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\\MONDAY AUG 23, 2004

"525,600 minutes, 525,000 moments so dear. 525,600 minutes - how do you measure, measure a year? In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee. In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife. In 525,600 minutes - how do you measure a year in the life?" -"Seasons of Love" from the musical Rent.

11:23pm- five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes (+~300)... is how long i've been working full time! it is absolutely ridiculous how quickly time can fly. a year. i guess the good is i definitely can say i have something to show for it. it is good to know i was able to 'make it' (for at least a year) on my own in the real world (who'd have thunk!). for the most part, i perceive the negatives more than the positives in where i am currently, because i feel so far from where i want to be. but i guess that makes sense, since i am at the beginning of this phase of my life.

one year past and another to come. here's to continuous introspection and self-improvement...

\\THURSDAY MAR 4, 2004

"Popular. Please, it's all about popular. It's not about aptitute, it's the way you're viewed, so it's very shrewed to be, very, very popular ...like me." -Glinda from the musical Wicked.

10:28pm- so i'm tired. have not updated this in forever.

reverse chronology... my birthday was celebrated this past weekend (first four pics in left column: dinner at virgil's bbq, alex & evita at karaoke afterward, allen, meagan and chris @ karaoke, mel and me in riverside park. much thanks to everyone who came and especially mel for planning the surprise. =D

saw wicked a few weeks back w/mel...it was awesome! i highly recommend it.

moving along back into winter time and the right column of pics... first is dinner we had somewhere in so-cal. it was really good to see college buddies again...afterward we went to mike's place and played some video games.

after those pics we're back to ny in my apartment... first is when grace visited in early january. next is when chris and i realized my vision of a new living room arrangement! then a pic of when karin and winita came to visit, and lastly, the fruits (or pizzas?) of one of our pizza-makin' evenings =).

things have been quite swell with me. chris and i have been playing entirely too much NFL STREET (kickass game). you can create your own team of 7 players who play both offensive and defense. thus, i created a team with the boys i grew up playing football with... chris, me, robin lee, tim laux, mike morrissey, jason pollack and lancelot rose. we even had meagan (fellow y-towner) try to guess all the characters on our team and who from our good old grade-school days they were. ironically enough, she guessed everyone except chris and me (lack of asian faces/features in creating characters didn't help... or maybe the fact that chris and i have been more boring w/our hairs than some of our childhood buddies). it's been bunches of fun... i'll maybe post some pics up here of our characters/team. =)

chris just came home and gave me a real funky awesome racket--i wanna play! but my lower back's been really killing me past two days, not sure why. =\ man, i know i'm not really that old like i complain sometimes, but sometimes it does feel like it when i find my body in crappy conditions like now. this has also been frustrating w/regards to my wingtsun training. i'm happy that the school (City WingTsun) has a passionate, dedicated core of good students... makes my time there very enjoyable. it's quite exciting now since although the school is just a little more than a year and a half old, more students are getting into more immediate levels. soon, we'll have a new batch starting poon sau! (which i know prob means very little to most of you out there...) =P

lastly, going back to birthday times...karaoke was a ton of fun. i hadn't sung much since moving here, and it was great to be able to just sing my heart out... i hope it wasn't too painful for those present, but i took advantage of it being my birthday to just sing like crazy. enjoyed it immensely. hope to sing more. and all that other music stuff...

okay...that's my life in a nutshell... it all sums up to a =) dan. gimme a ring or drop me an email if you've been out of touch.

\\FRIDAY DEC 19, 2003

"Lonely are the days, lonely are the nights without you. Christmas without you – Lonely are the days, lonely are the nights without you..." -Scott Leonard (Rockapella)

11:15pm- I LOVE WINGTSUN. it's so damn cool and kickass. geez...! man...! so amazing... yeah. so, the dynamic wingtsun class tonight was really awesome (if you couldn't have guessed).

i don't know what else to write. work has been alrite. i'm feeling more and more comfortable with what i have to do, which is great. plus i also feel more comfortable with the people i work with because i know many of them better. all in all, it's getting better. i've been somewhat missing at wingtsun the past week and a half, but it only fueled my eagerness to train well. wednesday was the institutional equities holiday party and thursday was the ibtech holiday party. they were both pretty fun...just wish they had spread them out a bit.

anyway, just 2.5 work days left before i head back to cali for the holidays! time has really blown by. i can't believe i've already lived in new york for 4 months now. things are shaping out to be quite alrite. i'm not a huge stickler for new year's resolutions, but here are a few things off the top of my head:

more music -- spend more time on guitar, on writing, and on singing
eat healthier/cook more
start investing money
more focused wingtsun training
keep in better touch with ppl
explore/take advantage of NY more (i've been a lazy aptbum the past few months)
read more

that's enough for now. anyway, this will prob be my last update for 2003. 'til 2004! (scary that it's here already)

\\SUNDAY DEC 7, 2003

"I crunch across the street, To the Maine man who sells us our tree every year, He asks how we’ve been, I just smile and say "bag up that five foot blue spruce please", Nice trees" -Scott Leonard (Rockapella)

12:41am- You know what bugs? The work "breakfasts". Looks innocent, but most people pronounce "breakfast" as "brek-fuss" or "brek-fest". now how are you to pronounce the plural of that? "brek-fests"...! most people say "brek-fussss". same problem with the verb form... "he breakfasts daily". pronounced "he brek-fusstsss daily". how annoying.

anyway, i just got back from watching The Last Samurai -- kickass! i particularly liked elements of culture clash, devotion to a code of honor, and just thoughts on the purpose of life. i don't like saying too much before someone watches a movie, but just go see it...

so as many probably know, IT'S SNOWING! (picture of rockefeller center, to the right, taken by chris' friend Aseem) too bad i can't have snow days for work... well i sort of did today... weekend work was cancelled because of snow. i had forgotten how nice it is to watch snow fall... and i had forgotten how much of a pain in the ass it can be to walk through slush and cold cold wind. apologies for the christmas-oriented lyrics above...but it's hard not to get in the mood with all the snow we have... and it is december.

alex started a very good class called 'dynamic wingtsun' on fridays for city wingtsun students. it's very cool because it doesn't focus on techniques but rather on repitition of basic movements in more intense training. the class has a sort of team sports feel to it, working with classmates and encouraging each other to get through the drills. i feel like it's something i need a lot, so i'm very happy it's available.

in other news... (chris &) i have been playing too much gamecube lately. ok. brain is shutting down... g'nite :)

\\MONDAY NOV 17, 2003

"By the time I recognize this moment This moment will be gone But I will bend the light, pretend that it somehow lingered on Well all I got's " -John Mayer

08:32pm- i feel totally out of breath. maybe it was the bad airplane air. or the attempt of adjusting half a day time zones within 4 days. in any case, my body is tired. so i just got back from hong kong earlier this afternoon. thankfully alex picked me up so i didn't have to suffer through other transportation means.

albeit short, my first trip to hong kong was definitely worthwhile (as many may have asked). and yes--although the flight was long, it was also worthwhile for catching up on rest and also thinking. as many of you know, my life's felt overly hectic since moving to new york and i haven't even had time to stop and think. well guess what a 14 hour flight, 3 hour layover in Tokyo, and 5 hour flight allow you time for? time to think.

it's good to stop and reflect on what you're doing. and after doing a bit of that, i definitely am happy to have what i have... just wish i had more time to catch my breath and realize it. and to clarify, things aren't as bad as my last post might have implied.

so...about HK. man...i know it sounds stupid and obvious, but there are so many asian people there! i don't know why this would surprise me at all, but it was strange for some reason seeing so many asian people... even though i've lived in areas with large asian populations the past several years. but hong kong definitely is unique...i thought nyc was crowded, but hk seemed more crowded to me. the subway system is pretty cool (as mel had told me before). it uses a magnetic card system more like card keys... so you could just leave the card in your wallet and so it's much quicker to go through turnstiles. there were some places where the air was so ridiculously bad...i don't know if i've ever 'breathed' such bad air... not in NYC, not in LA, not in Taiwan. i could be wrong.

so the highlight of my trip (next to seeing mel) was visiting the WingTsun school (see photo on right) and store on Friday. it was a mini-dream come true...to be able to just visit the headquarters and be there and see it all for myself. the store wasn't really a store, but there was more WT merchandise than i had ever seen in my life. i was seriously a kid in a candy store. i also met grandmaster leung ting's wife there. i didn't know it was her at first, and am glad i didn't say anything totally embarassing prior to realizing who she was. she was very very friendly though, and it was fun talking to her. i actually went back to the store on saturday to get more stuff=P.

visiting the HQ was amazing. and that's all i'll say here. ;) (since most of you probably don't care anyway)

result of visiting the HK school was definitely helping me refresh and renew my passion for WT. seeing Sifu Lau and other visiting instructors the past two months definitely did this already, but actually going to HK sort of did it on a different level. it also reaffirmed my confidence in my own abilities, which helps me feel good about going forward and continuing to do things the way i've been doing them.

i spent a decent amount of time perusing DVD/VCD stores for movies to buy and bought 3 chinese movies. Mel and i also went to a couple night markets (not typically my cup of tea) which was okay the first time, but then the second time i was a bit tired and so didn't stay long. (sorry to all those night-market lovers out there)

anyway, another interesting thing was communications... i had a lot of people speak cantonese to me, most of which made absolutely no sense. and funnily, while i was stopping-over in japan, everyone there spoke japanese to me. even on the flight from tokyo to ny the stewardess kept speaking japanese to me. made me feel like i should learn more langauges. anyway, need to go take care of other things now. g'nite.

\\SUNDAY OCT 26, 2003

"Why is it not the time? What is there more to learn? I've shed this skin I've been tripping in And I've never quite returned Yes, I'm grounded Got my wings clipped I'm surrounded by All this pavement Guess I'll circle While I'm waiting For my fuse to dry" -John Mayer

12:26pm- i have returned!

or have i? i've been feeling very not myself as of late. perhaps it's this illness which has been hampering me for a week now. whatever it is, i've been constantly re-evaluating my current "life". as some may know, my "life" has consisted of a few things: work (50 or more hrs/week), wingtsun (~12 hrs/week at the school), and the usual eat, sleep deal (and probably neither of which in healthy quality nor quantities). i think the lack of the right balance and over-exhaustion is partly responsible for leading me to falling under the weather, and definitely a factor behind my pensive mood.

funnily enough...i've begun to have a feeling of the "i wish i could go back to college" (check out Avenue Q soundtrack) blues... or maybe just the feeling that after college, the previously well-defined time-line of events-to-come on my highway through life has suddenly lost all notions of familiar or definite pitstops. and although the bladder of my patience is ready to burst, i figure i can hang in and go that extra mile before having to stop...and soon realizing that the next stop might not be for a while...

if passion is to living happily as oxygen is to breathing, i'm suffocating--gasping for a fresh breath of excitement or energy. i can point to areas i need to put my time to... music, friends, learning. the desire to appreciate, fabricate, or reproduce music is in me, as is that of spending time w/people or to pick up some reading material on anything that peaks my interest and will expand my mind... what is not is the ever so valuable resources of time and energy.

alas, i have come to my online sanctuary of MY HOMEPAGE! ...where i feel some level of control. hence i have spent a few hours on a sunday morning doing a little cleaning up of my cyber home. prior to this, i spent a good chunk of time last month designing the web site for the WingTsun San Jose school. okay...my thoughts begin to digress...but already i feel better having done something "productive" for myself. hopefully more updates more regularly soon. g'bye for now.