philly

Little Ones are Getting Bigger

Got to spend a little time with my niece and nephew Friday night at my brother and sis-in-law's place for the birthday dinner. They sat still long enough for me to get a few shots of them. This is the best one of the two of them together. They're the best.

Halloween 1984

And what would a trip down memory lane be without funny Halloween costumes? There I am with my cousin in clown outfits our grandma made for us. I'm rocking the reflective pumpkin sticker for xxxxtra safety.

Cuteness factor: 7

New House in 1983

There I am in my third winter in front of the new house in Scarsdale with my grandma. That weird yellow thing in my pocket is a mallet for one of those Fischer Price metal xylophones. My family moved from Flushing Queens to one of the ritziest 'burbs in the land. We lived in the not so ritzy 1/5 of town.

I lived in that house for about four years. It's still there. The house I lived in from about seven through most of college is now torn down, they built a bigger house. I was quite shocked to see a gigantic hole in the ground when I went home to visit during my sophomore year of college in DC.

Cuteness factor: 8

More House Guests!

NYE weekend it was my friends AK and KT and then Lady's sister stayed over and this weekend, my sister and brother in law are coming to town. That IKEA futon I bought for my old apartment is getting quite a workout so far in 2006.

And so far, with each visitor, more stuff has gone pu on our walls. I put up the six panel whooping crane painting thingie before AK and KT came to town. The next day, I got a bunch of photos back from the lab and we hung up a bunch of 11x14s, 8x10s and 4x6s all over the house. And at the end of last week, I got one more 11x14 and a frame and it now hangs above the futon.

They should be in town around brunchtime. Hopefully we can snag a table for four during the tail end of brunch at one of the Banbridge St brunch hotspots. Then, I'm thinking a little digesting time on the walk back and then a driving tour of Philly, be all touristy. A trip to the PMA? And then they have dinner reservations at Morimoto and we are oh so jealous. We will be relegated to a vicarious dining experience. One day... Probably grab some drinks somewhere afterwards.

Sunday brunch and then back on the road for them up to Queens.

My first family member visiting me since moving to Philly!

New Year's Day 2006

New Year's Day 2006 was much better than the preceding New Year's Eve 2006. I awoke sans hangover [I had puked everything up at about 3a] and my buddies from college were in town and not dead after the night before! We sat around and watched the Mummers mumm strut and were mesmerized/distracted by that guy's horrible horrible sweater that looked sort of like a Magic Eye gone wrong, horribly wrong. We guessed that it was a present that he had to wear for some reason - on air.

I took the ~3p R7 with AK to Trenton. I gave him my December TransPass and we both rode for free, sweet. It was the first time I was awake while taking that ride, I usually sleep the whole way through, but we were both awake and talking, catching up after a torturous first semester of law school for AK in Chitown. We passed the stop at Bristol and just north of the station was a gorgeously [manmade?] landscaped pond. There was a picturesque gazeebo jutting into the pond. I wanna get back there and take some photos. At Trenton, we hopped on the NJT where AK got off after a couple stops to meet his pops. I promptly went to sleep for the rest of the trip.

Penn Station [NYC] to Port Authority on the A/C/E and then a walk through the foot tunnel and hopped on the 7 to Grand Central where I caught the next train to my aunt/uncle's house in Ardsley. I was the last one to arrive at the family gathering. My mom, aunt, grandma and neice were all decked out in hanbok, traditional Korean garb, very colorful. We quickly went into sehbeh, a New Year's Day ceremony where the younger generation[s] pay their respects to their elders and the elders part some words of wisdom [and some cash!].

Then it was dinnertime where I caught up with my cousin who is a teacher in NYC and living with her good childhood friend in some gigantic apartment in the Upper West Side. How they afford it, I don't know. Somehow, the conversation lead to cooking and she was saying how she doesn't cook much. I asked if the cookbook I got her for Christmas [she asked for it] was just going to sit and gather dust, she promised no and that it was one of her resolutions to cook more. Eggcellent.

After grub, I'm not quite sure how it started, my nephew Justin started to demonstrate some of the Tae Kwon Do he's been learning. He's really quite good. His kicks are snappy and he's well balanced. And it's not just me, a martial arts movie junkie saying this, my brother in law Marc, a fourth degree black belt in Karate and an instructor, said so too.

Some photos from the night here on flickr.

Teaching Parents Technology

So after I scanned in all the photos of me one evening, I told my parents what I had done. My Mom looked at me and said, how do you do that? I looked at her stupefied. They had this nice scanner/copy/printer that they bought with this über nice new computer [2.8GHz HT, 512MB DDR RAM, 80GB HDD, DVD drive, CDRW drive, 17" flat panel monitor] and they didn't know how to use it? Good grief.

Apparently, they had just learned how to burn CDs in the last couple of weeks. They've had this beast for several months now.

So I sat down with them to teach them the ways. Scanning in the photos and rotating them in their My Pictures folder was easy enough. Emailing them, that's another story.

Firstly, lemme say that I got them switched off of MSIE to Mozilla's Firefox browser when I last came home in October. They're still using it. Good. I downloaded Thunderbird to be their new email client to save them the trouble of logging into their email via Optimum Online's webmail app [I despise webmail apps aside from my precious GMail]. I set up my Mom's account in Thunderbird and started to show them how to compose, attach and send. Easy enough, eh? No.

It took awhile, but I think it stuck. Then came the question of sending a link via email. Copy, paste, send. Simple? Nope. That took the bulk of several hours plus a reminder session the next afternoon. I was pleased to see that Thunderbird was compatible with their Korean character software, sweet. They can now compose emails on their computer without logging into their webmail app and write them in Korean as well with no problems.

Easy for me, not so easy for them. They took copious notes on scraps of paper. The same kind of scraps of paper they were using to store email addresses. I transcribed them into their oh so fancy address book in Thunderbird. Now, they can just click on the names in the Contacts pane of their email to add addresses instead of fumbling through drawers looking for scraps of paper with emails scribbled on them.

They taught me to walk, talk, eat, write, wipe my ass, ride a bike, catch a baseball, handle my money... the least I can do is set up their email and teach them how to email links [good god!] and photos.

It's funny, one of the first things I do when I go home is fiddle with their computer to make sure everything is up to date. What did I find when I turned it on when I went home? Their Norton Anti-Virus has expired. So I uninstalled it [no need for them to buy it] and installed AVG and scanned their computer, clean. They're currently using Word Perfect Office 12 right now. They're happy with that. I may switch them over to Open Office someday. Not yet. Next lesson, CTRL+C to copy and CTRL+V to paste instead of right-clicking with the mouse. I wonder if I can get that lesson in for when I'm back for New Year's Day.

Christmas Pictures

Pictures of my family's Christmas are up. Take a peek if you'd like in the flickr set.

Everyone Liked Their Presents!

Well, except for Justin, who already had the GameBoy Advance game I got him. But I guess he stilled liked it. My sister and brother in law sneakily read my blog and knew what they, and everyone, were getting! After all the gifts were opened, Marc turned to me and said, "We have a confession to make... I read your blog and we knew what we were getting." Ha. Who knew they read this thing. Apparently, he clicks over to my photoblog to take a look at my photos and clicks over to the blog here and there. Now I know to keep the secret stuff off the blog - snooper!

Marc and Julie apparently also already saw Fahrenheit 9/11 on DVD [which I got them for Christmas], but Marc said they hadn't seen all of it. Oh well. I got them that DVD because the last time I was in town for Thanksgiving and stayed at their house, they were saying they wanted to see it. I hoped that in the four weeks between Turkey Day and Christmas they'd be too busy fiddling around in their new house to get to watching it, oh well. There's extra footage to watch as well! They loved their album though which was where more thought went. I pointed out how I laid it all out too and Julie liked the progression of photos throughout the night of the festivities. The rest of the fam oohed and ahhed while looking through it.

Mom and Dad liked the photo of them from the wedding as well. In the frame I got for them. I had planned for them to hang it up in this one empty spot by the stairway in their house, but in the last few months since I've been home, they went and got something to hang up in that empty spot. It's been empty for like five years and they just got something there! Arg. Now where to put it.

James and Kelli [bro and sis in law] liked the shot of their fam I took at Julie's wedding in another nice frame. They were more happy with all the piles of gifts everyone got for the kiddies Justin and Emily. Their pile of stuff was ginormous! One of Emily's gifts was bigger than her!

My Aunt loved the photo of her kids that I got for her from the wedding. She called my Mom early this morning to ask if I could go over to their house to take family photos of them all dressed up before they all went to church. My Mom asked if she had opened the present I got for them and she said she hadn't. My Mom told her to open it. She did and was overjoyed. She told my Mom to wake me up and get over there pronto. Which I dutifully did. I took a bunch of shots of my Aunt, Uncle, Grandma and my three cousins in their dining room and next to their nice Christmas tree. No internet access from my computer right now [on my parents' bitchin desktop now] so I can't send the shots to them just yet, but hopefully I'll have some prints for them when I come back to NY for New Year's Day family stuff. Koreans pay homage to each of the elder members of their family each New Year's wishing them healthy and happy year to come in a ceremony called sehbeh. The younger people get what's called sehbeh don; money from the elders.

I ate so much great home cooking. Overstuffed. Gotta hit the gym on Monday night when I get back to Philly before Monday Night Football [ugh, the Giants lost yesterday].

Santa even brought a gift for Lady which I will bring back with me tomorrow. Most of the gifts I got were nice, light and green :) so my haul won't be too heavy. If it's not disgusting out tomorrow, I'd like to head into NYC a little early and walk around a bit. Grab a bagel with a schmear and a slice or two of some real pizza. There, I said it.

I hope everyone else's Christmas and first night of Chanukkah were lovely. Kwanzaa starts tomorrow!

My Christmas Contribution

Sitting underneath our very old, fake, plastic christmas tree. What's the deal with the 'rents not wrapping up their stuff and getting it out? Come on mom & dad!

There's a bow on one of them because the wrapping broke during my travels from Philly to White Plains. Mom had a bow and some tape and told me to just patch it up instead of re-wrapping. Genius!

Heading Home

I'm headed out of work in about thirty minutes to go home, pack up my final things and head over to Market East to catch the 4.45p or 5.06p trains back to NY via NJT. I'm bringing home my headphones in hopes that I'll have an .mp3 player for my trip back. Ooooh wouldn't that be nice.

The office is just about empty.