I won't be homeless at the start of school! I found an awesome studio in Streeterville, the Chicago neighborhood where Northwestern Law School is located. Unfortunately, I won't be able to officially sign the lease until Monday, which means I am stuck in Chicago for the weekend. None the less, it feels good to have housing taken care of. I'll post more details once the lease has been signed.
Yay!
Greetings from Chicago!
I've decided that I hate looking for housing. I never thought it was that bad, until I realized that out of my last four apartments:
1. Berkeley (North Berkeley): moved into an empty bedroom at my friend's awesome apartment
2. San Francisco (SOMA): moved into a loft sight unseen, which turned out to be the nicest apartment I've ever been to in SF
3. San Francisco (Noe Valley): found the apartment myself in about 24 hours, and loved the neighborhood although I knew very little about it prior to moving there (other than it was close to the freeway)
4. New York (Soho/West Village): also moved in sight unseen after taking over the lease of a friend of a friend. Now it's far and away my favorite neighborhood in NY.
Basically, I've always had excellent apartment karma, but it seems to have run out here. I'll keep you updated!
Greg has posted his set of Hawaii pics for our viewing pleasure. I've stolen a few for my own flickr, but you should check out his entire set foor the cool pics he got with his waterproof camera.
Hawaii 2006 by GBeaze
Tommy and Mike in the Fishbowl, Maui
This past weekend was a great one, for a few reasons:
1. I was finally back home. Although I loved my vacation, it was nice to finally sleep in my own bed in my own apartment.
2. Thien, my old roommate from San Francisco, was in town.
3. The weather had cooled down enough that it was nice to be outside.
Friday - I met up with Mike and Thien at Katz's, always a great place to take people from out of town. Next we watched Talladega Nights, next year's Academy Award winner for Best Movie Ever. Afterwards, we went to Forbidden City for Oliver's birthday, before finishing off the evening at Park. We also met up with Patrina, an old dorm friend I hadn't seen in ages.
Saturday - I gave Thien a much more proper tour of NYC than his last visit to NY. We walked around Soho, through Little Italy, all the way to Joe's Shanghai in Chinatown. After lunch, we met up with Mike in the Lower East Side, then back to my place in Soho so that I could show it to Mike's friend, who was thinking about taking over my lease. I'm sure my tiny apartment was not that impressive (aside from being a dirt cheap 2BR on the border of Soho/West Village), but I hope she was impressed by the roof deck. It was the perfect afternoon for a few beers in the sun. For dinner we had Lombardi's. It was my first time there, and I loved it. We didn't finish dinner until about midnight, after which we spent the rest of the evening at Uncle Ming's.
Sunday - We kicked off the day with an excellent French brunch with Mayumi and Will joining the three of us. During the afternoon, Mike and I hung out at my place while Thien prepared his stuff to leave. After walking Thien to the train station, Mike and I headed over to Prspect Park for some soccer with one of our Moe's Tavern teammates.
All in all, an excellent weekend. In fact, excellent enough that Thien is now considering moving to New York from San Francisco!
I've finally realized that my vacation days are over, and I won't be jet-setting away to another beach anytime soon (although Vegas is just over the horizon!). My recent two week Miami/Bahamas/Hawaii vacation has to rank among my best vacations ever. A month ago I never would have believed that a casual mini-trip (compared to my Asia and Europe excursions) could be so awesome.
Unfortunately, my beloved Nikon was stolen out of my checked luggage (shake a fist!), so I have no pictures of Miami and the Bahamas. The vacation consisted of largely relaxing with my parents, sisters and cousin, so there wasn't anything too exciting to take pictures of anyways. Here's the itinerary for the first trip with my parents, sisters and one cousin:
Day 1 - 2: South Beach, Miami
Day 3 - 6: Cruise in the Bahamas and Key West
Day 7: The Everglade National Park, Florida
I borrowed my dad's camera for the Hawaii trip, so the second half of my beach vacation was able to be documented. Compared to Miami/Bahamas, the vacation was much more filled with outdoor activities. Being the ninth wheel (four couples and me) among my closest high school friends and their significant others was not as bad as I thought it would be.
Itinerary (links to photosets)
Day 1: Arrive and hang at Nari's cousin's beach-mansion
Day 2: Road to Hana with Greg, Chris and Bo
Day 3: Bike ride down Haleakala Volcano
Day 4: Hike to snorkeling and the Old Lahaina Luau
Day 5: Fly to Big Island and relax
Day 6: Visit Kileuea Volcano Park and hike to lava flow
Day 7: Relax and shop for souvenirs
Day 8: Fly back to Los Angeles via Maui
Unfortunately, I came back with only a light tan after having slathered on the sunblock for two whole weeks (I've recently decided to avoid the premature skin aging you see all over Europe and Asia).
Tammy introduced me to a new blogging service, Vox, which I may consider switching to. Take a look and let me know if you think if it looks better than Blogger:
eat when hungry, sleep when tired
Last night I watched An Inconvenient Truth with my parents. It was a pretty good documentary, although it's target audience were people who don't know much about global warming. I think my parents both enjoyed it. After the movie, my dad couldn't stop with the "I told you so's." He works with a lot of NASA people and has been talking about global warming/rising water levels for ages. On the way home my dad wouldn't stop with, "I told you not to commute from San Francisco to Menlo Park all those years!" among others ("Everyone called me cheap for keeping the lights turned off in the house when I was trying to conserve energy!", etc.)
I do recommend that everyone watch this movie, even if you are as well-versed in global warming as my dad is. It is a bit scary knowing that the Earth has a great chance of being vastly changed, if not in our lifetimes, then definitely in our children's. It still boggles my mind how George W. Bush (and other Republicans) flat-out refuse to watch this movie.
Aloha! I'm in Maui now after a great trip to Miami and the Bahamas. My vacation has been fabulous so far, except for the fact that I failed to pack my camera. However, it's nice not to worry about taking the absurd amount of photos I normally do.
I'll try to post (or add to Flickr) pictures my family took in Florida, but here are a few shots that I've taken with my dad's camera:
Sunrise at the top of Haleakala Volcano
Maui sunset
P.S. - My last post may have been a bit ambivalent, but I am happy to announce that I will be moving to Chicago by the end of August to start at Northwestern (although I am incredibly sad to be leaving New York)!
