Reunion Weekend

This weekend was the Stanford c/o 2000's five-year reunion. Five years! First my six year anniversary with Gina, then my five year reunion at Stanford...life just keeps bombarding me with reminders that I'm getting old.

I chose to not partake in the official activities, mostly because I find small talk to be really exhausting, and I already keep in touch with most of the folks I'd want to keep in touch with anyway. Plus a large chunk of my Stanford friends aren't c/o 2000 anyway. There are some exceptions, of course, and I was happy to catch up with old friends through other channels.

Drew drove up from SoCal for the weekend, and Paige flew in from big sky country, so Lisa and I went out to dinner with them on Thursday, then hit Palo Alto Bowl for old time's sake. I bowled a 300! 313, to be precise, over two games, but whatever. Actually, a guy a few lanes down from us did bowl a 300. What an athlete.

Saturday was the game against Arizona State, and considering that they were previously ranked in the top 15, and we had lost to UC Davis, the prospects were not promising. Then we jumped out to a 45-7 lead and hung on for the win! Unbelievable. This team is full of surprises, not all of them good, but they've restored hope in the program, and now we're looking forward to next week's game against undefeated UCLA. Win that game, and we're calling Jim Rome. After the Davis game, people were calling our conference the Pac-9, so Gerald has decided to continue the countdown for each conference win that we get. After our three game winning streak, we are down to the Pac-6...and counting!

At the game, I saw Angie, my old RA buddy from Lantana (the one who dated a sophomore resident...how sketchy), and Randy, who I hadn't seen in quite a while. And if you haven't seen him in a while, he's lost a lot of weight. DanFran, Lisa, and Gerald were there as well. It was nice to have so many hands to high-five at a game again, and it was also nice to once again have reason to high five. After the game, we all went to Paige's brother's place for a barbeque, where a few more 2K'ers were hanging out.

Despite my aversion to reunion festivities in general, it was still great to see old friends, reminisce, and share old stories. Supposedly my ten year high school reunion is coming up, but something tells me I'll take a similar pass. That's what weddings are for, right?

Six years!

Who woulda thought we'd last this long? :)

Today is our sixth anniversary, and to celebrate, I headed to Hawaii this past weekend.

The trip got off to a great start. United Airlines has a Halfway to Hawaii competition, where everyone on the flight guesses the exact time at which we reach the halfway point of the flight. We took off at 6:35pm, and the flight was supposed to take 4 hours and 50 minutes, so I split the difference and wrote down 8:59pm. Then they said it had to be to the nearest second, so I quickly jotted down 45 seconds and submitted my entry.

8:59:44!

Thank goodness I didn't use Hurley's numbers, or the flight never would have made it. I narrowly beat a woman across the aisle (who was just seven seconds off) to win some boxes of chocolate macadamia nuts. I felt kinda bad since she was the one who lent me the pen to fill out my entry. Lucky pen.

When I landed, Gina and I had our customary first-night-in-Hawaii dinner at Zippy's, and then we headed home and exchanged gifts. Gina had a picture book made of the memorable moments from the last six years (thoughtful), and she also got me a putting machine from Sharper Image (fun). I got Gina a Nintendo DS with Nintendogs (fun). Even if it were thoughtful, I could hardly take credit for it, since Hubert suggested the idea to me. Thanks, Hubert!

Friday night was Gina's classmate Tracy's birthday (she's the one to the left with the lei), and there was a big dinner planned for her with a bunch of other future doctors. It was supposed to be a surprise, but much to my surprise, doctors can't keep a freakin' secret! So much for the Hippocratic Oath! So the surprise was blown, but I don't think anyone cared. As long as they aren't sharing patient stories!

It turns out there were a couple of other guys whose birthdays were around the same time, so the group decided to kill three birds with one stone and present them all with a birthday cake.

The next morning, we took a hike on the Eastern side of the island, up a ridge that gives a view of both sides of the island when you get to the top. It wasn't a very arduous hike, just two hours roundtrip, perfect for my lungs and knees. Gina, on the other hand, hardly broke a sweat, and this was the view I had for most of it.

The views were great at the top, but that's pretty much what it looks like from Gina's place. I felt like the racehorse in Seinfeld's bit. We were just here! If we had stayed, we would have been first!

After the hike, we ate at this Jamaican place, and its location further proved that it doesn't matter where you go, the view is going to be nice.


We headed home and caught the last quarter of the USC ND game, then I followed the Stanford game while Gina caught up on her med school reading. Somehow we managed to win! Not nearly as exciting as USC ND, but any Cardinal win this year is to be cherished.

That night we headed to a nice restaurant on the second floor of the Kahala Mandarin Hotel, the place we've chosen for our wedding (the same place Jack got married! Also Dean, who's a real person). We had a VIP card that cut the food bill in half, so we went all out and ordered a poke appetizer, veal and steak for entree, and chocolate bread pudding and molten cake for dessert. They also brought out a complementary dessert for our anniversary, and it was a pretty funny moment when the waiter asked us if it was our first, and Gina attempted to explain that it wasn't actually a wedding anniversary, but a dating one. I thought he was going to take the cake back. :)


We went to Dave and Busters afterward to have some video game fun. Damn those shooting games are tiring! I kept having to switch hands because my shoulders got tired. We finished with Skee Ball, then called it a night. It was a lot of fun, and it made me think my housemates and I should go to Dave and Busters some time, but our house kinda has most of the stuff we'd want to play anyway. Especially since Hubert and I were planning to get Time Crisis for the PS2. :)

Thanks for the great weekend, G! See you in two months...

In the mean time...

It's been awhile since either of us posted, so here are a couple of observations in our lives while we work on posting Chang's trip out to visit me (yay!) and my first NBA game.

1) I found 2 partially white hairs today... the beginning of the one with more white seemed to correlate with finals last school year and the shorter one correlated with the beginning of this unit...depressing :(

2) Sports update:
Uppers: Broncos won! Stanford is 3rd in the Pac-10 (?????)! UH won! I beat undefeated Ruth in a fantasy football league (sorry Ruth; you would have beaten me any other week, but I was lucky to play you when you had a crappy week) ... Dean is now in first place and owes me big time.
Neutral: USC won... good for Pac-10 and good scare for the USC fans
Downers: Michelle Wie DQ-ed in her first pro tournament (Nike doesn't seem to be having much luck with their endorsements) even though she would have come in 4th! Chang beats me in my other fantasy football league, and I am last place in that one.

The world is coming to an end

Stanford football won a Pac-10 game, and DrewYay.com has finally launched!

I had good money that neither would happen this year. Head to the nearest bomb shelter!

Interesting observations

1) Michelle Wie is a millionaire at the age of 15. Geesh. When I was 15, I think I got $10 a week for allowance money. I wonder how she's going to handle high school and if she'll ever go to Stanford? Lucky girl; she's sponsored by 2 of my favorite companies- Nike and Sony.
http://www.thehawaiichannel.com/index.html

2) It seems as if October is the month of romance and birthdays- wedding anniversaries, dating anniversaries, and birthdays... any theories why?

3) Matthew Fox (Lost) was on Oprah today. He, Orlando Bloom (yum), and Sarah Jessica Parker were sharing their favorite restaurants and things to do in their respective cities. Apparently, Matthew likes this smoothie place in Kailua on my Island, likes to go skinny-dipping at night, and his favorite romantic get-away is the Kahala Mandarin Hotel which is our #1 choice for our wedding!

4) Elephants have bigger brains (in terms of mass) than humans.

The beginning of a new era

After a full year off - a black mark on the history of the game - hockey is back!

Tonight, the new season kicks off, and the game looks a lot different than it did when we last saw it, way back in June of 2004. Hockey had been in a long slide, and it culminated in a season-long lockout that no one noticed. ESPN chose not to renew its TV contract with the NHL. Changes were needed.

Thankfully, the powers that be responded.

So what's different now?

For starters, games are now televised on OLN, better known for its coverage of Le Tour. But the most important changes have to do with what's being televised. The product should be much more exciting to watch, and even casual fans can embrace it. So please give it a shot! You'll like it! I swear!

For instance:

Games no longer end in ties! All games that are tied after regulation will have a five-minute overtime. If the game is still tied, a three-player penalty shot shootout will determine the winner. I think most fans will enjoy seeing a decisive winner, and plus, shootouts are simply fun to watch. Good move.


Hmm, does this make the goalie God?
Also, goalie equipment will be strictly monitored for size, and the pad dimensions have been decreased. This was badly needed. No more Sta-Puff marshmallow men in net. Meanwhile, the dimensions of the offensive zones have increased, giving players more room to operate on the attack.

The red line no longer counts for two-line passes, and if you don't know what that means, just understand that this will now allow for longer outlet passes, which will spur the odd-man rushes (think fast break in basketball).

And most importantly, the referees are cracking down on all the clutching and grabbing and hooking and tripping that have uglified the game over the past decade. That isn't hockey! And now the refs will make sure of it. If teams adjust, the game will be much more fluid, and if teams don't, power plays will increase. Either way, this becomes a skill player's league again, which is what the fans want to see.

Lost is on tonight, and you know how I feel about that, but I'm hoping you give hockey a look, too. If you've tried to watch it before and didn't like what you saw, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the new product. Rangers vs. Flyers tonight! Watch for Peter Forsberg, the best player on the planet. Something tells me he'll be enjoying all these changes.

I'm hoping for a tie. :)

It's Been Awhile...

Wow, I think this is the longest that Chang and I have gone without blogging! Unfortunately, it may be due to Stanford football stinking or our fantasy footballs teams pooping (although this week's results look better) or that we've been playing a ton of Mah Jong Tiles on MSN.
Whatever the reason, here's the latest scoops on what I've been up to (with the exception of studying and sleeping):
1) The other weekend, my friend, Eun Ho, paddled in the women's race from the island of Molokai to Waikiki...a whopping 41 miles! Paddling is an awesome local sport. There are six people to a boat, so because this race was so long, there were switches in the open ocean with the rest of the team riding along in a motor boat. I think it took them about 8 hours to complete the course.


2) Here I am with my med school pals, Katy and Ashley. It was Katy's birthday last weekend, and her boyfriend flew in from the East Bay just for a couple of days. We surprised her with a karaoke party.


3) My med school classmate, Misha, made the dumb mistake of betting that the Ducks would beat the Trojans. I think he just wanted to lose the bet, so he could wear Traci's USC booty shorts and a baby tee. He has pretty nice girly legs. :)


4) The medical research building next door to my school was finally completed, so there was a celebration and blessing for it and my school this past Friday. Below are a whole bunch of dignitaries at the ceremony (I think our mayor is on the far left and our governor is 3rd from the right).


5) Woohoo! A fancy schmancy new dissection room!


6) And to cap the month off, Brian's birthday was last Friday. Geez, that's a ton of candles on his cake.