Yhippa's Blog

I had a conversation with my mom the other day a little while after I broke my elbow snowboarding.  She criticized me for doing reckless things like that and that I shouldn't do things like that.  I told her that you need to take risks sometimes to get a great reward.  In this case it's the adrenaline rush from bombing down a mountain.  Or in my case, uh, bunny slope. Then this weekend I walked down a flight of four stairs in broad daylight.  I'm not sure what happened but I totally bit it.  For some reason the first thing I thought was "Is my camera OK?"  Kind of stupid once I finally saw the total damage on my leg later that day. So back to my original point.  I don't know if I'm getting old and my coordination is getting worse or what but I fear that I need to invest in elbow, shin, and knee pads.  What the hell, why not ankle pads at this point.  Are these the "extreme" activities in my life now that I need to watch out for?  Walking down sta

Bacoloate? Chacon? Whatever you call it, it is one of the rarest forms of enjoyment in the universe. Let's start with the packaging. Standard fare for packaging as far as I'm concerned. Please make notice of the ginormous strip of bacon adorning, no, almost spooning the piece of chocolate. The child of their strange union is waiting inside. Let's see what else is in there: OK, nice silver wrapping. Not quite hermetically sealed but still pretty good. If you can read it, notice the "BACON EXOTIC CANDY BAR" product labelling. Truth be told I got kind of excited when I saw the word "EXOTIC" preceeded by "BACON." The candy bars are little squares: I got tired of taking pictures so I finally dug in to the little sucker. What a treat this was, let me tell you. If you're a fan of sweet and salty products you will enjoy this. If you like chocolates with nuts you might like this as well. Honestly I didn't know what to expect upon digging

The current state of employment , I admit, scares the living crap out of me. For the first time since I've started working I have seen people I know get laid off. My overall stock portfolio is negative for the first time in my life. I like to think a lot and this issue has me stumped. I cannot think of how this will play out. It's easy to make plans when things are booming but when the chance that you could lose your job (which is your sole source of employment) increases each day, it's a scary thing. I work for a bank which is a problem. We're not doing too bad but that's a non-fully informed assessment. The government is giving banks lots of money to lend but it seems like it's just filling the losses they have been experiencing. The money is going into a black hole which is funded by us, the taxpayers! I hope that this economic purge is quick and painless and that new opportunities come about as a result of this. Unfortunately I've never been thro

I had a discussion with one of my friends about the fact that the first-born male in an Asian family has a tendency to feel responsible for his parents. To help them out with anything and to make sure their life is good. I never thought about this until it was spelled out to me like this. I grew up with primarily American, not culture-specific ideals (or at least I think so). I grew up very far away from extended family members so I don't think their influence in this matter had much sway over me. Yet for some reason I do appear to follow this stereotype of the first-born Asian male. I'd like to think it's just a part of my personality. I've seen examples of families of friends growing up and seen their family interaction. Some were contentious. Some friends were essentially kicked out of the house at 18 (could be to teach their kids how to live on their own or because they were sick of their kids). In any case I bet that I have modeled my interactions with my f

Sopheap's birthday was a success. The grilled food was good as usual. The best part was the cake. With the help of a friend I got a picture cake from Ukrops. The picture was of him from middle school of him (I believe). I am not sure if he liked it or not. You be the judge.

I was about to head out to band practice when I heard very loud thunder. Soon after that I heard lots of fire trucks near my house. I didn't think anything of it until it kept going on for a few minutes. I stepped outside and saw all my neighbors walking to the interior of the neighborhood and three fire trucks coming in through the main road to the neighborhood. As it turns out I believe that lightning struck one of the end units of a block of townhomes. There are usually four homes in a block. I saw pretty clearly a fire in the attic and I think the fire was so hot at one point that it looked like you could almost see the roof turn orange-hot. I could be seeing things though as our roofs are made of the tar-papery stuff that you see on most houses. I got kind of nervous initially. I saw the fire blaze through the roof and the wind picked up which made it worse. Even though it didn't happen to me, just seeing something like that in person is unsettling. This fire was under con