Greetings from Down Under!

Hi Everyone!
I can't believe that we've already been here for almost 2 weeks now. Having a fun and relaxing time, but Edwin is now fighting a cold. We are in Melbourne now and will be leaving for Ayers Rock tomorrow. It's been really crazy. Some of you may know, but some may not. The day before we left, Edwin accepted a new job at UCSF. We are both very excited to have him start working again. I'll let him tell you about the job, but all I know is he's getting 5 weeks of PTO. How does he do it???

On other news, I actually got a job offer as well. I'm still trying to decide what to do, but I got a job offer from IRI as a Research Manager and MarketTools is now trying to keep me. It's a good position to be in, but it is rather stressful trying to do this on the other side of the world. I'm leaning towards staying at MarketTools. The reason is that I am finally going to be able to do what I have wanted to do and that is writing surveys and doing the analysis. I also will be getting 3 more days of PTO in 6 months because I will have been there for 3 years. So, if they are willing to match IRI, I will probably stay.

So here's what we've been up to on our trip:
Sat. 11/18
We arrive in Sydney and took the Airport Link which is like taking a Caltrain for A$12.50/person or $10 US. After we checked-in, we went shopping at the Paddington Market and meandered around the area. We then walked around Circular Quay (that's pronounced like "key") which is basically the Sydney Harbour and walked to The Rocks area. It's all a tourist trap, but still very picturesque. We had drinks at the Harbor View Hotel which seemed very LA to me. Then we had German food at a restaurant called Lowenbrau to celebrate Edwin's birthday. (His birthday was actually skipped this year because we got on the plane on 11/16 and got off the plane on 11/18, so because we crossed the international dateline, his birthday didn't happen. Cool, huh?) It was this great meat platter with sausages, pork knuckle, pork belly, something that tasted like bologna, and a ham. My favorite was the pork belly. This dish was not for the faint of heart and any vegan would probably need to stay at least 10 feet away to not gag.
PS- We were able to use a Citibank at the Sydney airport (yeah!), but unfortunately, it didn't allow me to access all of my Citibank accounts and I had only $200 in my savings because I get a higher interest rate in my e-savings account (boo!) However, I actually had the foresight to transfer some money into my checking account just in case. (Really glad I did that!) So, we should be fine since I'll also get paid while we are gone and that goes into my checking account too.

Sun 11/19
We took the 10AM 1-hour Harbour Cruise which was really nice. All the guidebooks said that we should take the afternoon ferry which was like 2 hours, but I actually was fine with the morning one. I tend to fall asleep on these things anyways! It was a good intro to Sydney and Australia. Then, we went back to the Rocks Market and had a fisherman's platter (fried fish, calamari, shrimp, etc. ) at Costi's. For the afternoon, we took a bus to Bondi Beach. It was not the warmest day to go but it was still very pleasant. We had soft serve ice cream (me with a choc top which just means chocolate dipped and Edwin had a choc with nuts.) It was cold, but we both managed to get a little burned. Nothing serious, but just enough to be a little red. They also had some kind of art exhibit along the beach which was really nice. It made us seem more cultured, but I have never been to an art museum in a bathing suit before. There were close to 100 sculptures. Then,we met up with some old family friends, Philip and his wife Charlie. I haven't seen Philip for almost 15 years (we think the last time was in 1990 or 1991.) He is a friend of my Uncle Glenn's and he used to spend the holidays with my family. He's always very funny. I had never met his wife before, but she was really, really nice as well. They took us to a sushi boat restaurant that is owned by one of their friends. Really yummy. We had oysters and pipi hot pot which were these really sweet clams in a sake broth. It was really good catching up with them and they gave us some recommendations for the rest of our trip.

Well, I guess I'll have to write more about our adventures the next time because my time is almost up! See you all in another 10 days!

Ellen and ShiGoSan

This past weekend our Ellen returned home to us not to stay, but for a visit. On Friday, we had dinner at San Tung with Greg, Sin Yen, Matilde, Show, Kaori, Maika, Debbie, and her friend Caroline. It was a fun time and we ended the evening with karaoke at Kaleho for old times sake.

On Saturday, we went to Macy's to complete our registry. I'm still trying to figure out what the saleswoman did, but I'm pretty sure that it was in our favor. Then, we went to hang out with Ellen in her hotel room. Guess we're getting old because we considered that a night out.

On Sunday, we helped to celebrate Maika's ShiGoSan (7-5-3.) It's a Japanese children's celebration. Though Maika is not yet 3, I guess she's 3 by the lunar calendar. I guess the girls get to celebrate being 7 and 3 and the boys celebrate being 5. I don't really understand the significance, but I enjoyed seeing all the little girls wearing their little kimonos. When I was in Japan last year, I accidentally witnessed the same event at the Meiji Shrine. I have all these photos of little kids in their kimonos. They were just so cute. Maika was getting lots of attention in Japantown too. Poor little thing got nervous in the room full of kids and adults, but calmed down once the ceremony started. Of course, I think that candy helped too. :) We took about a hundred photos and we'll post a few. We're still getting the used to the new camera that we just bought- Canon SD800. Love it. The old camera worked fine, but we wanted more megapixels and the ability to create videos that were longer than 4 seconds.

Ring Around the Rosy

So what does a nervous bride do while she's waiting to walk down the aisle? In my case, I played Ring Around the Rosy with Hannah.

Ring around the Rosy!
Pocket full of posies!
Ashes! Ashes!
We all fall DOWN!

If you ever have a lot of nervous energy, running after a 2 year-old will definitely help. I loved these photos that Binh took of us. I'll add them to one of my photo links eventually, but here they are for now. So I was wondering what a posey was, maybe I shouldn't have asked...

Honeymoon update: We now have all of our plane tickets purchased and most of the hotels. Still need hotels for Darwin, Tasmania, and Cairns. Anyone have any recommendations? Also, if anyone has any recommendations for food in any of the places we are going to visit, let me know so that we can bring that list with us.

Got Wedding Photos?

So I've been trying to figure out how to display all the photos in one place. I wanted to be able to allow people to download their photos in jpg format. I've been furiously trying to research all the different possibilities like picasa, flickr, photobucket, SendPhotos, Kodak photo gallery, shutterfly, and snapfish. I thought I would try flickr, but I just don't have the time to learn how to do it in time. So here is my compromise. I am going to post all the photolinks that you all send me.

I'm going to upload our photos and put them into yahoo or flickr once I figure out what to do. Flickr is a yahoo product and picasa is a google product. I like flickr so far because it is in gamma while picasa is in beta. I suspect that picasa will become the better product over time, but currently, flickr has more functionality. I'll be updating the side bar with photos from everyone, so please send me links to your photos if you have them. I'll also post the photos from the photographers once we get them.

Even if you send me a link to your photos, please send me a CD with the full files so that I can print them out and send them in case anyone requests one of your beautiful wedding photos. If you don't have that many, you can send them to my email mfong8@yahoo.com.

This past weekend, we spent Friday returning/exchanging wedding gifts. We're realizing that we have more gifts than space, so we'll probably be holding a garage sale early next year. We also saw the movie "The Departed" which is based on the HK film "Infernal Affairs." I have to say that the acting and dialogue were great. However, I didn't like how they changed the ending in the US version. I really like how they adapted it to the Boston dynamics, but I didn't like how they had Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon's characters going after the same woman. It just added something that didn't seem plausible. Jack Nicholson was really good and I loved Mark Walhberg's character- he was hilarious.

On Saturday, I went to Greg's housewarming party while Edwin went to the Cal-UCLA game for an impromptu guy's drinking afternoon. I also spent some time planning our honeymoon since it is next week. Ha ha! Here's our preliminary itinerery:

11/18-11/22 Sydney
11/22-11/28 Tasmania
11/28-12/1 Melbourne
12/1-12/4 Alice Springs/Uluru (Ayer's Rock)
12/4-12/6 Darwin
12/6-12/9 Port Douglas
12/9-12/10 Cairns
12/11 Auckland/SF

So it looks like a lot for 24 days. We have 2/5 flights purchased and 2 hotel reservations (Sydney & Melbourne.) I know the rest of the 3 flights and I have another hotel reservation (Port Douglas) that I am about to make. So now I have about a week to plan the rest. Ha ha!

On Sunday, we went to Mike and Michelle's tasting dinner. Had to help Michelle with her invitations since she spent so many hours helping us with ours. Here are some cool photos that Michelle's bro David took of the event. http://poeticdream.com/tastetesting Gotta love that photojournalism. My recommendations for dinner- steak or chicken. Loved the apps.

Honeymoon- what honeymoon?

So we are leaving for our honeymoon to Australia in 2 weeks. We have always said that we were going to plan the honeymoon after the wedding. We had a month, right? Well, it is now almost 2 weeks after the wedding and we still have yet to make any hotel reservations or purchase any other plane tickets. So what have we been doing? Paying bills from the wedding, opening gifts, trying to get over a cold, and celebrating Halloween.

The day of the wedding, I was feeling something in my throat that I was trying to ignore. After all the festivities, my body wouldn't let me deny it anymore. I had a cold. Hannah and Timothy came to SF with a cold and something was going around the office. I think I was bound to get something. So I worked from home for 2 days and it still wouldn't go away. I'm in Seattle right now for work and I still am coughing. It sucks having to travel and being sick.

This past week, we went to see Robin Williams at Bimbo's for a live show. Since he lives in SF, he likes to test his material in front of live audiences at Bimbo's before he does it on HBO or Comedy Central. He was funny, but he just got out of rehab and so a lot of his jokes were about drugs and alcohol. I saw him once before at Bimbo's and I thought he was funnier last time, but it could also be that I wasn't sick the last time either. It was hard getting tickets because they limited you to 2 tickets per person and there were 5 of us trying to get them off the website and I was the only one able to get through and buy the tickets.

Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween. Edwin and I found out costumes last weekend. I was a princess and Edwin was my knight in shining armor. We went out clubbing with Tom and Debbie and I realized that my costume was definitely not hoochie enough. Debbie was Chung Li from Street Fighter and Tom was Clark Kent. On Halloween, we had Sin Yen, Show, Kian, and Wendy over for a small get together. Show dressed up as a paper dress up doll and Wendy wore a beautiful cloak. We helped to celebrate Sin Yen's annual 30th birthday (which was officially the day before) and ate some leftover wedding cake. We had 2 layers left- the chocolate and carrot cake. I would say that the white cake with apricot filling was my favorite and then carrot cake and then chocolate which is surprising because most of the time, chocolate is my favorite. However, this chocolate cake is pretty mild, so I think that's why I prefer the other flavors. Don't get me wrong, I still like them all, but that's my order of preferance.

Remember that show Doogie Howser? Who knew that Doogie was the first blogger? If you need a refresher, here's the theme song. Don't you just love YouTube?