Nine Thirty Twenty Ten

Wow, it's been so long since I've updated the blog.. I think I have to recruit Amy to help me because things get so busy that I don't get a chance to keep this up.. anyway, a lot has happened over the last 7 months, so I'm going to update this in increments :) I hope everyone is well and drop me an email at some point.. I want to see if anyone is still reading this!

Let's start off back in April, when we went to Thailand with Amy's family and spent time with my parents there in Chiang-mai and Bangkok. Here's us out at a local restaurant.. my parents on the right and Amy and her family on the left. I think it was quite an adventure for Amy's parents who are not as risky with food or travel.. but they had a lot of fun and came back with some great stories..

We also went to the elephant camp at Maesa near Chiang-Mai which was a lot of fun and we went on an elephant ride.. Amy loved it.. Elephants and Thai people, it's like Pandas with the Chinese..

These hill tribe kids are so cute.. though they expect a small fee for taking pictures with them :) This is at the steps to Doi Suthep, one of the most famous temples in Northern Thailand.

I don't know if you guys remember this but at that time in Thailand there were anti-government protests by the Red Shirt People's group in Bangkok. We were ok the first couple days in town but then the protests turned violent one of the nights and government troops moved in. From our hotel, we could hear gunfire, yelling and see helicopters dropping tear gas on people. The next morning we decided to get to the airport to see if we could get out of the country.. Here's a shot of an overturned and burned truck from our taxi..

We finally were told that we could fly standby on a flight to Taiwan so we ran through the airport and security to get to the gate. I was exhausted afterwards :)

We arrived in Taiwan in the evening and I must say that I was very proud of Amy for maintaining her cool, considering we had no place to stay and it was already dark. We looked up places to stay on Tripadvisor in the airport internet terminal, took a bus to Taipei, walked around for a while then got directions from a very friendly concierge at the Sheraton to our more modest hotel, took a subway to Ximending, found a nice little hotel where we stayed for 3 days..

They love their Chang Kai-Shek over there in Taiwan.. here I am at the memorial.. (though Ryan tells me that he wasn't such a good guy and they are slowly removing his names from streets and such..)

Atop the famous Taipei 101, formerly the world's tallest building until the position was taken by Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Elevator to the top was so fast it makes your ears pop..

One of the days we went out to these hot spring baths, which were pretty cool.. I think it was a quiet day at this spa we went to so it was totally empty and just us.. This water spout was hot and very powerful.. it was great!

Possibly the most disturbing part of Taiwan.. one of the subway stations we often walked through had this special addition to the bathrooms.. if you zoom in and look you'll see a small diagram of each restroom including the stalls.. and lights which turn green or red, depending on whether each stall is occupied or not.. maybe this does allow you to judge if too many people are waiting for the bathroom but truly probably too much information..


For our six month wedding anniversary, Amy and I went up to San Francisco and spent the night in the city. We had dinner at a nice French restaurant called Chapeau! Good food, not too expensive if you got the pre fixe menu.. we stayed the night at the Hilton in Embarcadero, which I managed to priceline for $50 but the parking fees were like $35 (uggh)..


In May, we went down to San Diego for Luis and Lizette's wedding.. a beautiful ceremony in a catholic church..

It was also great to see the guys.. here's us looking pretty dapper.. I always look so short next to the dudes..

Amy and Gloria looking very pretty as usual..


Coincidentally, our friend Lin was in SD at the same time and she got us tickets to the San Diego Zoo for free.. we had a great time and took some pictures of the animals but the statuary was the best! Here we are on the polar bears..

Seeing what it's like to be a seal..

Lin and Amy on a replica of a prehistoric lion creature.. that thing is gigantic!


One of the really big things that happened in May is that we bought a house in Campbell (right next to San Jose, about 45 mins south of San Francisco). It's a small 3 bdrm 2 bath house but very nice size for us and in a pretty good area.. we're still getting used to being homeowners and all the responsibilities that come with that but overall things are going well and we're quite happy.. We have a bed for anyone who wants to come visit! :)

Here's the front yard.. there's a lot of lawn area that I'm trying to figure out how to get rid of.. either eco-landscaping or we may push part of the house forward a bit..

Our little kitchen.. we spend a lot of our time here and we like to have friends over for dinner and BBQ's.

Our living room.. all the furniture is still from the apartment.. Amy has been very good in not rushing out to buy new stuff.. we're trying to live modestly when possible.

And our backyard.. we've since gotten a bbq and some simple lawn furniture, which makes sitting out in the back a lot more fun and great for having people over. I also started a small vegetable garden and we have several fruit trees growing..


That's all for now.. I'll leave you with another promise to update the blog soon and also a picture of Amy trying to mow the lawn in front of the house.. we've since hired a gardener :p Take care, everybody!