina's new roommates, including jan, who is a music fiend... he's got a whole boatload of djembes, 2 guitars (acoustic and electric) and a bass, plus a couple amps... nice. not like matt's collection of stuff, but still... anyhoo, i also met julia and antoinette, two fellow asian adoptees... julia is korean, like nina, and i think antoinette is filipina-chinese, or something like that...

anyhoo, evidence of how wacky the night got: we were dancing to some old beatles' classics, on lp... on LP! 33rpm! how funny is that... didn't get to see much of the city, but it seems pretty nice... i'll have to go back again sometime... at least i'd have a place to stay! in hamburg too, where antoinette lives... actually, i'm probably going to visit her in the time between christmas and new year's... coolz, coolz...

tired of reading yet? almost done... yesterday was the company-wide christmas party... it was in some castle-like place not too far away... good food, good friends (see you tonight! oh gosh... does the keg still use that slogan?)... met a german student helper, friederike, and we chilled together for the second half of the night... got digits afterwards too, heheheh...

anyhoo, start of the yahoo fantasy football playoffs, and i'm in all of them, all 4 pools... biggest one is the one against andrew and his big game dinos...

and yes, to all those who have been asking... kitty is going to visit me... arriving on tuesday actually... should be coolz. we'll catch lotr3 when it comes out here... ok, enough for today, right? i'm out...

posted by wongoz @ 9.06p gmt+1 | link it! | back to top

12.14.2003 my inaugural friday five

my first attempt at the friday five (albeit a tad late), this one from dec. 12...

1. do you enjoy the cold weather and snow for the holidays?
i love snow more than i like cold, but i guess you can't really have one without the other. well, you could have cold without snow... but definitely, snow is awesome. cold is alright, down to -10° Celsius, as long as the wind isn't too harsh... but gimme lotsa snow. nice packing snow, not too wet but not too powdery. white christmas all the way!

2. what is your ideal holiday celebration? how, where, with whom would you celebrate to make things perfect?
i'm not really sure what an ideal holiday celebration would be... it depends what you're celebrating. but assuming this means christmas, it would be at home, with my family, eating my mom's famous roast beef, with tons of yummy mashed potatoes and gravy... we'd all sit and talk and have a good time in each other's company, and a fire roaring in the fireplace would be sweet, even though the one in our house doesn't work... then at the end of the night, a nice present-opening session...

3. do you do have any holiday traditions?
no real traditions aside from opening all the presents together... me and my bro used to have to wait until boxing day (that's the day after christmas, for those not in the know) to open our presents, but we slowly moved it up to christmas when everyone started getting busy with post-christmas activities...

4. do you do anything to help the needy?
particularly at this time of year? not really... i've tried to be a bit more conscientious with my gift-giving though, making sure my gifts are actually useful and appreciated... otherwise, i try to donate money to charities on other ppl's behalf...

5. what one gift would you like for yourself?
for myself, i don't really need anything... but a plane ticket home would be nice.

posted by wongoz @ 3.36a gmt+1 | link it! | back to top

12.20.2003 she's just learning, officer...

i've really meant to blog before now, but it just hasn't happened... obviously... sorry about that... ok, so a quick recap of the week so far...

football pools: only playing for the championship in 1 of 4 pools. so sucky. all the underdogs won in all 4 pools. i was the higher seed last week in 3 of 4 pools, but which team makes it through? the one i don't expect to... man, it's like all my guys decided to mail it in last week. brutal...

so christmas is almost upon us... merry christmas and happy new year to all, in case you don't read this blog again after today... unfortunately, i have to be on-call for all the workdays after the 23rd... that's really not so bad, since i only have to leave my cell phone on... don't have to be on-site. yay. hamburg plans are still a go...

so kitty came to visit... she's studying in italy this year, after finishing a diploma at ocad... so you're either wondering who kitty is, or how i know her... hahaha... funny story actually, almost like someone else finding their fiancé... :P

so you remember a couple months ago when friendster wasn't already passé? yeah, i was clicking on friends of friends' pages and i happened across kitty's page, which said she was in italy... i thought that was quite interesting, so i msg'd her and we started emailing... she wasn't going home for christmas so i invited her to come visit, and now here she is!

anyways, so after a couple days of wandering around on her own (no snickering, karen!), we went to maastricht today... walked around the old city centre before hooking up a nice chinese dinner at wen chow... she was so glad to have real chinese rice again, it was hilarious...

and then we went to watch lord of the rings: return of the king... great movie. best of the trilogy. ending dragged on a bit, but without having read the books yet, i can imagine peter jackson was just trying to be faithful to the story...

after the movie, we touched 220kph in the rented bmw on the way back to aachen... heh, kitty was a little edgy for a couple seconds there... and then we went to the empty wal-mart parking lot to teach her to drive stick... well, all was going well up to the point the cops came by. that's right, the polizei came around for some questioning... apparently it's illegal for someone without a license to even be learning to drive here... luckily, kitty had her license and there wasn't really anything they could do except recommend another place for our adventures... ah wellz.

so tomorrow, the young adults' fellowship at ibc, one tea for 12, will be having the christmas potluck dinner... should be good, but i'm not sure how many people to expect. i guess we'll find out.

alright, time to post.

posted by wongoz @ 3.10a gmt+1 | link it! | back to top

12.23.2003 i'll be home for christmas... not!

woohoo! home free! that's right, boys and girls, uncle steve is off for the holidays! actually, i'm technically on-call for tomorrow morning, next monday and tuesday and the morning of the 31st. but if the past couple days were any indication, i won't be needed.

so kitty left this morning... we had some really good spanish food last night at paella... yes, the name of the restaurant was paella. we also ate paella. coincidence? i think not...

i think she had a pretty good time here, even if it's not exactly a hotbed of artistic wonder... but she kept saying that she was all "museumed" out... i guess doing it every day in barcelona and brussels can do that to you but i'm not much of a museum person to begin with... i think she enjoyed being here though, just to have time to chill, see what life is like here, to meet ppl from my church and fellowship, to eat chinese and japanese food again...

the christmas potluck for one tea for 12 went pretty well, even though there were fewer ppl there than i expected... we'll chalk it up to the christmas holiday time and it being sorta unknown... hopefully more ppl will come out when we start our regular program in january... there were still some new faces though, and for that, we're thankful. christian and claudia led a short bible study on the old testament prophecies that were fulfilled by the birth of Jesus Christ... it was good. learned new stuff.

have i explained the whole thing behind the name of our young adults group? we chose it to represent the verse we base our fellowship on: 1 tim 4:12. "don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity." (niv)

i also got to meet up with alzira on sunday night... that was great! i hadn't seen her since i left western 2.5 years ago... she was visiting germany to hang out with her parents for a week (they live in hk), and they did a little mini-tour of germany and amsterdam... we met up at the new starbucks near the köln cathedral and got to chat for about 1.5 hours... it sucks that we couldn't have hung out longer, but at least we got to see each other... it was pretty hectic trying to organize that already!

anyhoo, the one damper on the weekend was that i discovered friday night that someone jacked the brakes off my bike. seriously! i was walking back from dinner with kitty and i just went to squeeze the brake levers as i sometimes do when i walk past it (it's locked up outside)... except this time, there was no tension in the wire. i looked down and the whole brake was gone! front and rear, both wires snipped... dang nab it! that really sucks man...

matt's annual christmas potluck dinner is tonight and it's the first year since, well, since he started having them that i won't be there... tragic, i know... :P but in any case, whatever you're doing for this holiday season, remember to party hardy and drive sobery!

merry christmas, everyone!

posted by wongoz @ 9.39p gmt+1 | link it! | back to top

12.26.2003 no boxing day in germany

well, i hope everyone's Christmas was merry... i spent it in köln with church friends... we had a morning service which only a handful of people attended, and then a few of us (claudia, dawn, volker, volker's uncle dirk and myself) went for lunch and hung out a while before going to pastor david's place for dinner... there were like, 20 people there, a lot more than i expected... most were non-germans and/or living away from home, so it was nice to have a place to gather and such...

i rang up a whole bunch of people to wish them a Merry Christmas, mostly people i hadn't talked to in quite some time... i think i was on the phone for a total of about 4 hours. crazy... hahaha... talked for a bit with my parents and my brother, and then for a while with wing and hoang... we were going over some potential names for their baby, expected around the end of february...

also mananged to get a hold of yung, jnet and frances... that was coolz. frances, hoang and 14 other people from tcmc (my home church) are heading to urbana tonight! can't believe it's already here... only seems like yesterday (ok, really 3 years ago) that wing, hoang, hosanna and myself were the ones experiencing it... hahaha, hoang also said that my handling of the buses last time was way better than the ones ivcf is doing now... i don't get props from hoang too often (at least, not to my face) so that was very appreciated...

i also talked to a whole bunch of ppl at matt's little shindig last tuesday... a lot of old friends like nancy, wayne, joanne... apparently, i also missed mark by a few minutes and the amazing news that minh is expecting a "new arrival" sometime next summer! wow!

anyhoo, i won 1 of 4 football pools... finished 3rd in another and 4th in the other 2 pools... pretty disappointing finish to the season, especially how i crushed the field in one pool's regular season by going 12-2 and then tanked the 2 playoff matchups. brutal. key for next season - draft reliable receivers.

i was gonna post another friday five, but that'll have to wait until tomorrow cuz there's a couple other things i wanna write about... and sorry, no pics today.

ok, little rant in the middle of this festive season... i cannot stand it when people shorten Christmas to xmas. it drives me insane. i understand the inherent laziness of most people, and i know that many people aren't christian either. what gets me going is when christians do it. out of all the times when Christ is emphasized (and let's not forget that Jesus is "the reason for the season"), why do christians insist on leaving out Christ from Christmas?

alright, enough of that. one more thing before i go grab some lunch... people seem to have been posting about dreams lately (karen and lyds), so i thought i'd share one i had last night. now, i'm not sure what it was that brought it on... don't think it was something i ate or watched before i went to bed, but... well, you figure it out.

i was getting married (and no, andrew, it wasn't lyds) and it totally wasn't what i expected, in hindsight... it was taking place in what seemed to be some sort of big conference room, or something. matt wasn't there (at least, i didn't see him) and he wasn't my best man, but my best man didn't even show up. my parents weren't there, but my brother was, and it was all friends from back home, none from germany.

i can't remember who i was getting married to... i sorta remember the face, but i don't recognize it when i think about it... she was beautiful though, not like keira knightley beautiful, but pretty gorgeous nonetheless... i think i was only dreaming about the reception, cuz she wasn't wearing a normal white wedding gown, but more like a formal cocktail dress, dark in colour, but not black...

i remember what i was wearing though cuz i thought it was pretty ghetto and i needed to leave to go home to get my suit, but then i was like, it'll take so long to drive home and pick it up and come back, i thought i would miss 1.5 hours of the reception. then i thought i could get someone else to get it for me, but i couldn't find anyone and then my cell phone was on the blitz... argh!

well, that's about when i woke up... weird eh? any thoughts? too bad i don't have a comments section...

posted by wongoz @ 3.29p gmt+1 | link it! | back to top

12.29.2003 i should go into film. or something.

congrats are in order... rené and sandra got married in south africa last saturday... nice! they should be in some other place besides cape town now, on their honeymoon... rené comes back sometime in mid-january, and then hopefully sandra will follow in a couple months...

big props as well for carol as she got accepted into the jd program at the u of t law school! awesome! i think i will steal a tiny sliver of credit here for being the one to tell her to apply for the jd program instead of the llb... :P

anyways, so i'm gonna head up to hamburg on new year's day for a few days to visit antoinette and to check the city out... no plans for new year's eve though. i dunno. usually i'd be game for a big party, but only if there are lots of friends involved... and now, there's like no one around here. hence, the lack of plans. not to worry though. at the least, i'll go out to check out the fireworks.

so what have i been doing lately? well, aside from sleeping in and vegging around the house, i've been watching a lot of movies. five, actually, since i wrote about lotr: rotk...

on Christmas eve, i saw elf and s.w.a.t.. elf was a cute movie, predictable in all its kiddie glory, but enjoyable nonetheless. will farrell is darn hilarious; just look at him. and i thought zooey deschanel, the other store elf, was quite cute and had a nice voice too. good Christmas fare.

s.w.a.t. was a bit too formulaic though. i mean, it was still watchable, cuz samuel l. jackson is his usual over-the-top self, and ll cool j (going by his actual given name, james todd smith) was alright too. he's no ice cube, but then, he's not ice-t either. i didn't see the last bit coming though, with the tj character, so maybe it was alright.

on the weekend, i caught 3 movies... freaky friday and intolerable cruelty on saturday, and mystic river yesterday. freaky friday was, quite frankly, disappointing. never mind the fact that jamie lee curtis can still rock it (a fish called wanda, anyone?)... but the chinese restauranteur whose mother weaves some sorta asian voodoo with her mystical fortune cookies? oh puhleeze. rosalind chao must really be desparate for work to take this role (and that horrid accent). on the bright side, lindsay lohan... someone to keep an eye on. :P

i have to admit, i'm a george clooney fan. i dunno why. it's sorta like the hugh grant thing, only he's not as good as that yet. there were times though, i really thought clooney was on his a-game, like in the scene where he meets catherine zeta-jones' character for the first time (who, btw, looks amazing as usual), for divorce negotiations. it's almost comical, but i think george is better at these roles than in any non-comedic one, like the peacemaker. so intolerable cruelty was pretty enjoyable, to me.

the real kicker though was mystic river. knocked my socks off. you definitely have to see this movie. clint eastwood is a real tour-de-force in this movie, and he's not even in it. director, co-producer... he even wrote the musical score. great movie. i found myself really engaged by the characters (not hard when you have sean penn, tim robbins and kevin bacon as your leads), and really rooting for all of them. the denouement was a bit surprising, but this whole movie was a surprise. excellent film. clint really knows what he's doing. i gotta watch unforgiven sometime...

posted by wongoz @ 10.22p gmt+1 | link it! | back to top

12.30.2003 friday five... really late

my latest kick at the friday five can... from dec. 26.

1. what was your biggest accomplishment this year?
hmmm, i can't seem to really remember accomplishments. i suppose there really aren't any. well, at work, i don't really consider anything, unless getting props from project managers count. i guess i would consider my trip to the balkans my biggest accomplishment... personally, i thought it was a great trip, and i learned a lot about the region and the ppl living there.

2. what was your biggest disappointment?
my biggest disappointment? hmmm... well, i guess it would be the time in late october when i found out that... that someone was hiding something from me. well, maybe hiding is not the right word, but let's just say, i was a little shocked about the information i discovered. dropped into the wilderness and it took a while to climb out of that hole...

3. what do you hope the new year brings?
i hope the new year brings new opportunities, tons of them. new opportunities to meet ppl (maybe a gf? that's probably pushing it), new opportunities in my career, new opportunities to travel... yeah. change. change is in the wind...

4. will you be making any new year's resolutions? if yes, what will they be?
nah, no real resolutions. they never get kept anyways. i'll have something more like wishes for the next year, things to aim for. maybe it's just a way to temper my expectations.

5. what are your plans for new year's eve?
well, right now, i don't have any. i hafta check up on a couple ppl, see what they're up to, but if all else fails, i'll probably chill at home for most of the night and then go out to watch the fireworks.

posted by wongoz @ 3.12a gmt+1 | link it! | back to top

12.31.2003 happy new year!

three straight days of updating! someone call the blog police!

aight, well, just wanted to update once more before the big 2004 hits... got about 4.5 hours to go here...

like i said before, i didn't really have any plans... angie said i could go to her family's place near köln if i wanted to, but it's really just her family there, so i didn't want to intrude... i'd probably feel like a yahoo there anyways...

then simone called me last night, as i was coming back from brussels (there to watch another movie - more on that later), and told me that i could go with her to a party that a friend of hers is throwing... well, i'm not too keen on that either, seeing as how i'd only know simone, but then, at least it's amongst friends, and not like a family situation. so i'll probably go to that, check it out and if i don't really like it, i'll bail and just watch the fireworks from the lousberg...

so i went to watch le divorce, a film which seems a bit arthouse to me, judging by my complete lack of knowledge about it prior to watching... it's set primarily in paris and in fact, almost half the dialogue is in french... well, i understood a bit of it, and i tried to figure out the flemish subtitles, but i think i got most of it anyways...

anyways, it was pretty good... i don't really like kate hudson, but naomi watts (was 2003 the year of naomi watts, or what?) definitely more than made up for it. i was impressed by her american accent and her passable french, even though she's a native australian... good showings by matthew modine and sam waterston (of law & order fame) as well.

well, that does it for me. guess the next time you catch me will be after the clock strikes 12, so to all, a very happy new year!

posted by wongoz @ 7.41p gmt+1 | link it! | back to top