Wednesday, July 27, 2005

I'm an emo rocker....

You Are an Emo Rocker!

Expressive and deep, lyrics are really your thing.
That doesn't mean you don't rock out...
You just rock out with meaning.
For you, rock is more about connecting than grandstanding.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

the space shuttle launch

I breathed a sigh of relief as the space shuttle made it safely into space. It has been a long time since we've sent someone up there.

Despite all talks about how our space agency has been under fire for all kinds of things from agency culture to budget diffuculties, I'm glad to see that they are at least trying to get things back on track.

And that's reall what counts.

Monday, July 25, 2005

Back To work!

Greetings! I made it back safely back to the US of A on Saturday from Tokyo, and narrowly missed the earthquake that rocked the city! I've had a blast in Japan, got to meet some really neat people, all were fellow analysts/translators and are at the top of their game, much more that I am at mine.

I travelled with a group of all men, three supervisors and two fellow analysts, so there were much testosterone but not too too much. There were two who liked to drink beer A LOT, while the other men suffered from jet lag and a case of xenophobia. (One of my supervisors just stayed in his hotel room and read.) I think I've finally gotten over my fear of eating raw fish, and have eaten sushi 3 times without any tummy incident! The secret is in the freshness of the seafood, and the mixture of the seasoning. I couldn't speak any Japanese, but nevertheless managed to pick up a few simple greetings so that some people there actually thought of me as Japanese!

The weather over in Japan was hot and muggy, their "rainy season". I was just glad that I didn't have too much of jet-lag!

Japan overall is a very clean country, and Tokyo is one of the most packed cities that I've been to. Most people are shorter in height and they work very hard. I will post more photos from my disposable camera when I get them developed. My tummy, needless to say, was very happy to have been in Japan! Nomatter where I am at, I'll always have an Oriental stomach!

We've stayed at gov't lodging during the first 4 days of our trip, and it was alright, typical gov't lodging, if you know what I mean. However, I was thrown into the lap of luxury when we got to Tokyo for the last 3 days of our trip. We stayed at ANA Hotel Tokyo (ANA stands for "All Nippon Airways".) and that's the hotel that our diplomatic corp uses whenever they've got guests. The rooms (at least mine) are small, but it's got everything, not to mention one of the best beds that I've ever slept on! I've got a good view of downtown Tokyo from the 25th. floor, and you can see it in my previous entry.

Never in my imagination would I envision that the gov't would send me to a place this exotic, so thank you, the powers that be!

I just wish that the GF could have come along on this trip, even though we did not have a lot of free time, what free time we did have was quite valuable! My biggest disappointment was probably the fact that I couldn't find the hello kitty world headquarters, or doraemon stores, but I did get to see the Harajuku district, where Gwen Stefani found her a bunch of Harajuku girls. There's really nothing that special about that district, all it was was a shopping area filled with stores like the GAP, Guess, Banana Republic, etc.

I'll write more about the trip later, still got a bit of jet lag to suffer through!

Saturday, July 23, 2005

hotel view

This is one of the views from my hotel room in Tokyo

shrine

A shrine located in the middle of the city. I think it's Shinto Buddhist.

ramen

mmmmmmmmmm!! Ramen!

7/11 dinner

Even the prepackaged dinner from 7-11 was good.

star crowd

These people were waiting for Japan's biggest heartthrob to come out from a cd signing.

bed


bed
Super luxury. I wanted to take it home, especially the comforter.

Friday, July 15, 2005

Off to Japan!

It's almost 11 PM at night and I am blogging, downloading some songs on my Ipod, and packing at the same time! I've been working frantically to get my own presentation ready for the past week, and finally, I'll get to get it out of the way in the next few days!

Tomorrow morning, I embark on one of the more exotic business trips in my life! Iraq was fairly exotic, but Japan? I can't wait to see what things are like over there!

I am going as a tag-along with my team from work, we will be going to a lot of meetings and powerpoint slide shows, all in business casual clothing, and that's new for me! I've never held any jobs where I had to be dressed up every day, maybe one of these days, I will.

I hope to be able to eat a lot of Japanese food, get to know some cool folks, and take lots of pictures in the process! I will be posting the pictures on this site when I come back from the trip!

Since I don't really know if I'll have internet access, or the time to access it, don't be suprised if I don't see you guys and gals until sometimes late next week.

I'll be missing the GF and all of our pets!

Monday, July 11, 2005

The weekend

Weekends are a great time to catch up on beauty sleep! Not that it's really helping me regain or obtain any beauty, but ever since I've turned 30, I find that sleeping has become one of my favorite pasttimes! I've never been a partier, drinker, or an all-nighter, just never found a lot of attraction in these activies.

The GF and I took her motorcycle to the shop for repair, looked at some other motorcycles, drooled over them, and then went to this boot shop in St. Joseph, Mo. I couldn't help but to have purchased a pair of cowboy boots, I mean, they're tacky but cool! You can see the photo in the previous entry! The store clerk was this tall, tanned, and blond woman who was no stranger to an Asian shopping for cowboy boots! In fact, she's even dating a Chinese boy! We got to talking about life in the Midwest (still boring), Asian foods, her boyfriend and his peeves, and I felt a sense of relief, why a sense of relief? Well, from what she had mentioned, I am not the only Asian in the Kansas/Missouri area, and hooray for Asian men! I mean, my Asian brothers are venturing bravely into the territory of dating Caucasian women! (I couldn't be the only one, right?) It's just kind of rare for me to see many Asian man dating Caucasian women, even less Asian men dating African American women, that'll be so cool because they can have kids who'll probably be really exotic looking, like Foxy Brown, Tyson Beckford, or that dude from that group "Fine Young Cannibals"... all part Asian and Black!

Watched "Tour De France" and marvelled at how skinny these cyclists are, most of them weigh less that I do! (not all that hard to do) I'm kind of ashamed to say that so far, I've enjoyed watching the cyclists crash the most ;-) !

Went to dinner with a guy from work and his very young girlfriend (he's 29 and she's 18), he's about to be deployed to Iraq. He's a bit of a doofus but overall a good guy. Wait, maybe he's really not all that much of a doofus, I mean, he was able to score with a younger chick, right? (gosh, my values are all kinds of mixed up, right?)

Ended the weekend at Barnes and Nobles, where I satisfied my appetite for tabloid magazines and browsed over some other books. This book that caught my eye was a book about this Marine who was gay, and a pornstar. All of a sudden my mind just wondered about what if I was also a pornstar while in the service? Nah, don't really have the body for it. The old joke in the reserves was that a lot of the females join the reserves because of the porn industry, where they all work at as civilians, just doesn't offer good enough health insurance, so they all had to do something, hence the reserves. I, on the other hand, just failed the audition!

Saturday, July 09, 2005

I'm A Dork

I gave in to my tacky taste and got a new pair of cowboy boots. Now when's the rodeo?

Friday, July 08, 2005

Save our little Katie!

From Ms. (Soon to be Mrs. Tom Cruise) Katie Holmes:

"Tom and I will always be in our honeymoon phase," Holmes says in W, on newsstands July 22. In the interview, a theme emerges with many similar comments, including "Tom is the most incredible man in the world."

Oh Pullleeaaassse!

During the W interview, the actress wouldn't part from Jessica Rodriguez, who is described as her "Scientologist chaperone." Rodriguez's role in Holmes' life remains vague, though Rodriguez says they're "just best friends" since meeting around the time Holmes met Cruise.

"You adore him," Rodriguez told Holmes when the actress was at a loss for words to describe her love.

I smell a bizarre scientology,mind-manipulation,twisted friendship triangle between Katie, Jessica, and Tom!

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Meatwad


Meatwad
Originally uploaded by Bethlynn327.
Since I posted the threat level earlier, I figured I might as well post this self portrait...

I am meatwad.

About the London Bombing

To all Al-Queda members, especially you, Osama,

You can all go to hell, stay there, and enjoy your 70 virginal pigs because I doubt that there are even one human female virgins out there!
While you are in hell, go and F*ck yourselves!
You don't even know how wrong you are, praying to the God that you've created in your own minds!

Deepest sympathies to the injured and the dead in London.

Terror alert level

From the GF,

Terror Alert Level

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Back from the in-laws!

Sorry that it has taken me a while to write, but I've been neck-deep in work and preparing for an upcoming trip. (for work) This entry will be short but I'll be sure to write more later.

It was so nice to see the nephew, little Zach! He was really happy to see the GF, myself, and the dog! When a kid loves you like that, it really kind of reminds you that maybe you're not a total loser after all. Sure, I might not have been or am the most attractive person out there with the winning personality, but at least I've been deemed approvable by the pets and most of the kids that I've been in contact with! Zach is so curious and loves to run around outdoors, and that's what kids should be instead of glued to tv or in front of their gameboys!

The in-laws looks like they've lost a lot of weight and are also stressed out because of issues revolving Zach's mom and dad. At least though, over this past weekend we were all able to let go of that stress for a little bit. We went out to have some good seafood at Pappadeaux's restaurant, and had some good burgers and hot dogs the day after!

I will post some photos in my next entry and have some more thoughts about what has been going on, so for those of you who actually read this site, stay tuned!