MEMORIAL DAY MAHJONG WEEKEND

this memorial weekend i've played 10 hours of mahjong, just on saturday and sunday. Charmaine had a set that she brought from Singapore that was like a mini set and Justin and Mansur wanted to learn how to play again so we played.....for 6 hours. we stopped to go eat pho and the place was super asian and even had the drinks I've been looking for since Hong Kong!!! zomgggggggg

 

3 colored bean drink, it was like halo halo but no taro in it

this is my red bean drink. HELLA PLACES DON'T HAVE IT. the funny thing was that the beans were gigantic and I've never seen such huge red beans before

Anyways we were playing The Stupids, Kung Pow and we ended up watching the Green Hornet while we were playing Mahjong. Good laughs and good fun. Played again with my dad and mom tonight at my house

brand new set!

We didn't play that long but it was fun while we played. My dad was teaching me all the rules again and strategy. Made it pretty fun. My dad won twice, I won once and Charmaine won twice. The one game I won, I won pretty quickly so that was awesome. yay! anyways that's my weekend of 麻雀!!

new job

Wow I love my new job. It’s so chill and I’m actually busy and I’m given freedom to what I want so I don’t get all burned out doing my job and anything else. Last week I had to drive around the Bay area to Stanford and UC Berkeley to put up flyers because we need more teachers for the academy and I drove 118 miles @_@. It was cool though because I was just finding the proper places to put up the flyers BUT the only stressful part was cuz I had to pay for parking and I didn’t wanna get towed. At Stanford there was a dude in the parking lot so I was really scared that if I went over my meter that my van would get towed right away. It was actually hard at first to figure out where to go at Stanford since it’s like it’s own freaking city, it is so big that it’s retarded. I called Brittany though because her boyfriend? Goes to school there and he told me to go by the bookstore and I had to drive like 2 miles away just to get there. It didn’t end up being too difficult after I got there but it took me awhile to just get there. I also ended up going to the LDS institute and I talked to the institute director and he said he’d put up a couple flyers  too. Yay!

I ended up getting stuff in traffic on my way to Berkeley even though I tried to time my drive so I’d miss it but it wasn’t even that bad of a drive. Before I went out though, I decided to take a break and watch some of the Heat/Bulls game. Lol it was such a hot day that I needed to sit down and rest because I drank up all my water.  Anywho, when I got to Berkeley I had to wander around for 20 minutes before I even found the billboard things that I could post flyers up on. It didn’t take as long since I knew what I was doing this time but wow. The driving all day was exhausting! Haha at least I didn’t have to go back into work because I already spent all day on the road. But this job is really good, I like it a lot!!

new job

So i haven't really made any posts about my new job but it's pretty cool. the first day i was just whiting out dates and changing dates on the program we have planned for the summer. The 2nd day I was blowing up balloons to prepare for the place's grand opening. We're some kind of tutoring center that gets high school kids in the area into the top 25 universities in America. Harvard, Yale and all that type of stuff. It's one on one counseling/tutoring and college prep stuff and IT'S EXPENSIVE OMG. good thing i'm not paying for it and I just work here! I've kind of been shifted into a more IT type role out here the past couple days. I've been setting up computers and trying to set up the network. The router wasn't too hard to set up but I do maintenance on it and the like.

I haven't recovered yet from my sickness but I still think it's the Cali weather morning sickness/allergy thing I have going. It's been like this for years! If I wake up cold in the morning, i'll inevitably start sneezing and have a runny nose until it warms up. I do not have this problem in Hawaii, Hong Kong or anywhere tropical weather like. It kind of sucks having to use up so much tissue, but I think my 3 year plan is going to work out anyways.

Plan: get my degree in Biology/Chemistry and get my teaching credential so that I can be a high school teacher. preferable in Hawaii, emphasis Kahuku High. I really really hope that I can start school by this Fall so that I can actively work towards my degree. The other day I was talking to my best buddy, Pablo Gariando, about changing my major to Bio(he's a bio major and wants to get into med school) and he called out "BS" on my major change to Biology. hahaha I've always liked science since I was younger, but when I grew older I guess I just got lazy and didn't bother to learn too much more about it. The labs have always been interesting to me since they're all hands on and I had a really good high school Bio teacher. I remember I took a Bio class in college and I got an A- because I remembered everything from that Bio class from my freshman year in high school until I was a freshman in COLLEGE. I was talking to my older sister, Carol, about being a teacher and she said that science teachers are always needed, not history teachers. I remember hearing about that before which is why I made my decision to change my major since I've always liked science.

i don't believe it. BUT THIS IS A PHOTO

http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day/camel-thorn-trees-namibia/

this is amazing

Mission Peak

lol this sucks, I thought I made this post 2 days ago when I actually finished walking the mountain with Justin. We decided to hike mission peak at around 3pm but ended up actually starting at 6pm. I had already finished swimming in the afternoon and doing some squat workouts and some more cardio at the gym. My legs were already tired before I started hiking but it was a good hike because I did take a lot of pics of the scenery.

this was the first bench/checkpoint. The sun was hitting all the smog or clouds but I couldn't get a better shot

Actually, this was the better shot but it looked a little dark to me. 

baby rattlesnake!!! it was like the size of my palm but I didn't wanna risk getting TOO close 

Me and Justin both found out that we had the exact same camelbak! His had a thermal covering for his water and his was blue while mine was green. LOL it was amazingggg how we both randomly had the SAME bag for water. We both wanted to turn back but I've never been to the top of Mission Peak and Justin wanted to take me there. We both encouraged each other so it was good that we made it!

we finally made it! a random asian guy with two hiking sticks helped us take the picture! *thank you random Chinese man!!

I got some pictures of the sunset but I didn't even realize that the sun was setting. Me and Justin were both just like "stupid sun, get outta the way!!" cuz it was super bright when I was trying to get some pictures of the clouds. 

look AT THE GLARE!! 

but it's a cool looking sunset. lol

these are the clouds I was trying to take a picture of. THERE'S THE ASIAN GUY WHO HELPED TAKE THE PICTURE!!

It was freezing at the top though, next time I go, i'm packing a blanket and some gloves if I wanna hang out at the top longer. my hands are getting chilly just thinking about it!! It got dark pretty quick but we took some shortcuts down so we cut off like 20-30 minutes from the hike down. I ran outta water near the end but it wasn't that bad since we were like 5 minutes from the bottom. I took a picture at the top of the mountain of the Bay Area all lit up. 

Oh, so pretty!!  hahaha

The whole thing took about 3 hours up and down but I'll have to plan a little more time since my parents and a lot of other people wanted to also go up mission peak. I've never been but now I know the route so I'm a little more confident now. It was fun though, I'll definitely have to go up again. 

Sunday=Mother's day

Yesterday was pretty awesome, it was mother's day so at church there was like a total of 19 people in the chapel. it was pretty deserted to be honest. The talks were pretty good because it was about missionary work and I actually paid attention and learned something. hahaha for once since I'm kind of complacent about listening at sacrament but I do need to put forth more of an effort and today, I DID! yay me!! Well, the other ward had chocolate covered strawberries that they were giving away to the mothers in the family ward and I decided to go ask them people if I could have some. I took two plates of strawberries and I gave one to Brittany Jorgenson and one to Maine. Brittany was calling me crazy and ridiculous until I handed a plate to her. LOL so silly, people are always afraid to ask for stuff and think it's like a social faux pas to ask. I saw that they had a ton leftover and all the moms already had a plate so THAT'S when I asked for the strawberries. It was entertaining.

After church I had lunch with Charmaine and we both decided the night before to cook dinner for my mom. We planned out steak, shrimp and spam and eggs for dinner. Maine pointed out that we didn't have any vegetables so we brought some napa cabbage to cook with the steak. I happened to chance upon a friend of the family who went out to a restaurant on Sunday /omg for mother's day. oh well. everyone has their agency right? anyways, it was really fun cooking everything and we got flowers for Mom and some of her favorite chocolate: Ferrero Rocher. Mom really liked everything and we even facetimed on Maine's iPad 2 with Carol and her kids. All in all, it was a pretty good day! yay!

community service and college

THis week i've been really busy with trying to figure out my education and getting my community service hours. About 3 months back, I got caught running a red light turning right and instead of paying the $480 fine, I was sentenced to 48 hours of community service. I've been procrastinating it for a while and I decided that since I wasn't working right now that I should get it done. I went back to the courthouse because I didn't have my copy of my community service form and I discovered that it was due by the 16th of this month. soooo, I went online and I found a food bank  in Oakland that I was going to volunteer at since they had Wednesday orientation, but then I found another food bank right here in Fremont and decided I didn't want to commute that far.

Anyways, my plan was to go to Oakland but since I wasn't going anymore, I decided to go to Hayward and check out CSU East Bay and follow up again with my transcripts and records. I found out that I could have started spring semester if I had submitted my "intent to register" except that I never got that form in the mail OR was it ever mentioned to me UNTIL this wednesday. It's too late to apply for Fall but since it wasn't my fault I tried to talk to someone that was higher up at admissions, but the lady said there "wasn't anyone" to talk to but I convinced her to at least send an email to someone that could at least attempt something to try and help me. I gave the college my google voice number so hopefully someone can help me and get me in for Fall so I can start school again. UGH. so ridiculous.

In other news, I got sick. Charmaine was sick and got me sick. lol