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After being in a brief half-second clip of [amazon-product text="How I Met Your Mother" type="text"]B000HT3P7E[/amazon-product], my sister has expanded her stardom to print media.  Haha.  I half-wished I had voted in California (I registered in PA) because of all the measures that I thought were really important: Prop 8 and the High Speed Rail measure.  I was glad that the latter passed and a little shocked about the results of Prop 8.  Hopefully someday, we’ll figure out what equality really means.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-11-13-backlash_N.htm

My sister rocks USA Today

Electric_Jellyfish-0754, originally uploaded by enderMC.

Last friday night was a little different than I had imagined. It started out with my probability final, a quick bite and drinks with classmates at Mad Mex and finally a trip down to Gooski’s to watch the Electric Jellyfish. But the night didn’t end there. After the show, the night continued with the band crashing at my apartment and playing Rock Band till 3 in the morning. Haha. Good times.

It took me 2 years to finally watch The Inconvenient Truth and while I know that I’m two years late, I know I’m not the last… only because my parents haven’t yet.  But I just solved that problem by buying them the DVD and shipping it to them.  Hopefully they take Al Gore’s message sans politics.  I understood that the climate crisis was real but didn’t realize the severity of the problems and how urgently we need to change.

I heard from a classmate that there was a recent video of Gore from the TED.com series on “A Greener Future?” recorded in March 2008.  Sadly, it was much of the same message even two years after The Inconvenient Truth even with the progress that’s been made.  He calls for “bold moves” by society.  Hopefully we’ll see that soon.

I don’t have any bold moves up my sleeves just yet.  But I took a small step in the right direction by picking up a bunch of CFLs (compact florescent lightbulbs) from Costco today and was trying to figure out how much money I’d save or how much it would cost to use these instead of the 11-60 watt incandescent bulbs I’ve found in my apartment.  Each of the bulbs I bought output the same amount of light as a 60 W bulb but only use 13 W of electricity.  The bottom line: we’ll be saving a ridiculous amount of electricity and more than pay for the new bulbs.  For example: if I ran my room light for 1 hour every day for one year, the cost of the 4 bulbs in my overhead fixture would be $11 versus the $2 I would pay with the new bulbs (assuming $0.12 per kWh).  In other words, buying CFLs to replace every single bulb in your apartment or home is the way to go – both financially and environmentally.  Why are they still selling incandescents at all?  I hope I wasn’t the last to figure that out too.

74degrees and overcast – pretty nice conditions for a run considering it’s still summer in PA.  A classmate told me about www.mapmyrun.com the other day where you can plot and save your runs on google maps. It calculates the mileage, elevation change and can even download it to your gps (no, I don’t have one of those, I’m not that hardcore). I’ll have to try some other people’s routes when I get a chance but for now, I’m just happy with being able to see how far I’ve gone.  And also that I’m in ridiculously bad shape. I’ll have to do something about that.  Haha.

8.23.08 LY 069, originally uploaded by enderMC.

I guess since classes have officially started and I’ve finished building all my Ikea furniture, I can officially say that I’ve settled in. It’s been a long four weeks since arriving in Pittsburgh (PA not CA) but a whole lot of fun. The weather has been really great but unfortunately I hear that means the winter will be especially hateful. We finished off orientation with volunteering in East Liberty, playing team building games at Seven Springs and white water rafting down the Youghiogheny River. Yeah I don’t know how to pronounce that either.

My list of PA gripes:
1. Lack of real food (and Yelp): seems like bar food is the staple around here and Yelp reviews are minimal. Pittsburgh is not a foodie town.
2. PennDOT: no DMV is ever run as efficiently it should… Pennsylvania’s is no different
3. The Roads: there was no planning involved when laying out the roads in Pittsburgh but thankfully someone invented GPS
4. Drivers: bumping cars while parallel parking is generally accepted, as is driving when you really shouldn’t be
5. Beer Distributors: beer must be bought from a beer distributor. in other words, the supermarket and Costco do not carry alcohol – my biggest gripe.

My list of nice things about PA:
1. The weather is great in August (which will not last)
2. The bar food is rather delicious
3. The beer is cheap
4. Housing is relatively cheap
5. People are nice

A short 2 days after getting back into the Bay Area from Asia, Jen and I made a trip out to New York to go to Girish and Angie’s wedding and to play. It was my first trip to New York outside of winter and even though I was still sick from my return trip from asia, I had a great time helping Jen eat our way through New York. The Iroqouis New York made the stay really excellent. It’s a small but very well run hotel just a short walk from Times Square. We hit up Joe’s Pizza (from Spiderman), the Clinton Street Bakery, two different dumpling places on our “dumpling crawl,” Shake Shack and a bunch of other places. Avenue Q was a nice addition too. =) So what do you do with a BA in English?

DSC_0635, originally uploaded by enderMC.

After a brief but very memorable trip to Japan, Alex and I headed to Thailand on July 10th. Unfortunately, I can’t say that I had all that great of a time and think I would have rather stayed in Japan for a few more days. Bangkok was just too much of a contrast to Japan’s clean, courteous and efficient culture. Bangkok was far from that. We did get some pretty awesome suits made though which brought back memories of Marshall at Barney’s back-of-the-pet-store taylor. =)

I did make a last minute trip to Phuket on my own for some diving. Unfortunately the Viking hotel was closed. Yeah, there was a giant viking helmet on the front of the hotel. Haha. My 2 dives at Racha Yai were nice but I’ll have to go back and do the Phi Phi islands sometime.

DSC_0605, originally uploaded by enderMC.

July was a very busy month. There were two weddings (one on each coast of the US), a trip to Asia with Alex, keg kickball and of course a giant move out to Pittsburgh, PA. Not to be confused with Pittsburgh, CA. But I’ll just cover Mt. Fuji for now…

This little adventure started out at the crack of dawn on July 7th where we caught a bus out of Tokyo to make our way to the trailhead on Mt. Fuji. We started hiking around noon and made our way up to the mountain hut in the early afternoon – about a 4 hour hike. Our Japanese guide was leading us at a snails pace but the view was too gorgeous for me to care too much. After a quick dinner, we napped till midnight to continue our climb in the dark. The point was to get to the top and be able to watch the sunrise from the top of Mt. Fuji. Unfortunely, after another 4 hours, we were just surrounded by clouds. A sunrise from the top will have to wait for another trip. =) All in all it was a pretty fun climb and brought back memories of Mt. Whitney, Shasta and Olympus from my Boy Scout days. That would take another trip out to Japan which I think I could manage. Yum. =)

20080218-IMG_0049, originally uploaded by enderMC.

Snowday #9: Apparently, the groundhog was wrong. Diana, Joanna and I made a day trip up to Sierra and were met with 40-50 degree weather. Gorgeous blue skies and warm melting snow. For D’s snowboarding debut, I strapped on a snowboard for the first time in more than two years and tore up some blues. Oh yeah! Topping off the trip was a burrito from Dos which was just icing on the cake of awesomeness that my Monday was made up of. Cheers to old friends.

20080209-DSC_8986, originally uploaded by enderMC.

For some reason, I seem to only see the east coast in the dead of winter. And my seventh trip or so to the east was, like the others, freakishly cold. I started off in Philadelphia to stay with Steve who gave me the grand tour of the town: Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell (no, I did not lick it but the thought did cross my mind), cheese steaks at Pat’s (wit, with whiz), the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rocky Steps and last, but certainly not least… Morimotos. mmmm… kobe beef carparccio.

After two days in Philly, I headed off to Pittsburgh to visit Dave who showed me around CMU. I was lucky enough to visit on one of the coldest days they’ve seen all winter. It was 6 degrees and it felt like it. Played some volleyball, suited up, ate some good thai food, more cheese steaks, hung out with Jai and bought some chocolate covered bacon. Yeah… it tastes just like it sounds – very odd. If there’s one thing that visiting in the dead of winter taught me was that I’m sure I could survive the cold there. Whether or not I’ll have to the next couple years, well that has yet to be decided.