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Bachelor Party!


    I walk inside and get a room. We walk in and the first thing everyone says is "We're in this room by ourselves?!?", for they had only been in Karaoke bars where everyone sings in public. I could tell they were really unsure of the whole thing by now, but everyone being fairly drunk at this point from the 32oz. mugs of beer at the pool hall, we fired up the first song. Half way through "Footloose", everyone was screaming/singing at the top of their lungs, and at some point, completely out of normal character, Chris leaps up on the table while still singing, tips it, and falls and spills all the beers. One time the waiter, a short and skinny Korean guy came in to bring us more beer, and 6'2" Bill grabs him around the shoulder and yells "Come sing with us!!", he begged "No!! No!! I have to go back to work!!" and looked truely frightened by the sight of a bunch of drunken guys and probably mostly by Bill. Everyone thought karaoke was awesome, and we couldnt' get Bill to leave in the end.



    Next day of the suprise party, we drove up to Lake Tahoe where my friends chartered a sportfishing boat for the day. I caught a couple of good-sized lake trouts and watched a regatta in the afternoon. There were many attractive people there sportin' nothing but scanty swimwear and fancy silicone. We were pretty much unrecoverable from the night before, so we headed to Harvey's where they had booked a suite for me. South Lake Tahoe is very classy as far as casino towns go. We had a great dinner at the Sage Steakhouse where they like to set their meats and desserts on fire. Afterwards we chilled out with cigars and scotch at the hotel lounge gearing up for a night of gambling, entertaining ourselves by playing Spot the Hooker.

    I love to watch Tony gamble. First minute of stepping foot into the casino, he plops a couple bills on red at the roulette table right before the No More Bets sign comes up, and doubles his money before the rest of us even decided on what to play yet. The best is seeing the other players at the table, whose probably been there for half an hour, up and down on five dollar bets, stare at him in disgust as he comes and leaves with his winning. I don't really gamble, but the boys put together a gambling fund for me that night, and told me they'd kill me if I didn't use it at the casino and instead bought a mutual fund or something with it. So I obliged and promptly lost it all at the craps table, although I was ahead at one point..

    I'm a light weight these days as I don't smoke and I rarely drink. That night, I must've had 6 or 7 different kinds of alcohol, cigars, coffee and energy drinks. Surprisingly no hangovers, but I was zombie like most of the night in the casino, to which I apologize to my friends for, for they had obviously spent a lot of time planning and a lot of money on this trip.


    Sunday morning, on the advice of Tony, we hit up the infamous buffet at Harrah's.  Instead of heading back home afterwards like responsible adults, we hit the casinos again for a couple hours. In the parking lot, I saw a couple giving their dog in the back of their SUV food and water, and then shut it inside again to go back and gamble some more. I hope they don't have kids!
    I had a blast on the trip, especially the unplanned karaoke, and ofcourse pulling in a couple 4 pound lake trouts out of one of the 10 deepest lakes in the world! I just wish I had my camcorder with me at RuRuLaLa...

audiology





I'm addicted to these new headphones i got online. What started as a padding item to get my LCD purchase over a minimum amount to use the 35% off coupon has turned me into an audio snob of sorts. These headphones are closed, over-the-ear style, like the the ones DJs wear. I thought it was a good idea to have a pair of these since my coworkers tend to congregate in the hallways nearby. But now I find myself taking these headphones with me home and bringing it back to work the next day so I don't have to use the earbud phones I usually use. What a world of difference, the bass response seems sub-sonic with these. And I really enjoy listening to music again, everything sounds new. I have a 6.1 Onkyo home theater system in the living room and music doesn't sound quite as nice as through these $50 headphones. You get the picture yet?

I'm listening to Faye Wong's Jiang Ai album. After watching 2046 last night, I am fascinated by Faye all over again. I guess I'm listening to it because the soundtrack of the movie reminded me alot of this album. Zhang Zi Yi didn't look as amazing as usual, maybe because she portrayed a more mature and cynical character this time instead of the "Oh, I'm kinda helpless and innocent but can still kill you with my pinky" type of role. I'm so difficult to please sometimes..

Speaking of hard to please, when my company moved to the new building I made sure I got a quiet corner location on the second floor. Now that I've been here a month, it actually feels kind of lonely. In the old building, I would know the schedule of practically everyone on the ASIC design team. I was the gate keeper of the geeks. Now it seems that if more than two people passed by my doorway in a day it would be considered unusual traffic. At first, I took my gym bag to the locker room downstairs and changed, brought my civilian clothes back up and then went downstairs to workout. Now I just change right at my desk. No one walks by, and if they did, there's not a real direct line of sight from the hallway to me in my boxer briefs anyways. I don't see my boss or coworkers anymore unless I need to talk to them. I suppose it's better than being micro-managed, but I hope I won't start taking it for granted so I can keep my productivity up at work.