March 27-28, 2010
Jonathan messaged me asking for a favor, a favor to take this money and buy Chris and friends a nice fancy dinner. More like a gift than a favor huh? I’ve been wanting to go back to Waterbar for a real meal after the alumni association’s annual meeting last year. I also knew Chris would like the place because it has cool humongous fish tanks around the restaurant.
Before dinner could be enjoyed, we first had to golf. We headed east to San Leandro to play at Monarch Bay GC. I usually hate this course, because its long, and windy… and flat with lots of traps to lose balls. However, today was a beautiful day and no complaints were rendered!
There were a lot of these little bugs though. Some decided to grab on to me, so instead of freaking out and killing them, I befriended them. I think I named him Mike.
This fox wanted to join the Daniel’s Friends Club. Denied.
Chris also wanted to join. Denied.
Then Chris brought Doug along and asked to join as a pair… so I said ok.
BIG beer cans. One is short and fat. The other thin and long. But in reality… they both make you short and fat.
Chris’ awesome pink tees. I want them- I stole some, shhh!
I <3 golf! (and planes)…
I always find the view of the city from the bridge to be amazing 
We were quickly off to Waterbar after golf and started our delicious meal in fashion, from wine to oysters to an array of appetizers. Ahsome suggested dressing up, and since it’s rare you get to splurge at a nice restaurant, we concurred. The food was really good, ambiance was beautiful, but the alcohol, i mean… the friends really made the whole experience awesome!
Yum! Chris & I love oysters, Grace not so much…
Appetizers were yum too! Ahsome’s fav was the truffle fries… -______-
Delish dinner. I found some to be a little salty… but I usually find everything to be a little salty.
The tank looks gross from this picture, but its awesome in real life! True story.
I also <3 bridges.. especially at night when it’s all bright and shiny
Thanks again Jonathan!
Will suggested batting cages. I agreed. I thought it would be nice to pound some big balls (as opposed to little mini golf balls), and it sure felt good! Not sure if it was the bat, my terrible hand/eye coordination, or my girly weak hands… but the stingers were no joke. It was seriously painful, but it still felt good to let some frustration out here.
We got hungry after the cages so decided to hit up a Japanese restaurant on the way back up to the city. Had no idea where to go of course, but thanks to yelp we found a nice little restaurant called Kobe. The food was really good and the deals were also not bad. A side of warning… they give you a LOT of food.
I got my second taste of Tahoe this weekend with the KAPS annual ski trip. The trip had a different feel than the previous because it was composed of a lot of new people, and it was nice to meet some new cool people while getting to know some others better. Although the weather conditions were far worse compared to my previous Tahoe experience (ice and slush everywhere!), I felt a lot more comfortable on my skis and feel like I got the rust off. Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait another year, and then I get to take the rust off again.
Aaron, Chris and I decided to catch dinner together while Aaron is still in town. Aaron initially suggested a tapas place in Belden Lane, but we switched it up to a French seafood restaurant called 
I continued my birthday celebration over the weekend with golf at Stonetree GC in Novato, CA Saturday morning. I was a little nervous due to the way I was hitting balls at the range on Thursday, but was secretly hoping I had taken the rust off a bit and would hit better on Saturday. Nope. I played the entire course like I was hitting at the range… note to self, go to the range more. It was a beautiful course on a beautiful day nevertheless (with the exception of the cold front that crept up on us in the final two holes), and a day spent golfing is a day spent well. Thanks Chris for golf! And beer! And the hot dogs!
Back at home we prepared for the birthday house party. Guests quickly trickled in and I went from sober to… not so sober a little too fast. Let’s not drink so fast from now on, yah? Thanks to all who made it to the party, hopefully I gave you some alcohol and didn’t drink everything by myself!
After defeating death Sunday morning and afternoon, it was birthday dinner time at Local Kitchen! It was the perfect venue, primarily because some of us were starving to death and it was all-you-can-eat pizza night! Thanks everybody for a delicious dinner!
I’m old. To commemorate my old age, SG took me out to a special dinner at 
It’s rare we’ll get whatever sushi we want, especially off the sushi menu since it gets expensive fast. But I got to order whatever I wanted today because… SG said I could. We waited just a little bit after finishing our appetizer and as if it were planned, a seat opened up at the sushi bar. We quickly moved seats and ordered all our favorites, from the sashi plate to uni, ama ebi and hamachi! We ran out of beer in the middle and ordered some hot sake as well and the sushi chef threw up some birthday sake shots for us at the end!
After two years in the bay area, the stars aligned and I finally got a chance to go to Tahoe! I got a special invitation to hang out with the Fluffies at their annual Tahoe trip- this year to Sierra. It’s been at least 5 years since the last time I went skiing, and I’ve gone at most 2 or 3 times in the past 10 years after going almost 60-90 times a year during junior and senior year of high school. When I got invited to the trip I instantly went on a mad search for all my gear… only to come up empty. I thought of it as a good excuse to buy new stuff but it was also very expensive. My rational is that I’ll just use the crap out of it.
Jane picked me & Will up from my house, and after picking up some more friends we headed over to Cathy’s in Emeryville for a quick reorg of the caravan. We then stopped by Sonic for a quick bite, and although I wasn’t hungry from eating 인절미 and spam musubi, I couldn’t pass up on Sonic.
After lunch is where things got interesting, hazy, unclear (depending on the person). Apparently a few people were allocated with a larger amount of the special juice we prepared the night before, and now that I think about it, decided it would be a great idea to drink it all. While they were drinking away, I made a promise to Will that we would go on 3 more rides with one hour of skiing to go. Bad idea. Why? Because on run 1/3 I could barely carve because my thighs and calves were dead. But promise is a promise and I went on all three runs, PLUS a bunny slope run so more like 3.5 runs.
It was dinner time back in the cabin for most of us… nap time for some others. Big thumbs up to our cooks of the night!! From there we eventually moved onto some ridiculous round of games. There were quite a few moments where I thought I was going to die laughing. I was also challenged to a push up contest somewhere during the night by JANE (yes a girl, thanks Ahsome for reminding me…) and lost. Not only were my legs sore the next day, my upper body was sore too, my entire body was mad at me. After a quick stop for Pho at a random town near Sacramento (random as in, these people had cows and donkeys roaming around in their back yard), we called it a weekend and headed our separate ways. Good job guys, and thanks for inviting me to an awesome trip!
It all started with a short email from Aaron in December saying he wanted to set up a reunion in LA. That reunion has come and gone. Since alcohol killed most or our brain cells this weekend (the little we had left… and I’m sure it killed a lot more than just our brain cells), the blog will need to be pieced together by pictures.
Will and I drove down to LA on Wednesday night after work through the Pacheco Pass. I usually prefer the Bay Bridge way because I don’t want to deal with going through the local streets at Gilroy, but it wasn’t as bad as I remembered. The ride was 100x better when not done solo. We got in close to midnight on Wednesday so we kept it fairly chill and stayed in. (Picture: Aaron decided to jump in the shower just about the time we would arrive… so I cleaned my car while we waited)
I went home on Thursday for a quick lunch with the parents + aunt, and then they ditched me so I went back up to Aaron’s for dinner. On my way I picked up PB from the airport who got in earlier to avoid the massive snow storm in the east coast. We were supposed to eat dinner together, but freaking Aaron and Will were full from a power shake (or whatever it’s called) a couple hours earlier; at least now we know it works. We tried a few places, but it was relatively late and everything was closed, so headed to 
Soon Isaac called from LAX and Aaron left to pick him up after dropping us off at 
The great thing about LA, which is the biggest reason I moved to the west coast as opposed to NY, is all the open grass and the abundant choice of sports! We woke up and first headed out to 
We were a bit afraid that golf would be rained out, but it turned out to be a great day with the exception of about 5 minutes of rain. This is usually a very crowded and time consuming course, but the rain kept most people away and we were able to get through almost all 18 holes. We even got a good look at a perfect rainbow (TWO actually, one on top of another). All my practice lately after work really paid off because I played the best 15 holes of my life. Team Aaron + ME beat team Chris + PB, so they bought us dinner at the Korean/Chinese restaurant 
After dinner, we spent the last night at 
My 이모’s family moved to Orlando from Korea a few months ago so our family took a trip down there to visit their new home. My nephews are the same age as when my sister and I first moved to the US, so I was interested to see how they were adjusting to the new environment. I’m glad to say that I breathed a sigh of relief to see they were getting adjusted well to their new school. They actually came back from school on Friday with a shoebox full of valentines day cards and candies they exchanged with their classmates. It’ll be a tougher adjustment when they go back to Korea in a few years, but no need to worry about that now. I was a little sad that my uncle couldn’t get located to a city closer to LA/SF, because Orlando is, well… really far. But at the same time at least it wasn’t to some remote city in Idaho (nothing against Idaho in particular). Besides, it’s the “Happiest place on Earth!”
The next day we headed out to Daytona Beach for some fun in the sun… except there was no sun. There was however, the Daytona 500 race which did not add any value to our trip, only traffic. It was cool to drive by the speedway though, the loud engines of the cars going by… I’ll likely never get this close to another NASCAR race in my life. After running around the beach with the kids we spent the night at Universal Studio’s Citywalk.
