Florida Part I

A couple of days ago I flew to Florida for New Year's. The flights were uneventful. Actually the one from LAX to Charlotte, NC took less than four hours! I was only able to get a couple of hours of sleep.

Becky picked me up and we drove from West Palm Beach to Jupiter. New Year's was tiresome. Becky's sister Laura had a new year's party with a lot of friends. People got drunk and all was happy. I could not make it to Pacific time new year's. I was in bed around 1am. Pictures here.

Today we went to beach and snorkeled . I saw a shark and some cool fish. This is where I wish I knew something about nature, so that I could tell you which species I saw. All I can say, is that some were yellow. After that, we went biking to a local park, Layla (Becky's friend joined us). I was promised mud and gators and was disappointed. There was a nice drizzle during the entire outing, which felt great and kept us cool while riding. Sadly, I fell on the way back when trying to do a cool braking stunt.

Tonight's dinner was wonderful: mushroom chicken. I got to meet Becky's grandparents, they are 89 and 90 and look so well! I was also humiliated at cards, but I promise to do better next time.

Tomorrow Becky and I are going golfing with her grandfather (my first time), this should prove to be fun. I love this trip!

Lack of Reading....

Growing up I used to love reading. I read so many books! I think that was one the reasons why I was able to learn English to quickly and compete with the native speakers in my class. I remember taking entire summers and reading a bunch of books, just for fun. Although, I never really got into word games (crosswords, jumble, ect.) to help my vocabulary (which I regret), I had a decent enough vocabulary to help me with my writing just from reading.


At some point during college, I just stopped reading for fun. In the last few years I have not read that many books for fun. The number of pages I read during college was phenomenal, and even more so in law school (at least 2,000 pages of dense reading this term), yet my leisure reading has dropped to a couple of books year. This is disturbing to me. It seems that I now see reading as a chore, and decide to watch TV instead. Now that I have a Netflix account and Hulu I am always choosing TV over book. Below is a list of the TV shows that I have seen since the summer.



Dawson's Creek (Seasons 1-5)

The West Wing(Seasons 1-7, which I own)

Prison Break(Season 1, Season 3 on TV)

Heroes(First half of season 2 on TV)

Stargate SG-1(Seasons 1-10, this took a long time!)

30 Rock(Season 1, half of season 2 on TV)

Big Bang Theory (Half of the first season on TV)

Cane(Half of first season on TV)

Sliders(Season 4)

Roswell(Season 1)

Chuck(Half of season 1, on TV)

Pushing Daisies(Half of the first season on TV)



Wow, that was a lot. Maybe I should cut back. Well, in the meantime I just need to finish my two on going projects: My So Called Life and Freaks and Geeks.

However, I am trying to read more for fun. While I was looking for a gift for my friend I stumbled upon a cheap copy of Wuthering Heights and purchased it immediately. I had not been so excited about a book in such a long time. I am going to bring it on my trip tomorrow and read on the nice warm Florida beaches. This is going to be better than the last book that I brought to the beach, Patent Law.

I'm out.

Merry Xmas ...

First of all, I wish all my friends a merry Christmas. For the non-christian ones, happy holidays. For all, happy new year. I'm in Riverside for a few days, so that should be enjoyable. I hope to see some old friends from high school before I get back.

All around I see holiday cheer, whether in the commercial sense at the mall, or more familial the neighborhood decorations.

Since all the gyms are closed, I decided to go for a jog today. A little background first. A few days before Thanksgiving I decided to have a reverse new year's resolution. I was going to the gym every single day, until the new year. I weighted 168 lbs., and wanted to get back too my summer weight of 155. So far I have been able to go to the gym every single day. I usually do 37 minutes on the elliptical machine and another half hour of lifting (usually longer). As a result, I've lost 10 pounds (3 pounds away from my goal!), and I've gotten much stronger. I think will keep up the regiment past new year's, probably less intense.

While I was jogging I made three observations. First, jogging is much harder than the elliptical. Second, the crash of the housing market is huge, I saw about 7 houses for sale in my 2 mile run. Third, people are a**holes, even on a holiday. Let me expand on this. While I was jogging some guy honked at me, slowed down, and flipped me off! WTF?

I assume that the person thought I was being jerk for exercising during Christmas. Aside from that I have no idea. I spent maybe 6 days in Riverside in 2007, so I know I don't have any enemies. Maybe he confused me with somebody else. I don't know, it was just rude.

Anyways, I will end on a happy note. Happy holidays to all. I bought my brothers a radio controlled airplane and I am just as excited as they are to go fly it. Take care all.

Not on Beauty and the Geek

So nobody called me today from the show. I guess this means that I am not going to be on TV. Oh well. Long shot, but it was fun thinking about it.

Half Way Done With Law School....

This makes me happy. I spent some time trying to teach Andy some products liability concepts, there is actually a lot of material I learned this term. As always, I was impressed with Andy's ability to understand difficult concepts.

Anyways, now that I am halfway done I guess I officially have the "J" in my "J.D."

Top Flickr Photos...

A couple of days ago Flickr announced that pro accounts can now access statistics about all the pictures on the account since it was first opened. Since I have over 4,500 pictures, I was interested in seeing which ones are the most popular.

Not surprisingly, most of my top pictures are from Madagascar. I guess this makes sense since these are the most unique pictures that I have on there. Some other top pictures surprised me. Here is a list of my most viewed Flickr pictures.

# 1: 204 views

This one makes sense. A picture of a Gorgeous Grandidier's baobab. Most people have not see these types of trees.


#2: 176 views



Picture of Felicia in a wetsuit when she was in middle school. No nudity, no interesting background. Why is this #2?


#3: 151 views



Local Malagasy girls. Makes sense, very cultural.


#4 views: 139



Andy sitting on my couch sophomore year at Caltech. I don't think he should be that interesting.



So in conclusion, people are weird. I have so many great pictures, and many of the ones that get viewed are not interesting at all. This of course might have to do with the fact that not that many people look at my pictures to begin with. A top view of 204 is pathetic on the web. I also don't do that good of a job tagging or geo tagging my pictures. Oh well ... I'll try to get better pictures.

Geek is chic?

Apparently being a geek is now cool. I read this article that was linked on msnbc and part of a Today show segment yesterday. They even have a field guide for women, to help them find geeks. My reaction ... when do I get to benefit from this?

I'm certainly consider myself a geek. This is of course apparent when I tell them about my Stargate SG-1 obsession, the fact that I love to tutor calculus, and computer hobbies. I have yet to see an improvement in my dating life. Maybe this has a lot to do with being in school all the time. Law school does not give me much time to meet people outside of the school. I guess I have to wait a bit longer to reap the benefits of this cultural shift.

Any ladies out there, feel free to contact me.