Archives
Year In Pictures 2003
Merry Christmas everyone!
That's it.
Movie Reviews:
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (LOTRROTK) - Great movie, a nice ending to the trilogy. Lots and lots of gay innuendos. Was waiting for Gimli to jump on bed with rest of hobbits and also for Sam and Frodo to begin making out.
American Wedding - Continues the tradition of the previous two movies. I liked it but it had terrible editing where one scene would begin with a conflict that didn't see a solution at the end.
Infernal Affairs - Import from China. Great flick. I don't really know how to describe this one. I just hope they don't fuck it up for the Americanized Version (staring Brad Pitt). One of the guys in the movie looked like an asian Colin Farrell. Colin Farrell will probably play his character in the remake. Also the China "PC" alternate ending for this movie sucked and made no sense.
Turn Left, Turn Right - This was a typical 'boy meets girl, girl meets boy, both lose each other and find each other in the end' kind of movie. I'm not sure how long this movie was but let's assuming it was a 2 hour movie they wrote enough dialogue for a 1 hour movie because the boy and girl said the same thing in sequential scenes. Okay but cheesy movie.
That's it.
Movie Reviews:
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (LOTRROTK) - Great movie, a nice ending to the trilogy. Lots and lots of gay innuendos. Was waiting for Gimli to jump on bed with rest of hobbits and also for Sam and Frodo to begin making out.
American Wedding - Continues the tradition of the previous two movies. I liked it but it had terrible editing where one scene would begin with a conflict that didn't see a solution at the end.
Infernal Affairs - Import from China. Great flick. I don't really know how to describe this one. I just hope they don't fuck it up for the Americanized Version (staring Brad Pitt). One of the guys in the movie looked like an asian Colin Farrell. Colin Farrell will probably play his character in the remake. Also the China "PC" alternate ending for this movie sucked and made no sense.
Turn Left, Turn Right - This was a typical 'boy meets girl, girl meets boy, both lose each other and find each other in the end' kind of movie. I'm not sure how long this movie was but let's assuming it was a 2 hour movie they wrote enough dialogue for a 1 hour movie because the boy and girl said the same thing in sequential scenes. Okay but cheesy movie.
It's been more than a week since I headed to UCI to go on the CA Ski Trip. I packed up my stuff on Saturday and headed out to UCI at night. After a brief stop at CV to get some final things. I dragged all that crap down to the Social Science Parking Lot then to the Student Center Parking Lot when I realized that no one was at SSPL. Once there I met up with Ed. We were the first ones there, none of the officers were there yet.
Eventually people started arriving one by one, we manage to assign everyone to a car and fit all the bags into the back of the vans and head off at around 12:45 AM Sunday.
Sunday: We drove from about 12:45AM until about 12:00PM Sunday. During this time I only did 2 things. Sleep, and wake up to use the bathroom during the rest stops. At around 8AM we got to the base of the mountain. We ate breakfast at a McDonalds and also heard the news that Saddam Hussein was captured, in a hole no less. At 12 we made our way to the rental place for the people who needed skiing/snowboarding gear. Then after that we ate at Marie Calendar's. There is something wrong with this Marie Calendar. First the manager totally ignored our table. Sam and I ate with two others (can't seem to recall which two) and the manager waited on CA people who came much later than us and basically any attempt to get service was ignored. Eventually one of the waitresses took pity on us and took our order. Oh yeah and Hot Chocolate at Marie Calendar's in Lake Tahoe cost $2.50.
We eat and then we get the bill. Since we were such a big group, they split us into smaller groupings of 4 to 6. But apparently since there were 55 of us, separated, they decided to add in this ridiculous gratuity to our fee. Even though they split us apart because they couldn't handle so many people, they still charged us for having to serve said large group. Think about that for a minute. Restaurants usually charge you money for having to serve a large group of people with one waiter. But not only were there multiple waiters waiting on us, we weren't even a large group for the waiters to manage. Each of them probably only had to take care of two tables. Anyways, we paid our bill but we left a smaller tip mainly because a $15 dollar gratuity fee split among 4 people is pretty goddamn expensive.
We finally make it into our cabin at around 3 and everyone settles in to find a place to sleep. Luckily I was able to take the bed in one of the rooms and slept on it for the rest of the trip.
Speaking of the room I was sleeping in. It was THE ROOM TO BE IN! Every night there were always people chatting it up and more people coming in and out of there. Everyone wanted to be in the cool room!
Well okay some people came in because the room was the only place to get one bar of reception on their cell phones. People were on the bed moving their cellphones left to right like one of those scanners from Ghostbusters trying to get the coveted two bars of reception. But still it was a cool place to hang out.
Monday: This was the main skiing/snowboarding day. Everyone went to Heavenly to go have a good time. Being out there at like 9-10AM in the morning reminded me of why I hate the cold. It's cold. Even with several layers of clothing it was still cold. I only bought big thick gloves that were too big to grip anything small. I didn't bother to buy smaller gloves that I could use to help me keep warm so the whole day my hand would go numb everytime I took off my gloves.
Snowboarding in general was fun, but tough. Even the beginner's mountain was hard for me. It's not the fact that I couldn't stand up. Standing up and going down the hill fast was no problem. Learning how to turn and slow down was a different matter. For the life of me I could not "carve" my snowboard well enough to slow down. I would either carve too hard and fall on my ass or I would have to purposely fall to stop my snowboard. For some reason I thought it would be wise to go to the next easiest slope and I ended up staying there for half an hour snowboarding and falling in succession.
Well you know the saying, "Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, shame on me." Well for some reason I was convinced by the other people there that I had not gone on the right course and that in fact I went on a more difficult course. So back up I went to that slope only to realize that the one I took was in fact the 2nd easiest slope and that I would have to go down it again. Luckily there were other people with me this time and we kept each other company while we tried to get down the mountain. One of our partners ran into one of the signs while we were starting and ran her snowboard into a tree right at the end. Good times. Good times.
Well at night when we got back to the cabin... Let's just say things got a little wild. Not much of the action was recorded by me but let's just say a few people on the trip have perfect blackmail material :)
Tuesday: A group of people went snowboarding again while another group went to Downtown Lake Tahoe to just look at some of the shops. Nothing much went on there except I won myself a harmonica only to realize later that it only plays 4 notes. At night we went to Reno where we ate at a buffet and then went to their "Win stuffed animals" Game Place. I played Ski Ball for an hour with little success, destroying the notion that I was king of ski ball. I still won a monkey though, so that was pretty cool.
Wednesday: Not much happened here, just a lot of chilling and relaxing. I woke up at like 9:15 because people had left earlier to go snowboarding again. I don't think anyone else woke up until noon. We got a lot of snow time though. Someone bought disc shaped sleds and we rode down this hill that was next to the house. And then later on in the night some of us went out and had a small snowball fight.
Thursday: Everyone packs to goto San Francisco. $30 Parking!!! A group of us went to Fisherman's Wharf where we saw the Bush Man. Haha, that was awesome. Paul didn't believe there was such a thing but there he was with his bushes.
We headed towards this World Famou Ghirardelli's where we ordered their Earthquake 8-Scoop Sundae. We totally annihilated that shit.
Ended up going back to eat with the rest of the group at Lichee Garden. They gave us a ton of food which we couldn't finish, which was sad 'cause we had a ton of guys at our table.
To wrap it up, we started driving back at around 10:30, we got back to Irvine at around 5 or so and then I found myself back home after a fantastic week.
Miscellaneous:
If it smells like Icy Hot in your room, someone must have slept on top of an open Icy Hot tube and spread it all over your sleeping bag.
Someone clogged up one of the toilets with what can only be described as dried apple sauce.
It is funny when you see someone in San Fran. turn their wheels the wrong way on a sloped hill. It is funnier when someone sticks a "How to park your car on a sloped hill" scrap from the San Fran guide on their windshield wiper.
Ski Ball at the Circus Circus is rigged, I swear to god.
A certain person decided to punch someone because said person wanted to get some sleep while others wanted to watch Minority Report. Either he really wanted to get some sleep or he was determined to not watch another Tom Cruise movie in the same night.
Here is me with a picture of Mt. Doom, aka the Heavenly slope to the top.
Eventually people started arriving one by one, we manage to assign everyone to a car and fit all the bags into the back of the vans and head off at around 12:45 AM Sunday.
Sunday: We drove from about 12:45AM until about 12:00PM Sunday. During this time I only did 2 things. Sleep, and wake up to use the bathroom during the rest stops. At around 8AM we got to the base of the mountain. We ate breakfast at a McDonalds and also heard the news that Saddam Hussein was captured, in a hole no less. At 12 we made our way to the rental place for the people who needed skiing/snowboarding gear. Then after that we ate at Marie Calendar's. There is something wrong with this Marie Calendar. First the manager totally ignored our table. Sam and I ate with two others (can't seem to recall which two) and the manager waited on CA people who came much later than us and basically any attempt to get service was ignored. Eventually one of the waitresses took pity on us and took our order. Oh yeah and Hot Chocolate at Marie Calendar's in Lake Tahoe cost $2.50.
We eat and then we get the bill. Since we were such a big group, they split us into smaller groupings of 4 to 6. But apparently since there were 55 of us, separated, they decided to add in this ridiculous gratuity to our fee. Even though they split us apart because they couldn't handle so many people, they still charged us for having to serve said large group. Think about that for a minute. Restaurants usually charge you money for having to serve a large group of people with one waiter. But not only were there multiple waiters waiting on us, we weren't even a large group for the waiters to manage. Each of them probably only had to take care of two tables. Anyways, we paid our bill but we left a smaller tip mainly because a $15 dollar gratuity fee split among 4 people is pretty goddamn expensive.
We finally make it into our cabin at around 3 and everyone settles in to find a place to sleep. Luckily I was able to take the bed in one of the rooms and slept on it for the rest of the trip.
Speaking of the room I was sleeping in. It was THE ROOM TO BE IN! Every night there were always people chatting it up and more people coming in and out of there. Everyone wanted to be in the cool room!
Well okay some people came in because the room was the only place to get one bar of reception on their cell phones. People were on the bed moving their cellphones left to right like one of those scanners from Ghostbusters trying to get the coveted two bars of reception. But still it was a cool place to hang out.
Monday: This was the main skiing/snowboarding day. Everyone went to Heavenly to go have a good time. Being out there at like 9-10AM in the morning reminded me of why I hate the cold. It's cold. Even with several layers of clothing it was still cold. I only bought big thick gloves that were too big to grip anything small. I didn't bother to buy smaller gloves that I could use to help me keep warm so the whole day my hand would go numb everytime I took off my gloves.
Snowboarding in general was fun, but tough. Even the beginner's mountain was hard for me. It's not the fact that I couldn't stand up. Standing up and going down the hill fast was no problem. Learning how to turn and slow down was a different matter. For the life of me I could not "carve" my snowboard well enough to slow down. I would either carve too hard and fall on my ass or I would have to purposely fall to stop my snowboard. For some reason I thought it would be wise to go to the next easiest slope and I ended up staying there for half an hour snowboarding and falling in succession.
Well you know the saying, "Fool me once, shame on you, Fool me twice, shame on me." Well for some reason I was convinced by the other people there that I had not gone on the right course and that in fact I went on a more difficult course. So back up I went to that slope only to realize that the one I took was in fact the 2nd easiest slope and that I would have to go down it again. Luckily there were other people with me this time and we kept each other company while we tried to get down the mountain. One of our partners ran into one of the signs while we were starting and ran her snowboard into a tree right at the end. Good times. Good times.
Well at night when we got back to the cabin... Let's just say things got a little wild. Not much of the action was recorded by me but let's just say a few people on the trip have perfect blackmail material :)
Tuesday: A group of people went snowboarding again while another group went to Downtown Lake Tahoe to just look at some of the shops. Nothing much went on there except I won myself a harmonica only to realize later that it only plays 4 notes. At night we went to Reno where we ate at a buffet and then went to their "Win stuffed animals" Game Place. I played Ski Ball for an hour with little success, destroying the notion that I was king of ski ball. I still won a monkey though, so that was pretty cool.
Wednesday: Not much happened here, just a lot of chilling and relaxing. I woke up at like 9:15 because people had left earlier to go snowboarding again. I don't think anyone else woke up until noon. We got a lot of snow time though. Someone bought disc shaped sleds and we rode down this hill that was next to the house. And then later on in the night some of us went out and had a small snowball fight.
Thursday: Everyone packs to goto San Francisco. $30 Parking!!! A group of us went to Fisherman's Wharf where we saw the Bush Man. Haha, that was awesome. Paul didn't believe there was such a thing but there he was with his bushes.
We headed towards this World Famou Ghirardelli's where we ordered their Earthquake 8-Scoop Sundae. We totally annihilated that shit.
Ended up going back to eat with the rest of the group at Lichee Garden. They gave us a ton of food which we couldn't finish, which was sad 'cause we had a ton of guys at our table.
To wrap it up, we started driving back at around 10:30, we got back to Irvine at around 5 or so and then I found myself back home after a fantastic week.
Miscellaneous:
If it smells like Icy Hot in your room, someone must have slept on top of an open Icy Hot tube and spread it all over your sleeping bag.
Someone clogged up one of the toilets with what can only be described as dried apple sauce.
It is funny when you see someone in San Fran. turn their wheels the wrong way on a sloped hill. It is funnier when someone sticks a "How to park your car on a sloped hill" scrap from the San Fran guide on their windshield wiper.
Ski Ball at the Circus Circus is rigged, I swear to god.
A certain person decided to punch someone because said person wanted to get some sleep while others wanted to watch Minority Report. Either he really wanted to get some sleep or he was determined to not watch another Tom Cruise movie in the same night.
Here is me with a picture of Mt. Doom, aka the Heavenly slope to the top.
Finals are finished. I'll be gone next week but I hope to see everyone later on next week. Until then for those of you with finals... Good Luck! Enjoy the vacation.
When you study for your finals
Posted 2003-12-07 08:04:13 AM | UCI
You're funding terrorism.