Greetings From Bangalore, India!
Hey everyone, quick update here because I can’t really fall asleep yet, but I’m here in Bangalore India on a business trip. I’ve been taking some pictures of the business class amenities on the plane, the Frankfurt Germany airport, and a few of the Bangalore airport. I haven’t seen much, so these might be a little boring, but keep checking on this set because I’ll be uploading pictures to the set all week long.
Update 9/13 - Added more pictures!
Update 9/14 - Added even more pictures!
Bangalore India Trip Set on Flickr
Beach & Bangalore
It’s the last day at the beach here for me and for the first time in a few years, I had my fantasy football drafts the week before going to the beach. This is especially nice, because I got to pick my team rather than using the pre-set autodraft. (I’ll post my two lineups in a later post.) Unfortunately, I have to head back a little earlier than usual this year because of school, but I’m glad to sneak in one more relaxing vacation before I’m inundated with homework and reading.
Also when I get back to work, I will be frantically prepare some training material for my trip over to Bangalore, India to train a few new analysts. I’m really excited to get a free trip to a place that I never thought I’d visit to experience new cultures and food. I’ll be heading over with my co-worker, Chris, and we’re going to try to chase down some NFL games in a bar. Not sure if they get the games over there though. You’ll definitely see a slew of pictures posted/linked from in in about two weeks, so keep checkin’ back in.
New Addition: Acoustic Guitar
Ever since my first incredibly difficult to play $125 Epiphone acoustic guitar that almost made me quit playing, I’ve wanted a nice acoustic guitar. Fast forward about 14 years or so, and I finally got one. At first I only had my eyes set on either a Martin or a Taylor, the two big dogs of the acoustic guitar industry. That is until I sat down and played a Breedlove brand guitar.I spent a few hours at Guitar Center this past weekend with Andrew and Don and hashed out all the positives and negatives about each guitar in the price range I was looking at. Ben, from Guitar Center, described the sound quality of the Breedlove as a very well balance guitar that rings out like a “bell”, meaning it has sustain, and is tonally somewhere between the typically bassy/mid-range Martin and a bright Taylor. He was spot on. And in my opinion, the Martin and Taylor were incomparable to the Breedlove.
In addition to the sound of the guitar, you get a few additional features/finishes when you’re not paying for the name. This guitar has rosewood back and sides, abalone edging on the face, around the soundhole as well as the fret markers, Grover tuners, and a Fishman pre-amp with built in tuner. I may have lost a few readers with that last sentence, but if you know what I’m talking about, then you know you’d have to pay about twice as much for some of those finishes.
I’ve only had this guitar for less than a week, but it’s already accomplished its mission of making me want to play guitar more often. I highly recommend considering a Breedlove if you’re in the market for an acoustic guitar. Check out the specs of my guitar here, and the rest of the pictures on my set on Flickr.
Blogging from my Nintendo DS
This is a little painful, but it’s possible! I’m composing this post from my nintendo DS using the DS browser and the mobile wordpress site [http://m.wordpress.com]. The site is super light and let’s me do almost everything that I can with the normal Wordpess site. A lot happened this weekend: saw Bourne Ultimatum, bought a sweet acoustic guitar (more on that later), and going to see The Rentals tonight at the 9:30 Club. As for a running update, no miles run in the last two weeks, a new personal record!
Okay, enough of this torture, it sucks blogging from my DS, but I proved it can be done. More on my guitar, India trip, Fantasy Football, and the DS Browser coming up soon.
August is a Busy Month
Oy, I got back from the beach a few days ago, but I’ve been so darn busy catching up that I haven’t had a chance to post anything. As many of you knew, last week I turned another year older and I pretty much stretched out birthday celebrations over a week. Last Saturday, I celebrated my birthday with two friends that also have August birthdays and some of our closest friends. We pre-gamed pretty hard, and then finished up at the Clarendon Ballroom. The next day, I held myself together long enough to celebrate my Grandma’s 89th birthday. She’s in good health, and can still cook up a storm.
On my actual birthday we headed over to Sette Bello in Clarendon for some Italian. I’ve eaten there a few times before, but this was the worst service they’ve ever provided. We couldn’t get a decent table (we first got seated at a picnic-like table but then settled for a four top, when there were five of us) and orders were mis-heard thanks to a waiter that liked to stay at least 7 feet away from whoever was ordering. The food was good, but service has to get better for it to be a complete package.
Finally, the weekend after my birthday, I took my annual trip to Ocean City with Amanda, Nick and Amy. We indulged all weekend, but unfortunately snapping pictures escaped my mind. The only thing that I got a picture of was the table buzzer in the shape of a lobster we got at Sunset Grille. I’ll be back in OC in a couple weeks to chill out again before starting school back up. Summer, once again, was too short.
Check out all the pictures from last week in my Birthday Weekend 2007 Set on Flickr.
Off to the Beach
I’m headed to the beach for the weekend, but thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes. I got some very cool presents, one I have to pick out from the guitar store, one that will make it easier for me travel, and a couple that just seriously increased the fun factor of my Nintendo DS.
Running Log: Week 18
Finally a breakthrough in my running schedule. I set a goal of 10 miles last week, and I’m glad to say that I met that mark. I ran a total of 11 miles this week in three sessions, the longest run being 5 miles. It went easier than I anticipated. Physically I wasn’t tired or hurting after each run. It has become more a matter of available time, my patience level of running for >45 minutes at a time, and also my dang left earbud won’t stay put in my ear. I’m going to have to get different headphones for my iPod Shuffle just for running. If anyone out there has recommendations for good running headphones, let me know.
Now onto stats that aren’t totally pathetic:
[week 18 of 26]
- Runs: 3
- Distance: 11 miles
- Time: 104 minutes (9.5 minutes/mile)
Total Stats (18 weeks total):
- Total Runs: 30
- Total Distance: 91.5 miles
- Total Time: 14.8 hours (9.7 minutes/mile)
Found: Rare Weezer Artifacts
Anyone who knew me during high school and college knew that I was a huge Weezer fan. I started liking them around 1994 when I saw “Undone the Sweater Song” on MTV. Weezer turned into a decade long obsession starting with the Blue Album, hunting down import singles and fizzling out with more recent releases.
Just this past month or so, my parents made me clean out my closet from my old room where I was storing lots of old toys like random Transformers and He-Man books/cassette tape sets. In the cleaning out process, I also stumbled across an envelope with all my Weezer Fanclub gear.
For just $10, I was sent many priceless items. I scanned in most of the items such as the autographed group shot, an awkward factsheet with biographies of each band member, and Weezines (weezer fanzine’s) 12, 13 and 14. But the most interesting of all was the Weezer Fanclub Address Book. At the time, there were only about 5,000 members, and each person has their name and address listed by country. By now you’ve seen my member card, and I clocked in at #4439 - and I even made it in the address book despite the cover only going to #4415. Looking at this stuff definitely sparks some nostalgia of the good ol’ days. Check out the rest of the stuff in my Weezer Fan Club Gear set on Flickr. I did some quick searches and haven’t found anyone with this stuff…
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Now playing: A Perfect Circle - Magdalena
via FoxyTunes
Running Log: Week 17
Only one run this week (3.25 miles), but got to play golf twice and even see a Nat’s game. I played OK on Friday despite it being about 95 degrees and much better on Sunday with my family when it was only 90, but horribly humid. I’ve been busy this week gathering paperwork for my upcoming trip to India (more on that later) as well as registering for my first semester of classes and ordering books (what am I getting myself into?!). My goal this week is 10 miles…I’ll let you know how it goes.
Skydiving Video
I finally got a co-worker to rip my skydiving video from the DVD and give it to me in .avi format so i could upload it to YouTube. My sister and I went to Skydive Orange for our first skydive. The free fall was for about 50 seconds, in which I fell about 1.5 miles, and then the floating down was about 5-6 minutes. For some reason I wasn’t that scared, but only because I didn’t really think about what I was doing at the time. Maybe I should have, considering I was jumping out of a plane from 13,000 ft, falling at a rate of 120 mph, and then pulling a parachute at 5,500 ft. Definitely worth the video, and I definitely would want to do it again soon if it were a little cheaper. I highly recommend anyone to go skydiving, even if you’re scared of heights.
I picked out the music for the video as well, Tool & Soundgarden…enjoy!
watch this second video for another view of my jump [@ 4:28]
