no new postings for a while

what's going on?!
work has been hell. HELL! S&J left almost a week ago, so i'm readjusting back into the single life
Deviline also got me onto Facebook - so now i have an account and actually found real friends from school there, so it's actually pretty fun to stay in touch!

let's see some updates - my Sharks' win the other night vs LA Kings cinched their playoff spot... i want to go to the playoff games! (yes, still rooting for Habs to make playoffs, it's a close race there) had a conversation with a friend about my LifeList, i think on the top 3 one of them is at some point in my life i want to go to a Stanley Cup series game. maybe all of them. preferably with the Sharks being one of the teams...


i went to the annual Taste of Yountville festival last weekend - the weather was absolutely beautiful, i'll have a separate posting about it. Yountville is an awesome little town just near Napa known for the fantastic food. i just need to say that Chandon had a booth there for tasting i had champagne and creme brulee there... (pix to come as well)


this weekend is packed! yesterday went to a lounge bar with some friends, had 2 drinks, and were tipsy enough to dance a bit. but lately the kids at the lounge/bars is looking kinda young. maybe i'm getting kinda old.


going to be in the nicer area of Santana Row with my persian twin sister P and her hubby M. they are so sweet and they are my family here. we're going to hang out for appetizers and drinks - M is DD (designated driver) so me and P get to drink since we're lightweights (her physically, me in terms of alcohol consumption).


also on the agenda this weekend spending the day in the city with friends old & new! probably lunch, shopping, loitering, more eating and maybe even karaoke.

it's also persian new years BBQ, i gotta go represent since i am invited to eat with them - thousands of ppl at the park celebrating all day! and i have my hockey game....

work has been such a biatch this week, drinking with friends is going to help unwind me. maybe hopefully catch a movie this weekend too.

Movies i wanna see: 300, Blades of Glory, Meet the Robinsons

garlic noodles in my hair, enchilada sauce on my shirt...

no no that isn't just a bad country song's lyrics.
spending time with S&J while they were in town, we all realize that i'm still somewhat of a bumbling klutz!
when we went to Crustaceans (boy oh boy did they chow down their dungeness crab which was sooooo good) i threw in the towel first and finished my mango martini while they continue to devour the food. our side order was the equally famous garlic noodles that compliments the crabs soooo well. anyways we were just chatting about our day when J, with a crab leg poised in his mouth, points at me with his free hand, and mumbled.
S paused from her crab momentarily, looks at me and laughs...
i had garlic noodle IN my hair. in it. real classy! i had no idea how it got there seeing as i've stopped eating 5 minutes prior.

then a few days later, we went to El Buro which is a good mexican place near my work with fantastic enchiladas. food was yummy and portions were huge, so we all took half our dinners home. we walked to Coldstone creamery to check out the ice cream, we walked all around barnes and nobles bookstore to browse for an hour to try to digest the food. we got home and S&J are showing me their vacation photos from the Canary islands, in the midst J pointed to my tummy and said 'piggy' in english with a french accent, my first instinct is to protect my tummy from hearing such insensitive judgemental heresy against its size ; afterall it's not that big... it's seen worse days!
S wrestled with my instinctively placed protective arm covering my tummy and laughed, mind you, giggled till she fell on the floor, because i had a pretty big patch of red enchilada sauce DRIED on the front part of my shirt near the tummy...

so that is why "we can't take you to anywhere nice"!

speaking of which i went with a girl friend to Nola's yesterday, cajun place with gumbo and such. we had their pecan pie which was MELT IN YOUR MOUTH fantastic. easily the best pecan pie and possibly best pie i've ever tasted. crunchy pecan softly sits on top of the brown sugar filling and flaky pie crust, drizzled with soft caramel (but not overwhelmingly sweet caramel) served warm with a scoop of whipped cream (i can do without) and a scoop of vanilla ice cream.

it is heaven in a spoon.

and no, i managed not to take any of the pecan pie home on my shirt.

sympathy vacation weight gain...

S & J are in town and staying with me... they have been delightful and it's nice to come home to some company; it's been ages since i last had visitors.

the problem is, your friends are expected to gain weight on their vacation; afterall, they should eat good food, good beer/wine, chill, relax, enjoy and have a fantastic time.
however, when you play hostess to your friends, you inevitably start eating well too by showing them the best of the best food selections.

since S&J have arrived, we've lived it up quite a bit. this morning S made an awesome cheese and mushroom omelette and we had nutella toast. (i never have breakfast usually) tonight we had delicious dungeness crab and garlic noodles. sooooooooo yum. yesterday we ate at this great ramen noodle place... the day before we feasted on seafood near the Monterey Bay Aquarium (some might think it cold & unfeeling to have seafood plentifully served on your plate before you hit an aquarium... obviously i don't *grin*). yes, we hit Ghiradelli for ice cream sundae.

i've had coffee twice of three times a day, even on weekends...

S brought me:

• 5 jars of fantastic flavored instant coffee
• 7 kinds of teas (herbal, english.. you name it she brought it)
• 9 kinds of flavored hot chocolate mixes
• 2 boxes of chocolates
• 9 boxes of different types of scottish shortbread cookies
• 1 jar of marmalade

how she still manages to have room in her luggage for ANYTHING is beyond me! besides eating well with her and J here, i tell her she's feeding the bad habit of all this good food and drinks so i'll be hooked long after she's gone... then i'll pine away addicted to the teas and coffees and treats she introduced me to (that i would never have missed if i didn't know what i was missing)

so starts the Sympathy Vacation Weight Gain. i think i'm pretty good at it...

snowing blossoms...

the weather has been unseasonally warm this year, even for Cali (i don't know if calling it 'Cali' gives me away as someone not from this area...)
the cherry blossom trees are already flowering... today i was just caught of guard as a gush of wind blew through the courtyard at work and it looked like snowing blossoms...

time stood still for a moment as i was unreasonably, crazily delighted in that moment. a previous moment like this has happened before, in rear frequencies. the last time i was at LaSalle park as the colorful fall foliage and the crisp autumn air embraced me, and gusts of wind blew the leafs all around, snowing leaves all around me...

More on Chinese manners (or lack thereof...)

Continuing on from Feisty's rant about idiots:

From today's Globe and Mail:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070314.wxspitting14/BNStory/International/home

I've got tons of anecdotes from my trip to Asia last year. Actually, a few years ago, some ladies huge phlegm bullet landed squarely on my toes in Toronto's Chinatown. I was wearing sandals - huge mistake.

my hockey blog

i've started a hockey blog, just because i think most people here are tired of hearing me rant and rave and praise hockey too often in my "Regular Blog"'s posts...

http://fans.nhl.com/amytobiko/home/

feel free to go there occassionally and post a comment or rate my blog! pad my stats !!! *wink*

why i hate idiots

So our budy JW brought to attention this article to me and I'm amazed at all the idiots (including this magazine's staff) who are giving this story more credit than it deserves. If you read any articles written by this doofus, I think you can agree with me that they suck. I'm not criticizing his opinion, but his weak arguments. How this guy gets this crap published AND an idiot editor doesn't realize this could spell big sh-t for his magainze is beyond me. It just further illustrates stupid asians who make me look bad.

Just now at lunch, I learned to hate another stupid asian. This loud, slimy, skrawny asian pushed me aside in the cafeteria for no reason whatsoever. Hello? Manners? Apology? I honestly wanted to shove him back. Why do I hate asians? Because there are too many that ruin it for the rest of us. Its bad enough we're surrounded by foreigners who claim we alllooksame; to have other people who look like us acting sexist and stupid drives me crazy.

There's mr.phlegm on my floor, always making spine tingling sounds, there's mr.xioyuz you honestly can't understand because his accent is too thick (don't even ask how to pronounce their name), there's the creepy asian always staring at women, there's the LOUD chatty group of asian girls who assume no one understands them so they decide they can shout out all their inhibitions, there's the asian who brings in smelly ass fish lunches and eats at his desk, there's ms. frantic who gets frustrated because we don't understand her, there are dumb asians, BO asians (ever heard of de-odorant?), ignorant asians, sexist asians and the list goes on.

According to Mr.Eng I'm an ass of an Asian because I laugh at Asian stereotypes. wtf? How can you NOT laught at Bobby Lee?

Why I Hate Blacks
Kenneth Eng, Feb 23, 2007
Here is a list of reasons why we should discriminate
against blacks, starting from the most obvious down to the
least obvious:
• Blacks hate us. Every Asian who has ever come across
them knows that they take almost every opportunity to hurl
racist remarks at us.
In my experience, I would say about 90 percent of blacks I
have met, regardless of age or environment, poke fun at
the very sight of an Asian. Furthermore, their activity in the
media proves their hatred: Rush Hour, Exit Wounds, Hot
97, etc.
• Contrary to media depictions, I would argue that blacks
are weak-willed. They are the only race that has been
enslaved for 300 years. It’s unbelievable that it took them
that long to fight back.
On the other hand, we slaughtered the Russians in the
Japanese-Russo War.
• Blacks are easy to coerce. This is proven by the fact that
so many of them, including Reverend Al Sharpton, tend to
be Christians.
Yet, at the same time, they spend much of their time
whining about how much they hate "the whites that
oppressed them."
Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Christianity the religion
that the whites forced upon them?
• Blacks don’t get it. I know it’s a blunt and crass
comment, but it’s true. When I was in high school, I recall
a class debate in which one half of the class was chosen
to defend black slavery and the other half was chosen to
defend liberation.
Disturbingly, blacks on the prior side viciously defended
slavery as well as Christianity. They say if you don’t study
history, you’re condemned to repeat it.
In high school, I only remember one black student ever
attending any of my honors and AP courses. And that
student was caught cheating.
It is rather troubling that they are treated as heroes, but
then again, whites will do anything to defend them

my presidential campaign..

little known fact, i'm actually running for US president!

vote for me (click the little square that says 10 on top!)

:) my 'platform' is hockey, and acquiring more money in my Swiss bank account. my skill is being literate.

it may seem that i'm overqualified for the job... ;)