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I don’t have much time to blog but I just wanted to mention 3 things:

1. Yesterday me and some friends decided to try and do the Wicked Raffle (you can read about it in the FAQ but basically they give away 13 pairs of front row tickets 2.5 hours before each show every day) and we all ended up getting in! We got to see Wicked FRONT ROW for only $25!!! Normally the tickets cost $90. I was really happy because when we saw it the first time we came late so we missed the first 20 mins of the show so now we’ve seen the whole thing and it was just as good the 2nd time!

2. We’re throwing an impromptu Cinco de Mayo party at our apt today do if you’re free… stop by! There will be tacos and beer. I’m going to try and make these taco cups:

MMMMMMMM!

3. (recently added) I forgot to mention that I finally tried Father’s Office! The burger is interesting…not really a typical burger but it was pretty good. I had a sip of my roommate’s fruity beer and that was really good as well! We went to the new location in Culver City…it was nice and not too crowded. We got to sit outside on a beautiful day. Great lunch!

Does anybody want to take tennis lessons with me or know of any good, affordable tennis lessons? This can be around W. LA, south bay, or even orange county.

So ever since I moved out here to Los Angeles, I’ve lived in west LA. It’s been almost 10 years now….I can’t believe it!! Now that I am looking to buy a house, we’ve been looking in the Orange County area since housing is a lot cheaper out there and plus I prefer that area for raising a family vs. w. la. Despite those reasons, I wasn’t really looking forward to moving away from w. la. I’m so used to this area. I feel like we’re in the middle of everything I like to go to, it’s closer to work for me, I’ll miss the eating and shopping and most importantly, it’s where a lot of our friends live! Hopefully, we’ll still all hang out after I move. That’s another thing that sucks about LA…it’s so freaking big and there is so much traffic everywhere that it’s hard to get people together. Sigh…I wish everyone would just move to OC with me!! :P

But after thinking about it for a long time, I’m really looking forward to living in Orange County. I think I’m ready for a change. I’ll be sure to keep in touch with my w. la friends and it will give me a reason to come out here…to see them and all of the places I like out here! So I bring you my list of why I’m looking forward to living in OC:

1. I can’t wait to buy a house. This wouldn’t be possible if we lived in W. LA where it could be up to twice as much for the same type of house. I can’t wait to decorate and make a place all mine (and boyrobot’s of course ha ha). I can’t wait to make it “us” and a place I can really call home. I’m tired of living in apartments where the rent goes up every year. No more of that!!!
2. I’m looking forward to making new friends. We know a lot of people in OC that we’re just not that close to since we’re so far from them now. But if we live out there, maybe we can become better friends! I’m looking forward to inviting people over for dinner parties hehe.
3. Biking! I love how the streets are so wide out in huntington beach and there are bike lanes everywhere. I’m definitely going to get a bike and go biking to the beach and stuff. I can’t wait!
4. food - i love all of the eating options out there. viet food galore and so cheap! they also have a lot of korean options. plus boyrobot’s mom lives there and she always wants to feed us haha.
5. shopping - there’s a wide variety of shopping options out in orange county…from high end malls to this really cool flea market by boyrobot’s house

So yeah…I can’t wait to see what OC has in store for me!

So this weekend, I saw the much hyped Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I’m a huge Apatow fan (Knocked Up, Superbad, Freaks and Geeks!!!) and I loved everyone starring in the movie…how could it not be the best movie ever!? Well….perhaps it was a bit too hyped for me. I just thought it was ok. It made me laugh…but it was definitely not as good as any of his other movies. Definitely worth a rental though. :)

Speaking of which, have you guys been redboxing it? I’ve been watching free movies ever since I blogged about it. The redbox near my house is so popular too. I always see people coming or going with redbox movies! Love the service. The only bad thing about it is you can’t rent old movies. I just found this list of 300 movies you must see before you die and the best films that never won a best picture oscar. Now I must see them all!!!

Ahhhh, I can feel the hint of summer coming our way. Around this time, I always like to think about my Summer To Do List. I love summer. It always signified freedom from school and responsibility, great weather, and vacations. Things I have lined up for this summer:

- my annual camping trip with friends. yes, REAL camping with tents and sleeping bags! looks like we might be going to Sequoia National Park and go white water rafting!!
- my annual fishing trip to Mammoth with boyrobot’s family and coworkers - i look forward to this EVERY YEAR! even tho i’m a horrible fisher and never catch anything. I always have hope with each new year though ahha. It’s still a lot of fun!!! can’t wait
- Dallas trip for my hs friend’s wedding. We’ll be staying with my friend Ronnie who I probably haven’t seen for about 7 or 8 years!! He is going to be giving us a yummy food tour of Dallas too! hehe.

Also, some new exciting things happening this summer is that my sister is going to be getting married! and then I will be going on a cruise with my family and extended family including all of my favorite cousins. This is going to be my first cruise and I’m SO EXCITED!!! We are going to be doing a 4 day Baja Carnival cruise. I can’t wait to spend time with my family. It will be the first time we are doing such a large family get-together. My family’s so fun, so I know I will have a great time!

Things I will/want do this summer:
- Disneyland with my cousins and sister. it’s been awhile since I’ve gone, should be fun!
- We have plans to go to the Gilroy Garlic Festival this summer. I loooove garlic. The festival is in norcal so that means ROADTRIP! and we have a lot of friends that live up there including Hakushaku. maybe we’ll visit him. :P
- one thing i like to do is go to places around LA that i haven’t seen/gone to like the canals of venice and huntington library and botanical gardens
- more house shopping. man i’m addicted to going to open houses! it’s so fun. sometimes they have free cookies and drinks too hehehe.
- wedding planning. man i need to get going on this!!
- lotsa BBQs! mmmmm one of my favorite parts of summer
- more hiking!

any cool summer plans for you guys?

I want to enter in this Fodor’s contest where you have to submit a photo from your Alaska trip. Please tell me which photo you like best from my slideshow please??? :)

My Alaska Slideshow

The winner gets a Garmin Nuvi 760 and a chance for the photo to appear in the next Fodor’s Alaska book!

PS. There are 37 pictures total. Just leave a comment with the # of the one you like best! (I hope you can make it all the way through without getting bored hehe)

We had our first hike of the year this past Saturday! If you remember, last year I started a hiking group amongst some friends. If anyone lives in the LA area and wants to hike with us, contact me! We did the Mishe Mokwa Trail which was actually kind of challenging for me since I haven’t been doing anything strenuous for MONTHS now. It did feel good to be active again and outside on such a nice day! The only bad thing is that we dropped my GPS and cracked it! That means we can’t go geocaching anymore. I only got to go once so I’m kind of sad.

If you don’t know or have never heard of geocaching, it’s actually a sort of nerdy thing to do. There are several geocaching websites online. Here is a great tutorial. Basically, people hide containers filled with random items and they post up the coordinates of the cache online. You enter in the coordinates and proceed to find the cache and take an item from the cache while replacing it with a “treasure” of your own. There’s all different types of caches. One interesting version is a destination cache. This is where a cache is hidden in one location but is supposed to end up in another location. So each time you find the cache, you are supposed to hide it somewhere closer to its destination until it ends up where it’s supposed to be. Cool huh?

Anyways, geocaching is a lot of fun. I’m one of those dorks that love treasure hunts and stuff though. Here’s a picture of my cousins and boyrobot finding a cache in Little Tokyo (yes, they are pretty much hidden anywhere and everywhere!)

This one was found under the sign. You’d never have guessed it was there just walking by!

I’m going to have to find another cheapo GPS now so I can do more of these!

I love my 3 day weekends!! This one was spent like most of my other weekends: boardgames, movies, eating!

Friday - we spent the night at Andy’s on Thursday after playing Settlers of Catan. There’s nothing like playing a GOOD game of Settlers. Unfortunately, the ultimate champion of the night was boyrobot but it was a heated race and fun nonetheless! We ate at one of my favorite viet places in Westminster, Brodard (their spring rolls….yum!!) and then went to go look at houses. Yes, boyrobot and I are shopping for houses….nothing serious yet but we just want to see what’s out there and which way the prices are heading. We probably won’t be buying until 2009. Instead of looking at houses that were in our price range, Andy took us to go see the houses he was thinking of buying…yes that meant looking at $1M + houses. It was nice to dream of a “one day” for us. There was one house especially that tugged at my heart. It had a super pimp movie room + game room. A game room is a must in my future house. I’m such a kid at heart!

Saturday - our friend Fong and Mike invited us over for some lasagna. Before dinner we decided to go shopping at Century City and then catch a movie. We bought some dress shoes for Mike and then stopped by Tiffanys to look at some wedding bands for fun. I like this one:

Nice and simple!

We ended up watching Jumper because we couldn’t bring ourselves to watch our original pick, 10000BC after seeing it’s rating on Rottentomatoes (8%?!). Jumper was entertaining but completely ridiculous. The best part of the movie is seeing all of the places around the world. It makes me want to travel soon again! Then we went back and ate some yummy lasagna, texas toast, and peanut butter cookies. Our other friend Igarta brought over a cake he and his gf made and we spent the rest of the night installing hacked apps onto boyrobot’s IPhone and playing “who can guess the song first” while Mike was uploading songs to his Ipod. We’re such apple whores! At around 1am we started watching King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. The movie was funny and made me such a fan of Steve Wiebe (down with Billy, the pompous coward!!). You’ll have to watch the movie to see what I mean. Now all I want to do is play Q-bert!

Sunday: After sleeping in, even later than normal because of the time change (grrr!) we decided to get up. I wanted to get a tshirt from UCLA and also check out a future possible wedding ceremony site, LA Exposition Rose Garden. Right before we left I looked up the directions only to find out they are closed from January until March 15th. Doh! I guess we will have to wait til next week. We still headed to UCLA anyway and I took this picture with the bear.

I’m a dork and accidentally had the camera on manual with some weird setting so the pic is all blue. Oh well. I still got my tshirt!

Lastly, we ran a quick experiment at McDonald’s. A lot of people were complaining that McD’s has an “eat in” tax. It’s completely ridiculous! It’s just the sale tax labeled wrong but a lot of people have been blogging that McD’s charges you extra if you eat in so you should always order to go. Well I hope this picture ends that debate! hehe

Click the pic if you need to see a larger version!

Ok, so I’m not that excited about planning a wedding (btw, thanks for all of the super helpful comments!!!) but I can’t WAIT to go on my honeymoon. We haven’t officially decided where we’re going yet but Belize is at the forefront. There are a few reasons why we’re leaning towards Belize:

1. It’s named one of the most romantic places on several lists. In fact, the first one I ever saw read like this

Ian Anderson’s Caves Branch Adventure
BELIZE
Chaperoned by a local guide, a daring couple can hike 90 minutes through the rugged rain forest of central Belize, then rappel down a dark, 300-foot limestone sinkhole in the forest floor to a series of underground caves ending in the ultimate secluded honeymoon “suite”: a candlelit chamber decked out with champagne and a bed strewn with flowers.
ONE-NIGHT CAVE ADVENTURE $575; 501/822-2800; www.cavesbranch.com

I know it sounds a little unconventional but it’s totally something we would love to do! Also, check out this list that lists Chaa Creek Cottages as a top 50 romantic place. The opening splash page is mesmerizing to me.

2. It’s a little different from other honeymoon places, yet also has the whole relaxing beach scene.

It’s also home to the Great Blue Hole!

3. It has a lot of interesting things to see and do. We’re very adventurous-do-anything-once type people. I can’t wait to do cave tubing

And to check out the rainforest, jungles, the mayan ruins, and many other natural reserves.

4. It’s not too costly. Belize and other places in Central and South America are one of the few places where the dollar is still strong! After our wedding and our plans to buy a house, we’ll probably be strapped on cash so it would be nice to go somewhere where the dollar can stretch a bit more so we can have a nice honeymoon!!

So yeah, those are the main reasons why we’re considering Belize. We tossed around the idea of Bora Bora or Fiji as well but it seems like everyone is going there. It would be nice to stay in one of those overwater huts though! :) Very pricey though…maybe one day! Any thoughts on Belize?

Nobody will see my feet under my wedding dress anyways right? :)

A few questions:

Food - which is better….pan fried scallops or shrimp with walnut (the one with the mayo)?

Flowers - What flowers are pretty? I’m not much of a flower person so I really have NO preference. We looked at flowers this weekend and I’ve always been drawn to orchids. In fact, those are the only flowers boyrobot has ever given me! So I am thinking of that…but they are pretty pricy and kind of simple. Like if we use them as centerpieces, will it look too bare?

Colors - Still debating on a color theme. Sigh…any combos you like?

Entertainment - We’ll most likely have karaoke (at our friends’ requests! haha), but what else is fun to do at weddings besides dancing? We will also have an open bar.

favors - yes or no on edible favors? i’ve heard both sides…what do you most people think? right now we have edible favors!

hair/makeup - man, to get this stuff done professionally it costs quite a lot! should i hire a professional to do it or ask my cousin who works at a makeup counter to do it? i saw her work on my sister this past weekend and i was happy with the result! i might have to find someone pro to do my hair though. a part of me thinks i want a pro to do the whole thing since i NEVER wear makeup and this is probably the one day where I will so I should just go all out. But it seems like such a waste of money! Even the makeup/hair trials are expensive to do!

lastly, from the weddings you’ve been to…what did you care/remembered/enjoyed the most? what should i spend my money on? what should i not bother with?

(I know I asked a lot of questions, feel free to answer 1 or all! any help would be appreciated :))

Sorry this is late but I got in last night so had no time to post this but better late than never! The trip was a blast and I wish we had more time to see everything. Some highlights:

The White House (no sightings of Bush though :()

The Capitol

Supreme Court (yes that little black speck is boyrobot!)

Lincoln Memorial

Seeing the panda bears at the zoo…AMAZING. I swear they look like men in panda bear suits!

Another cool animal we saw at the zoo..the HIPPO! And we got to see it during it’s feeding time!

I lovedlovedloved the subway system in DC. Why can’t LA be like this???

I ate raw oysters and escargots (not pictured here) for the first time! I decided snails aren’t my thing though.

Washington Monument

Not pictured here:

Georgetown - hip area with tons of restaurants and shopping. We ate at Old Glory BBQ which had to die for cornbread…MMMM

Smithsonian - we loved visiting the museums, especially the air and space museum. Since we work in the space industry it was just cool to see everything. We also checked out an IMAX showing of a space station in 3D that was narrated by Tom Cruise. It was awesome. If you visit and it’s showing, definitely check it out! But skip the planetarium showing of Infinity Express….we both fell asleep.

Chinatown - I was really disappointed with DC’s chinatown. But it was interesting in that they have a lot of normal stores but with signs in chinese like Ann Taylor and Bed Bath and Beyond. But when I go to chinatown, I want to see REAL chinese stores….like the ones that sell cheap souvenirs! heeheh. Plus, it was way small.

Five Guys and Potbelly’s Sandwiches - Five Guys is supposed to be the best burger in DC. I thought it was good but that InNOut was better. Potbelly’s was pretty good! I would definitely eat there again.

You can check out my flickr set for the rest of the pics.

This past Sunday we held a Superbowl Superdip party and I have to say it was a success! (btw, congrats to the Giants!!!)

Let’s see if I can remember all of the different types of dips we had: Spinach (one homemade, one store bought), hummus, cheesy jalapeno, cheesy beef, baked brie, corn (I’m not sure what else was in it but it was good!), pineapple salsa, ratatouille, artichoke, and 7 layer dip. I have to say ALL of the dips were delish!!! I love dips. I was sooo full the whole day. Oh yeah, we also had homemade mochi for dessert!

The game was pretty entertaining, especially since the Giants won. I did one of those magic squares bets and I had really good numbers but did not win :( We also did a 10 question proposition bet after the 1st half so that made the 2nd half a lot more exciting to watch. We had questions like which team will score or punt first, etc.

As for the commercials, I was kind of disappointed in most of them but I thought this Coke one was cute!

Anyways, the whole party was a lot of fun. We might have to make this an annual thing!

Yeah, I need a vacation from my vacation. No posting today! I can barely get through the day at work hehe.

For everybody who doesn’t know yet, I’m engaged! Believe me, I feel so happy and lucky to get to share a future with boyrobot. I can’t wait! But there is one thing I’m sorely dreading, and that is the actual wedding. Most girls can’t wait to plan this day but for me, there are a million and one things I would rather do than wear a dress and makeup and be the center of attention. In fact, every time I think about it I get really agitated and stressed!

Other things that make weddings really annoying are that my parents are uber traditional. It’s so funny because when I talk to them they think they are so carefree and we’re so lucky that they aren’t enforcing all of these rules that were so important back in the day. But still, there are tons of other rules that we definitely have to follow. I have a deep respect for my culture and background and everything but to be honest I was born in America and am very americanized. A lot of the traditions aren’t what I envisioned my future wedding day to include but because I care about making my parents happy, I will do them. This includes wearing the vietnamese wedding dress (not the white one everybody else wears!) while walking down the aisle. Sad!

Also, my parents are hardcore buddhists so I will most definitely be having some type of “temple” wedding where a monk will reside the ceremony. So this means I’m limited in where I can have my wedding. I’m not even sure how the whole “walking down the aisle” part goes in a traditional buddhist wedding. And even though I’m buddhist by association, I don’t really personally practice it or anything. It has no meaning to me. But don’t tell my parents that! Sigh.

For the reception, my parents expect that I have a viet/english speaking emcee. I have horrible visions of a cheesy, fobby viet person dictating my wedding while new wave music is playing in the background.

Lastly, I predict seeing a lot of red on my wedding day. Red is considered a lucky color. My wedding dress, the ceremony decorations, etc…will be red. I hate red.

There are a million reasons why I don’t want to have a wedding. You don’t even know! :( :( :(

Boyrobot tells me that it’s just 1 day. I keep telling myself that. I can’t believe that “1 day” can make me feel so much distress!