I’ve Arrived

Got in yesterday afternoon. Traveling time was about 15 hours including a layover in Amsterdam. The flights felt long. I expected to be so tired that I would be asleep most of the way over but that was not the case. I had female seat mates both flights. The first was an accountant headed to Holland for work. She was your typical friendly American girl, and she sure could hold her liquor! My only gripe was when she accidentally spilled a cup of water all over me. Luckily I dried out pretty quick. There were mostly Dutch folks sitting in the vicinity, and somebody was let me say… letting out gas… the whole way there. It was super stinky too! We held our breaths, rolled our eyes and giggled each time it happened. What happened to common courtesy?!

I thought KLM food was surprisingly decent. I made sure to eat something because there’s nothing worse than sitting there with a growling stomach.

My luggage didn’t cause too much trouble. My two check-in pieces were 50lbs and close to 70lbs. (Thanks to careful weighing by Ban Fu and Long!) I thoroughly expected to pay the $50 heavy bag charge for one. Either the agent wasn’t paying attention or he just didn’t notice. I sure wasn’t going to point it out. I didn’t even have to turn on my female charm. ;-) My carry on was too heavy! There wasn’t a weight limit as far as I can tell, but there was no way I could lift the bag to the overhead compartment. I almost took out a woman when trying to remove it. Oops…

It was such a thrill to see Stefano. It had been almost 5 months since I last saw him. I must admit that I spent much of the traveling time thinking about the move and how would fit in into this new land and culture. I’m happy to report that Stef is just as he was the last time I saw him. Yay!

I was feeling rather jet lagged the rest of the day. The highlight was definitely the stop at Gelateria Marghera. Stef claims it is one of the best in town and I believe him. I had noticed that the whole city of Milan was pretty dead due to the August 15-16 holiday coming up. It was crazy, no traffic and hardly any people around! But at Marghera it was packed, at 10.30pm on a Monday night. See for yourself…

I stuck with my Marghera favorites, pistaccio and cioccolato rhum (it had been 2 years and it was as good as ever!) but almost wavered when I saw the fruity summer berry flavors. I’m saving those for next time!

Sunday at the Park

8/22/07 – I posted the pictures but never got around to writing about it till now. Better late than never! Eugene was so kind to organize this fun day for us. It was supposed to be at Lick Mill Park near his house, but when he arrived at the ungodly Sunday morning hour of 7.30am, all the picnic tables had already be taken! Plan B: a small park that was literally 2 minutes away from my house, one I never knew existed in the 8 years I’ve been living there.

It turned out to be a really nice spot. Our potluck picnic resulted in a veritable feast of burgers, hotdogs, potato salad, chips, samosas, fried rice, chow mein, Korean bbq ribs, grilled shrimp, kabobs, Hawaiian spam rolls (not sure what they are really called but they sure were yummy) and chocolate cupcakes. There was no shortage of food for sure!

The best part was just hanging out with everyone. We had a great group… adults, kids and 2 puppies. We got a game of wiffle ball going, which is essentially baseball using a plastic bat and ball. Fun! Then we played ‘Steal the Bacon’, where we had run around A LOT trying to steal the ball from the other team. Phew, some of us could really feel our age catching up on us then!

It was a wonderful way to enjoy the beautiful California sunshine.

One More Week

It's good and bad. One more week till I can see my love... one more week left to spend with my friends here in California. I will miss everyone! I'm also scrambling to organize and pack everything up in preparation. It's hard to sort out what goes and what doesn't. Alot of these 'material' things have memories attached to them so it's hard to let go. Not to mention the fact that there is alot of stuff. It just feels so overwhelming at times.

But the impending move has forced me to look up some friends that I have lost touch with over the years. Today on my day off, I had lunch with Dave. He was probably my first friend in the MBA program. We laughed and reminisced over that first economics class, and others that we had shared. It was really good to see him, and I remembered why I enjoyed talking with him so much during the countless times we walked back to our cars after classes. He has the best sense of humor, a sarcastic sort, which always cracked me up... like it did today.

Tonight I had a great Vietnamese dinner with close friends, thanks to Long. I regret not discovering this cuisine until recently. I really like the dishes that involve your own custom blending of various fresh herbs like mint, cilantro, dill leaves. The food has a clean, fresh taste and just feels healthy. Then we adjourned to Andy's to chat and fool around with the wii, until it got late and Andy walked around sleepy-faced hinting it was bedtime.