Well today or yesterday the 6th of September marked the 100th day after my grandma in Vietnam passed away. My parents held a small anniversary remembrance at my house, my uncles and aunt (yes only one) came by for a while and ate. My cousins and my brother, who is in Berkeley, couldn’t make it. Afterward, I stayed at home for a while today and took a nap until 4 PM.

Devin and Darren, who stayed over for the night again after our long trip to San Diego the night before, left for Northridge to Nick’s BBQ earlier in the morning after their short sleep (I have no clue how they can do it, so extreme for even me!)

After my nap this afternoon, I took off for Northridge to Nick’s BBQ also. I have never been to Northridge before even though after today, I have realized how close it is to where I live. I have always thought that Northridge was far away or at least 2 hours away. Anyhow, I arrived a bit late to the BBQ and didn’t get a chance to swim. After the swim, everyone gathered in the living room playing, “What’s in my world?” and “Black Magic” and a few other random games.

Furthermore, after staying there for a while, I took Darren Chen down to Los Angeles to pick up his car with his spare key that we picked up the night before in San Diego. This was around 9 PM, and I thought at that moment my night was over already so early for once, and I can go home and play some UT2004!

BOY, SO WRONG I WAS! After waiting for Darren outside of this towing storage place for at least 15 minutes. He walked out and told me how sorry he was. Before I could tell him not to worry about it….he proceeded to tell me that his parents gave him the wrong key to the car! We then sat there and cried for half an hour! Ok…maybe not...but Darren was pretty pissed about it because now we have to figure out how to get the “right” key up to Irvine and taking another trip down to San Diego for the third time in the past 4 days is just crazy!

We all went back to Darren’s apartment in Irvine to discuss more about what we were going to do, right after eating the rest of the left-over from the Dim Sum restaurant 2 days ago…or is it 3 days? Who knows anymore….I think I have lost track of time altogether.

What we figured out while we were eating was that it will probably take us at least 5 hours give and take of driving to get everything done by tonight.

Irvine->SD (1 hour)
SD->Irvine (1 hour)
Irvine->Los Angeles (40 minutes)
Los Angeles->Irvine (40 minutes)
Irvine->Chino Hills (1 hour)

After much thought, I figured that that 5 hours could be spent doing something else better! I decided to help Darren out by pitching in some money to either get a locksmith, replacement key or to pay for the storage for his car in LA. So I gave him 50 bucks and told him that I rather give him 50 bucks and work 5 hours at work to earn it back than to be driving or be in the car for the next 5 hours! Hehe

Then I also suggested him to have his key be sent by snail mail up to Irvine and it should arrive in Irvine in a day at most and in the meantime, the extra days at the storage are only 28 dollars each, so it wasn’t too bad of a deal.

After further discussion and agreement, Devin, Darren and I headed out to the swimming pool/Jacuzzi area in the middle of the apartments complex just to chill and also to let Darren’s roommate, Yoichiro, do his homework quietly inside of the apartment. We started the Jacuzzi but only soaked our feet while we examined and discussed about life in general and the twisted paths it throws at us.

It has always been in the talk that we will either take a trip to Japan or Europe maybe in the next year or two. Then Darren and Devin brought up the JET program that Devin applied for in the past year but didn’t get accepted. The JET program is basically a national program for college students who want to travel to Japan to teach English to young children for a year with salary and fees paid. Well, I think that meeting Mika (who was Yoichiro's coworker in Japan, came over here for her vacation) was part of inspiration to visit Japan.

Another reason is that I love the idea of traveling to Japan for free and learn more about the Japanese’s culture and language while teaching their children English. It sounds like a great idea! But too bad I’m going to have to stick it through the next two years at least, until I’m done with my Master graduate program, before I can do anything else. I’m thinking maybe I will start applying at the end of next year for it and will get the result back after my graduate program. It will be an extremely cool thing to do right after my Master program and maybe it will help me pay for my loans, or at least just a bit of it.

We had some pretty damn interesting and funny conversations at the Jacuzzi area, wished I had a voice recorder at the time. We then headed back to the apartment around 2 AM; Devin took a nap, while Darren and I watched some downloaded Chappelle's Show and laughed our butts off.

Well anyways, that’s it for my long 5 days party (with some naps in between) or so it felt like! As I’m typing this right now at 7 AM in the morning, Devin, who only had about 2 hours of sleep, is currently driving back up north to Sacramento (insane mofo).

Thanks for coming down here dude, hahaha, if you weren’t down here, I think I would have spent the past 5 nights sitting on my butt doing just about nothing after playing UT2004 (of course). And Darren or “The Last of the ChowJo,” thanks for taking some time off your schoolwork and the pursuit of your coworker, Jennifer, to come along and hang out with us….hahahah…this is probably the second time I distracted you from school and ruined your GPA. Have fun in your taxi ride to work this morning.

Pete, if you are reading this, let Cedric know that I won’t be in to work for a while after a much needed sleep. Good night or morning world. Ok I’m going literally going to lie down on my bed and pass out right now.