Secret Santa

For all of my friends not from Kansas City (or even some who are), you've probably never the name Larry Stewart (and most of us never had either till 2006). All of us from KC remembered him as Secret Santa. He was a truly inspirational man who proved that the spirit of Christmas only dies when you let it. Every year at around this time, he would race across KC and give out gifts of $100 or more to completely random people who needed the money. This came about due to an act of kindness bestowed upon him and his promise to God to help those in need if given the chance.

You can read about Larry here. To read about this year's round of Secret Santa, go here. If you haven't found a meaningful place to make a Christmas donation, you should consider Secret Santa.

NY, NY.... eh

Well just got back from a nice long weekend vacation to NJ. Susan and I visited our friend Bob (former coworker) who was celebrating his 40th wedding anniversary and his kids (who are all around my age so strange calling them kids), asked if Susan and I could go as the surprise to their party.

Friday

We left Vegas on a red eye on Continental (we flew to Newark as it was easiest place to fly to logistically). Also, who knew that Newark,NJ is closer to the City as JFK? The flight was completely full! We left at 10pm and got in at 5:10 am (4 hour flight roughly with the time zone changes). Bob's daughter Jamie picked us up (and she's a port authority airport cop so she just parked her car out front and had her coworkers watch it! Talk about perks!) and took us to my friend Cami's place. From there we just crashed for a few hours (airplane sleep is not sleep).

Saturday

When party time started, a SUV picked us up and brought us to Bob's place. This was the big surprise part since Bob and Diane had no clue what was going to happen other than a car was going to pick them up at around noon. So we pull up to Bob's place, and he comes out, the driver rolls down the window, and before Bob even says Hi to the driver, he says, "My kids are driving me nuts!"



Then he looked over and Susan and I said, "Hi Bob." He was completely shocked to see us! Diane was shocked as well (but not in a rush to be shocked as when Bob told her to come to the car to see 2 people they hadn't seen in a while, she went back inside the house).

The party was great. I met Bob's friends and family (and not one of them was wearing a track suit!). The place is called Seasons, and it's a beautiful place. You can see it here. The food was great too!

Afterwards, we went back to Bob's for a while and then went back to Cami's. On the drive back, we got a quick tour of New Jersey. I saw the Bada Bing from the Sopranos, the Meadowlands, where the Jets and Giants play, and the Xanadu, from what I was told, just one big mess with a indoor ski hill in it.

Now off to Manhattan!

We took the Path train into the 33rd Street Station and when I got outside it was almost like walking into a movie set. We were 10 streets from Times Square but I could already see the lights. We walked past what I'm guessing has to be the world's biggest Macy's (it takes up a whole city block). I didn't know that Miracle on 34th Street was also named by since it took place in this Macy's.

Seeing Times Square was just like seeing it on TV. The lights, the glitz, the police barricades. I remember hearing on an episode of the Office that you can tell the tourists in New York because they're always looking up. Yup i'd believe it! It's funny how I didn't know Sex and the City 2 was coming out till I saw about 15 billboards plastered everywhere saying it.

We saw the Ed Sullivan Theater (home of the Late Show with David Letterman, more on that on Monday), Columbus Circle, the Met, the Lincoln Center, and the Library. From there it took about an hour to get home. From there, it was sleep time!


Sunday

The big day! We saw practically everywhere in lower Manhattan. We took the PATH train into the World Trade Center Station. It's still a big hole in the ground, but you can't really see it as it's all fenced off. We went to the display of the new WTC and it was like experiencing it all over again. The place showed the news reports from back then, pictures, time lines, and items recovered from the site. It was quite emotional; some people were crying. From there, we went to the World Financial Center, which gives a beautiful view of the Hudson, the Statue of Liberty, and New Jersey. We then made our way all the way to the other end of the island to the South Street Seaport. It's a semi hidden area of the City that a lot of tourists don't know about (it wasn't very busy there). We had a light snack of a piece of pizza (thin crust Unos pizza!) and then we took the water taxi around the City. We went past Battery Park (which got its name since military artillery was placed there waaaaaay back in the day), then on to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. From there we went to the east side of the City and toured the City's border with Brooklyn. It was a neat one hour tour (which was nice to get off our feet as our feet and legs were hurting from all the walking the night before!). Plus it was freaking windy as hell so it was nice to be inside the boat. After we got back to the South Street Seaport, we walked down to Wall Street and found the Golden Bull you see in all the ads and pictures. We then realized that it's less than a block from there to Battery Park (we were gonna skip that since we were trying not to walk due to the achy legs). So we went to Battery Park and saw this weird looking (yet slightly familiar) globe statue. When we got up to it, we found out it was artwork structure that was between Twin Towers. That's why it looked familiar.
After we left Battery Park, we took the #4 train to Chinatown. It wasn't as foreign looking as I thought it'd be (there were tons of white people there). Susan got a beef kabob from a street vendor (and started a trend as no one was buying from him but there was a line of 3 people after we left). The interesting thing was that when he rewarmed the kabob, he deep fried it instead of putting it on the grill. Grilled and then deep fried beef tastes interesting. From there, we went to BIG WONG! It's a fairly well known Chinatown restaurant known for their "Eat it and get out....NOW!" attitude. When Susan and I walked in and she pointed she wanted a seat, the lady NATURALLY assumes Susan speaks Cantonese and just busts it out talking to her. After we got sat, like 8 seconds later, she's ready to take our order. Susan asked why she couldn't find the roasted duck she wanted and the waitress told her that she had the wrong menu. They had the traditional menu and then the "Special Menu".
After looking at the people at the table next to us order, we realized the "Special Menu" is the "White Safe" food menu! The Panda Express type of food. That became a running joke for the rest of the trip. After we left BIG WONGs, we went explored more of the area and saw Wu Hop. We noticed it had 2 restaurants. One in the basement and one at ground level. This, we found out, is basically the Traditional downstairs, and the "Special Menu" upstairs. Strangely enough, the downstairs had a huge waiting line with white people! We left and walked over to Little Italy (next door to Chinatown). At this point, our legs were killing us so we just found a set of stairs to sit down on to rest for a while. OF COURSE, that very restaurant (which wasn't scheduled to open for 10 more minutes) happened to be the place that the only other people on the street wanted to go to. And it didn't look like it was open (all the lights were off and chairs were up and they were due to open in 10 minutes). So the people hung out there for a while hoping it'd open so we left since we couldn't stand their complaining that the place wasn't open. As we were walking along, we found a place that had a ton of people in it, which turned out to be rice pudding store. Out of curiosity, we were gonna try some, but it was $6 for a small one! I don't care how good they think it'll taste (rice pudding is gross), i'm not paying that much. After that, we took a subway to Grand Central Station so we could go to the Palm Steakhouse. Grand Central looks just like I remember it (the upstairs part). I remember we were standing in that area when we bought my first NY bagel and man that thing tasted good. Almost like a pretzel. We walked out to 45th and 2nd Ave, and then found out, the place was closed! WTF? Mothers Day and they're closed? They have a sister restaurant across the street, but I only wanted to go to this one since that's where the cartoon drawings are at. At that point we were a bit demoralized as we knew we'd have to do a lot of walking to get back to the subway station and find somewhere else to eat. But since we were just one street from the UN, we went over to take a picture (my famous, "The UN as seen on 24" photo that I took). Susan remembered there was a bus that would take us into chinatown from there so we took that down (mental note, they only take exact change in change, no dollar bills!) So we went back to Wu Hop and had their lobster which Susan was just raving for! Susan was salivating for that lobster and when we went by Wu Hop the first time, she was trying to convince me to eat the lobster rather than the steak. After that we went home and slept from this exhausting day.


Monday

Having learned our lessons from the two days before (mostly as couldn't move ha ha), we took this day reallllly easy. Originally planned was going to Central Park, 30 Rock, The Letterman Show (which I requested the tickets over a month in advance), and then the Mets game. After waking up and walking (very slowly) to the train station, we decided to skip Central Park and 30 Rock as we'd have to rush back to the Letterman show if we did that. So we went to midtown and had some street food (hot dogs and kabobs). The kabob was pretty good too. The hot dog was decent in that I had hoped it would have been grilled (since he grilled all the other meats), but it was just boiled so it didn't have as much flavor as I would have hoped. We had to wait in line for what seemed like forever for the Letterman show 3 different times. It got to the point I was about to kill a few of the show pages as they were really getting annoying and after a while just repeating themselves (this gets amplified when your feet are hurting so bad you can barely stand). FINALLY we get into the studio. The stage is surprisingly small. Camera tricks are incredible to make it looks so big. We had a comedian come out for a few minutes to warm up the crowd (and they were blasting the AC to get the temperature down to about 55 degrees since Dave likes it cold in there) and then Dave came out for a few seconds to say hi before the show started. An interesting tidbit is that behind the Manhattan mini city set they have is a bunch of trash cans, but i don't think you can see them on TV. Our guest line up (from the May 10th show) was:

Evangeline Lilly
Sam Rockwell
Whoever the American Idol castoff was that week
and the Million Dollar Quartet (a musical in Broadway)

They film the whole show in about an hour! Almost in real time like 24. When they cut to commercial on the show, they just finishing playing whatever song they're playing and then start right back up again (and Dave takes off his jacket at every commercial). Plus when they say they're gonna show a clip of something, they put this big ass tv right in front of Dave and his guest (so it's hard to see them due to that).

After the show, we took the train out to Queens to get to the Mets stadium (very convenient that they have a subway stop right in front of the stadium). Citi Field is beautiful! I've never seen a stadium (football, basketball, or hockey included) look this nice! Though it's a bit too open air for me (it was about 50 degrees at best with the wind chill that day so it was cold). We tried the Shake Shack (which was freaking expensive there! It cost us $30 for 2 burgers, 1 fry, 1 shake, and one drink!) And i'm guessing since it was stadium prepared it didn't taste as good as I've been told. Oh well, next time, we'll try it in Madison Square Park. Since it was freezing, we didn't stay for the whole game and got back to Cami's around 10 that night to get to bed and ready to travel the next day.

Our Tuesday was fairly uneventful. We left Cami's and took a train and a subway and then another train to JFK to fly back to home.

It was a fun trip to NY/NJ, but I don't think I could live there. Not having a car can be nice, and the public transportation system there is great! That being said, I don't think i'd have fun waiting for a subway or a train when i have tons of groceries to haul or when it's raining or cold. Maybe it's just the small town KC boy in me, but NY isn't for me. Next vacation is definitely going to be a cruise!

The mic goes silent

In a shocking (and surprisingly national) story today, Vegas lost it's voice. Danny Gans, the man of a million voices died. It was probably due to a heart attack, but they're not sure yet. He was 52 but he didn't look or move like it at all. Susan and I saw his show (at the Mirage) last year and it was very entertaining. He had a very sterile, family friendly act that while at times bland, it was what made him Entertainer of the Year for 11 out of 13 years he was active here (he was at the Mirage forever). Steve Wynn hired him at the Mirage and as soon as his contract was up, he pulled him to the Encore again. Sadly, it was barely 3 months that he was there.



It didn't take long for Youtube to put a tribute up or for Wikipedia to update (I found out at 7:40 this morning and his page already had the info on it!)

Danny was just as well known outside of the show room as in it. He really appreciated his audience. He always gave out tickets to the locals and did charity work to give back to the community.

We'll miss you Danny. The illustrious glow of the Strip has lost it's shimmer today.

The Horror... Again!

Been a rough week. Need sleep!

In yet another example of how my cowardice and indecisiveness have cause the world more harm, I saw Carrot Top at my gym again. This guy is FREAKY looking! He's even scarier looking in real life! He used to just be annoying looking, but now he looks like a 'roid freak so juiced up he could rip your hand off by shaking it. Surprisingly enough, he didn't bring a pair of work out gloves so he was buying some there. Why can't Heidi Klum or Christina Ricci work out at my gym? Interestingly enough, NO ONE talks to this guy when he works out (probably due to fear). But I did hear a few of the trainers there saying he looked really juiced up (like more than usual). I could have rid the world of a major annoyance if i could have gotten up the courage to off him but he probably would have been able to crush my whole body before i got close enough to "hurt" him.

This weekend marks the one year anniversary of my dad needing to have open heart surgery. That was a very rough weekend for the whole family, but we all prayed a lot, and dad is doing great.

Another birthday down and if i'm dead tomorrow it's because i'm trying to make cookies from scratch tonight!

I'm hoping and praying there is some rhyme or reason as to how the Chiefs did their draft this weekend. They didn't even draft any offense till the 6th round! But we do have the distiction of picking Mr. Irrelevant. So I'm hoping they're gonna go offense crazy shopping on the free agent market soon? Hopefully?.......

Ha Ha Ha!

One thing that really annoys me about Vegas is the fact that pedestrians here treat cross walks and red lights as optional items. I've almost hit at least 8 people who were crossing the street in the dark (going against traffic naturally). Well today I got to see some poetic justice at work! While I was stopped at an intersection, I saw a guy standing on the center median and i noticed he was flailing his arms and moving funny. It was raining this morning (yes it rained twice in one month in Vegas!) and since the geniuses who built Vegas decided to not put in drainage in the roads, water builds up pretty quickly. At first I thought the guy was retarded or something but then I realized that he was flailing and moving funny because he was getting splashed, trying not to get splashed, and getting pissed off that he was getting splashed all at the same time! I'm actually surprised that the guy didn't get ran over as he kept falling off of the median (which was only about a foot wide) onto my side of traffic. The funniest thing was he was yelling it like it was the on coming car's fault that he was getting splashed!

Moron.

Well football season officially drew to a close yesterday as the Pro Bowl is now over. Boy what a disappointing season for us Chief fans. I'm glad the Steelers won, but I wished deep down that Kurt Warner could have gotten another Super Bowl ring. So what do I do between now and preseason?

Naga.. Naga... Na gonna work here anymore

If you don't know where the title is from, shame on you (it's from Office Space, go watch it!)

Friday.... Going to Naga. When our family had dinner before I went to the Philippines, mom and dad mentioned we were taking a trip to Naga (where my dad is from) to attend my cousin Nicky Boy's wedding. Mark, Phil and Leo all started laughing (the last time I went to Naga, I was 4 years old and don't remember it). I understood why. Though I don't remember going to Naga, I remember the trip of flying to the Philippines and flying back. My brain probably blocked out the trip because (from what I've heard) I got really sick because someone gave me the water there (you DO NOT want to drink the water there!) And I was told it wasn't a pleasant experience. Going to the airports in the Philippines (and a lot of other countries) is very different than in the States. In the Philippines, you can't even get into the airport if you don't have a ticket. Luckily since I wasn't over my jetlag, getting up at 6am was no problem. We got to the airport cutting it a little close (there was still traffic) but we got checked in pretty easily. The thing I don't understand there is that they just told everyone to get on, and then we were completely loaded onto a full flight in 10 minutes! What's up with that? The flight was a quick 45 minute hop down to Naga. From the air, all i could see were lots of green, and lots of water (and not a golf a course in sight!). I also saw something that looked like a 100 foot long road. Then I noticed we were descending towards it! I was like, "Crap that's the runway?" We landed and hit the ground HARD and flew right by the terminal. We stopped at the end of the runway and then turned around and brought the plane up to the "gate" which turned out to be some stairs and then walking about 30 yards to the airport. I noticed while we got off of the plane a lot of people were saying hi to this guy who was sitting in the first row (who also happened to be standing behind us in line at the airport in Manila). As we got off, even dad said hi to him too. So naturally I asked dad who it was, and he said it was the mayor! Apparently on Air Philippines (and probably Philippine Airlines) flights, the first row is saved till the last second for government officials. So I asked dad if the town is so small that everyone knows everyone. And mom said that the mayor knows dad because his wife is my grandmother's god daughter so they've known the guy for years even before he ran for mayor (so that was basically a YES to my question). A bunch of guys pulled all of the luggage off and put it in a small trailer and then just dragged it around to the front side of the airport (which was pretty small). After we got to the "baggage claim" which was little more than them throwing all of the luggage into a small pickup spot, i noticed that the airport people looked like they were getting ready to close (it was barely 8:30am at this point) and then i noticed that the flight we were on was the ONLY FLIGHT OF THE DAY! So that's all the airport people had to do! One of my uncle's picked us up and we were all to Naga and all of it's "nothing to do" country side. After we got to my grandma's house, I said hi to her (she's not doing well), and then just basically did nothing. We had lunch provided by my uncle who is running a pretty successful BBQ place there (pretty good food too) and then went to the Cable Water Ski place they have one town over (about 2 miles away). It's pretty neat. It's basically a network of cables that go in a circle and can pull you like you're water skiing but with no boat. And if you fall off, you can jump back on the platform and have the next cable pull you. I found a video on youtube even!



But I didn't try it because my knee had been hurting ever since we had gotten to the Philippines (probably from sitting cramped on an airplane for 17 hours!) . After that, we went shopping to get a barong to for me to wear to the wedding (it's the formal shirt to wear at a special events, kinda like a shirt and tie). Then it was just a drive home and then we had dinner and then went to bed.

Saturday we were up early and went to print something up at an internet cafe (they don't have a computer or printer at my grandma's house). I met yet another cousin i'd never met before (Dennis) who was helping my uncle setup a newer and bigger restaurant (his old on was essentially inside of someone's garage and it was so successful, the owner wanted to open his own restaurant). We went home to get ready for the wedding and then got ready for the weirdest part of the day! We got the Church and my uncle (different than the restaurant uncle) and his son (the one getting married) had gotten to the church way too early because they thought the wedding started at 2 and not 3! There were like a zillion sponsors for this wedding (i think like 20 or something). After the wedding we had a few hours to kill so we just went home and then chilled out for a while (it wore dad down from being in the heat so long as the church was fairly open air and it was hot). We had dinner at a local hotel and I saw a few cousins I hadn't seen in a few years. After that, it was home and to sleep as we had to get up at 6:00 again.

Sunday we got back to the airport and I checked the flight schedule for the day. Just one flight, so I was right! We had to wait forever as the flight to get us was 45 minutes late! When we finally got on, that was pretty scary too! When we took off, we barely cleared the runway (i don't think it's FAA approved in length). If we have gone another 100 feet (which is not long when you're going really fast on a plane) we could have fallen off the end of the runway and fallen 100 feet (at least) into a rice field! That was the worst part of the flight. We got into Manila no prob. I had lunch with my other grandma, and 1 of my mom's sisters (and her kids) and 2 of her brothers. Then I took a nap. I was still trying to meet up with Jill and Jennifer, but we just couldn't fit it in. We did have dinner with another one of my mom's brother's and his family so I ended up seeing all of my relatives on my mom's side. Then it was just sleep, and then it was a flight to Taipei on Monday.

Monday I got up early (again) and got to the airport (which mom and dad couldn't come in with me since they didn't have tickets) and had to go through a 2 hour wait to get through all of the security and immigration. I had some Christian missionary family from Wisconsin behind me and I think they were just going back to the states temporarily (but had like 4 bags each!). When we got to Taipei the lady behind me got hassled for having liquids in her bag (I did too, but her bag got through first so they hassled her and i got through scott free!). I had to wait in Taipei for about 1.5 hours and that went pretty quick since they had internet at the airport. on the flight from Taipei to LAX, I saw this fascinating documentary of the National Museum in Taipei. They house some of the greatest treasures from past Chinese Dynasties. The items are here because after the Chinese Revolution a lot of the items were never returned to China after the revolutionaries fled to Taiwan. So depending on who you ask, a Chinese person will say the items have been stolen, while a Taiwanese person will say they're being held to protect them. Kinda like during Katrina, white people found food, black people stole food. Jet lag was really kicking in during my flight so I was falling in and out of consciousness for most of the flight. I got into LA late (I rarely had a flight on time this whole trip) but customs was relatively painless, though if you've ever gone through customs at LAX, it's LONG. I got through ok and Susan was nice enough to meet me there as I had about a 2 hour layover till my flight back till Vegas (cut down to an hour since my flight was delayed). So luckily the flight back was fine and then it was off to bed for some "not sleep" as i was jetlagged and i knew work the next day was gonna be hell (which the next 2 weeks were)!

Well that was the trip and hopefully next time i write a trip blog it won't take me 2.5 months!

b!

Pried chicken and no appetite

So I finally get to the Philippines after what seems like days without a shower (I was ready to give my blanket to anyone on the plane as I was sweating even though people were bundled up (wimps). The lack of A/C probably had something to do with it. Once we got onto the ground you'd be amazed by how non foreign the place looks. You'd think you were in San Fran or Fort Ree, NJ. Except everything is in English instead of Chinese! There were more things in English here than in Downtown LA The first thing that I get adjusted to very quickly is that i'm not considered short anymore! Almost everyone is around my height or within 5 inches so I'm able to see the tops of peoples heads (that aren't 5 years old)! Due to the limited number of flights allowed into the country (due to runway space at the airport) every flight is usually packed full. Sooo, customs is usually packed full.

Luckily we got a line pass since dad was in a wheelchair. I look behind me and it's this 139 year old white lady is there (in a wheelchair too). So being curious, the porters are all asking her what the hell she's doing here? Her son married a pinay and decided to move to pinas. She said they lived 1.5 hours from the airport so that could either be 60 miles or around the corner depending on traffic.

After getting out of the airport was fairly painless. The ride back to the house was relatively quick. It was about noon (local time) and I was exhausted. So since the 3 of us were hungry and wanted something quick, where else to go (while in the Philippines) than KFC!?!

One different thing there is that people practically DRINK the gravy (they serve mashed potatoes but most people get rice) and the gravy is poured all over everything! For years I never understood why Phil and Mark liked gravy with rice. That is until about 4 years ago when I first tried it. Mannn that's gooooood stuff. But since we were tired (and double parked outside), we just got it to go. Naturally as soon as we got home, I went to bed! Of course since it's so hot and humid it took the room unit about 20-25 minutes to get the room cool (due to the high cost of power, it's more practical to have room units than central air).

The nice thing about being in the Philippines is the relaxed pace that things go (whether you want to have that pace or not). Pretty much all day Monday was sleeping and trying to stay hydrated. Dad was really worn out from the traveling so he was resting most of the time. I don't blame him; I felt the same way! I missed seeing my aunt Patty that afternoon because

1. I didn't know she was there till she was pulling out of the driveway.

2. She didn't say hi since mom thought I was sleeping.

So it was mostly just KFC for dinner and then went to bed.

Tuesday was interesting in that I saw my grandma (she's like 86 and can walk faster than me!) still kicking strong and she even drove herself over to my parents place! That was a shocker! But an even bigger shocker was her wireless landline (which sounds like an oxymoron). I found some info here:

http://quago.wordpress.com/2008/01/28/the-proliferation-of-the-wireless-landlines/

It was still hot of course. Tuesday night started a bathroom ritual that lasted till I left. Every night I had to kill a cockroach that was at least 2 inches long. Those things are honking big over there!

Wednesday. A day long remembered. I finally got to meet my penpal Myla (see her here). We've known each other for about 7 years now so it was weird to finally see her in person (especially since in the time we've known each other, she's gotten married and had 2 kids as beautiful as her). We ate at a place called Gerry's Grill and boy was I adventurous! I had Pusit which is grilled squid (not nearly as tough as I thought it would be) and Sisig a pork dish that is mostly pig head and pig ears. It was overcooked (burnt) but other than that, it was fine. I treated her to the SPA. That's the thing I always look forward to going to when I got to the Philippines. You can get a 1 hour massage for less than $20! You can't get that anywhere in the states for that price! I wanted to go back again the next day but we didn't have time :(

Thursday. Family time. Today was mostly either going out with family I hadn't seen yet or doing errands with mom. I went to Gloria Maris (a Chinese restaurant i've gotten really sick of going to) again. This time wasn't as bad as we ate on the "casual" dining side. Every other time i've gone there we've eaten on the formal dining side (9 course meals of the same thing everytime) so it was a nice change of pace. Though the scallops there sucked! Mom had a zillion things to do but we found time to get some games for my phone (and Sannie's).

Friday was going to be a busy day as we were going to be flying down to Naga for Nicky Boy's wedding. That's next up (hopefully faster than a month away)