Category Archives: Trips

San Francisco

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I am in San Francisco. It was a rather frustrating trip here, but has been a fun time thus far (due, in no small part, to the holiday today).

Travelwise, I spent most of yesterday on planes. Got into San Francisco about 30 minutes late, and had some slight panic when I made it to the bus stop at 12:16, with the 292 scheduled to arrive at 12:15. Fortunately, it was a little late, and I barely made it on… which was fortunate, because BART had stopped running and the next bus was at 1:15 AM. Made it to the hotel at around 1:30 and managed to get some sleep. Meh.

Jeremy, Shawn, Ian, and I spent the day wandering San Francisco for Unpresidents’ Day.
What is Unpresidents’ Day? I’ll let the video tell you. (NSFW for language.)

Video editing done by Jeremy. My DSLR apparently delivers decent quality audio, despite all the background traffic.

There were also tasty Mission burritos (oh how I missed you) and Korean food at Stone (highly recommended).

Mark and Tim playtested People Wars for me, and it seemed to go well. It looks like attacking and tasks are mostly balanced now (I worry a bit about attacking being overpowered, actually, because of the constant difficulty of task playing, but lower difficulty as the game progresses of using more powerful attacks), but the main issue is (as I suspected) with the limited pool of task cards. This will have to be remedied before the game is released.

Now I should sleep so I can go to work tomorrow. Yay work.

Travels

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The past few days have been an adventure.

We started Thursday evening when Greg flew into SF to help me move. We had a last session of games that turned into more just hanging out and talking, which was just as good. At least I got to see everyone before I moved.

Friday involved driving to Phoenix. Packing the car was kind of fail… I ended up leaving a suitcase and 3 boxes behind (thanks, Andrew!) because we couldn’t fit them in the car. Also the car was already extremely heavy and Greg was worried about the rear wheels.
It was a 765 mile drive, but Greg managed to make it in one day. It was also a really pretty drive.

Sunday was going to the Titan Missile Museum and Tombstone. The former was awesome, the latter was kind of dead (especially given it’s Sunday… maybe the recession was especially hard on this tourist-centric town), no pun intended.

Besides that, there was seeing random people and catching up. It was nice. I drove for the first time in 2.5 years (hopefully didn’t give Greg a heart attack or something) and also got to see some friends for the first time in just as long. Makes me feel like I should go back to Phoenix more often.

Now we are back in Pittsburgh after a flight that routed us through Tampa Bay. The weather is kind of horrible (it’s really not the heat, it’s the humidity… over 90 in Phoenix was totally fine), but there is an air conditioner that is making things okay. San Francisco has really ruined my weather tolerance, apparently.

Photos coming at some point in the future (psst… you should subscribe to the RSS feed or the LJ syndication).

Europe summary

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Been back in SF for a couple days… today was my first day at work in a month. Spent most of the time going through my almost 1100 emails and getting my build working again.

The flights home were uneventful, although I didn’t get any sleep during the flight. I got to watch Bolt, which is actually a fairly well-done movie. Customs wasn’t nearly as annoying as I had been anticipating. It was my first time filling out the form and going through by myself and such, but they didn’t seem to really care and just waved me through after taking my form.

In any case, I wanted to post a summary of my Europe trip… mostly for my own reference later. The 10-day tour is really more like 7 days of actual sightseeing and such, but meh. I love how they count the “arrive at BKK” as a day, despite the fact that the company itself has absolutely nothing else to do at that point (at least Day 1 involves them getting tickets and sorting out baggage and such).

I still need to go through and post photos from the trip. I’ll do that once I’m feeling more normal.

Day 1 (June 6):
Meet at the Bangkok airport at 9:30 PM to board a flight for Italy. Take off at midnight.

Day 2:
Arrive in Italy, drive to Rome to see the famous fountain and the Spanish steps. After lunch, head to the Colosseum, then Saint Peter’s in Vatican City. Stay at the Admiral Palace hotel in Chianciano Terme. Special dinner of Italian food.

Day 3:
Travel to Florence to see Duomo/Santa Maria church and reproductions of various famous works in the area, then to Piza to see the leaning tower. Stay at the Novotel hotel in Florence. Special dinner of Italian steak.

Day 4:
Travel to and take a boat to Venice. Take a gondola ride around the city and see demonstrations of glassblowing. Explore the city. Lots of shopping. Take a boat back and stay at the Anthony Palace hotel in Marcon.

Day 5:
Travel to Milan and look at various statues in the area. Then drive to Switzerland through the longest tunnel in the world (17 kilometers), stopping at Lucerne to look at the famous bridge before heading to Interlaken. Stay at the Hotel Krebs (crab hotel) in Interlaken.

Day 6:
Take the cog-wheel train up to Jungfrau, the “Top of Europe”. Stay at Hotel Krebs again. Special dinner of fondue.

Day 7:
Take the bus to France, stopping in Strasbourg. Take the TGV into Paris. Visit the Triumph Arch. Take the Bateaux Mouche boat up and down the Seine, seeing different parts of the city. Stay at the Pullman Paris La Defense. Special lunch of Escargot.

Day 8:
Go up the Eiffel Tower. Walk by (but not into) the Louvre and the Joan of Arc statue in the area. Go to the Galleria Lafayette for shopping. Bus down to Versailles for a tour. Stay at the Pullman Paris again.

Day 9:
Head to the Charles de Gaulle airport for a 1:50 PM flight.

Day 10:
Arrive back in Bangkok at 6 AM.

Food and Star Trek and Food

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Back in Thailand for a day of fun.

My uncle took us to an awesome buffet today for lunch. They had a ton of gourmet-looking food from all different parts of the world, people to pull your chair out and push it in when you sit down, people to fold your napkin and place it nicely on the chair when you get up for more food, and the most amazing gourmet dessert bar I’ve seen. I tried more types of cakes and parfaits and more traditional Thai desserts today than I’ve had in the entire trip thus far.

Afterward, we went to the mall movie theatre and discovered that they were still showing Star Trek. After watching it, I can understand what all the excitement and hype was about… I was very, very, very impressed. One of the best movie experiences I’ve had in recent memory… at least since Wall-E. Yay for CMU-grad Spock. Also, I missed Randy Pausch’s cameo… anyone know where it was?

Afterward my uncle introduced us to the tastiness that is Crepe Cake… basically a few dozen layers of crepe and whipped cream, topped with strawberry sauce. They also had thai tea cake, which is likewise amazingly tasty. Om nom nom nom.

Tomorrow will be a trip to my aunt’s orchid orchard followed by more buffet dinner (Japanese, this time). The day after will be food with my uncle… or whatever you call the son of your grandmother’s sister. The following day will be flying home to San Francisco. I get back Saturday afternoon (before I leave from Hong Kong, actually… yay timezones).

Greetings from France

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So this is the dreqded azerty keyboqrd: Itùs pretty zeird; I ,ust sqy: The nu,bers reauire pushing shift::: the defqults qre qll punctuqtion: Hoz odd§ ?qybe§

Todqy zqs qn interesting trip: Ze got up rqther eqrly in Szitwerlqnd before hopping on the bus qnd bussing into Frqnce::: Strqsbourg; to be precise 9i zrote dozn the nq,es todqy1 Qnd ze hqve q booklet zith qll the locqtions qnyzqy thqt Iùll type out qfter the tour0: Qfter so,e sightseeing there; ze hopped onto the TGV qnd took it into Pqris itself: Ze got to sit first clqss; zhich is pretty nice::: the chqirs zere big qnd co;fy: The trqin is qlso reqlly fqst but reqlly auiet: Zhy cqnùt Cqltrqin do thqt§

In Pqris; ze zent to the big Gqte qrch thing thqt celebrqtes Nqpoleon: Qfter dinner; ze hopped on q boqt qnd took it dozn the Seine; photogrqphing the city qs the sun stqrted to set: Bequtiful:

To,orroz ze zill be exploring ,ore of Pqris 9qnd going up the Eiffel Tozer10: Zeùre qlso supposed to go South to Versqilles 9I believe0; but thqt ,qy or ,qy not hqppen depending on zhether the zorkers dozn there decide to strike to,orroz qfternoon qfter their negotiqtions in the ,orning:

Frqnce is ,ore of the sq,e expensive)zise: I donùt knoz hoz q,yone cqn qfford to live here: Q,ericqns hqve it so eqsy::: gqs here runs betzeen six qnd seven dollqrs q gqllon 9qbout one point tzenty euros per liter0 qnd food is likezise expensive: Iùll never co,plqin qbout the price of gqs or food qgqin MP
Qlso; drivers here qre reqlly bqd::: on the zqy bqck to the hotel; ze pqssed qn qccident zith q cqr qnd q ,otorcycle: The cqr hqd q huge dent in the side qnd the ,otorcycle zqs on its side; qnd its driver zqs lqying very still in qn unnqturql position q fez ,eters qzqy: I reqlly hope the guy ends up being ok: M9

Yeqh; thqtùs reqlly it for noz: If you ,qnqged to reqd this entry; yqy for you::: you get q ton of speciql French broznie points or so,ething: