I HATE BLOGGER!!!!!

IT ATE TWO OF MY POSTS ALREADY!!

ok, i am NOT going to write it a third time! anyways, i've tried multiple times to post earlier this week about my weekend, but something has been wrong with my blogger, i don't know what's up with it, so unfortunately i am mad at it and don't want to rewrite everything i wrote.

but i got my dress!! yippee! it actually arrived on friday, but the stupid office didn't tell me, so i had no idea. and i asked them about it, and they said they didn't have it (because it wasn't logged on their sheet, and they checked the small package area and it wasn't there). i thought it should have arrived by then, cause on the ups website you can calculate how long a package will take from zipcode A to zipcode B, and i calculated it to arrive on friday! anyhow, so i called the dress place on tues (but they were closed) so i had to wait til wed. so on wed i called, and they tracked it down saying that it WAS delived on friday! and it was signed for by the office!! soooo, i had to go call them again, and FINALLY they found it, in the large package room! i was so relieved that it wasn't lost somewhere or someone had stolen it or something. so i tried it on, and it's a little big! obviously my measuring skills are not so good, cause according to my measurements, it should have been a little tight. so now i'm glad i didn't get a larger size! hehe. i can now start accessorizing woohoo! good thing julian is in alabama this week so i can admire my dress openly hehehe

spring break

for the sake of those that do not want to see a scary pregnant lady at the top of my blog, i'll put in another entry. this week is my "spring break", next week i'll be starting up night classes again. and some weekend classes. fun fun. i don't look forward to it, but at least i'm taking the summer quarter off so i can concentrate on wedding stuff.

what i'm working on now regarding wedding stuff:
- my dress is being shipped! so i should be getting it the end of this week or early next week! can't wait! i'm really hoping that the size i ordered is not too small, i'm sort of scared!
- been thinking about what kind of veil i would like (why do i like expensive things?!) argh. i'm debating whether or not i should get a nice silky one (expensive, but will look pretty) or one of those cheap-o ones since i'll only be wearing it for an hour or so. sigh.
- i've been researching about "other" dresses, i know i know, i'm very fickle and i have not decided whether or not i want to wear more dresses.
- bridesmaid dresses, this is a VERY big stress right now. i can't wait until i've picked one and never have to think about it again. let's just say finding a dress that looks good on 4 different body types AND is pretty is no easy task.
- i'm going to order our invitations soon
- my mom is coming back from taiwan on friday so i'll get to see my taiwan pictures, yay!! i forgot to tell the wedding studio that i didn't want weird english words in our album, so i'm hoping and praying that they don't do that normally! ack!!

ok, i guess that's it for now. work still sucks, as usual. at least supposedly next week we're starting the working 5 days a week thing, so if you work more, you get a comp day. i've already earned a comp day for working last sunday =P and i get a two day weekend this weekend! it's been quite a while since i've had one of those. we're having another release on friday, so they gave us the weekend off! yippeee!!

ack!

i happened upon this picture while i was browsing my usual wedding message boards, is it just me or is this not scary???
she's about 39 weeks pregnant, it looks....so.....BIG!!!

seattle/vancouver

julian booked our airplane tickets for seattle last night for memorial day weekend, and we plan on going to vancouver as well! i know a few of you have gone to both recently, so let me know what are the must go to's, and of course, the must eats (DESSERT!!) i'll definitely have to go to death by chocolate i think hehe.

here are the list of places i must go to before i have a baby:
australia/new zealand (let's go next year!!!)
greece (the year after??!!) =P

other places i would like to visit but not as high:
caribbean
mexico (cancun)
thailand/japan/maldives/bali

it seems like i prefer tropical destinations eh? =P

more pretty earrings

I really like these earrings, these are my favorite so far. There are two problems though 1) they are very very long, 2 5/8 inches, which I think might be too long for my face. 2) they are out of stock!! Oh yeah, I guess there is one more thing, they are a little pricey.

But I'm hoping that they'll be in stock again soon, so I can at least try them on and see how I like them, cause I can always return them!!

warm weather

the forecast is 80 degrees today! too bad i can't enjoy the beautiful sunshine and i am stuck here at work. the weekend is supposed to be nice also though!

it's such a change in weather from even 2 weeks ago when it was rainy and dreary. i can start wearing my open toed shoes again! so exciting! hopefully it stays nice. this weekend i am going to do one of my favorite things to do, go to the SF farmer's market!

supposedly we can work 5 days out of the week now!! but we still have to cover weekends, so our team has to arrange it so that one of us will be there during the weekend. so for example next week i'll work sun-thurs or something. it's so unbelieveable! i don't know what i would do with all my free time. i need to catch up on all my magazine reading. and probably need to do some spring cleaning =P i remember when i actually had full weekends, i would mop, clean the kitchen and bathroom regularly, but now that i only have one day of the weekend, i do not spend my free day cleaning, so they are only cleaned when it gets pretty dirty. hopefully i can get back into my routine again. after going to tucson & taiwan, i'm hoping i won't have as much disruption and will be able to get back to my daily life.

pictures

Here are my Taiwan pictures , they are on Ofoto, you can just select "View pictures", you do not need to sign in. Enjoy!!

homemaker?

oh yes, i forgot to mention, my relatives gave me a sewing machine and a rice cooker. i guess now that i'm getting married i'm supposed to learn how to sew and cook. hah!

oh yeah, i think i'm suffering from jet lag...i'm soooo tired. i don't know if i can make it to the end of the day.

taiwan

i am back from taiwan, and so happy to be back! the trip was pretty miserable, too much rain and sooooo cold. since shal already gave a trip summary on her flutterofwings blog, i won't repeat it =P
the first six nights (sat-thurs), we stayed in a hotel room all 4 of us in a room. it was very damp in the room, the sheets felt wet and slimy. and somehow all the bathrooms in the hotel were connected or something, cause our bathroom always smelled of poo even though none of us had used the restroom, it was gross. i guess that's what you can expect for a room that is $60/night! i didn't sleep well most of the time in the hotel. and it rained every single day, which pretty much sucked. it's no fun to walk around in the rain.
the next two nights we stayed at my grandma's house (fri, sat). luckily the rain stopped on fri & sat, but it was soooo cold. it was around 50 degrees i guess? i don't know, but like everywhere in taiwan, there is no heater in my grandma's house, so you have to wear warm clothes all the time. even with warm clothes, my head was still cold so i had a perpetual stuffy & runny nose the whole trip. the last night (sat) there were several small earthquakes starting at 3am. so basically after the first earthquake, i didn't sleep a wink.
and the flights to/from taiwan were loooong. and we didn't get an individual screen.

so that was all the bad points. some good parts of the trip: got to see shally, and she was a very good tour guide. she took us to pretty much all the sights in taipei, and all the good food places that she liked. it was fun celebrating her bday at ktv, much nicer than karoake around here, but of course it's also a lot more expensive. we got to take wedding pictures....unfortunately since it was raining we didn't get to take any outside wedding shots, but oh well. i didn't really get to shop that much, cause i was always tired which thus did not put me in the mood to shop that much. plus, it was raining all the time, so the night markets was not as good. i didn't get any new clothes or shoes which i had hoped for.

overall, i think i've done about everything there is to do in taipei, so i don't think i want to go back for a long time, especially in the winter. i'm thinking hot humid weather with bug bites is better than cold and miserable!! isn't that crazy?? anyhow, i now know that i don't think i could ever live in taiwan, the lifestyle is very different and i don't think i could ever give up my american luxuries =P

interesting tidbit

"A french manicure is when the tips of the nails are white and the nail bed is light pink. An american manicure is when the nail tip is an off white color and the nail bed is a really natural and pinkish color. The american manicure is really, really nautral looking and lasts a long time between appointments."

Perhaps a new thing to try at the nail salon...

accessories

Here is the hairpin I was talking about, I think it's really pretty, but now that I see it again, it might be a little big. And I don't know if it would match any of my other accessories (earrings and bracelet) since the earrings I want to wear are pretty big. But I think it's really pretty. Also I think I'll have my hair half up and half down, so it probably wouldn't work as well. Oh well, it's too expensive anyways.



These are the accessories I'm considering, I'm not sure which look I'm going for, they are definitely two very distinctive looks. Which do you guys like? I'm definitely considering getting both sets and trying them on to see which I like better. The top two pictures are one set, the bottom two pictures another set. I'm not sure how it look if I mixed the two sets. Anyhoo, I'm hoping that my dress comes soon so I can start looking for a veil and try on all my accessories to see which goes best with my dress!

poll!

Are these earrings too antique-y? I think I might just get them to try on, they're only $24! =) I think they're really pretty.


Right now i'm working on wedding accessories, it's quite hard to pick what to wear! I think I've decided to not wear a necklace and just wear pretty earrings and maybe a bracelet. I'm also trying to think of what I should put in my hair. I think most likely no tiara, so either pins or flowers. I found this really pretty hair pin, but it's $200!! yikes. I don't know if I want to spend that much. I'll try to find a pic of it, but it's really nice. I'm now leaning towards wearing only one dress, I think the additional cost of buying more dresses & accessories might be too much. Since my wedding dress was expensive, I should get as much use as possible out of it =)

not much to say

i don't really have much to blog about, i'm counting down the days until I'm out of the country, where no one can call me and ask me to look at a problem. i can't even go out and have fun without worrying about being called from work. this weekend i was called twice on sat, worked sun, called again sun night. ARGH!! i feel sorry for my backup, i've been sort of training him, but it's been kinda hard cause it's been so busy, i wish him lots of luck hehe. at least it's only a week, hopefully it won't be too bad for him =)

i have to finish a marketing plan for a new product for one of my classes and i have to finish it before i leave on friday. i'm sooo dreading it, i really totally don't feel like doing it. i keep on putting it off because i don't want to do it! the class that i took was sooo disorganized, this professor was new, and he really had no idea what he was doing. one guy in class asked, oh, can you send us some examples of good marketing plans? and then he turns it into a homework assignment!! i really have nooo idea what the heck a marketing plan looks like, so it's basically going to be a bunch of BS. plus i don't really have good ideas for a new product! argh! school sucks.

hmm, and i haven't seen sharon or pearl since new year's...that's almost two months. i guess i was in tucson for one month, ugh. it just sucks that my life is centered around school and work. i haven't had time to hang out, chill, have fun. i guess i could always try to make time, but i'm usually very drained after spending 10 hours at work. sigh. i am crossing my fingers that it'll get better...soon. next quarter i'm taking more units at school though bleh.

ahhh paradise

if only i could go on my honeymoon now...i can escape the soggy sj weather and bask in the warm glow of tahiti....ahhhhhh

the honeymoon is booked! we're going to 3 islands in tahiti, 4 nights on moorea, 4 nights on bora bora, and then 3 nights on taha'a. can't wait!! we'll be staying in overwater bungalows on all 3 islands, i was thinking maybe doing beach bungalows on 2 of the islands, but i got slightly freaked out when i heard that there is a higher chance of bugs and lizards. sooo, i decided we should just go for the splurge and stay in overwater bungalows the whole time =P i'm sure it's probably not bad at all, but i just don't like having creatures inhabiting my space, i'm creature-a-phobic. from the pictures, it may seem like those thatched roof villas should be pretty cheap since it looks so rustic. wrong! on average, our rooms are about $700/night. oy! paradise is not cheap

on another note, we've recently joined the millions of subscribers to netflix! so now we can watch all the movies we never saw in the theater and more. one example of such a movie is open water. it's about these scuba divers that get left behind while they're on vacation. somehow the people running the boat mis-counted how many people there were and just left without realizing they had forgotten two people. after watching the movie, not so sure i want to go scuba diving, ever. i'm sure you'll see a lot more if you go scuba, but i think i'm content with snorkeling.

happy valentine's day!

it's sooooo nice to be back home. my hair/face/skin was going craaazy out in tucson, it was sooo dry there. even in just 1-2 days back home i feel like my skin is much better here. and no more staying at work til 10pm, or even midnight! that's the latest i've ever stayed at work. ugh. i'm so glad i'm outta there. i'm also really sick of flying, i don't look forward to the loooong flight to taiwan. if i get asked to go back to tucson, i think i'm going to have to say no.

since i've been so busy with work and school, valentine's day has fallen by the wayside. this year it looks like it's going to be very low-key. julian will cook dinner, hehe. and for presents, umm, well, we're picking our own! =D i picked my pretty pink wedding shoes as my present, and julian has yet to pick his, but it'll probably be some type of clothing since i refuse to buy anything else. oh yeah, and we bought a box of godiva! they were having a promotion where if you buy a box over $23 you get a game piece. the grand prize is 52 pairs of manolos! and i think they were also giving away one pair of manolos to 1,000 people or something. well, i did not get a winning game piece, boo.

also, since i've been so busy at work, i haven't worked out in sooooo long. so now that i'm back home, time to start getting my butt in gear! since i usually work later now, i've decided to wake up an hour earlier (7am), work out, shower, and then go to work. i started this today, and i was so groggy and tired the first five minutes heh. oh well, at least it's better than not doing anything. we'll have to see how long this lasts. gotta look good for the pictures that i'll be taking in taiwan! (julian laughed when he heard that because he doesn't think working out for two weeks will change much =P ) but i definitely have to force myself to work out at least 3-4 times a week until the wedding. sigh. working out is no fun.

i remember now

i can't believe i forgot the most important reason why i'm staying at ibm! the pension! if i leave ibm within the first 5 years, i will forfeit all the money that ibm has put into my pension. obviously the lure of the pension has started to lose it's appeal since i totally forgot about it! if i could find another job with a salary that covers the pension loss, i wouldn't mind swiching jobs! i still have about 1.5 years til i've hit the 5 year mark. my prediction is that we'll be transferred to tucson by the end of the year, so if i want to keep my pension i'll have to look for another job within ibm soon! time to start updating my resume me thinks.

i'm close to booking the honeymoon, i think by the end of the week it'll be booked. i'm still trying to negotiate with various travel agents to get the best price. =P

dun dun dun duuuun

that was the sound of doooooom, i guess it doesn't seem the same written vs spoken. anyways, one of our team leads in sj is leaving, and one other guy in tucson has resigned as well! i wonder if i should start looking around for a new job. i dunno, so far i've sort of felt this kind of loyalty, not wanting to leave the team since i have a pretty important role. and other times i think, why? ibm doesn't care about you, they're going to ship you all to tucson! i don't know, maybe i'm still in denial, hoping that it won't happen, but i know that is not true. and plus everyone else has stayed, so i didn't want to feel like i'm a quitter. i guess that's how people get sucked into staying at a company for so long (30+ years!) i guess i need to start adopting the attitude that i need to take care of myself and not think about how the team would react!

pictures in tucson

i FINALLY took pictures while in tucson, so now you can see what it looks like. the first picture is of the mountainside filled with all the saguaro cacti (the big tall ones). the rest are a bunch of pics of different cacti. there are sooo many varieties, i only took pictures of the ones that i thought were interesting. enjoy!

honeymoon

i'm slacking off at work today cause it's friday! i'm researching about tahiti for a honeymoon, and it's not cheap. i think in the end it'll be around $10-$15k !! and that's not including business class airfare! yikes! i guess we should start saving up now! but the reviews of tahiti sound really amazing, beautiful and lush, and very relaxing. i have not seen a bad review at all, everyone raves about it, and who could not love an over the water bungalow, where you can just dive into the ocean?? sounds divine! i'm starting to get excited about it too! i'm also going to research bali, which is supposed to be similiar to tahiti (resort-wise) but cheaper.

oh yeah

i forgot to mention that i think work is making me crazy or something. when i booked my flight to tucson, i apparently booked it for tues feb 1 instead of mon jan 31. so yesterday when i tried
to check in, they couldn't find my reservation. eventually they found it, but the reason they couldn't find it was because i wasn't supposed to fly that day! so the flight that i wanted to go on was booked already, so they booked me for a later flight, but that flight got me in like 2-3 hours later. ugh. i was in such a bad mood yesterday when i finally got into tucson. i spent the whole day waiting. i woke up at 6am and didn't get into work til 4:30 tucson time (3:30 sj time). and flight time is only 2 hours!! it was pure torture just sitting around waiting. one good thing was that my stopover was in las vegas, so i got a coffee bean ice blended (yum) and i got to play some video poker heh. perhaps i should have just gone home and flew out tuesday! my car reservation and hotel reservation were correct though! i haven't completely lost my mind....yet hehe =)