Patrick Kozey and the Mendicants sing for SABA!

SABA = Singaporean-American Business Association. We sang for their gala dinner about 3 months ago in San Francisco. Here's the smooth voice of Patrick Kozey of the Mendicants singing Hooked On A Feeling. The video's a bit jerky, sorry about that.

Durian!

Yes, believe it or not. They've apparently found a way to grow durian trees here in California.



I'm kidding of course. They freeze durian and import it to the Chinese supermarket here. I was at the supermarket (Ranch 99) the other day and saw durian in boxes. It was two pieces for 5 bucks which i thought was quite ex but decided to try anyway. Turns out they're seedless! Or at least someone took out the seeds. So it's a pretty decent amount of durian flesh for 5 bucks! Unfortunately I think I left the durian in my fridge for a bit too long so one of the pieces was a bit sour. Don't worry, I didn't eat it. The other piece was pretty good - nice and smooth and creamy and, of course, tasty. More on the sweet side, only slightly (but not really) bitter. Yummmmm. :)

Talking about food.... two weekends ago (the weekend before Tahoe) I went to SoCal (Southern California, i.e. the LA area and San Diego) with the Mendicants and Counterpoint, this all girls group that is pretty good friends with our group. We went to this ex-mendicant's house in Hollywood - he sound engineers for TV shows for a living and he's actually won an emmy for sound engineering on Ally McBeal and was nominated for his work on the X-Files! Pro... Anyway check out this HUGE pizza that he (his name is Kurt) ordered for us:



It was like 3 feet in diameter. Which is about... I don't know... 120cm?

Oh and I mentioned the Emmy... Here's a picture of one the Mendicants, Jai, and the Emmy in the background. We'd only just gotten to Kurt's and didn't dare to go touch it yet, so the Emmy is actually on a shelf in a corner of the room, and Jai is holding up his hand to just the right height so that it looks like he's holding a tiny Emmy. He's actually quite far in front of it:



Here're a couple of pictures from San Diego, which we went to on one of the days of our tour in SoCal. More specifically, Coronado, a small, very pleasant and pretty rich island just off the coast from San Diego:


That's my shadow. hehehe. Look at how nice the sand on the beach looks.


A picturesque view of my car set against the rising moon.... *violin music in the background*


I know I've been less regular with updates this year... last year everything was new and exciting. This year I'm finding rather different things important compared to last year, not all of which I'm inclined to say to myself "I wanna blog about it!". I'll still post updates when I can though. Like this one. =)

Ski trip!

Went with the Singaporean association at Stanford to Lake Tahoe this weekend to ski. Was quite fun, Saturday had really fantastic weather, and from the mountain you can see the lake and on the other side you can see the plains of Nevada surrounded by mountains. Great stuff. :) Sunday morning we awoke to find it snowing, and it didn't stop snowing the entire day. Apparently the snow was from a storm that came from the Gulf of Alaska... I cut short my skiing time 'cos the weather made skiing kinda unpleasant. The drive back was amazingly terrible - first they had chain control through the mountains, so there was stop-and-go traffic that backed up so far that we were probably in the traffic for 3 hours, maybe even more. Then just as we were about to pass chain control into the mountains, they stopped the traffic completely - apparently some car had taken a spin on the mountain. So for at least an hour, we sat in traffic not moving at all. Meanwhile the snow was coming down really heavily outside and with really strong winds. I must say it was kind of exciting to drive through the mountain during the storm though.

So we set off from Tahoe at 2:30pm, and what should have been a 4-5 hour drive became a 10 hour journey (including a 1 hr stop for dinner). Skipped my morning classes this morning to sleep, was really tired last night when I went to bed. Didn't get a good rest both nights that we were at Tahoe either. So, skiing was fun. But I was exhausted when I got back... and I'm actually still kinda tired now. Econ 52 midterm this week. Sigh. :/

Random post

It's been stormy today. Wind and rain, fallen tree branches etc. The main storm was supposedly yesterday - apparently it came out in Singapore papers. Winds of up to 70mph on the Golden Gate Bridge, gusts of wind topping over 100mph in Los Gatos (somewhere not tooooo far from Stanford) but somehow Stanford wasn't too bad. Which is good. But also makes me feel a bit like I'm missing out on the excitement. Apparently the wind was so strong at San Rafael that it blew over two to three 18-wheelers onto their sides on the San Rafael Bridge, somewhere over in the East Bay. I guess we're blessed that Stanford was spared the power outages and dangerous winds. Would've been exciting though. :P

Check it out on the news:
"Fiercest Storm in 5 Years Hits Bay Area"

Below (rather randomly) is an excerpt from today's entry into my (spiritual) diary that I've started keeping just before I came back to Stanford in Sep last year (that's 2007, for those who haven't yet adjusted to the idea of 'this' year being 2008):

Trust God. That’s different from trusting that things will turn out well. Sometimes we think that trusting that other people will take care of things is equivalent to trusting God, but that’s trusting other people. Yes, God is bigger, but somehow the whole idea of “God = everything beyond our control” isn’t entirely accurate. ‘Cos other people are beyond our control. And God gives them free will to make the decisions they want to make regardless of whether they’re the same choices He would like them to make. And somehow, despite that, it’s also true that God is bigger than other people – sometimes it seems like I can trust Him to work through or around others, and sometimes it seems like I can’t. That bit doesn’t seem too important right now – I guess God’s main point to me is trust Him. Not a blanket trust that things will always go well, but trust Him. Specifically Him.

Grades

I just checked my grades. It's funny. I took 3 classes - Econ 50, Econ 102A (stats) and Intro to Judaism. I really don't like stats, couldn't bring myself to study really all that hard for it. I really tried, but I know I didn't do all that much. The Judaism class was interesting but I started losing interest halfway through, especially with that weekly 2-3 page paper that we had to do plus a final paper. But I got it done, and I wrote some time ago about how I've been getting As for my Judaism papers even when I really don't care about them. That's grace man. Anyway here's more of God's grace to boast about: I got an A- for Econ 50 which is decent, but an A for stats and an A for Judaism!! The two classes that I didn't care much about or didn't like, I got As in. And compared to how much work I put in, the grades are definitely undeserved but I realize whether I deserve it or not isn't all that important. God's taking care of me. :)

Pictures and updates on my trip to Hawaii which I just came back from coming soon... I hope. :P

Finals

Finished one final and one final paper, one more to go!

Unfortunately that final is stats. And I really don't understand a lot of the stats stuff ever since the midterm. I just find it really hard to grasp the intuition behind a lot of the stats stuff. Plus the lecture's at 9am and lasts for 1h 50 mins, which pretty much guarantees that I either will wake up late for the lecture, skip it entirely or fall asleep in lecture for at least half of it.

Well. This morning's Econ 50 final was scary but good. I guess God pulled me through. Running low on faith now but He can see me through even when I'm faithless...

Almost there...

finals...

It's finals this week... yes one quarter's already finishing. Weirrd. I just turned in a paper for my Judaism class. If I do well, it's really by grace, cos I didn't feel that I wrote all that fantastically but I also didn't feel like I could've done much better. I ALSO didn't know that the paper was due at 5pm, so I happily decided to take my time before realizing that the paper was due at Building 70 which would probably have been closed and locked by the time I was done at 10:50pm. I went there, and sure enough the doors were locked... BUT there was a guy still in his office (at 11pm?!) and his window just happened to be on the ground floor next to the walkway I was at so I tapped on his window and he let me in - didn't even ask why I wanted to come in although I offered an explanation anyway. Found the box in which to put the paper and left. Came back and discovered an email from my TA saying she didn't see my paper in the box at 5pm. Doh.

I guess God's taking care of things for me. Even though I didn't know about the time, there was still this one guy who was in one of only two offices whose windows I could possibly tap on (the rest of the offices are either in the back or upstairs). I think He's telling me He'll take care of me. On a related note, I realize I can't force myself to do stuff I don't really wanna do like I used to be able to. Which is good, 'cos I think I'm more relaxed and happier too.

Two more finals: Econ 50 on Thursday and Econ 102A (a.k.a. Stats) on Fri. And then it's Hawaii for a week! :) Going to Oahu with Qianwen (Shaowei's sis) then heading over to Maui with her to meet Awa (friend from Stanford Chi Alpha, my Christian Fellowship here) who lives on Maui. SO COOL. Can't wait for the break.

Oh and I've also discovered the joy of eBay and craigslist. Bought a pair of skis from some guy 20 mins away that are the perfect height for me, for just $48. And he gave me a pair of poles too. Just ordered a pair of ski boots from ebay too. I hope I don't end up spending too much. :P