Finally... my Sunlight Copper laptop is on its way home... all the way from China, hahaha. So on September 25th, the laptop departed Shanghai at 21:25... it made good speed, since it reached Louisville, Kentucky by 01:21 the next day. But those fried-chicken-munching, grits-devouring Kentucky people left my laptop and they didn't found out about until 06:04. I guess at six in the morning, right after they had grits for breakfast, somebody stumbled upon this rectangular box by the loading dock and upon closer inspection, hmm... maybe this should've gone out with the 3AM truck?
It's 11 now, and who knows what's going on with my Sunlight Copper M100?

Here's the exact wording on UPS Tracking Page:
« LOUISVILLE, KY, US 09/26/2006 6:04 A.M. THE PACKAGE WAS LEFT IN A UPS FACILITY CAUSING THIS DELAY »

With the amount of time I spend at the dentist's office, I should just write a biography, or a dentography of my experience. So the latest installment of my dento-journal: my first root canal. Sans anesthesia ! What an experience it was.
Well, I guess this morning was not a full root canal since it was partially done 3 weeks ago. But back then, I was already on the chair for more than an hour, so he decided to just pull out the material near the surface and put me on antibiotics to stop any infection. This morning I came back and he finished it. In and out of my tooth that little file go.

What's with the torture techniques? Well, normally people get numbed for a root canal procedure, but since my case is unique, I got special treatment. I really should donate my body for the advancement of science, who knows what else is weird about it.
A little back story: I had a diskectomy a couple years ago due to disk herniation. The symptoms I had would mean that the herniation occurred on two levels, but that turned out to not be the condition when he went in. It turned out that 2 of my nerve roots came out on one level (so the other vertebrae had nothing coming through of it).
And so it turned out yet again, my tooth was not exactly normal. First, the root itself was going sideways instead of straight up. To add to that, as the dentist was working on it, he found out that I had two canals going up that tooth that finally merged again up there. So he didn't numb my gum because he needed to know where he was in the canal and since I didn't want to be exposed to a continuous burst of potentially carcinogenic x-ray, the only way he could know that is from my reaction out of the shooting pain that comes everytime he plucked some nerve roots out of my tooth.

After the procedure, he told me that now it should be fine. Well, not really, in a couple of weeks I have to go back to get a gingivectomy because the decay has gone below the gum. But he said if that tooth ever become infected again, I had to get it removed and removing it would be another challenge do to the root that was pushed down by my sinus. Man.. see what I'm saying? I really should go into textbooks and get royalty out of it.

Jay Zhou's latest single, 千里之外 [qian li zhi wai: beyond a thousand miles]. I think Jay should patent his slow songs, hahaha... 'cause if you listen carefully, you'll notice that all his slow-to-midtempo songs are pretty much the same. From 龙卷风 to 髮如雪, it's like he got a this golden formula. Tweak it a bit here and there, voilà a new hit single!

As much as I would complain on how similar each song is to the other, I still like all of them. A fact that makes me even surer of Jay Zhou's Golden Hit Formula.

Yeah so the much-planned, not-so-much-finalized trip to Ocean City finally took place this past Labor Day weekend. After endless Reply All's on our e-mailboxes, we finally decided to split up into two groups. One goes up north to Maine and another goes east to Ocean City. We've actually been planning to go to the beach since so long ago, I started to get skeptical if it was going to happen, actually. But finally the hotel got booked, the people got tallied, and Ocean City.. here we come.

Brrr! Stupid Ernesto! You just have to strike right when the 250million Americans are on a long weekend don't you? The Friday before our trip started, the hurricane hit the Mid-Atlantic region pummeling the Chesapeake Bay and our Atlantic Coast with wind and water. I guess at least we didn't have to drive in that condition, because it was really awful.

Even though we didn't have to drive through a storm, it wasn't exactly happy weather either. It was very gloomy, everyone was wearing their sweaters which kinda ironic considering our destination. When we got to the beach, the weather was still just as chilly. It was quite an interesting sight though, it felt like watching a black and white film because the sky was so gray, it was windy, and everyone was huddled up. It was almost romantic if the boardwalk was not covered in sand leftover from the previous night's storm. For those of you who knows Ocean City, the answer is yes, that Jesus sand sculpture and the Last Supper sand painting were still there. I'm not sure if they were rebuilt or some miraculous event had saved them. My money is on the former though.

Fortunately, the following days were so much better. Plenty of sunshine and warmth, just like a beach town supposed to be. We ate and ate and ate. Oh, we did exercise a bit, some dodgeball here, some volleyball there and plenty of Dance Dance Revolution, LOL.







Two Sutandios and a Soetandyo walking on the boardwalk. While we applaud Nonik's bravado in wearing that super thin cardigan and shorts by the beach with the mercury hovering under 60F (windchill not calculated yet), maybe it would be wiser to put something warmer for the time being. You know, just so nobody would lose a toe or two due to frostbite.







The Pacific Sunwear Ad on the Teen National Geographic Magazine.
On him: White hooded sweatshirt with green logo, brown cargo shorts, yellow & green flip-flops. All by American Eagle.
On her: Red sweatshirt by Levi's, jean shorts by Wet Seal, white sandals (models own).






Devmann did some research before we went to Ocean City and Fish Tails was one of the supposedly good places to eat at. And it was! OK, so it wasn't to die for but it was good seafood, everything was fresh. Their plus point though, was the atmosphere. Most of the restaurant was outside, by the bay, on sand while the bar and the kitchen were under the roof. Plus this awesome lizard swinging lounge right across from the bar.




On Sunday night, we decided to play at the Fun Fair on the Boardwalk. I can't remember the last time I went to a Fun Fair... maybe high school? Well, it was so much fun being kids again :) Eating caramel popcorn, getting on a roller coaster that such a rip-off and no Fun Fair trip would be complete without a Ferris Wheel ride.

It's Friday, August the 19th. What does that mean? Nothing actually, except for the thousands of hopeful premeds taking the dreaded MCAT. On this day, Thoai, Lisa, and Tu Anh all took it. And being the party people that we are, of course we couldn't miss this chance for a party. So the plan was set for a night out in Philly right after the exam followed by a chill-down period on Sunday.

Thoai and I got to Philly around 8 and we went directly for dinner at Pho Xe Lua in Chinatown with Minh, Lisa, and Tu Anh. We all then meet up with Minh & Thoai's friends at Old City. Actually it's more like a gathering than a meetup since there was so many groups of friends. At the most, each person only knows 3 other people and so we spent the first hour trying to get everyone introduced to everyone.

Old City was crazy that night. I don't know, maybe we weren't the only one with the Post MCAT Bash idea? Whatever the reason was, 2nd Street was so full with people that it was hard enough to walk let alone march in a group of 20. The 5-block radius from Old City was practically jammed, no one could get out nor in. We ended up walking from Independence Mall.

Maybe it was a happening night for some people, but apparently it was too happening for us. The first club we tried to get in refused to allow Tu Anh because her driver's license expired a week before. OK, so I get it, expired ID's are invalid ID's, but clubs check ID's not because minors are not allowed in bars but because they don't want the hassle of checking each person who's getting drink their ID. And the purpose was to check her age anyway... it's not like she got younger since her ID expired ?!?! So we moved on. The next club was OK with the expired ID but it was too small. Halfway through our group, the bouncer was like, "sorry, it's too full." And so again we moved on to the third club which turned out to have a strict dresscode regarding... sneakers! It was crazy... I could just imagine the soft mattress and the fluffy pillow at our hotel room ^_^
But fourth time's a charm I guess... cause we all got in to this bouncer-less club. At the end, it was fun... like always, it's the people you're with, not where you at that matters.

We woke up at 9 in the morning on Sunday because Minh decided that if she's awake then everyone has got to be awake too. After spending some time at the jacuzzi, we headed out to Atlantic City for a day at the beach. Even though it began with the Tragedy of the Missing Pencil Case, it was a nice day. The sun was sunny, the wind was breezy, and the sea was... hmmm... full of water? ^_^

It's always nice hanging out with you guys!