#305 - what happened in 2009?

ok so i rarely do year-in-review type things because i don't really like categorizing such dissimilar (and continuous) events into a single category (i.e. a year)... actually, that's not true, i LOVE categorizing things... but it kinda seems weird to do it by years when things that happen today would be categorized into 2009 but what happens when i wake up tomorrow will be categorized in 2010... and what if i stay up past midnight, then i'll have to decide whether to categorize those events in 2009 or in 2010, so you see the problem here.

anyway, instead of doing a "review," i just went back and looked through all my blog posts for the past year and i was surprised at how many things i had forgotten i'd done, or forgotten that i had done them just last year. things back in january/february seemed like an eternity ago... for example:

- roger federer was no. 2, and rafael nadal won the aussie open. then during the spring season federer smashed his racket on court! then proceeds to win the french open and wimbledon completing his career slam, breaking pete sampras' record by winning grand slam #15, and regaining the #1 ranking... phew.
- i was in a community orchestra... yikes, i'm not ashamed of it because i wanted it to be fun and cool, but it was very much neither of those things, so i quit. oh well, a learning experience
- i bought a piano... seems like i've had that thing for way longer than just a year, but it's still sweet
- in february i was feeling so overwhelmed with all my activities that i over-worked myself and got shingles! oh man, that was HORRIBLE. and it was only a year ago (not even), seems like a lifetime ago...
- dollhouse started on tv... and now, one year later, dollhouse is canceled. so sad.
- my quarantine (with shingles) led me to the big bang theory, psych, attack of the show and... OLIVIA MUNN! woo hoo!
- got my dino buddy
- i totally called kris allen winning american idol (and the rest of idol sucked)
- me being a neilsen "family" was sadly not enough to save terminator and dollhouse
- started playing on a tennis team with my sister's friends... weird, but i like playing tennis so it turned out to be awesome
- the second half of the year was largely dominated by geekiness, taking things easy, and the beach.. so, a pretty good second half of the year!
- almost made a go of it in the romance department, but it flubbed... oh well, better luck next year.
- oh, and can't forget my portland trip last month! see? that was only a month ago and i have to categorize it as last year already...

anyway, i guess instead of a "2009 in review" it's more of a "where were you a year ago?" kind of thing because i really only had to remind myself of what happened in the first half of the year (the second half was too recent). oh well. i think the biggest news story of 2009 for me was SHINGLES! man, that sucked. hopefully there'll be a much better headliner for 2010, but for now let's start off with... live in the now, don't worry so much about the future but enjoy the present. take stock of what's around you, what's in your life and what about you and your life is great right at this moment and appreciate. i got a lot of this inspiration from reading a book (yes, reading an actual book!) by steve martin called "the pleasure of my company." of course i would related to a main character who's socially awkward and has OCD right? anyway, it's a good book, if you're looking for one to start of the new year with, give it a read. i love the point of view from inside the main character's head (he makes an awful lot of sense) and i think gives a nice boost of reassurance in human worth. plus it's funny.

#304 - PORTLAND! Day 4

day 4... well, we had to cancel our planned trip to see the oregon coast, due to being scared of driving on icy roads. but i still wanted to see some oregon forest-y landscape so we decided to go to the japanese gardens instead. but i missed the turn driving there and we ended up on the wrong road, there was a sign for the Pittock mansion so we decided to check it out! go spontaneity!
it was a good thing we didn't go driving all the way to the coast because just driving up to the mansion (which was on top of a hill) was kinda scary. but when we got there it was pretty cool. we didn't go inside the mansion (you had to pay, and i'd rather see nature than the inside of a house), but we walked around the gardens outside.

imitation of a tree:
there were surprisingly a lot of japanese plants around the grounds, like the red japanese maple trees were all over the place, making the garden look really cool with leave-less red and brown trees, and some evergreens mixed in.


so after the mansion we finally made our way to the japanese garden, but when we got there...
it was closed! BOO!
i guess that was a good thing too though, because we had a hard time walking the icy steps just to get to the entrance to the garden.
so after that we decided to get a head start for the concert instead. we drove to salem (about an hour outside of portland), stopped off at an outlet mall along the way (sorry, no pictures from there, but there were a surprising amount of asian tourists at that mall, like FOB no-speak-english asians, weird...). once in salem we had a bit of a hard time finding the arena, but once we did we were ready for RELIENT K! okay, so not a lot of photos from the concert obviously, but we had pretty decent floor seats and everyone was pretty close to the stage, so it was a great concert. we didn't watch the two opening acts (b. reith and stephanie smith) because we were starving and got some burritos instead (but we heard them, they were not bad). they only did a few songs each, which was perfect for an opening act, then we got seated for relient k! they started with "sleigh ride" (cool), but then their lead guitarist wasn't there, so they did an acoustic set, which was very cool because the lead singer is great on piano so it made for a good set. they did "forget and not slow down," "therapy," and "who i am hates who i've been" along with a few more christmas songs. luckily, though, they brought in the guitarist from the opening act's band to rock out "be my escape" and finish with another christmas song. it was sweet! after they were done it took toby mac for-e-ver to come back out and finish off the concert. i don't really care for toby mac (think white rapper + christian radio + black eyed peas wannabe back-up singers), but he actually put on a pretty fun show, lots of lights and excitement, not too awkward, so all in all pretty good.

after a somewhat long drive back to portland i thought it would be appropriate to end my trip on the last night with a nice, eccentric portland coffee house... and i got just that.

i don't actually remember what this place was called, but they had some funky art on the walls, a weird altar with creepy-looking dolls, and just lots of look at. i also had a gingerbread dessert and a latte, yum.

so that's it! it was a fantastic 4-5 days in portland, i loved playing tourist and brandi was an awesome tour guide! i definately got to see everything i wanted and more. relient k rocks! i have new appreciation for hawai'i weather and although i kinda liked the cold and being able to bundle up at christmas-time, i definately would not be able to live in that kind of weather on a daily basis. one thing i do want to take away from this trip, though, is how to live life like a tourist. to be able to start out each day with the goal of going on an adventure. i mean, a lot of the things that i found so neat about portland were things that people living there go through every single day, so if i can flip that way of thinking around and see those great things in MY everyday life, how much excitement and zest for life will every single day bring? i mean, hawai'i is a great place to that right? so live like a tourist, find the good things in the world around you... every day.

#303 - PORTLAND! Day 3

day 3 started much warmer than the previous two days... above freezing... by one degree. well, at least we didn't have to worry about icy streets anymore. this is the view outside brandi's apartment.
i even caught a squirrel running across the telephone lines!
here we are outside the steps to brandi's 2nd floor apartment, note the 5 layers of clothing that was still not enough to keep me warm the whole day.
first stop... the portland saturday market! it was pretty cool, like the swap meet except with quality things. plus, in order to be a vendor, your products had to be locally made and not mass produced, so there were a lot of cool things. unfortunately, nothing for me to buy, but still great stuff.
even though the forecast said the temperature was finally above freezing, we still found spots of snow and ice. the entire market was OUTSIDE (crazy people) and some tents had little space heaters... so at least we found a little bit of shelter. i had hot pho for lunch, which wasn't really great pho, but it was so warm that it tasted like a bowl full of heaven.
around the market was a park (we're now on the other side of the williamette river, on the opposite side of the museum) which was very cool. lots of stone paved walkways and old-looking street lamps. we're kind of in a historic district right now so all the architecture and surroundings were very nice.

after the market i was feeling like a popsicle so we stopped off at stumptown (fancy coffee chain) for coffee. i don't think i've ever drank so much coffee in the span of 4 days (or ever) in my life. but it was so cold that everytime i saw one of those hot, frothy drinks i wanted one. coffee shops were pretty happening places too, i don't think i ever saw an empty one, and each one was very lively.
after warming up for a bit we headed to pioneer square... it's a shopping district, but we went there to see a tuba christmas concert! well, it sounded kinda neat at least. when we got there they were still setting up (i think they said there were 200 tubas there) so we waited in the cold with everyone else (and there were a surprising amount of people waiting out on the icy steps to hear a tuba concert). then a super old guy came up (he was the conductor) and like an old geezer talked endlessly trying to introduce the band, it would have been comical except that by that time we were frozen solid and just wanted them to hurry up and start because we had to get to our walking tour very shortly. anyway, we ended up only hearing 2 songs (which were like 2 minutes each, it was weird) before we had to catch a train to our walking tour.
GO BEAVERS!
our tour was called a portland underground walking tour, because it was all about crime, sex, and other shady business. we started out exploring some underground tunnels, all the building in portland have underground tunnels to move goods, drain floodwaters, and (allegedly) kidnap people from their homes and force them to work on the export ships! here's one tunnel (it was closed up by the police) that may have been used for that purpose...
in the underground basement of a pizza parlor we sat in the dark and heard these kinds of stories, shanghai-ing, illicit trade, etc. i don't know what this sign was, our tour guide didn't know either because there really was nothing else in this basement except bricks, dirt, and more tunnels. but he said lots of people take pictures by it... so we did too.

after the undergroud we walked through more of the district and were told stories of corruption, brothels, and bars. it was pretty interesting stuff, mostly because the history was all pretty recent. i think his theme was "history repeats itself" because a lot of the places that he told us stories about were either still in existance or have come back in another form. for example, we walked along one stretch of the city that was mostly bars, clubs, etc, and when the city was first beginning those were the same kinds of establishments that portland was founded on.


we rode the tri-met a lot of places, it was cool because it's free within a certain area (then you just pay if you want to go beyond that area).
finally for dinner we ended up at rock bottom brewery. portland is famous for their multitude of microbreweries and this one was pretty good, i got the sampler...


this picture came out blurry, but i put it in here because immediately after taking this picture we were approached by an old man who asked us, "are you okay?" then, without waiting for our answer, promptly followed up that question with "you got any weed?"

after getting home for a bit, we decided to go back out to a mcmenamin's pub. it's a chain, but each establishment is pretty seperate. like this one was an old school that they turned into a resturant, bar, movie theater, hot tub place, etc. it was pretty darn cool, they really didn't change anything about the school, so walking down the halls you have your choice of getting a drink in any one of the seperate classrooms, the teacher's lounge, go for a hot tub soak or grab a pizza, pitcher of beer and watch a movie! we saw zombieland (awesome!). which was appropriate because on the way out we walked past this painting in the halls... creepy...
i liked that place a lot, i think i would go drinking there any day. later on i found out that my cousin (who lives in oregon) had her wedding reception in the gymnasium! coincidence huh? and at the time (before i knew about this place) i was thinking, "a wedding reception in a school gym? that's a weird thing, but i guess they do that on the mainland." now i realize it must have actually been pretty cool! day 4 - coming soon....

#302 - PORTLAND! Day 2

busy day... this morning was a little bit warmer, i think it was in the upper 20's... geez. no snow, because there was no rain, but anywhere we went with standing water there was ice. like in the parking lot of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry:
okay, it was just a little bit of ice, but still exciting.
here are some shots i took outside of the museum. the museum itself was pretty fun, of course, as in any museum you have to pretend you're a kid again so i ran to any exhibit that was "hands-on." their main exhibit was about fear, so that was kinda neat, although it was a friday so we were in the museum with a busload (probably more) of school-kids.


man, just about any outside shot looks cool and unique huh? i mean, i'm sure it looks pretty commonplace to anyone from the mainland, but it was cool to me. oh this picture below is me in front of a mural. it was kind of in the corner and didn't look very special, but there was a stool right in front of it just begging to be sat on... so i did... and here's proof.
this is the sunset over the williamette river, not the prettiest of rivers, but still kinda cool to view the scenery along both sides of the river (the museum is on one side, and the day after we went to the market on the other side).
so we probably spent the most time at the museum at this infra-red camera. not sure really why it was so much fun... but it was. and that's just it.
along the river outside the museum was a bike/jogging trail that went along a good length of the river, but it was fricken' freezing outside! i have no idea why anyone would want to run in that weather, i mean, run yes, because you don't want to stand still, but then the cold air would be blasting you in the face... hello snot-sicles. but there were a lot of people on the trail so i guess you get used to it?

went for dinner at saburo's. i know, a japanese place in oregon? but it was really good, and super popular, people start lining up in the cold a half-hour before the place even opens.
and we did too, so i had some time to snap shots of the streets...
check out the size of the sushi! geez, it was so good though.
and that's only one plate, i didn't get a picture of the second...

to cap off the night we took a walk to the video store to get some wii games... along the way we saw a playground, so what the heck... day 3 - coming soon...