After a nice meal at Maggiano's Little Italy in San Jose complements to my brother and cousin (if you guys haven't been to that restaurant, it's the best italian restaurant in the US!!) and a farewell from my roommie and TJ, i was at the airport by 11 PM.

Singapore airlines was stingy with luggage.  I had to pay an extra 200 bux because i had two extra checked in bags, because they wouldn't let me carry it on...

The flight was looong.  19 hours in all...  There was a 1.5 hour lay-over in Hong Kong.  The Hong Kong airport is awesome.  Its really technologically advanced.  But ya know what?  What i really like about Hong Kong, is the way it smells.  I recall the way it smelled when i was there some 15 years ago, and it smells the same, very reminicent.  After a few nice sniffs, I went to explore the airport...  They had a food court with a japanese  restaurant where I ordered an octopus ramen (They don't have THAT in the states they have friggin Chicken and beef ramen, but not octopus!), and a bowl of sagunachi (sp?).  The cashier said sagunachi was seaweed but it looked and tasted like abalone.  It was good.  No, it was real good.  After that, i explored some more and found a burger king and a popeyes.  Apparanently, Hong Kongians like popeyes better than KFC. But what was cool was next to popeyes they had flat screen TVs which showed non-stop popeye the sailor man cartoons.  I was mesmorized by the cartoon, and watched popeye beat down Bruno and a few of Oliver's other admirers.  This proves that the strongest men get always get their girl.  =)

After two more hours, I was in Singapore.  Finally!  I went to the foreign exchange center and changed my US dollars to Sing Dollars.  It was kinda ghetto..  The cashier's lady said she wasn't comfortable with one of my 100 dollar bills.  She said that the head of Franklin on that bill looked funny (not that she even knew who he was), and wouldn't exchange it for me.  *%!%@#$  I grumbled and took my S-Dollar exchanged money minus 100 bux and got on a shuttle to my Raffles hotel.

I took a shower in my hotel (which is niiice by the way) and went out to start exploring..  Singapore is pretty warm..  It's not super duper hot as everyone else was telling me.  But still I wasn't used to it, so I was sweatting beads after 15 minutes of walking.  I kinda like the sweatting..  It feels healthy...  I walked to the city hall, and I saw a singaporean guard standing outside, in his military uniform and cap.  I asked him where the MRT (Their public METRO or BART) was at, and he gave me directions in his Singaporean-style english.  But when i took a closer look at him, i noticed that he was completely dry.  And here i was pretty much completely drenched from sweat as if i had just run a marathon.  So, i joked with him, how come you aren't sweating?!?!  Isn't it hot?  He gave me a funny look.. Not really, you stupid foreigner.  (okay, he didn't say you stupid foreigner but i'm sure he was thinking it)..

I never made it to the MRT that day..  I got distracted a multitude of small malls and some side action along the side of the road.  Inside those malls were all these clothing/electronic/tailor/random stores, lots of food, and drinks.  These stores all had a hint of ghettoness...  Maybe it was because they sold pirated software and a voltage converter that shorted circuited after 30 minutes of use (Which i was suckered in to buying).  Singapore is more than I had imagined.  Its nice.  Come visit.  (Getting sleepy so i'm giving an abrupt ending to my post)

I'm going to buy a digital camera and post pictures eventually..

I just read the craziest story ever, it's like something that would be on a Jerry Springer show, but this time its for realz!  Goes to show that there are some crazy people out there, beware!  And let me be unbiased and say people instead of ladies because all of my readers are females...  =)

Note: The astriks are the guy's thoughts.... 
Real story....  In korea, a guy has an affair with a girl.  Guy specifically uses protection cuz he knows girl's a crazy nut case.  But somehow, gosh..  Girl gets pregnant!  Guy panicking...  *What have i done!?!?  How did she get pregnant?  This protection must have broke down...*  Girl demands a marriage, so unwillingly, guy agrees.  *Sigh, I must be responsible for my own actions*  Guy becomes husband...  Wife now has baby, but baby doesn't look like the husband at all...  *Baby kinda looks like my best friend, Will*  Everyone laughs at husband...  Husband get paternity test, which turns out negative.  *Yo!  This ain't my baby!*  Husband blames hospital for switching up baby, and proceeds to sue.  Wife confesses, no no no.. I had an affair with another man prior to our marriage.  Husband goes nuts!  *what the random?!?!*  Husband nullifies the marriage and sues ex-wife and wins 42k.  Ex-wife then tries another tactic...  accuses baby's real father of rape and tries to sue, but has no evidence, case dismissed.

Crazy huh? 
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040601/ap_on_fe_st/skorea_baby_compensation&e=1

Yack Fest 2004

A few coworkers and I wanted to get together to do some kind of big activity for memorial day.  So we decided to go deep sea fishing...  One of my coworkers was interested, but has a fear for water.  So when he asked for a picture of the boat, that we'd be taking in to the ocean, i thought it'd be a funny joke so i  showed him a picture like this:

I said that TJ and I would be rowing most of the way, but he might have to help.  When he saw the picture of the "boat" he freaked out and declined our trip immediately, but afterward I had showed him the real picture of the boat, but he still declined cuz i guess he was still traumatized...  Oops...  Didn't mean to turn him off..  Ironically, it turns out that the joke's on us, and you'll find out why...  So, memorial day early morning at 5:15 am we congregated at Siebel, and drove to Pacifica, after my bad jokes, only Super, TJ, GQ, and Richard were still willing to get on the boat with me.   Super took some motion sickness pills prior to leaving Siebel.  Everyone else thought they were man enough to get on the water without em.  We get to Pacifica, rent the fishing rods, license, tackle, and board a ship called Outlaw.  Catchy name for a fishing boat, eh?  A few minutes later, we were off in to the ocean.  The five of us Super, TJ, GQ, and Richard hogged the front of the boat, all the other 14 "fishermen" that we shared the boat with were in the back.  As we were sailing in to the ocean, the waves just got bigger and bigger, and so we were riding the waves like little kids going crazy jumping up when we were at the peak height of the wave landing while coming down and getting a brain rush from the waves.  It was soo fun!  The captain of the boat, who was trying to steer the boat and look for a good spot for fish must have given us a look..  "Amateurs..." 

We must have been going full speed in to the ocean for like 30 minutes until Superman wasn't so super any more...  Superman says, I'm not feeling so good.....  5 minutes later, i start to feel my stomach get uneasy too..  At this point i'm hoping that the boat will get anchored and the ship will stop so that we won't feel the waves as much..  We're like trying to hold it in with the hope that it'll get better when we anchor.  We ask, How does he know where the fish is at?  Super talks to the captain, and tells us..  The captain's looking for birds.  Looking for birds?!?!  I thought we were looking for fish!!  Apparently, the birds know where the fish are at, and we can see where the birds are at!  So now, we're looking for birds and every time we'd see a pack of bird in sight, we say in relief... ahh..  birds!  We're almost there..  Whew..  But we'd just keep passing them birds until about another 30 minutes later finally we got to water where it was like birdland. We stopped! (well... not completely stopped, cuz the boat never stops, it cruises slowly)  Victory!  We've made it!   But the boat didn't stop rocking, and it was rocking hard!  Oh man..  We're doomed..  All of us (except GQ) were sea sick.  Every few minutes, one of us four had to go to the side rail of the ship and hurl...  The captain in his deck must have been laughing after seeing us celebrating as if we defeated the ocean, only to find out that we've been defeated at the end!  As a matter of fact, everyone on the boat was sick..  All 19 - GQ = 18 of us were yacking...  GQ was the only one with a sense of humor at that point, and called it Yack Fest 2004.  The sea sickness was a horrible horrible feeling, and what made it worse, was the fact that the 5 of us were at the worse position to catch fish!  Being at the front of the boat is the worst because the hook and bait would drift toward the back of the boat (cuz we're still moving), and there'd be a good chance that the fish would see our boat and not want to take the bait.  People in the back of the boat had their hook / bait way behind the boat where the ship was no where in sight.  Luckily, I caught a fish really quickly, (15 minutes after stopping) and pretty much called it a day after catching it...  I couldn't fish any more.  I was too sea sick.  I had to lay down on one of the ship benches.  After that, the group of our sea sick 4 started laying down and stopped monitoring our fisking rods.  The bench was long enough to have two people lay down.  I slept for 3 or 4 hours on that bench..  (Sleeping makes the sickness go away)   All of us were laying down by the end of the second hour...   I must have slept next to each of the sea sick (Super and TJ and Richard) at some point of time..  It was too much...  The fish got the best of us...   It was torture.  We layed there groaning about how badly we missed land.  And how we paid 80 bucks to get tortured on a stupid boat.  We got back to the pier some 6 hours later at 2 pm, and walked back to shore with our 6 fish.  Tourists vacationing on the shoreline saw our fish (all 20-30 inches), congratulated us as if we were champions!  Nice Catch!!!  Champions or not, they didn't know the half of the story..  We went through alot to get those fish..  Man!  That was one of the toughest and roughest 8 hours of my life...

I know i'm no psychiatrist, but with all things being equal, in Dave's book of smelling, I think that there are two "classes" of people...  A dog class of people and a non-dog class of people. 

Dog's are very keen to sounds, smells and taste (like hound dogs), so when curious about something, they smell and taste just anything they're curious about...  And so being a dog person myself, I smell and sometimes (when i know its not poisonous) taste things. 

So what kinda person are you??  You're in a  restaurant with someone and that person says, "Man!  This drink tastes sooo nasty!  It tastes like elephant!  Hey.. do you wanna try it out?? (Note- I think only a dog person would even think to say this)" 

Non-dog people say- No way!  You think i'm stupid?  You just said it tastes nasty, why would i wanna try it out??

Dog people say- It is?  I wonder how it tastes..  It looks tasty, can't be that bad!  Lemme have a taste.  *thinks- you dunno what u're talking about*.  *tastes*- Oh, you're right..  This this thing tastes pretty bad...

But on a side note:
It's kinda weird... smells are always so relative...  If u've ever seen the Last Emperor, there's a guy who's got the job of smelling things, so whenever the emperor poops, he smells the stool and tells the emperor whether he's sick or not (Total Dog).  So I use the same theory.  Whenever my ear is itchy/dirty, I'll use instruments to pick/clean my ear be it a q-tip, hairpin or a mechanical pencil, but after i get the wax out, i wonder what it smells like..  So i smell it, and it always smells different (sometimes i even think it smells pretty good)...  So when i think it smells good, i ask someone who's close by, Hey.. check this out..  Smell this thing... it smells pretty good..  *he/she smells* "what the?!?!  What's that?  Yo that thing stinks!!"  You guys ever notice that?  Your "stuff" always smell okay to you, but horrible to everyone else...