2005

Archive for the year 2005

Give This Girl a Pat on the Back

Posted on July 13, 2005 by Ching under Web.

This is more of a go me, woot-woot posting. LOL.

Not only am I kicking Brian’s butt at Ogame, but I just found out that Air Milikay’s Philippines Style Links named Almost Famous (Life After Censorship) Best Blog for July 2005. My blog shares the title with Cia’s Pabulum, which is outstanding so I’m in very good company!

Anyway, Angie talked me into participating in the upcoming NCCJ Walk so I am looking for sponsors. If you are feeling generous, please email me. It is for a very good cause. Thank you in advance for all of your kindness and generosity. I really appreciate it.

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Happy Birthday, Misty!

Posted on July 10, 2005 by Ching under Life.

For pictures from last night’s outing click here.

I owe Misty a debt of gratitude for getting us out of the house. Well, Brian and I will go out, but it’s mostly to go see a movie or have dinner or what not. It has been a while since Brian and I have gone out dancing. The highlight of the evening has got to be when Brian and one of his exs made eye contact on the dance floor.

“You won’t believe this,” Brian tells me as he points to a girl on the dance floor, “Chandra is here.”

She has lost quite a bit of weight since I saw her last. That was a few years ago at the unofficial Spiegel call center lay off party at Rumour’s, a local karaoke bar.

“Let’s go dance right next to her,” I tell Brian. Brian and I have this way of dancing that I think makes some people uncomfortable. Our legs are often intertwined and our bodies are always stuck together like the two sides of a magic wallet. However, since we are married, we can get away with it. 😉

“Let’s not.”

A bit later a good song starts playing and I manage to coax Brian onto the dance floor with me. As people clear off the dance floor and other take their place, we found ourselves dancing next to Chandra’s group. I didn’t even realize this until after we had our fill of dancing and left the dance floor.

“You got your wish,” Brian says, “Are you happy?”

“What do you mean?”

“We were dancing right next to her.”

“Did she recognize you?”

“We kind of looked at each other and then she looked away,” Brian says while nodding his head.

“Good!” I am so evil! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Anyway, another highlight would be Misty getting a mock strip stease on the stage. There are pictures in the album. I hope you enjoy browsing them.

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Besides the evenings festivities, Saturday was a pretty regular day. Started out with my usual workout. I had to stop at 10:00 am, though, instead of staying until PHAT class is over at 11:15 am because I had a waxing appointment.

Kathy is still having poblems with her voice so Mindy subbed for her. As an instructor, Mindy is pretty cool. She is no Kathy, though. Muscle pump ended earlier than usual with Mindy teaching. Usually Kathy will use ever single second allotted, often going beyond the time allowance.

Something worth noting: Mindy’s music selection is pretty ecclectic. Provides a nice break from the usual fare. For example, she had us do our cool down to GNR’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door.” As someone who went through a GNR phase myself, I found it amusing. It was a pleasant surprise.

Sarah subbed for Julie in step class. I hadn’t seen her in forever since her Tuesday night step class at North was canceled for the summer. She teaches exclusively at the East location these days unless, of course, if she is subbing for someone.

It was good to see her again. She has is so motivational because she is vibrant and full of energy – and she has a killer figure that a lot of people (myself included) aspire to have…

It will never happen, though. I will never be thin again. I realize that and I’m fine with it.

After that we took our shower, went to my waxing, had lunch at PF Chang’s, picked up our movie tickets for today’s matinee showing of Fantastic Four and then went home.

I was supposed to work on my Accounting project, but I just can’t get motivated to do it. I ended up watching Lost in Translation instead. It’s not as bad as everyone says. It actually some really good funny moments. I guess I can relate more than most people because I am all too familiar with the language barrier issues.

I can also relate to how their relationship developed because I have been in those shoes. Not the same situation per se.

But I have found myself stranded in a foreign country, lonely as hell. It took several months for me to cope. After realizing that I’m going to be living here for the rest of my life, I came to the conclusion that coping would no longer suffice. I need to embrace the situation. It took years to fully adjust. Here we are, twelve years later, and I’m not even sure if I’m fully adjusted yet. Sometimes I wonder.

The rest of the afternoon was spent napping with Brian and playing Ogame. I got some laundry done, but it was still your typical, unproductive Saturday. Hopefully today will prove to be better, especially on the school work front.

I guess that’s all for now. I have to go send my fleet out on raids. 🙂

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Cable Mafia Ranks

Posted on July 8, 2005 by Ching under Games.

You all know how competitive I am. I never start any endeavor half-heartedly. I always go buck wild, full on, head strong into something. I am the same way with working out. I am the same way with poker. I am the same way with sex. And now, I am the same way with Ogame. Brian had been playing it for almost a month before I decided to give it a try. I figured that if it can captivate him for hours, perhaps it will be just as entertaining to me.

So we signed me up and he got me into the Cable Mafia alliance. It’s called Cable Mafia because almost all the members work for Cox Communications. They play the game all day at work!

Anyway, getting into the alliance was the smartest move ever. It gave me acces to the alliance forum and to other players who are knowledgeable and experienced. Attila, our kingpin, even sent me 10K in resources to get me started. JW helped me by giving me some leads early on. He gave me coordinates to nearby planets that I could easily raid because they had no planetary defenses. Rushdogg sent me some stuff, too — but he sent more stuff to Brian. Â 😛 Â I shouldn’t complain, though. It’s good to get resources from other people.

In our alliance, everyone starts out as a henchman. Within a week (a week and a few hours, if you want to be exact), however, I managed to get promoted to hitman. The titles are based on point values and they follow the mafia theme. Anyway, I was really excited to make hitman in such a short amount of time especially since Brian had made hitman only a couple of days before.

It took Brian almost a month to make hitman. When I first started the game, I told him I would make it in half the time. I totally blasted that since I made it in about a week. Go me!

Of course, I had some help. I couldn’t have made it to hitman so quickly without the generosity and guidance of Brian and the other players. But still, I rock!

In the picture above, you will see Brian’s current point status as compared to my own. Brian doesn’t know this yet, but the goal is to outscore him by the end of the month!

When he reads this blog I’m sure we’ll agree on a wager just to make things more interesting. Hmm… What should I ask for if I win? Any ideas?